What have you seen
Comments
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Yes thanks Wn, they are covered in short geometric spikes. The puffballs I’ve seen in the past have been smooth, yellowish in colour and were in meadows with cows in. I remember The River Cottage chef stuffing and baking one but it was much bigger.
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Thanks, WN. I just wonder if it was the light that day that resulted in the colour, or maybe a foible of the phone camera.
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Quite a few interesting birds about on our walk today. As well as charms of Goldfinches and skiens of Pink Footed Geese, there were a couple of Greenfinches, a Blackcap and we set up what I think was a Woodcock.
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A first for me, well in these numbers! There must have been 50, possibly more, curlew today on the stubble field near us. Just a few hundred metres from the coast. Let’s hope there is a future for our lowland breeding populations of these birds. The upland populations aren’t fairing too well either and the bird remains on that Red List.
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Quite a fascinating walk around the woodland of Chirk Castle as the substantial leaf fall allowed us to pick up various leaves and examine them in close detail, obviously in their autumn colours but handy nevertheless. We looked at the small difference, for example, between beech and hornbeam, not the easiest to distinguish simply from the bark or even the leaf.
The numerous variety of trees kept us interested all the way around.
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We too were admiring the fallen leaves today around the estate grounds at Scampston Hall, especially those from the London Plane trees, the N.American Red Oaks and the Beech Trees.
Back at the site we heard lots of Greylag Geese calling and then spotted hundreds, if not over 1000, feeding on the stubble in the field behind the site. They created a heck of a noise when they all took off just as dusk fell!
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While out walking today in Wykeham forest we heard and then saw a flock of Crossbills. It was the noise that they were making that altered us, and using the Merlin app identified them. I did not appreciate that they sometime occur in flocks, thinking of them as quite solitary birds.
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Fabulous spot, Nellie! Apparently the collective noun for crossbills is a ‘warp’ or a ‘crookedness’. I’ve only seen them in pairs. I’m going in search of Hawfinch this next few days, apparently there are quite a few around. I wonder what their CN is?
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Hi mickysf it is a Collection of Hawfinches hope this helps and yes we have had them already on our window ledge bird feeder.
Would like to see some Crossbills none of them around here will have to check one of my books to see where over here.
Still got a lot of butterflies about here even had a Small Copper in the garden a couple of days ago.
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Thanks, RK. Just tipped off that Hawfinch are near us today. I’ve never seen one so hope to in our efforts this week. We are headed to Clumber Park site next week where several have also been spotted so a second chance there.
Strangely we still have bats around us with quite a lot of flying insects about. The leaves are falling but still lots on the trees here. I remember harsh frosts at this time in past years and even snow. We left one site on the last morning some years back concerned that we wouldn’t make it up the hill. Thankfully we did but things are not as they were. No frosts and no snow yet.0 -
Micky, there are certainly lots of flying insects out of a night at the moment, as they are attracted to my head torch when I take Flyte out for our last walk!!
Hope you manage to see the Hawfinch, I have not yet seen one, but don't go out of my way to do so.
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For those interested.
Hawfinch Here3 -
Well, our "resident" Green Sandpiper is still at Burton Mere. I wondered whether it had damaged a wing but apparently not as we saw it flying today as well as getting a full on closer view.
We both saw a flying Bearded Tit for all of 3 seconds and shook our heads as they hardly have foothold here. Both of us quite convinced of what we saw though.Had a lot of trouble spotting the Green Wing Teal amongst about 500 Teals until someone kindly pointed it out. 10 seconds later a Marsh Harrier disturbed everything so we took that as a sign to make haste.
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We went to a churchyard in the countryside near Conway as it was said to have plenty of Yew trees with wintering Hornbeam seen regularly. Of course we didn't see any, mainly due to the 4 Yews being taken over by masses of Redwings. The resident Mistle Thrushes gave up and flew off. A few Siskins and a Grey Wagtail helped with diversity but no Hawfinches.
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wintering Hornbeam
Don't get many of them around these days, WN!😁
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