You know, there are times when you experience such acute embarrassment that you just want to vanish into a handily adjacent parallel dimension. One such event happened to me today, but more of that later.
Yesterday, when not staring out the window wondering how they hell they all knew which weekend it was, I took a stroll around a rather, er, cold Mamhead with the folks and Tilda Swindog. If it hadn't been for a ridiculously cool Treeeecreeeper near the Obelix there wouldn't have been much of a bird report at all [not entirely surprising]. Treeeecreeeeper was a Star, though, "Mad barking dogs? What mad barking dogs?" etc... It wasn't an entirely solo effort, though as we did have a couple of very nice sightings before the 'creeper; Roe Deer. Oh, but Tilly was over the moon. She really likes deer. When two does ran across the track behind us, only a very well-placed and snaggy tree stump saved my Mum and I from getting high-speed extendo-lead to the backs of our legs [That lead goes through vegetation like a strimmer..]. Then a buck was just stood behind a tree, cool as you like, about 50' from us. My Dad's getting very good at dog-wrangling..
Today a proper Day Out on't Moor! Well, a proper day out around Fernworthy anyway! Not as much ice as last year [at one point there was a glacier on the road, I kid ye not; park 2km short and walk...], though the ground was nicely frozen. Just a little ice in the shadow of the dam, though lots of nice natural ice sculptures around. A day of blue skies and warm sun, with a light but toothy wind; glorious! As well as the traditional circuit of the reservoir we also took a wander through the trees; much quieter :) There are some wonderful trees at Fernworthy; its a big wood, so it really deserves to have them - proper mature conifers of a lot more than one species, thankyou very much - look along the valleys for the best ones. There's also some nice archaeology there, if you're interested [[And on the subject, next Sunday afternoon on C4 is apparently when Time Team is showing their dig at Tottiford - yes that's why it was drained last year - should be interesting! ]]. Fernworthy rocks. Especially in winter.
We went by most of my favourite bits and were rewarded handsomely with crippling views of Crossbills! Special thanks to the 2 adult males, female and two fresh juveniles which came halfway down a conifer to pose for us on the short bare stubby branches. They just sat there, looking around now and then.. I couldn't believe my eyes. Close enough to see all the details of bill morphology with bins... The other Fernworthy specials were less obliging, with a single flyover Redpoll [in the company of a single Siskin, which was a nice comparison] and Siskins mostly staying up high or flying over [and not singing]. Even the Goldcrests were feeling shy. I'm not bothered; those Crossbills [at least 20 in small groups] more than made up for it. We also met two more Roe Deer, but Tilly was staring the other way and missed them! Poor thing, about 10 seconds after they vanished she must have caught their scent as her head snapped 'round and she was frantically looking in a "What did I miss?!?!??" way..
Having finished the loop early, we kept going past the car park and had coffee in the hide, hoping maybe a nice Goosander might fly in. No such luck. 5 Herrings, 6 BHG, singles of Tufty, Coot, Grey Heron and Cormorant, plus 5 Teal lurking in the far side tussocks were all that was on offer. The sound of someone approaching sent Atilly into Hun mode [she thinks everywhere she gets fed is home, the mad thing], so I went out to apologise, only to discover it was [Famous Devon Birder]. Oh the shame...
Mostly it was a very nice day indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment