Tuesday 17 May 2016

May 17th Mousehold Heath

Sunrise over Mousehold Heath
I arrived with Will to Mousehold Heath at 5am this morning to help out with a dawn chorus walk. Only two people (and a dog) turned up to join us for this early stroll. The sky was already light with the sun rising gradually above the trees. The sound of bird song flowed to our ears with many voices singing and calling at once in a wall of noise. I could hear song thrushes, goldcrests, treecreepers, blackcaps, dunnocks, robins, blackbirds, blue tits, wrens, great tits, long-tailed tits, willow warblers, chiffchaffs, carrion crows, greenfinches, chaffinches and woodpigeons. You should hear some of these in the videos below.



Blackbird
Chiffchaff
Chaffinch


Peregrine sitting on the base of the Cathedral's weather vane
From St James' Hill, we could see one of the peregrines sitting on the base of the weather vane at the top of the cathedral. It sat there with its back facing us, but you could still see it clear enough from as a black-grey blob from the top of the hill. I could not find any whitethroats in the surrounding gorse this morning, but at least the house sparrows were chirping away proudly. We also heard a great spotted woodpecker calling before we saw it flying past us and we caught a glimpse of a sparrowhawk soaring over the trees like a flying capital letter T.
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Feral Pigeon
House Sparrow

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