Saturday 23 February 2013

Local area: Sparrowhawk, Water Rail, Squirrel etc

Instead of heading to Wales again, I decided to stay local with having a few things to do! Around lunchtime I popped round to see my elderly grandad who will soon be 95! He has a great garden full of wildlife. There's a male and female Sparrowhawk who visit his garden usually picking up the left over, half eaten Wood Pigeons which we think are brought into the garden by a fox. Along with Blue Tits, Great Tits, Robin, 10+ Black Bird, Fieldfare has been around recently scaring all the black birds away, Carrion Crow, 4 Jays, Feral Pigeon's - nice mix of colours, Wood Pigeon (alive as well!) etc.
Today a nice female Sparrowhawk was there with dark bars on the underbody.


Around 2pm I went off to Burton marshes, saw some Waxwings on Chester Road. 
Arrived at Burton, saw a lot of Coots around and then a Water Rail appeared out, I haven't seen one of these around Burton yet, so a first for me.


Grey Squirrel, I know there common but I can never resist taking a photo!

Saw these two again... (below) Canada Goose with? a bit like a Grey Lag (sort of!) a strange mixture, never seen this before. 


He spent most of his time fighting off the other couple.







What else I saw:
10+ Shelduck
50+ Lapwing
26 Teal
6+ Canada Geese (apart from the above)
x1 Cormorant
x1 Grey Lag Gose - probably another/more around
Tufted Ducks
Oystercatcher
Heron
Coots
Mallards...
Male Pheasant 
Siskins
Chaffinch
Blue and Great Tits etc



























The other day I saw a large Female Hen Harrier #stunning. 

Today possibly another Harrier, some were saying a juvenile male...


I was hoping for an owl but no luck! so around 5/6pm I decided to call it a day. 

7 comments:

  1. Your getting quite good at this wildlife photography, some stunning photographs there.

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  2. Hello Eve,
    What a great blog with beautiful shots!!
    It must be great to see the sparrowhawk in real. Good shots too of that funny squirrel and the goose in shot 12. Well done!!

    Many greetings,
    Marco

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  3. A great blog that you have, stunning motion, cheers Eve.

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  4. beautiful photos! perfection!

    ReplyDelete