Very quiet afternoon stroll Astley Road round to Cutnook Lane in perpetual twilight. Absolute absence of pied wagtails the length of Astley Road. Male stonechat in horse paddocks immediately North of the motorway. Flock of 104 pink-footed geese in the field immediately to the North of Twelve Yards Road, presumably the same birds flying East later on. The hooded crow would have been showing well on the open peat but for the murk and mist so it looked like a disembodied head drifting round the bits of sedge.
A flock of at least 800 Jackdaws in one field down Moss Lane,Astley ,late afternoon.
Also about 10 Red Legged Partridge (almost certainly released birds for shooting)
Saturday 18th January 2025
Hooded Crow showing well in field 65 on Chat Moss at 11:30 hrs.
I walked about 150 metres along north - south path down middle of old Croxden Peat Fields and had great views of Hooded Crow on left hand side.
C1000 Pink Footed Geese circled over Little Wooldon Moss and Irlam Moss then came west and landed west of LWM and slightly east of Holcroft Lane at 12pm
Hooded Crow still on Croxden at about 12:45 with lots of other crows - not always easy to see simply because the "bumpy" terrain gets in the way
Fieldfares and Redwings in various fields
Marsh Harrier briefly seen at the reserve - against the light so couldn't tell the sex
Pink-footed Geese - flock of somewhere between 500-1000 (rough estimate) between the Glaze and the Culcheth Road - sort of up the hill from the "normal" flock of Canada Geese
The Hooded Crow on Croxden again early afternoon today.
Yesterday: A good sized flock of large gulls on the flooded peat after the heavy overnight rain contained 46 Great Black-backed Gulls, 80+ Lesser Black-backed Gulls and 11 Herring Gulls late afternoon before all flying off to roost elsewhere.
Hooded Crow mid-morning foraging the former Croxdens peat works and occasionally flying in to adjacent copse, viewed from end of track running NNW from Twelve Yards Road, with c30 Carrion Crow, 8 Rook and Jackdaws. 1 Peregrine circling the area 52 Fieldfare & 3 Redwing feeding along Cutnook Lane in field 2, plus c115 Starling around fields 2&3
-- Edited by dave broome on Monday 30th of December 2024 01:00:44 PM
Lunchtime: Hooded crow showing distantly with carrion crows on Croxden's. Female white wagtail with pied wagtails and grey wagtail on dung heap North of Twelve Yards Road.
[I missed the original autocorrect-imposed location error when I posted as I was just being run into by a couple of roe deer.]
-- Edited by Steven Heywood on Monday 30th of December 2024 06:40:59 PM
The Hooded Crow still on Croxdens by the flooded area(thanks to Steve Nelson for pointing out the area) associating loosely with about a dozen Common Crows .
Elsewhere on the moss still 100s of Chaffinch and Linnet down Moss Lane on the flax that the farmer has planted. A few Greenfinch also and a single female Brambling with them. Plenty of Redwing in adjacent fields,500 + Woodpigeon and a few Black Headed Gulls and on the River Glaze a Little Grebe,pair of Goosander and a few Mallard.
191224 Including a Carbon Landscape Winter Bird Count Barton Moss
6 Reed Bunting
4 Meadow Pipit
3 Snipe
1 Song Thrush
6 Common Gull
1 Stonechat
2 Bullfinch
....and yet another stark reminder with this year really putting in focus that our Birds are in many places Absent....and I don't mean temporarily....especially emphasised that after at least an half hour checking over a large area of 'farmed' fields that my sum total of birds was 1 Reed Bunting and 2 Meadow Pipit....