[Farnboro John]

1 January. Partying kept me from the field till afternoon, and only Rabbits and Roe Deer (which are almost impossible to miss locally) kicked off the Mammals for the New Year.

2 January. Off to Kent with Clare, first of all for the delightful West Hythe Night Heron then a waltz round Dungeness: an abortive look at Rye Harbour and a few waders at Winchelsea to pass the time to dusk. Oh yes, the first of the 2009 Boar trips! Unfortunately three hours in the gloaming and dark got us only nearby twig snapping, leaf rustling and heavy-duty grunting but as is well known I quite happily year-tick on call. If you are the BFer grubbing about on hands and knees in the Beckley darkness making loud grunts then I was wrong and you can have a laugh at my expense.

3 January. First tree-rat of the year, can't avoid them indefinitely I suppose. Also Bank Voles and a Brown Hare at Greywell but no mustelids.

4 January. No new mammals (quite a few Roe Deer though) but the birds struggled up to 100.

5 January. Back at work. Boo hiss.

John

[Jos Stratford]

Started my year off well - before any birds, saw first three mammal species - Racoon Dog at about 4.00 a.m. on the 1st, then Brown Hare, followed by Roe Deer. Added Wild Boar in the evening. Four Foxes on the 2nd and 3rd.

First bird Middle Spotted Wodpecker, number 4 Hawfinch, number 5 White-tailed Eagle, Pine Grosbeak in first ten.

[skink1978]

I’m happy you’re taking the mammal listing thread into 2009 John. So far this year I’ve only managed Grey Squirrel, Rabbit, Brown Hare and Roe Deer so nothing unusual. I’m doing better with birds as I’ve already seen Hawfinch, RL Buzzard and a stunning male Hen Harrier.

This year I hope to improve my UK mammal list with Hazel Dormouse, Wild Boar and a few more bats. I should get the Dormouse at a nest box checking session with the Yorkshire Mammal Society, and several more ticks with the PTES vouchers I got for Christmas.

[Isurus]

Happy New year mammal-fans!

The caribbean year has started as well as can be expected with feral cat, feral goat, feral sheep, brown rat and house mouse as well as a couple of unidentified bats. Perhaps this year with my new views I'll finally get humpbacks on my garden list!

Have you all seen the thread in the mammals section on sugar gliders in wimbledon?

[Farnboro John]

Marion suggested before Christmas that we could celebrate my birthday with a long weekend in Norfolk and although it wasn't packed with rare birds I reckoned there would be plenty to do, so we booked three nights at a B&B in Wells-next-the-Sea. They are birder-friendly and in addition to rooms in the main house have an annexe in the back garden which makes coming and going at all hours less tiptoey. The website is www.boxwood-guesthouse.co.uk if you are interested. Wells makes a good base for birding North Norfolk, being about in the middle of the coast and just big enough to have several pubs (the Crown and the Globe on the Buttlands being particularly good) and other places to eat out/spend an evening: as a winter bonus you are treated to masses of Pinkfeet overflying the B&B morning and evening (well 24/7 really) as they move from fields to coast and back. Thoroughly recommended.

8 January (my birthday). We drove up early Thursday morning and kicked off with a cup of tea waiting for Golden Pheasants at Wolferton. We heard a couple but they didn't come out. At one point Marion went "There's one" as she picked up a movement just in front of the car but the head that emerged was a Muntjac (year tick). It froze and ducked back, and after moving away vented its displeasure with a series of harsh barks.

We moved on to Hunstanton and then Titchwell, knocking off various common waders and the few wildfowl I hadn't picked up locally. While I was sitting hull-down watching a pair of Goldeneye on the beach pools drift closer, I heard a woman's voice dimly down the wind saying "Weasel". I was up and running in that direction (to the consternation of the Goldeneye) instantly. She had seen "a Weasel or a Stoat" running down the main path away from us. As she told me and her husband this, it reappeared, still bounding away, and I legged it after it with a total absence of fieldcraft.

