MORNING WALK INTO YEO VALLEY AND SUTTON BINGHAM
WEATHER: dull overcast, moderate winds. Temp 14C
The miserable weather continues, dull low cloud with some drizzling rain made for a dull and uneventful walk. Before I set off I sat eating my cereal looking through the lounge window when a Green Woodpecker landed on our garden fence. A Crow chased it off even before I reached for my camera.
Very little bird-song rang out as I made my way along the track into the valley, I heard Song Thrush, Blackbird, Wren and nothing else. I walked a mile without stopping to look at anything because nothing caught my attention. I recorded a strange call made by one of the Blackbirds and a Common Buzzard flew over carrying some morsel of food in its bill.
I checked my wildlife camera which had been sitting strapped to a tree near the stream, it had not been triggered once overnight! So I repositioned it facing a track on the bank of the stream instead of the water, I also put down some cat food offerings.
The sky darkened as the cloud thickened, it looked like a downpour was on its way, so I cut my visit short and headed back home, I had not even reached the River Yeo andI never took a single picture!
Before going home I jumped into the car for a quick drive across to Sutton Bingham reservoir to try to find a wader or two. The sky brightened a little and I enjoyed a nice ½ hour scanning the water and its shoreline, I stopped first at the causeway where I scanned two bodies of water one on each side of the road. I saw many Mallards, Great Crested Grebes, Herring Gulls and Great Cormorants.
Four Black-headed Gulls, three Lesser BB Gulls, a couple of Moorhens and two Stock Doves was the total of all the other birds seen at this point. My second observation point was from the southern end of the main reservoir, I scanned the area from a grassy bank. A couple of female Mandarin Ducks, a single Grey Herron and a Peregrine Falcon (sitting high up on a distant pylon) was all I saw.
Stock Dove at Sutton Bingham
I returned home and apart from a little pottering in the garden and an exercise walk through the village I never left the flat again. I do hope this awful weather changes pretty soon its getting depressing!