An early walk today around the Avenues, Chanterlands Avenue and Northern Cemetery. Cloudy and mild with little wind. I'm pleased to find a flock of 11 Jackdaws feeding on the YPI playing fields, with loafing Common and Herring Gulls. I keep seeing Jackdaws around, singly or in pairs in the area, but I wonder if there are resident ones. The streets behind the YPI could hold the breeding colony, will visit again in the breeding season.
I hear a Mistle Thrush singing from the cemetery trees, the first in the season, spring feels a long way off, but this thrush is starting to feel the stirrings of a new breeding season.
A mixed flock of tits gives me Coal Tit and a Treecreeper. A Long-tailed Tit flock later has two Goldcrests amongst them.
A Redwing, flushed from a rowan.
Grey Squirrel with apple.
Goldcrest.
Magpie.
Great Spotted Woodpecker feeding on a maple.
Clinging from a branch upside down.
Many Chaffinches about feeding on the birches and on the ground under rowans. The male in the photo above has white leg growths, see this article for a description of this condition. The proportion of garden finches with the condition increases in winter, when many chaffinches migrate to the UK from the continent. It is unclear what causes the growths as both a papiloma virus and a mite are found in most affected chaffinches.
Great spotted woodpecked investigating a broken branch in a large willow.
Iris foetidissima berries.
Goldfinches.
Robin.
Coal Tit.
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