Outing Account: A brief detour

This really will be brief, but sometimes 

it's the brief trips, detours or stolen 

'wild' moments that are the best.

Not from today but it seemed so drab without any photo's. This is from a year or two ago, late winter but seeing a Robin
is somehow a comforting sight, familiar, it makes you (and by you I mean me) feel at home, even if I am some way from it. 

This morning I squeezed in a quick detour on the way home from dropping my daughter at school. I'd planned on taking a longer detour and taking the camera along for the ride, but the morning dawned miserable, wet and dull. Not great for photographs and not great for camera electronics (maybe if I write him enough grovelling letters Father Christmas will bring me a weather-sealed DSLR for Christmas?). So I left the camera at home and did a bit of exploring. Hence no photo's to go with this story I'm afraid. 

I followed a stream which flows from an 'ornamental' (only in that it's not natural) lake just 200 yards from the school and runs down through a quiet residential area, then between an industrial estate and the houses in a quiet and secluded gulley. I'd only been down there once before and had forgotten just how wild it feels despite the immediate neighbours. Unfortunately the stream disappears underground, again un-naturally, after maybe a quarter of a mile and I have yet to discover where it re-emerges. 

I followed a green way cycle path back to Coyney Woods and had a nice slow wander through the now very autumnal, borderline winter-looking, woods. I heard a Great Spotted Woodpecker on the way in but apart from that I seemed destined to see nothing but a single Jay and a couple of Squirrels by the time I emerged from the dark, wet wood a few minutes later. Funny isn't it how sometimes you'll go for a big chunk of your venture without seeing anything then everything arrives at once? 

On the scrubby grassland on the other side of the woods I stood quietly and watched several Jays rocketing from Oak tree to Oak tree to Hawthorn and back again. Obviously trying to make the most of the last few acorns to bump up their winter stocks. Although their plumage seems duller at this time of year there is no missing that bright flash of white or the harsh call as they hurriedly leave the scene. 

Next a small flock of Fieldfares (my first this Autumn) flew over disturbing some of their resident cousins, Blackbirds, who were also making the most of the Hawthorn berries the Jays had abandoned just minutes before. Feeling like my rushed mini-nature-fix trip had now justified itself I heading homewards through the mist beaded scrubland only to be surprised by another white flashing backside, this time a female Bullfinch. I love Bullfinches and can't remember seeing one at Coyney Woods before although I regularly see them at Park Hall. 

In trying to locate the Bullfinch's hiding place in a long overgrown hedge I noticed a small flock of Goldfinches, now looking decidedly drab in past-their-best feathers... until they fly when the splash of gold on their wings seems brighter than ever. Both these finches are way up there on my 'really enjoy seeing' list of birds, so being able to watch this scene so close to home, even for just a few minutes felt like a real treat. 

Perhaps a relative of the birds I saw today as I took this just about half a mile away as the finch flies at Park Hall.

They were soon joined in their tweeting, chirping procession along the hedge by a second Bullfinch (another female), then a Blue tit, then a Great tit, then a Robin, then a male Bullfinch (you've just got to love that colour, and the contrasting black cap, splendid!), then a Dunnock, then a couple of Black birds and finally by yet another Jay, until with all the various contact calls and I assume a bit of avian heckling, it sounded more like early spring that well-established autumn. By this time they had worked their way along the hedge and round a corner, and the Goldfinches had transferred their attention to a patch of thistle seeds along the unmanaged edge of a long unused playing field (I hope to be able to persuade the council to include this in the LNR boundary and manage it as flower rich grassland).  

At this point, spirits bouyed by the sights and sounds I got over ambitious and tried to take some pictures on my phone through my binoculars... suffice it to say that between the combination of low light and 'wobbly binocular holding' I won't be uploading the photos, not this time. If I can perfect the technique then we'll see for the future. 

Not from today, not through binoculars, not even in Staffordshire I'm afraid. This was taken at RSPB Ouse Washes Reserve
in Cambridgeshire a year or two back, but it IS Goldfinches so is in some small way relevant... maybe?

Other than the minor disappointment of the failed photographic attempt what a detour. The alternative would have been a 20 minute walk down a busy sub-urban A-road, dodging the splashed from HGV's and just generally trying to wish the walk over and done with. 

Richard