About Two Owls

Friday 14 November 2014

Forest Walk

With our Sunday group we met at Cadman's Pool near to the old Stoney Cross airfield.  The pool can attract a lot of duck and indeed there was a good number of Mallard present and the Oaks around the parking area were alive with Chaffinch, but no early Brambling was found.  Our circular walk took us down the valley, back up on to the plain and then back to the Cadman's Pool.  We didn't see masses of birds but we found Grey Wagtail along the Dockens Water and as we walked back up onto the plain we had a Painted Lady butterfly, the latest I've ever recorded a sign of how mild the autumn has been so far.
The latest Painted Lady we recorded
A Kestrel hovering over the plain was are only raptor. seen, though our highlight of the day had to be the Fieldfare and Redwing that were feeding up in the holly copse after their recent return to the UK to winter though many of the birds were very restless and after a quick feed moved on across the forest. Though we stopped for sometime listening to a gathering in one holly copse and the noise of the chattering and calls were amazing, made me wish I had my recording equipment as it would have made a great audio recording.  

Our walk turned into a bit of a fungi foray many of which were identified by Mick and Angie, as yet a subject that Jackie and I have only touched on but must do more to learn about as some can be very interesting.  I've included a few of the fungi that I managed to get reasonable shots of.

Cauliflower fungus 
Dung Fungus
Yellow Brain Fungus - Tremella mesenterica
A circle of Sulphur Tuft Fungus

closeup of Sulphur Tuft Fungus






  

No comments:

Post a Comment