Stopping about where I had seen it once again dive into the long grass, I caught my breath and began squeaking with pursed lips. In seconds I was face to face with a Weasel standing on its hind legs to see where the noise was coming from and I tried to continue squeaking as my camera started clicking. Being short of breath and full of cold didn't help my photography skills but I got a couple of reasonable shots of the little bundle of dynamite before it whipped round and dived into the grass like a kingfisher into water.

When Maz asked me late yesterday, I nominated that as sighting of the trip.

Later in the day we clocked three Grey Partridges near Choseley Barns, a Peregrine at Holkham and a pair of Tawny Owls outside the B&B among a day total of 85 species of bird. The only other mammal was a Grey Squirrel at Wolferton - the absence of Rabbits from view was commented on throughout the weekend until we hit the Royston bypass on the way home, where there were dozens.

9 January. First objective today was Sculthorpe Moor, but en route we were distracted by a Barn Owl that Maz spotted on a SLOW DOWN sign. By the time we had slowed down, turned round, changed seats and organised the camera it had flown, but luckily I spotted it crossing a field to a side road and we relocated it on another road sign. It proved very approachable and Maz drifted the car quietly up within about ten yards for full frame pix of it as it intently followed the movements of a Field Vole in rank grass and roadside weeds. I know it was a Field Vole as I saw it dangling from the owl's feet, but I am sure it was dead by then so no year tick.

Unfortunately the dank, cold weather didn't generate the mammals we hoped for at Sculthorpe Moor, but showy Water Rail, Marsh Tit (beware local Great Tit that does great imitation: no year-ticking on call here!) and Brambling were nice.

We moved on to Salthouse for the first-winter Glaucous Gull and found it eating a Red-throated Diver and being sketched by a local artist. We waited for about an hour and a half for his hands to freeze too much to work, then I could push in closer to get pictures of the gull. Not great but decent record shots. We left it sitting on the beach with other gulls, after also watching a Common Seal, that had been hauled out near Kelling and been pushed off by rising tide, swim past us. A massive passage of Red-throated Divers included a few others and a Great Northern was a good year tick for me.

10 January. A bitter frost and rising wind combined to produce a very harsh morning though the countryside was picturesque with heavy frost even on large trees persisting more or less all day. Two Corn Buntings in a flock of fifty plus Yellowhammers on the Ringstead Road from Burnham Market to Choseley livened things up and we then went for another look at Titchwell. Knot, two Whoopers and a Woodcock by the fen trail were added to the bag, the last two species courtesy of Tony Gray whose directions were inch perfect.

We finished the day at Wells quay watching the Pinkfeet fly out to the saltmarsh to roost and also seeing a male Merlin chop a Meadow Pipit effortlessly (the hapless pipit just climbed vertically from the ground and was taken in mid-air with just a couple of casual wing-flaps and a zoom climb: no chase at all).

11 January. We drove round to East Norfolk after Cranes and so on, dropped into Hickling just to recce the route (I'd never done that side, always been a Horsey man) and then had a search of the fields between there and Horsey, without success. As we repeated the exercise in the other direction without the sun in our eyes, we found a couple of birders with a scope up and of course they had four Cranes in a distant ploughed field. With the pressure off we enjoyed a Sunday roast at the Old Hall Inn before driving back round to Hickling for a session at the Stubb Mill raptor watchpoint.

I enjoyed that very much, with 23 Marsh Harriers and up to four Hen Harriers including a male, swirling about over the reeds. I enjoyed it even more when another birder there spotted the Ross's Goose transiting from field to field with a big bunch of Pinks and we all got progressively closer views of the vagrant (committees? what committees?).

To top the day and the trip off, on the walk back in the deep dusk we found a Chinese Water Deer - probably a female, no obvious tusks - grazing in a stubble field. It wandered towards us rather than away and with the camera set to ISO1600 and full belt from the Speedlite 580 I got a decent record shot at about fifty yards (according to the distance marks on the lens).

Traffic wasn't too bad on the way home and we were in by 2000 hours to catch the end of the darts final.

