Christine's walking & birds blog

A midday walk in the woods brought peace and quiet, and plenty of birds. Only one dog was encountered, which trotted up gently, licked my hand and trotted off again. If only they were all like that!

The huge redpoll flock had split up; these are four of about twenty. Later I would see at least thirty on the far side of the woods.

The treecreepers were loosely associating with a big flock consisting of coal tits and goldcrests; there were at least eight of the latter. Green and great spotted woodpeckers and nuthatches were also seen; and a flock of long-tailed tits drew me into larches where about twenty siskins were feeding, neck-breakingly high.

As I drove home, I spied several fieldfares through the hedgerow of Boveney Wood Farm - my first of the year.

Of incidental interest (but not much):

Boveney Wood Farm is in Boveney Wood Lane, while nearby is Boveney Wood. Not far away, the strip of woodland between Littleworth Common and Burnham Beeches is known as Dorney Wood; while in the same neighbourhood can be found Dorney Wood Lane, Dorney Wood Road - and, of course, Dorneywood House, of croquet-playing-Prescott fame.

All of which should not be confused with the area a few miles to the south, where Dorney Court and Dorney village lie between Dorney Wetlands (Berkshire) and Dorney Lake (Bucks); while the nearby Dorney Common is bisected by Boveney Road - leading to the River Thames past Boveney Court Farm and - well, Boveney.

Try sorting that lot out when you're out walking around Burnham or Taplow and someone in a car stops to ask you the way.

It might have been worse. In the late nineteenth century, the residential area to the east of Dorney Common was known as Boveney New Town; but this became absorbed by, and also known as, Eton Wick.

For which we may all be truly thankful.

I took him into the house and supported his head, but he remained limp and his eyes slowly closed. After about five minutes they suddenly opened wide and clear and he began to struggle slightly, so we went out into the garden and I turned him the right way up; he could now raise and turn his head, but he was still very groggy and made no attempt to fly. I was holding him loosely and he gripped my finger with one of his claws.

I had the woods to myself for an hour this morning. I whiled away most of the time watching this marsh tit....

The winter-finch flock of yesterday was fragmented and restless. I kept hearing redpoll and siskin calls as they skipped about above the tree-tops and then I saw three lesser redpolls high in a swaying birch. A great spotted woodpecker foraged metres away, but despite his beauty it wasn't him I wanted.

Burnham Beeches/Egypt Woods

In the general contrary way of things, I had just got onto a winter-finch flock when the rain began. As far as I could make out they were mostly redpolls with a few siskins, and there were at least one hundred birds.

A helicopter whirring over low put them all to flight; and they don't half shift when they're startled, the whole flock shooting outwards from the tree-tops in a small chattering explosion.

 It was a male bird and provided me with my second sighting of the year.

I paid an early(ish) visit to the wetlands in better light than yesterday evening; twenty-seven golden plovers were with the lapwings but there was no sign of the black-tailed godwit.

I spent some time waiting on the main path at one of the bearded tit locations, only giving up when a man complete with telescope (and dogs) came wandering along the edge of the reed-bed in front of me. He's not the first birder to do this. When it happened before, I persevered; and a few minutes after the chap had gone past there was a "ping" followed by a brief sighting of one of the beardies in the reeds just inches from where he'd been. I don't know why they don't just wade in and beat the reeds about and have done with it. AAARGH!

I couldn't spend all day birding, but on the way home from a shopping trip I paid a quick visit to Marsh Lane to see the white-fronted geese again.

Elsewhere, a siskin called unseen and a stock dove perched for a while on a dead branch high up. Six redpolls were feeding at the top of a silver birch.

Combe

There was an icy sting in the breeze as we set off past the gibbet, but bright sunshine lifted our spirits. As we carefully approached the pheasant feeder on Sheepless Hill, a mass of birds flew away. I just clicked into what was left on the ground and discovered later that among the chaffinches and blue tits there was a brambling (on the left by the straw).

At the bottom of the track near the church, three chickens were foraging among the dead leaves. Like my mum before me, I always like to see free-ranging chickens as they scrape with their feet to get at worms and things. They were very tame (and I still failed to get a decent pic!) One of them was pecking away at the corpse of a pheasant.