Started of by parking by the bridge on the Stour. Had a look down stream but could only see a few mallards, I have seen goosander here in the past. To the east of the Stour is a small sewage works which processes sewage from Kinver and surrounding area. It's a great place to see wagtails - pied and grey - which get on the sewage beds looking for insects. It's entertaining to see them dodging the sewage outlet pipes as they circle round the circular sewage beds discharging their effluence. They ride on the pipes and then take a flight down to catch their prey. Even though there were only about twenty pied and two grey there I have seen a lot more than that in the past. Standing on the bridge that over looks the plant is a good spot to see goldcrests and if lucky a chiffchaff which has been wintering there. I saw the goldcrests today but not the chiffchaff, perhaps the cold weather has pushed it out.
Chiffchaffs are summer visitors to our shores and spend the winter in the southern Mediterranean and north Africa. Some, though, stay for the winter and a few birds arrive here from the east which are of a different race known as Siberian chiffchaff. The one, or two, in question here could be of this race, or one of the Scandinavian races, but they are difficult to see and get a positive identification on them. A couple of weeks ago I tried tape luring them by downloading their calls from the Internet and putting them on my ipad and syncing it with a small potable speaker I had purchased from Tesco's for twenty quid. It didn't work. O well the idea was there perhaps I will try again soon.
Talking of soon, spring will be here in no time as I saw, from the same bridge, snowdrops in flower!
I took a short walk along the canal towards Kinver and had good views of great spotted woodpecker. At Whittington Bridge there were a number of mallards on the canal.
 |
| Whittington Bridge |
 |
| Whittington Bridge |
No comments:
Post a Comment