Thursday 26th July 2012 - Shenstone

I only had time for a brief patch visit this morning so I focused my attention again on the Stanklyn Lane area.

On arrival I noticed that the Hall's Agricultural Sale was on at the rear of the gallops field.  This sale is kind of like agricultural car boot (or should that be tractor boot!) and the disturbance usually impacts on bird sightings from that area.  Amazingly, the ♂ Whinchat seemed totally oblivious to it and was still present perching on the Ragwort in the same field.  It is now an incredible 7th day that this stunning little chat has been present.

From the gallops I checked out the set-aside where again a single Marbled White was present and again it gave me the runaround as I tried and failed to capture a better record shot!  Also noticeable from my last visit was a further increase in the numbers of Gatekeeper on the wing.

My final stop was the beet field where I noted 3 Corn Buntings, 2 Yellowhammers, 1 Skylark and a juvenile Common Whitethroat. A ♀ Sparrowhawk also went through.

Gatekeeper

5 comments:

  1. Just caught up with this and your previou8s posts Jason.
    Well done with the Whinchat, not a bird I see too often around here!
    And what a great find the Marbled White was too, never seen one on my local patch unfortunately.

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  2. Cheers Phil. I am a big fan of chats as I have mentioned (probably too) often on this blog in the past, but it is really nice to have a longer stayer like this!

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  3. Those Whinchat can stay around for a week or two in the Autumn Jase, I find that here. Not the case in spring though :-)

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  4. Believe it or not Warren it's the first time I have had a long stayer on the patch. They are almost always one day birds here!

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  5. So glad you saw the Marbled White again.

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