Saturday 3 December 2011

Mr. Grumpy gets some White-fronts

Had some light to look for some wild flowers today but today's excuses are that there was a 23mph hour westerly wind with heavy rain showers and even some sleet and hail that covered everything for a few minutes. With 2 days of frost I was never going to see much so foolishly left my camera in the house. What's a grumbling old sod I am these days!

A walk around despite everything I just said did find me some flowers, 11 to be exact, these being -
Ivy-leaved Toadflax    Cymbalaria muralis
Hogweed                    Heracleum sphondylium
Autumn Hawkbit            Leontodon autumnalis
Oxford Ragwort            Senecio squalidus
Common Groundsel    Senecio vulgaris
Feverfew                    Tanacetum parthenium
Common Dandelion    Taraxacum aggregate
Scentless Mayweed    Tripleurospermum inodorum
Wild Angelica            Angelica sylvestris
Hairy Bittercress    Cardamine hirsuta
Meadow Buttercup    Ranunculus acris

Which puts me on 19 species.

Bird-wise it was very quiet and the light was going fast but then at 15:10 I was looking back over the fell towards Nettlesworth when I picked up a skien of geese heading slowly into the wind, generally WNW  in my direction. The long V skien contained about 85 birds and I was wondering if they might be White-fronts when I saw the black lines and patches on the belly. They were indeed White-fronted Geese, new for Waldridge.  With no new birds for the year for ages, two in two days.

1 comment:

  1. Well done on your first patch White-fronts, Keith.

    There`s a couple on your flower list that i haven`t seen this month, yet. Good luck for the rest of the weekend.

    ReplyDelete