Saturday, October 29, 2011
West of the river
West of the Thames where it flows through the Goring Gap, we parked at Warren Farm and continued on up the Ridgeway. A chiffchaff was seen in the hedgerow and a bit of subsong was heard.
Turning off to the north we crossed high, windy fields where skylarks skirled and churruped, and headed for Lowbury Hill. I had envisaged Greger keeping watch while I climbed a fence to bag the triangulation pillar; but in the event we discovered walker-friendly gates leading to an area of open access (shows how out-of-date my maps are!)
The photo is taken looking west to Bury Down and Scutchamer Knob.
Two wheatears running about on the short turf were a nice surprise, and a black bird flying away might have been a ring ouzel. Or it might have been a blackbird. 
We decided to walk north across the Aston Upthorpe Downs and back through the partially wooded dry valley seen in the picture.
So we carried on towards Langdon Hill, and while we were eating lunch on a bank at the side of the track a peregrine cruised by. Further on a wide area has been given over to pig-farming. Here we saw an immense number of gulls - mostly lesser black-backed - just standing about among the pigs, or foraging, or taking to the air and milling about in small groups. Greger reckoned there were about 2,000.
At the bottom of the track we turned sharp left to walk back through the valley, the slopes of which are dotted with hawthorn scrub and juniper bushes and grazed by sheep. A male blackcap and a goldcrest were moving through with a band of tits, and a dozen fieldfare went over chacking. Lapwings, starlings and linnets were on the high fields and a large flock of corvids chased a buzzard. A goodly walk.
// posted by Christine @ 12:10 PM 
