Tuesday 23 February 2010

Sunday and Monday at Holywell

Sunday saw me down at Holywell at half 9, it was cold with quite a heavy cloud cover, the pond was 80% frozen.

From the car 60+ Greylag could been seen in the West fields, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Magpie, Starling and House Sparrow were feeding on the green. On the pond, 2 Mute Swan, 5 Teal, 23 Mallard, 21 Pochard, 6 Tufted, 2 Drake Goldeneye, 2 Grey Heron, 6 Moorhen, 8 Coot, 100+ Black Headed Gull, 20 Common Gull, 50+ Herring Gull and a lone Great Black Backed Gull. Usual suspects in feeding station.

The geese flock was next on my cards, to have a closer look incase of something different lurking amongst them. A quick look in the public hide produced nothing more. I approached the geese slowly and cautiously as they were quite close to the path, the 60+ seen from the car had turned into a 120+ strong flock, although all Greylag. Down the dene there was a pair of Stock Dove.

Monday, arrived at the hide at 17:00, with heavy snow clouds and a setting sun, it was colder -3. A 100+ skein of geese flew overhead as I walked down, joining another 100+ in the East field, again all Greylag. On the pond 2 Mute Swan, 250+ Gulls steadily increasing as I sat, 17 Wigeon, 1 Drake Goldeneye, 21 Pochard, 4 Tufted, 1 Cormorant, 20 Mallard and a lone Grey Heron.



3 comments:

  1. The amount of time the pond has been frozen this winter says a great deal about how hard a winter it has been, and how hard it has been on wildlife. Looks like frozen ponds are to be with us a while longer! It would be interesting to know how many days the majority of the surface of Holywell Pond has been frozed during the winter. Cheers Brian.

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  2. Would be really interesting, and a comparison with last years wintering wildfowl. I bet there would be a drastically different figure compared to previous years, apart from days when the ice thawed slightly to expose freshwater, at them times an increase in wildfowl may be seen, possibly.

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  3. 'skein of geese' - you learn something new...

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