Not much to watch on the Bankhouse side, but we've seen a Tawny Owl chick out down there a few times in the past and wondered if I could work out where they nest. One dead trunk of an oak fell over many years ago in which, at nesting time, you could see the adult's tail sticking out from the nest in the top of the trunk. So they must have another hole now, but it wasn't visible to me today.
I like snow because it brightens things up and I see things I normally wouldn't in winter.
Onto that stretch of canal bank by the Copley Water Treatment Works; smells almost as bad as in Summer! Along here I saw my first ever Waxwings in the 1970s; about 60 of them feeding on hawthorn berries. That was before they got the Rowan berry habit as that tree hadn't yet been planted much around supermarket car parks.
At least 50 Black-headed Gulls feeding in the waste water and flying around. Several of them with full or nearly fully black heads. The flock gets up to about 250 as the winter wears on. Never any other species of gull with them that I can see. They wheel around in the sky seemingly most of the day, then about 3.30 pm they drift off over Greetland as if they are going to roost on Scammonden or Ringstone Edge Reservoirs. It would be nice to know where.
Over in North Dean Wood I got a Goldcrest in the churchyard and a couple of Dippers going up the Calder. Then there were numerous small dull birds flying straight up from under the Rhododendrons into the trees in the wood. Redwings! But none showing any red. Further on as I went through the beeches by the river I flushed two different flocks of at least 100 each, and finally one perched showing a bright red flank as well as the face stripes. They were feeding among the snowy leaf litter, presumably on invertebrates, not seeds. Then straight after this excitement (first big gathering of winter thrushes I'd found this winter) a Buzzard flushed from the tree tops over my head and started circling round and jinking to avoid an angry crow.
Searched the bottom ponds along there in the hope of a Woodcock, but nothing more than a count of 3 Robins, showing they are not just a garden bird.
Lovely walk in the snowy woods.
3 comments:
Interesting report Steve. Long time since I did those woods. I used to do it in late spring for Wood Warbler in the beech trees near the church and remember a good tree for Tawny Owls in the same area. Good to find a few Redwings in there for you.
I have once had a Wood Warbler in there about a quarter of the way to the church from Clay House, above the path where the oaks are quite small.
There used to be a colony of Tree Sparrows nesting in the escarpment along there. (Before my time but in the records.) I guess they were established when more arable farming was practiced on the Greetland plateau just above, and when it all went to pasture, they moved off.
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