John

[MarkHows]

John,

hope you had a good birthday, pity you missed out at Sculthorpe, I have had excellent field and bank vole sightings, but no water vole yet, will keep trying on that front.

Mark

[Farnboro John]

Originally Posted by MarkHows

John,

hope you had a good birthday, pity you missed out at Sculthorpe, I have had excellent field and bank vole sightings, but no water vole yet, will keep trying on that front.

Mark

I think I will wait till the weather begins to warm up but before the vegetation gets going for another go at Sculthorpe but I was generally impressed with the place.

John

[Farnboro John]

Friday night is pub night, and as I arrived as duty driver to pick up my brother a Red Fox bolted down his next-door-neighbour's driveway - year-tick! Fleet is the affluent, green part of the Farnborough-Fleet-Aldershot conurbation and urban foxes are common and easy to see.

On our return later we had another near the Qinetic main gate.

Saturday was mostly birding - Sandhurst Sewage Farm for another abortive Firecrest hunt - but I tried the Greywell far hedge in the afternoon. The weather promptly started to deteriorate and I gave up for the day.

On Sunday I went on a bit of a tour with Steve Davis, kicking off with the last of the Bursledon Waxwings, and very nice too looking completely settled and feeding happily no matter how close we took pix.

After that the wheels fell off the day R-b Goose at Keyhaven - gone, Rock Pipit poor compensation: No Caspian Gull at Blashford (and it took us ages to even find the Black-necked Grebe despite it being in open water) or Water Pipit, or Great White Egret: no Great Grey Shrike at Shatterford and an inconclusive flight view of what was probably a Crossbill. And I don't want to hear any c**p about chups and chips and sonograms either.

On one of the transit drives I had spotted a Fallow Deer in the distance on open heather (it was nice not driving and even better having a driver I trust enough to take my eyes off the road and look around) so I got mammal number 12 for the year.

We headed for Blackwater Arboretum thinking both that it was a near certainty and that the way the day was going we would get no Hawfinches either.

The two birders already present hadn't yet had any, so we moved on through the far end of the arboretum to look for Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. A waste of time late in the afternoon but the adult Goshawk that flew languidly across the track further up was substantial compensation!

Returning, we had excellent views of Hawfinches perched up and finished the day believing that it hadn't been a total disaster - not quite!

John

[Farnboro John]

With fair weather persisting I went for a hide session at Moor Green yesterday at dusk. The Barn Owl was using the other owl box, viewable across Colebrook Lake: normally this is held strongly by Stock Doves so I was quite surprised to see the white disc peeping from the entrance.

The evenings are starting to draw out (hurrah!) so it was 1720 before the first Wood Mouse of the year came to the seed and sultanas I had chucked out for passing rodents. Two of them provided a lively session and I got a couple of decent pix.

A Roe Deer was feeding behind the hedge by the feeders just before dusk. It looked like one of last summer's fawns. Other than that a Grey Squirrel on the way down and four or five Rabbits in the paddocks were the only mammals.

John

[Farnboro John]

Thursday evening I had my first wander along the canal at Crookham Wharf. It was more of an aural than visual experience, with Little and Tawny Owls calling and a Red Fox barking wrow-wrow-wrow from the top of the cutting.

However, one of the far-siders became my first Badger of the year and I managed a couple of non-competition standard photos of it while it scuffled unconcernedly among the dead leaves.

An elusive Bank Vole was the only other mammal of the day.

On Saturday I spent the late afternoon through dusk at the Greywell far hedge, being rewarded with distant Roe Deer, a fast-moving Rabbit and a Grey Squirrel that came straight down the track towards me from fifty yards away and only realised I was human when he was about ten feet away. At that point he removed himself very rapidly!

A white Pheasant and a view of one of the Tawny Owl pair (I heard them calling to each other on emergence at dusk) hunting the main hedge rounded off my only wildlife of the weekend.

John

[shrikebirder]

7. Stoat, weasel, rabbit, roe deer, red deer, red fox, grey squirrel.

[Farnboro John]

Roe Deer on the tennis courts outside my office this evening to add to the regular tree rats on the way home. Friday - yippee, prospect of decent weather tomorrow - report Monday....

