On a Wander

No car today so the Westies and myself went on a wander. Starting in the little park round the corner, where there was blackbirds and Jackdaws, then up Drovers lane and eventually arrived at Thacka Beck reserve. 90% frozen with just one small area being kept open by Mallards milling around, but the gulls had so suffer the ice.

A mixed bag of gulls on the large pond at the reserve.

Common Gull. this is becoming a habit, pics of gulls standing on one leg

We walked round the reserve noting 12 or more Moorhens and a similar number of Mallard. A Stock Dove was sat on the wires close by, and a Fieldfare flew over. It was a morning of fly-overs because as we got closer to the farm a Buzzard flew over , good to see them back on the patch again !!. On our wandering we had two good fly-overs of Lapwings about 100 in each flock and 2 Oystercatchers in the second flock. We had a potter about on the Newton Rigg land finding about 6 Redpolls hedge hopping . We were just making our way through the small coppice when we met 2 young birders, they are stoodying at Newton Rigg and had just had a wander down to the petteril where they had seen dippers.

Blencathra, Sharp Edge will be in fabulous condition for ice climbing. I took a friend up in those conditions, gave him the fright of his life.