Back To The Patch

Saturday morning and back to the routine, early visit to Gosforth Nature Reserve and was greeted by a pair of Mistle Thrushes singing their heads off. Into the Reserve itself and was paying too much attention to the last calls of the Thrushes when 3 Roe Deer came galloping past me no more than 10m away. Plenty of Tits and Robins around (they seem to be everywhere) could hear geese flying overhead and the closer I got to the Reeds the louder the whistling from the Teal became. A small flock of Long Tailed Tits could be heard off to the North and seemed to be on an equidistant path to mine. I arrived at the Feeding Station and so did the Long Tailed Tits.

There were a couple of Nuthatches keeping up their busy busy routine of in, collect a bit of food, leave and come back 30secs later. They use the same alighting place every time then do about 3 separate hops/flutters to the next places before picking up the food and offski. I just focus my camera on the blade of grass in the picture and wait. It never waivered from that spot and one other during the 30mins I was there although they change their food collection point every week so better piccy ops will arise.

Off for a walk further around and bumped into 2 more lots of Roe Deer, quite a few more patches of snowdrops and plenty of birds calling from the lakes.


Then went to my favourites place where there was plenty of life on the lakes, a lot of it taking to the air as one of the otters decided to have a leisurely tour round his territory. He came quite close to the Hide but this time you could see him with the water being exceptionally high and the lack of reeds.

There was a Sparrowhawk flying very high over the bottom end of the lake and we were all watching it through bins, when it suddenly plumetted down and came like a bullet across the water only a foot or so above it, managed to grab the camera and press the button twice but failed miserably with only a couple of severely blurred blobs. Im sure the Feeding Station birds employ a couple of lookouts as it only took a few seconds from the Sparrowhawk dropping a couple of hundred feet then traversing the lake at unbelievable speed and by the time it entered the Feeding Station it was entirely empty. Just as we were about to leave the hide a pair of Goosander slipped onto the lake without any of seeing them come in.

Then went for a walk round with Alan and Graham. Plenty of things knocking around but nothing ultra unusual. A few Mistle Thrushes, Fieldfare, the odd Yellowhammer, a couple of Kestrels, couple of Buzzards, a few Greylags and a couple of Pinkfeet flew over and landed on the lake and not many Reed Buntings were seen compared to the hundreds a few days ago.

Headed home early as my weary old legs were beginning to feel the strain from the last 8 days walking.