Heavy rain persisted all day making it uncomfortable and difficult to do much birding. Again I walked in from East Malling village this morning and quickly located 8+ Waxwings in the orchard nearest the main labs, sitting out the rain a top a couple of Walnut trees. A quick scan across the track turned up a male Brambling drinking from a puddle alongside 3x Chaffinches.
During my lunch hour I checked the orchards again - 20 Waxwings flew over the weather station and appeared to land in one of the middle orchards (away from the public footpaths) but I failed to relocate them. Over 500+ Starlings sat out on the wires, interspersed with Fieldfares and Redwings. On to the orchard at the back of the churchyard - this help good numbers of Redwings but Fieldfares numbers seem to really dropped off in the last 2 weeks. A cock Pheasant picked at the fallen apples and Chaffinches and Goldfinches hopped and flitted between the fruit trees. Amongst them I was pleased to find 6+ Brambling, especially after commenting to someone yesterday it had been a poor year for them. Walking back past the corner orchard I picked out 4 Waxwings; 2 sitting on the wires and another 2 feeding on apples close to the road alongside a male Brambling. I checked out where I'd seen the Brambling earlier and was amazed to see 15+ Bramblings, mainly males amongst a larger flock of Chaffinches. A couple of Lesser-blacked Gulls graced the air above the bypass road. Unfortunately the weather conditions were so bad that all my photos were particularly poor...even by no standards!
2 comments:
I'm pleased to hear there are Bramblings about Adam, I really want to record one on my patch at this end of the year, rather than chance it at the tailend :-)
Wow, look at all those Bramblings!!! Nice one! Apparently there's a few moving around locally but I haven't managed to spot any in Mote Park yet this year.
Post a Comment