John

[Farnboro John]

Saturday was very cold and very windy which made finding mammals very difficult, with the exception of Roe Deer. I saw several at longish range then in the early afternoon found a female feeding quite close to the main path at Moor Green. A half-hour stalk got me within twenty yards but with some quite thick branches and twigs in the way. As I manouevred one cautious in-balance foot at a time towards a suitable gap, a couple of birders who must have been able to see how I was moving, marched up and loudly hailed me with "What've you got?" By then the answer was "Nothing"!

Sunday I spent five hours in the North hide at Blashford's Ivy Lake with two Bitterns on-and-off. Terrific! By then I was frozen solid so had a big hot mug of tea and knocked off the Harbridge Bewick's Swans from the car. Heading homeward late afternoon via Godshill I paused to scan for harriers and instead found a small herd of Fallow Deer tucked under a shoulder of hill out of the wind, near the Deadman Hill car park and at the bottom end of a line of gorse that would give me an invisible approach route.

I scooted over, stalked them and despite blowing it myself at the last minute, freezing in place (all too easy in that weather!) brought them to a halt after only a forty-yard flight reaction. I got some nice shots in the late afternoon light and was also rewarded on the return walk with an accidentally flushed Woodcock and a ringtail Hen Harrier.

A block of ice I might have been but a good day I certainly had.

John

[Farnboro John]

Made a classic cock-up last night. Was keeping half an eye on the BBC news (headlines at the start) and thought I saw a snatch of film of a whale in a river. Half heard the commentary and thought "that's not a Pilot Whale, fin's too tall: must be something better!" Pilot was the only word I had heard clearly.

Watched the whole programme to get the full report and when the weather forecast came on realised I'd been looking at a rear view of the jet in the Hudson river! Well, I was half right: it wasn't a Pilot Whale!

Major string!

John

[Farnboro John]

Got out both days at the weekend, which made a nice change. Saturday was a birding day down at Portsmouth and Gosport, nailing point-blank adult Glaucous Gull and Purple Sandpipers with the camera, plus Clare and I saw the 2w Glaucous flying East from the pier, had distant views of Red-necked Grebe, and on going round to Gosport although we missed the Ring-biled Gull we did see half a dozen adult Mediterranean Gulls. In sunshine even!

Sunday I went for a longish walk along the Greywell far hedge and around some of the nearby fields. The usual Buzzardfest was enhanced with a Brown Hare running lightly across the snowy fields and a Bank Vole sticking to the sunny, defrosted side of the far hedge.

I also found tracks of Stoat along the far hedge and beside the hedges surrounding the next field West, so that is still about even if I'm not getting views just at the moment. I'll keep bashing away at it, as soon as the weather warms up I'm sure sightings will improve.

John

[Jos Stratford]

Went mammal tracking last weekend, hours in the sub-zero following the tracks of this beastie ...no success, the blighters must have had a good headstart on me!

Did see Foxes and Roe Deer.

On another note, one peanut feeder vanished from my forest site, suspect Raccoon Dog guilty.

[Jos Stratford]

And from a week or so earlier, this is what flying Stoats look like when they zip past on dull days when they can move faster than a shutter speed can rise to!

[Isurus]

Jos
I'm curious - What exactly is that track from?

I added bottlenose dolphin to the yearlist yesterday after a thrilling encounter with a mother and a newborn calf. I'll throw up a link to the disgustingly cute video when I get a chance. Still hoping for humpbacks.

[Jos Stratford]

Originally Posted by Isurus

Jos
I'm curious - What exactly is that track from?

I added bottlenose dolphin to the yearlist yesterday after a thrilling encounter with a mother and a newborn calf. I'll throw up a link to the disgustingly cute video when I get a chance. Still hoping for humpbacks.

