Mostly Thrushes

A bitterly cold northerly wasn’t the best prospect for today but after a few hours I came home with a bit of news from far and wide plus plenty of photographs of thrushes. I hope Another Bird Blog readers are Turdus fans. 

Kicking off at Lane Ends gave 4 Little Egrets, 1 Grey Heron and a walk to the pool just 2 Tufted Duck. It was too cold to hang about on the sea wall with a trip around Cockerham Moss ensconced in a warm car seeming a much better prospect. 

Most of the Whooper Swans from last week seem to have moved on, with a meagre count of 32 today, and 3 Mute Swans well separated from their noisy cousins. The gangs of corvids alerted me to a Sparrowhawk flying low across the stubble towards flocks of feeding Starlings and when they all panicked into the air I made an approximate count of 1500. Hundreds of gulls remained uncounted, but I did pick out 10 Redshank working their way through the flooded stubble. Further round the moss and on a less flooded field were 300+ Lapwing and 18 Curlew. 

I stopped at Braides to count more waders on the flood there: 1200 Golden Plover, 420 Lapwing, 18 Dunlin and 40 Redshank. Two Kestrels here too. 

Kestrel

Conder Green next where I found a good selection of birds, starting with a Peregrine over the pool which circled briefly before flying off towards Glasson and the marsh. On the pool and creek: 110 Teal, 2 Goosander, 1 Goldeneye, 3 Little Grebe, 2 Snipe, 15 Curlew, 3 Lapwing, 2 Oystercatcher, 1 Little Egret, 10 Redshank and 1 Mute Swan, the latter a little more approachable than the wild and wonderful Whooper Swans. 

Mute Swan

Smaller birds around the car park area: 2 Greenfinch, 4 Goldfinch, 1 Tree Sparrow, 3 Redwing, 18 Fieldfare and 12 Blackbird. It was here I spent a while trying to obtain shots of the shy thrushes feeding in the hawthorn bushes. So thrushes below, not in any particular order. 

A single Fieldfare had taken ownership of one hawthorn, chasing all the other thrushes off, its own species as well as the Blackbirds and Redwings. Occasionally the other thrushes would sneak back for a quick berry or two until the Fieldfare chased them off again to the next hawthorn.

Fieldfare

Fieldfare

Blackbird

 Redwing

Fieldfare

 Fieldfare

Fieldfare

Blackbird

Redwing

Fieldfare

Weekend beckons, so does more freezing weather with frost and snow. Not to worry because Another Bird Blog will surely find somewhere to go. Log in soon to discover where.

This post is linking to Anni who would rather Be Birding Anytime soon.