Right then, I'd like to say I feel better, but that wouldn't really be accurate... Mr and Mrs Smew are apparently still on the Exe, and if they deign to stay until Saturday I will have the chance to feel better [before zooming off to the wild wild west of cornwall again..!].
Few indeed and happy are those birders who've never felt the urge to twitch, and who thus have never suffered the agonising wait - trapped by commitments that even they dare not breach; be they work, school, or family - while hour by hour, day by day, that wondrous bird shows to the jammy sods who don't seem to have jobs/lives/cares in the world, knowing that any second could be the last... That eternal breathless wondering.......... Will it stay?
Birds that have stayed are the now seemingly resident garden Fieldfares - indeed they've set up Bird Wars II! Adult Fieldfare has decided that not only the Garden, but also the neighbours' garden, is his/her personal domain, and woe betide anything bigger than a finch that comes in to try to munch on the assorted apple [and now pear] thirds.... 1w Fieldfare is putting up a claim to next door, but Song Thrushes and Blackbirds are getting severely pummeled - Starlings and the Redwing seem to have beaten a retreat. Blackcaps are too small for either Fieldfare to be bothered with, and they've continued Bird Wars I on their own - male Blackcap still more-or-less holds the fat block, but female and male Blackcaps have been getting at the apple fairly regularly. Sparrows and Greenfinches squabble over the feeders, Robin and the Dunnocks make sporadic attempts on the roofed tray, while the Chaffinches mostly watch disconsolately as the Flying Hoovers [ie. Woodpigs] devour everything spilled from said feeders [which have been VERY carefully placed, with much judicious pruning, to stop said Pigs from hoovering up everything in the feeders as well].
Additional from previous posts;
For Saturday; I have indeed never seen B-N Grebe on the Exe, and also forgot to mention another Location Tick - 2 Purple Sandpipers flew upriver past me a couple of minutes after I arrived at Cockwood Crossing. Purples were my first Sands [due to being formerly ubiquitous at Haldon Pier], and I still tend to go "Oooh, pretty Purple Sands" and not think too much more about them. I guess they were also avoiding the easterly-driven seas.
For Sunday; Something which should have dominated my post! I'd hoped, theorised, and generally thought "One day, one cold winter, one perfect spring... maybe?" But it actually came true - I now have all 4 'peckers on my Patch List!!! Joy of joys, a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker... ::Fond sigh:: I don't know if it had moved down due to the cold weather, or if it was just being bolder [I hope the latter - there are woods enough and the habitat's the same as other places they breed. I, understandably I think, say no more]. Also, not all the Goldcrests had succumbed to the cold - at least 2 were still going, and while there haven't been any Coal Tits in the Garden, there were plenty knocking about the more sheltered Patch areas.
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