I should never be surprised of course but wow are these nights drawing in now, and with cool winds whipping around my legs en route to the shower block of a morning and murky skies overhead from 2.00pm onwards, my thoughts are rapidly turning to my next big road trip! Same general direction as last year - South and some winter Spanish sun, but a full 3 months this time Jan - March so less frenetic and probably centred around the
Ebro Delta and
Costa Blanca for most of the time. I simply cannot wait!
Having said that I'll kinda miss my temporary little patch of East Yorkshire here at
Fangfoss Station but unless I find somewhere better next year I'll be back in April to see what this most perfect of green lanes produces in the Spring. I'm unlikely to turn up a rarity here (though there's always a chance) but for traditional UK countryside birds I think it's exceptional, and with resident birds such as
Skylark, Yellowhammer, Grey Partridge, Common Kestrel, Sparrowhawk, Tree Sparrow, Song Thrush and
Green Woodpecker to name but a few, and all in good numbers, within spitting distance of my motorhome there's never a dull day; oh and then there's the owls that I hear every single night....
Tawny, Barn and
Little Owls - just fab! So good in fact that apart from a brief trips to
Tophill Low &
Hatfield Moor, I haven't strayed much recently.
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| Fangfoss Station Lane ... centrepiece of my patch |
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| Male Bullfinch, Fangfoss |
A bird I didn't mention above was our very own
Bullfinch. Now I love these sizeable finches but boy are they shy and a nightmare to photograph ... never had a full frame decent pic and still haven't but there are up to half a dozen around here feeding on the mast heads of last season's Rosebay Willowherb and with a steady hand and not a little bit of stalking I've managed some very reasonable distance shots over the last couple of days when the morning light has been at its best.... here's a selection of pics
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| Female of the species |
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| Male Bullfinch |
.......... and this male seemed particularly showy! |
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Not the sharpest by any means but the only half decent of both Mr and Mrs
Bullfinch at lunch together .... typically showy male!
The early morning light was almost too bright lending more of an 'orangey' tinge to the male's normal rosy red breast.
Absolute corkers some of those male Bullfinches and its great to see little flocks of them around here. No less colourful are the many
Yellowhammers around here (flocks of 50+ are not uncommon down this one lane), and this little chappie was nicely framed by the
Hawthorne bush he was perched in.
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Yellowhammer
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| Fieldfare en route overhead! |
The
Fieldfares and
Redwings that were initially slow to arrive on our shores this Autumn are now well and truly here on our bushes and consuming our berries! This one is a
Fieldfare and one of many I took a week or so ago when big flocks were making landfall on the coast and then streaming in over the
Yorkshire Wolds along with Northern
Song Thrushes and
Blackbirds that swell our UK resident populations in Winter.
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| Song Thrush, one of many new arrivals in the lane |
November is not only the best time of year to grow a moustache (I've declined again), it's also one of the best months of the year to catch up with and see big numbers of a variety of common birds. Why? Because in flocks they can work together to find food and gain safety from predators by being part of a big crowd!
Tits, finches and thrushes do this all the time in Winter as a survival mechanism and many other small bird species will often join in the crowd to take advantage of this mass foraging behaviour. This is why you will often see the odd
Treecreeper, Goldcrest, Nuthatch or if you're very lucky a
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker in amongst a 'Tit band' of
Long Tailed, Blue and
Great Tits .... there's a
Lesser Pecker doing just this at
Adel Dam, nr Leeds at the moment!
Moving away from my patch but sticking with the 'common bird' theme here's some atmospheric
Starlings nr
Hatfield Moor the other evening as they were coming into roost ... me n Mark had close on 5000 massing birds around telegraph wires and although the light was abysmal the results were ok.
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| Massing Common Starlings, nr Hatfield Moor |
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Arty Starlings
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............ magical and always a thrill to witness, hear and feel such events.
Maybe only a mini '
murmuration' by national standards but awesome all the same and with a bit of tampering in photoshop, the artistic possibilities are endless!
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| Male Marsh Harrier, Tophill Low |
......and to round things off, an impromptu visit to
Tophill Low nature reserve, nr Beverley whilst I was en route to Hull with Rob for a musical chill sesh, brought a nice male
Marsh Harrier shot and in the briefest of good light some splendid
Shoveller ducks ... just a shame that none of the 70 or so
Goldeneye that were also about didn't come into a similar range!
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| Male Shoveller, Tophill Low |
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| Shovellers, Tophill Low |
Less nattering from me, here's the pics more or less in sequence. My only slight regret is that I didn't get more of the 2 of them together but hey I won't see these delightful animals again at such close quarters for a very long time, so I have to be very satisfied with these images.
