Friday 5 February 2016

SQUIRREL SURPRISE

This red squirrel posed nicely for Andy Field alongside the Fishponds wood in Shop Lane on Wednesday 3rd. It paused long enough for Andy to get his camera out of the bag and take several shots.

The red squirrel was seemingly commuting between the conifer wood and a nearby garden where there's a feeder.

The two brown hares were snuggled up close to each other in a field near Bromans Lane on Friday 5th. Despite the loud bangs from the bird scarer in the middle of the field, the hares stayed motionless during the day.
Still present in the field were the eight red-legged partridges.

Elsewhere on Friday, Andy Field had five goldcrests in the Shop Lane wood, 2500 brent geese feeding on Reeveshall, while at the Youth Camp, 19 corn buntings were seen.

On Thursday the barn owl put on a nice display of daytime hunting towards the end of the afternoon at the country park. It did a lot of quartering of the areas of long grass, when allowed to by the mobbing magpies. The barn owl was also out hunting fields to the north of the park on Tuesday.

At the park pond the Cetti's warbler and the water rail were both heard calling but not seen on Thursday.

From the Esplanade on Wednesday at least one red-throated diver was seen offshore by Andy, while the day before 200+ great crested grebes were seen.

During a walk along the Reeveshall seawall on Monday 1st a ringtail hen harrier was seen high over the Geedons, a pair of marsh harriers over Reeveshall, 2000 brent geese also here, 8 red-breasted mergansers in the Pyefleet and 20 linnets on the saltmarsh.
There was no sign of the common scoter which was seen on Sunday in the Pyefleet.

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