With a post-work weekend again, and most cheery from all the Hawfinchy Goodness, I resolved to get some proper country under the boots and chase yearticks in an amusing manner.
First up was Yarner, where only Marsh Tit was new for the year, but it was worth a try and always a pleasure to be there.
Then on to the main course, Fernworthy!!
I spent all the rest of the day [and a bit more] ambling about inside and out up on t'Moor proper. This was my first 'out there' for far far far too long, and while I didn't stray far [there were hordes of bods out there. Horrible, horrible scenes and 10T's, too... Oh the humanity.......] I did find a nice field of view to sit down and see if any yearticks felt like cruising by.
They didn't.
Thus is usually the way [don't be fooled by recent successes with HH's and so on, normal service is sfa over a Buzzard, my dears]. But You Never Know. And the looking is worthwhile in itself.
I ended up stalking the gull roost along the south shore, finding a nice close point where they weren't bothered by me. I'd have liked to be up higher; say on the road lookout where I wouldn't have to go wandering far from my car in the dark, but not having an x-ray camera and knowing I'd need photos [which nobody else has, it seems?] if what I was waiting for was real and appeared.
Following that reasoning, I got a bit cold in the pinkies, needing them bare to use said camera at short notice.
But, well, look at it;
Fernworthy
Spot the gull roost.
Or not, just look at it!
It was rather lovely there, though the cold was quite toothy, and as the roosting birds present at 1605 [~270 small gulls - about 90% BHG with Common - with 69 Herring, 7 LBB, 2 GBB] were joined by groups of mostly ~20 almost entirely Herring Gulls at a time, coming in along a sort of standard line up the Teign valley but making wildly different final approaches, the scamps.
Anyways, at 1651, with perhaps 500 gulls now present* and just as I was thinking I'd been right to be sceptical [there was this very pale immature GBB, you see...], what should come cruising up over the dam?
Yup; Glonkus humungus interiorensis.
I have the awful low-light photos and everything.
Flying Glonk
Floating Glonk
Waiting for the tentacles to attack...
Tall trees
Now, before anyone gets any ideas about expressing dislike for the second image...
Let's see; 1) First location sheltered by second. 2) Wood is a very green material, and growing it here is infinitely greener than importing it from how many carbon miles away? 3) Conifers are a valid habitat themselves, and species I need not name like them quite a lot, don't they? 4) Look at all that carbon sucked out of the air. 5) Hmm, how many jobs, how much economic benefit, comes from this? 6) I like conifer plantations, even when they've been felling while the ground's soft...
I could go on, but you I am sure have got the idea.
Let's go back to birds.
Female Goldeneye
While the Goldeneye stayed close to the north shore, the reported BN Grebe was not visible to me anywhere, though in the morning a redhead Goosander was. Otherwise the usual scattering of Tufties [3] and Teal [6] with the inevitable Mallards [41].
Land birds were the usual expected spp., with the Moor itself quieter than even a winter's day would expect,
That's Cosdon Beacon,
over there.
[Though the vast hordes - including a group of 21...?!? - might have had a little to do with that.]
It was lovely just being out there again, and that was before a white-winged wonder lifted over the dusky dam.
Be Seeing You...
[[* I must admit I did not keep proper count of incoming birds, being concerned that while noting down numbers I'd miss a sneaky incomer. Hindsight would have involved a clicker. ]]
