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!



A rare twitch for me but worth it for some great pics of a Rough Legged Buzzard in the Yorkshire Wolds

I've said it before and doubtless I'll say it again, I'm not a great fan of 'twitching' (man I can't afford the fuel costs for one thing!) but if there's a good bird on my doorstep sure I'll make an effort and so it was the case today ...so many thanks to Mikey for alerting me to this peach of a raptor that's been hanging around for the past few days on the Yorkshire Wolds nr Grindale, just outside of Bridlington ... a Rough Legged Buzzard.

Similar at first sight to our own Common Buzzard, one or two of these sub Arctic hawks over winter here nearly every year and East Yorkshire seems to be a favoured spot for them. They're longer winged than our own, paler with a distinctive white rump and they tend to hover a lot, pretty much like a Kestrel does, and on their breeding grounds further north Lemmings are what they're usually after. Not sure what this one was after but it sure was doing a lot of hovering and have to say it was a wowzer of a bird! Shame about the poor light but if it hangs around I might pop back on a better weather day.



Hovering like a Kestrel but so much bigger!

Nice profile!

From some distance but that white on the rump is so distinctive

Awesome head on view!

Nice in black and white!

Unfocussed I know but it was coming right at me!

Lemmings are in short supply in East Yorkshire but I bet he'd have been interested in this Stoat I spotted on my patch this morning!