Clearly I am not managing to post to this blog very often - which does not mean that my interest in natural history has waned. Rather, it is a reflection of 1) prioritising my welsh blog Ailddysgu and 2) that I do at times do the nature related blogging in Welsh that I would otherwise do in English - and having limited time, as always.
Yesterday Jim and I went on a walk at the Hanson reserve - our local nature reserve - with our county bird recorder, Andy. The weather was kind and we had an ausipcious start, as he told us that the bird flying so quickly past us and the hedge was a sparrowhawk. Although I do see sparrowhawks from time to time around us, I certainly could not identify such a bird flying past very quickly - giving you only a glimpse.
It made me realise that we had not been to the reserve for some time, but apparently there is a short-eared owl there again so I will plan to go a bit more often and see if I can spot it. There is also a great white egret around - and has been for a month so hope to look for that too. It was not apparent yesterday, at any rate.
In addition to the water birds (the usual crew of lapwing, heron, many black headed gulls and one common gull - which I don't think I've seen before, heron, shoveller, teal, coot, gadwall, widgeon, swans, canada geese, cormorants and a very large roost (around 16?) of little white egrets) we saw a beautiful bird at the woodland hide. This was a marsh tit - which I have never seen. Apparently they are quite difficult to separate from willow tits, but Andy was pretty certain that this pair were marsh tits - and pointed us to all the features to support that identification. Not that I would be able to tell the difference if I see another one. It was a striking bird - much prettier than it looks in the field guide with a warm, buffish colour on its breast and a very smart black cap. The photo is my best go on my little camera - but it is not really able to show it very well.
We are having quite a mild autumn so far, having had really hot weather at the beginning of the month. To round up: in the last couple of months, I have seen a kingfisher on the way back from work on the river - I stopped my bike having seen a bird fly past quickly and as it perched on the bank, saw that it was a kingfisher before it flew back again. A few weeks earlier I saw the first weasel I have seen for a long time - running across the road this time. And a couple of weeks later we saw a large fox on our way back from the city centre. Again, I have not seen a fox for quite a while, though the rabbit population is still pretty high with a large number on the verges as we drove back into Newport Pagnell last night.
