Today my car was in the garage over at the Black Country so I ended up spending most of the day over at my parents house in Halesowen. Whilst there I decided to visit a former patch of mine called 'Hawne Park'. Its basically an area of woodland and scrub sandwiched between a housing estate and 3 suburban roads. Needless to say, being an urban area, litter and antisocial behaviour can be a problem here. Then again, in the past I recorded some good birds here including Cuckoo, Woodcock, Willow Tit, Marsh Tit and Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. I also discovered a colony of Purple Hairstreak butterflies here. Anyway enough about the area and on with today's sightings.The walk around the area was more difficult than it used to be due to the spread of Blackthorn and Bramble - many paths were now inaccessible. Still I managed to record 3 singing Chiffchaffs, 3 pairs of Long-tailed Tits, Coal Tit, Great Spotted Woodpecker and a pair of Bullfinch. A Common Buzzard also soared over.There seemed to have been a mass emergence of the over wintering butterflies as, in just this small area I counted 8 Small Tortoiseshell, 3 Comma and 2 Peacock.All in all this was no Shenstone but it was a pleasant enough trip down memory and killed some time whilst waiting for my car to be fixed.Comma - Hawne Park, 22nd March 2011:
That first shot shows the camouflage of the underwing off really well. Nice one, Jason.
ReplyDeleteCheers Dean...yeah I was pleased with that one.
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