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Only the brave

No matter how many times I walk the well-trodden paths that criss-cross my local patch, nature can still throw up something new. At Surlingham Church Marsh early this morning, the temperature beginning to climb above freezing, I witnessed a pair of Jays mobbing a perched Common Buzzard. I have never seen this behaviour before, although from a Corvid of any kind not exactly unexpected. My presence appeared to be the final straw, the raptor taking flight and disappearing further into the small pine wood. Elsewhere on the reserve, a hunting female Marsh Harrier was hopefully a sign of things to come prior to Spring, and Siskins aplenty called overhead and amongst the Alders. Walking the holloway from the church down to the river, the first Snowdrops were braving the frozen ground and providing a welcome splash of purity and colour.

This afternoon as the sky took on a golden tinge above the copse opposite, I took this as my signal to walk the marsh path down to the river. I was rewarded with an unusually silent Green Sandpiper, flushed from a dyke. Only my second here; the first passing through during the brutal Beast From The East of 2018. Soon after a Water Pipit thankfully called as it flew north towards Buckenham, also my second record here. My regular Barn Owl needed no encouragement to get out early and hunt, these are tough days with more to come. The satellite Corvid pre-roost have moved to the edge of the parish boundary, but numbers appear as strong as the start of the month. Small pockets of Wigeon banked over the river before settling to roost, and in the gloom the commuting Black-headed Gulls snaked their way downriver in absolute silence.

Having recently come across this, it would be selfish not to share. Solan Goose

Comments

  1. Caroline Gill23 January 2019 at 01:49

    A beautiful post about a place that is close to my heart. We seem to have seen fewer barn Owls in Suffolk the last two years (though others may have been luckier, of course). I wonder how long it is since the last Coypu...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jim27 January 2019 at 06:12

    Many thanks for your kind words Caroline. On the Coypu, I believe the last one was recorded in East Anglia in 1989, trapping having ceased around 1981.

    ReplyDelete

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