Hello it's Harriet again. I went for a walk around the nature trail to see what birds were active despite the chilly wind we've had this week. It was fairly quiet, compared to my last spotting trip a few weeks ago when it was a little warmer. For those that regularly walk the trail, you might be interested to know what I saw so you know what to keep an eye out for.....
In Beaumont's Wood, there were: Blue Tit, Great Tit, Blackird, Chaffinch and Goldfinch
A lot of the birds were spotted along the edge of the trail next to the wild flower meadow, dotting in and out of the wild flower meadow obviously looking for insects and seeds in the soil. The field had recently been harrowed so this obviously brought a lot of things to the surface providing a feast for the birds!
I also saw a pair of Mistle Thrush in the Wild Flower Meadow which took me a while to ID and in the end, Keeley came to identity it correctly for me!
Along the Disused Railway Line I spotted more Blue Tit, Blackbird and Great Tit as well as Coal Tit and Wren.
So despite the cold, there was plenty of activity which helped me to improve my ID skills and see these lovely birds.
I also went with Keeley to Normanton Down, another site nearby that is monitored by the RSPB, to look for Lapwings and to see what sort of activity they were getting up to. We saw nearly 200 birds on the field, with definitely two pairs displaying, something I have never seen before. The male puts his head down and scrapes the soil with his feet which is his way of suggesting a nesting site to the female. Although they aren't near to breeding at the moment we hope soon (within the next month) they will be. In the mean time, we have to keep checking on them to monitor their behaviour and hopefully determine how many pairs are likely to breed on the site.
Keeley