Answer here, scroll to 1st February

[Isurus]

Originally Posted by Jos Stratford

Answer here, scroll to 1st February

Ah, I was righ after all. I figured bison but then thought there aren't any bison in lithuania (are there?) and it was secondguessarama. Obviously the idea that you may have travelled somewhere to look for them was far too obvious for me to think of it

[Jos Stratford]

Originally Posted by Isurus

I figured bison but then thought there aren't any bison in lithuania (are there?) and it was secondguessarama.

There are a few in Lithuania, but they are basically captive animals that seem to be part of a stagnant reintroduction program - I believe about 30 or so wander a small area in the centre of the country, most in a large enclosure, a few outside. Seen them in the past, but really interested in the wild ones, so it'll be down to Poland or Belarus a few times more till I finally connect.

Originally Posted by Isurus

Obviously the idea that you may have travelled somewhere to look for them was far too obvious for me to think of it

I'd had ideas to stay within the borders of Lithuania a little more this year, but totally flumped that - already done three trips out, two more planned by the month's end, one being back down for another attempt on the Bison.

[Isurus]

Thanks for the info Jos.

I finally managed to get sunday's newborn dolphin photos/video to upload here:
http://tai-haku.blogspot.com/2009/02...in11-woot.html

[Farnboro John]

Got out to Greywell after work, the evenings are really drawing out now! The only mammal was a Brown Hare feeding in a field but they have been so elusive through the winter that I was satisfied with that. Tawny Owls called but didn't show.

John

[Farnboro John]

Have to say I had two days excellent birding this weekend. Trouble was I was after mammals!

Saturday I was back at the Greywell far hedge looking for mustelids. No sign. Had to make do with Brown Hare, Rabbit, and good views of Bank Vole.

However, a ringtail Hen Harrier first thing, followed by the usual hordes of Buzzards, a couple of Kestrels, a soaring Sparrowhawk and a Red Kite, were all much appreciated.

Sunday I rose early and shot off to that British banjo-playing centre of excellence aka the Forest of Dean, there to search for Wild Boar. I was well aware that of late these have become much more elusive, as the locals have started to "control" them, but I fancied a go at a bunch other than the Beckley boars.

There were two Dippers on the river below the Wenchford car park that gave me good views but were camera-shy. A Kingfisher was more routine but added to the day's interest.

I must have covered eight miles or a bit more through the day, and although I didn't see any boars I did find huge amounts of tracks and snouting everywhere I went. I can also confirm it is not only bears that 5h1t in the woods as I found my first ever Wild Boar dropping. Do not get behind a Wild Boar and startle it is my recommendation.

I found two Fallow Deer at the edge of a dark pine plantation that I was traversing, and was making some success of a stalk when a huge wet flappy snort from a horse spooked them into flight. Shortly after I found the remains of two Woodpigeons that had clearly been Goshawked and shortly after that I flushed a Gos that I hadn't been aware of, sitting in an oak tree waiting for another Woodpigeon to do something stupid.

By lunchtime I was knackered from tramping up and down hills with a load of birding and camera kit and drove to New Fancy View for a rest. Three displaying Goshawks later, one of the other birders present hesitantly asked if a shrike had been reported as he thought he had one in his scope. Sure enough he had located the Great Grey Shrike on top of a tree about a mile away across the forest towards the ridge right of Cinderford. A good spot at that distance!

Half a dozen more Fallow Deer were lounging in a clearing just North of the viewpoint, distant but decent views. I finished lunch watching a couple of Brambling by the carpark feeders.

I plunged back into the forest for the afternoon, covering more ground but still not finding more than boar sign. A group of local walkers I met said they usually see them from the road - but between eight and midnight. Oh well. I gave it a dusk watch by a plantation with boar-broken wire fences and heavily used tracks in and out, but no joy. A couple of Tawny Owls called and I saw a flick of one go by my right side.

An easy run back was another bonus after a really fun but tiring day.

John

[Farnboro John]

I got out to Moor Green last night, not to any great effect but a female Roe Deer still with her well-grown twins, a Grey Squirrel, a bunch of Rabbits enjoying the mild weather and rather later on, two courting Red Foxes yowling the night away were all enjoyable.

34 Goosander roosting were the bird highlight.

John