Great Givendale morning walk, Fieldfares coming in and yet more Fungi

One of the more diverse and scenery rich areas of the Yorkshire Wolds, Great Givendale is now on my doorstep and with the weather set fine (for the morning at least) and some favourable winds for perhaps a bit of long overdue winter thrush passage I decided this morning to heave myself out at the crack of dawn for a tramp around.

Great Givendale

Ridings Beck

Some fantastic late Autumn colours on show as you can clearly see; less than clear were the numerous natural springs that feed the becks around here which in turn feed into the Rivers Foss and Ouse. I was hoping to locate at least one of these 'bubbling puddles' I'd pinpointed on the map but to no avail so had to make do with a couple of pics of the Ridings Beck, one of the many chalk streams that are such a unique a unique feature of this landscape.



Ridings Beck

A glorious morning and a lovely walk, not much happening in the bird world apart from some pleasing numbers of Skylarks in the air, the odd finch flock and a few Common Buzzards,but these days I'm not just a birdwatcher and my Autumn fascination for fungi continues and as I scanned these chalky slopes these big beauties almost dazzled me ..... Common Puffballs

Common Puffballs

Slippery Jack

and these are common too but freshly emerged Slippery Jacks looks as good as anything pushing up from the earth

Slippery Jack

 Finally, as the skies darkened and I was retracing my steps back to the car and looking forward to coffee and a bite to eat I caught something out of the corner of my eye, looked up and bingo - a flock of about 70 birds heading in from the Northeast and my biggest flock of Fieldfares this Autumn

Fieldfares coming in over the Yorkshire Wolds

...... mission accomplished!