Monday 1st November - Dreams and woodland walk

I woke up this morning having dreamt that hundreds of Waxwings had savaged my crab apple when I was in Cornwall, only to be seen by everyone else in Petworth. Despite this being a nonsense dream, the first thing I did this morning to check that the tree looked largely intact, which it did !!






Ornamenal Crab Apple - Still with fruit and not a sniff of a Waxwing.

 

Spent this morning wandering through Ebernoe Common. There has been a real turn to gorgeous autumn colours on the treees over the last week and a real feeling that autumn migration has pretty much had its run for this year (apart from the late rarities of course).

There are 2 bits of water on the route I normally walk. Firstly the 2 ponds on the trout farm, which this morning only held 5 Moorhen and 2 Mallard (and a few ducks whose ancestors might just have been Mallards before they spent too much time socialising with Mr Muscovy) and the Furnace Pond in the wood, that was completely devoid of any avifauna. So my waterfowl expectations are always minimal.




A picturesque Furnace Pond with zero birds

 

Over the course of the morning I picked up a reasonable selection of woodland birds with another Firecrest being the pick of the bunch, although it was in a Holly and difficult to photgraph. Redwings crowded in good numbers in the Holly undergrowth. Fieldfares (8)  flew over with Siskins (2). Long-tailed Tit flocks held Treecreeper, Goldcrest, Marsh Tit, Coal Tit, Great Tit, Blue Tit. Wren, Robin and Dunnocks were plentiful. Large numbers of Jays were still foraging and Great-spotted Woodpecker and Green Woodpecker were seen and a Lesser-spotted Woodpecker was heard but unable to locate. Buzzard and Kestrel represented the raptors and a Grey Wagtail flew over Furnace Meadow, where the cows were grazing.




An Ebernoe Cow - They're very friendly.