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.
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| Great Givendale |
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| 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.
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| 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 .....
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| Common Puffballs |
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| Slippery Jack |
and these are common too but freshly emerged
Slippery Jacks looks as good as anything pushing up from the earth
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| 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
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| Fieldfares coming in over the Yorkshire Wolds |
...... mission accomplished!
