A couple of Reed Buntings

It's 'snow' use!

Two weeks into the New Year and I am making my first post. Outrageous! In simple terms I have not been out much over those weeks, except to try and get some sort of work, which is getting harder and harder and consequently other things have become more important. 

Today dawned with snow on the ground, no work today then! I dragged myself out of the house and tried to do some birding. I visited a local site where two 'white'winged gulls were seen at the weekend, but today there was no sign of the Glaucous or Iceland Gulls. I carried on regardless, travelling to a local gravel pit to see if I could catch up with an over-wintering Great White Egret that has been seen a few times, on the way seeing two Common Buzzards hunting close to a dyke, most unusual as they were on the ground. No joy there either. Great, this is turning out to be a complete waste of time, I thought! I ventured a bit further up the road, all the while the snow was falling heavier and heavier. I arrived at a little dyke, known locally as the Cross Drain. This is more like it, I thought. Two Green Sandpipers and four Redshank were feeding, accompanied by a couple of Little Egrets, a Kingfisher flew by, a dazzling blue in a world of grey and white, but the icing on the cake came by way of a Water Pipit, my first locally for a couple of years. I ventured out to Baston Fen, but only saw a few Common Snipe probing hopefully by a frozen pool, before the snow forced me back home where the garden was filled with Blackbirds and Reed Buntings.

Male Reed Bunting

Male Reed Bunting

Common Buzzard

Common Buzzard

A bunting and a wagtail

Male Reed Bunting

Male Yellow Wagtail

Female Yellow Wagtail

Reed Buntings

Waffle-less Wednesday.

Reed Bunting male

No words, just pictures.

Reed Bunting

The archetypal LBJ (Little Brown Job) is the Reed Bunting. About the size of a House Sparrow and at first glance the same look, but on closer inspection this bird is very different. The male in breeding plumage is a stunning bird, with a pure black head and throat and a broad white collar (the photo`s below are of a male in winter, so not quite as fine looking!). They have a habit of perching on branches and `flicking` their tail feathers which in turn shows the white outer tail feathers to good effect.

This is another bird which has suffered due to agricultural intensification and numbers have dropped by over 50% in the last few years. Thankfully the population seems to have now stabilised, albeit at a much lower level.

During the winter we get these little birds visiting our small garden in Peterborough, the highest number being 16 when the really cold weather was here, but come Spring they disperse to their breeding grounds. A bird that my Dad is extremely jealous of us having on our feeders!

Digiscoped using Lumix FS15 and Kowa TSN-883 x30