Faricand Orisene...

Monday 2nd April

You gotta love the good old Captcha. I was commenting a couple of fellow bloggers and up popped Faricand Orisene... best yet! Can't decide if it's a Frathouse Motto, a medieval Trappist chant, or part of a line from a Lou Reed song. Anyway, it loosened my brain trying to figure it out and my mind drifted to birds and so I hit the patch for a bit.

Thought I'd give the Angler's Pool a quick check (I'd missed it out on the other day's count) and check the Big Hand Ranch horse paddocks for Wheatear and the barn owl box for Barn Owl. Shock Horror! Not only had the barn owl box gone, but so had the barn and in it's place was being built a redbrick one. Not cool! And there was nothing, save horses, on the paddocks. The Angler's Pool was a little more productive...

Angler's Pool

24M + 15F Tufted Duck, pr + 4 Coot, pr Great Crested Gebes and a pr of Mute Swan on a nest.

Lapwing Lake

Just basically parked up and had a quick look to see if the Little Egret was still there. It wasn't, but there was a 2prs of Greylag Geese that I don't remember seeing the other day. AND the first Blackcap of the year piped up from the north-west corner. Good stuff!

Birchwood Pool

Bumped into a couple of excited Wirral birders (called Tony and Alan I learned later), who'd just connected with the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and gave them a quick run down of the pools and hides and then sat a while in Birchwood Pool west hide. No Little Ringed Plover or Little Gull today... but I found where the Little Egret had got to... Birchwood Pool.

pr Teal, pr Mallard, 10 Coot, pr + 7F + 6M Tufted Duck, 27 Canada Geese, pr + ad Little Grebe, pr Gadwall, pr + 1 ad Moorhen, 1 Little Egret, 20+ LBB Gull, 10+ H Gull, 2 juv GBB Gull, 1 juv YL Gull, 29 BH Gull (of which only 10% had summer hoods).

Walked back via northern fringe along the south side of the Capped Tip but picked up nothing new and so decided to head to...

Was walking the WH Path Field and noticed that WH Big Field had been recently ploughed and rolled.

Always worth checking such fields at this time of year. First off, the Lapwings like to move in... today there were 3 pairs spread across the field. Second, it's a good place to get Grey Partridge... they seem to like the field margins... today there was a pair. Third, it's a great place to look for passage Wheatear.... and today, as luck would have it, there was a cracking female Northern Wheatear. Happy days! SO, four more species for the year list... brings me to...

75 species