Sunday 27 January 2013

Saturday/Sunday 26th/27th January 2013


Dappled shade - something that's been absent for near on 4 weeks.  A graveyard isn't the place I'd normally choose to spend my weekend, but the Hawfinches more than made up for it.

Snow, rain sunshine - all seasons in one weekend.  Sunday had all the promise of Spring, but I won't tempt fate.  I stayed local and spent a few hours catching up with the Hawfinches in St Margaret's churchyard.  A couple of the birds showed reliably on both Saturday and Sunday early morning but became more elusive as the day went on.

The arrows are back!

The feeders have managed to attract Blue, Great and Long-tailed Tits, along with Chaffinches and a few Greenfinches, but no Hawfinch as yet which seem much more content staying high in the Ash and occasionally dropping down to feed in the yew trees.  

A heavily cropped shot taken from quite some distance but shows very well the difference in size between Greenfinch and Hawfinch.

Even heavier crop to show what a beast of the bird the male is.  Bullfinch would have been a more appropriate name for this species rather than being assigned to their smaller cousins.

A number of Kent birders also visited (Hi Sian, Mark and Gavin) but with mixed success!  However a couple of birders reported Treecreeper both Saturday and Sunday, and a Common Buzzard drifted over on Saturday afternoon - both birds rarer birds in Barming than Hawfinch (the Treecreeper would be a first for me on this part of the patch).


3 comments:

Marc Heath said...

Nice account Adam, the arrows are back. You certainly are lucky to have these on your doorstep.

Warren Baker said...

Surely i'll see these birds eventually Adam!

Ken. said...

Adam.
Nice to see that you are still keping track of your Hawfinches. Well worth cropping get a better look at them.