With thanks to volunteer John for his report from a morning's wander.
No sea eagles seen but it was an irresistible morning - mild with sunshine. My first scan of the south brooks showed a large number of Canada geese and a satisfyingly good number of lapwing. A flock was on the newly wet West Mead pool with others dotted around the meadows. On the big oak one stock dove sunbathed, two magpies observed and two fieldfare checked out the feeding ground.
Little else was evident on the walk down the hill apart from the usual robins sweetly defending their territories. Near the pipe pond I found a speckled wood butterfly and two young goldfinch were taking lessons from an adult by the gate.
As I didn't take the tramper today I stopped at West Mead for some time before heading slowly back. Outside, the lapwing were joined by two Egyptian geese and two pied wagtails. Further out, well, much further out , was what could easily have been identified as an osprey on the ground. As you may suspect it was in fact a very pale buzzard.
Buzzard by Chris & Juliet Moore. You can certainly see why this individual has been causing confusion over the past few weeks!
Towards Greatham another raptor perched on a post. A pale head led me to marsh harrier but as the sun shone on it's red back I realised that it was a red kite. Around it a pair of stonechat flitted fearlessly.
Male stonechat by Graham Osborne
More Canada and Egyptian geese arrived but they were all soon spooked by two hungry-looking raven. They seemed to enjoy putting everything up including the lapwing and starlings before drifting off to annoy the inhabitants of the north brooks.
Apart from the odd shouts from incoming Canada geese the only other sound was the pleasant one of several skylarks larking about. It was good to see and hear so many.
On my return crawl I stopped at Fattengates and topped up the feed including the roof of the " Fattengates Pub". I was rewarded by great views of two coal tit but 'dipped out' on the two marsh tit that had been seen earlier. Above me about sixty fieldfare were undecided as to whether to land on the big willows or move on. Annoyingly they disappeared to the east.
Fieldfare by Anne Harwood
That was that. No more birds but plenty of autumn colour and some pleasant chats with fellow volunteers and visitors.
Here's a photo of the sightings board from the weekend - in addition to John's sightings the wildlife highlights include little stint and lesser spotted woodpecker. The lesser spotted woodpecker was seen feeding amongst the dead elms along the zig zag path so keep your eyes and ears open for this fabulous little bird. Find out more about lesser spotted woodpeckers and listen to their calls here.