A brilliant day birding.

After heavy overnight rain on the 20th September, the grey clouds lifted to reveal a gloriously sunny 21st September. Temperatures were between 19 and 22°C with a variable south westerly breeze that increased as the afternoon wore on, not a great day for taking photographs and that occupation soon became frustrating as nothing kept still.

On the short grass of the playing field I watched a small flock of pied wagtails, Motacilla alba, these birds are slightly larger than a sparrow with a black upper body and pale cream or white under belly, the wings are barred with black and white; they were hunting for small flies and midges and as they jerkily walked, they bobbed their long tails up and down.

The meadows have been cut, and the lush greenness after the recent downpours has now returned.

The foliage of the trees and plants are really starting to colour up now and what was an homogeneous mass of green a few weeks ago, is slowly changing so each plant and tree can be identified easily.  The shimmering silver of the poplar and the willow was particularly stunning. The fruits are well advanced and are now starting to be taken by the birds which were very active yesterday as were the grey squirrels.  The acorns are starting to fall thick and fast and there was a crunchy carpet of them under foot.  I spotted an elusive jay, Garrulus glandarius, gathering the acorns, then going off to cache them for winter.  Jays  make up about 30% of all oak saplings in any wood after burying them and then either the bird dying or forgetting where they have stored them, they germinate. Being members of the Corvus or crow family they are highly intelligent and inquisitive birds, very striking, and colourful with a pale fawn body, the wings are delicately barred with black and a startling blue and white patch.  The head sports a streaked crest which is often raised in alarm.

As I was hunting for the last of the summers butterflies, in the first meadow, a small group of blue tits  flew overhead and started acrobatically hunting for grubs among an old and nearly dead oak tree in the wood.  As I watched I noticed a nuthatch on the main trunk of  the tree, as you may know nuthatches have similar colouring to blue tits, Cyanistes caeruleus or Parus caeruleus,*  both have a bluey grey upper body and a pale yellow underbelly, so it can be hard to distinguish between the two, but the nuthatch is the only bird species to descend a tree head first.  The nuthatch is also slightly bigger in comparison to blue and great tits. Patience was needed as it stayed in the one spot for quite a while, either hammering in nuts and seeds or picking grubs from the nooks and crevices of the  bark.

As I sat on the bench overlooking the first meadow, a great spotted woodpecker, Dendrocopos major, flew with its characteristic undulating flight, straight at me, making a huge racket as it did so. Great spotted woodpeckers are quite big birds with males having a red patch on the nape of their necks. The bodies of both sexes are black and white and have black and white barring on the wings and a red patch on the rump, unfortunately I was unable to sex this particular bird as he flew incredibly fast into the hedge behind me. I couldn’t stay long on the bench as I became increasingly bothered by crane flies flitting about me.

Wending my round into the second meadow my eye was drawn to the only butterfly, of the day in the park, a speckled wood, Pararge aegeria,  I did see a red admiral, Vanessa atalanta, in the hedgerow outside but I’m not allowed to count that one. A solitary kestrel, Falco tinnunculus, hovered, scanning the meadow for small rodents and beetles. Kestrels have a mottled appearance in buff and brown. I watched the kestrel for a good ten minutes, hovering effortlessly, almost hanging in mid air, skillfully steering it’s fan shaped tail to catch the air currents, and then sweeping its pointed wings backwards in to a dive for a morsel of something delicious to eat.

There is still plenty of colour in the margins of the field, a large patch of Chickweed, Stellaria media, was attracting plenty of pollinators, this little fly had the most amazing iridescence.

This lone buttercup, Ranunculus acris, shone out from the from the Chick weed, just crying out to have its picture taken, how could I resist?

*RSPB.com