A little obvious I know. After cosuming 56,284 calories during a gluttinous Sunday evening dinner, I decided to take myself and my corpulent dog out for a hike around Plemstall near the river Gowy.
Being a bank holiday the weather was obviously less than clement. Actually, this is not obvious at all. Why do the troop of BBC meteorologists, notwithstanding the fact that they are all of the scientific ilk, proceed to come out with this hackneyed line? And continuing theme of BBC weather presenters, why does Breakfast's Carol always dress like a cheap stripogram?
Anyway, I digress.
After passing through some stables adjacent to Plemstall church I was out into the wilds of sterile pasture. Then, unexpectedly, "Kronk, Kronk", a Raven drifted overhead being mobbed by two Carrion Crows. Not a bad start. Next on the menu was a dashing male Kestrel, hopefully in the business of satiating hungry mouths. The remainder of the walk to Barrow was a little quiet birdwise save a couple of singing Common Whitethroat and the usual mono-agricultue line up.
Their was little improvement when I walked along a footpath from Barrow to Mickle Trafford too. Also, rather irritatingly, I had to negotiate quite a number of electric fences kindly put across the footpath by the local farmer. Not being Colin Jackson these can be quite an obstacle.
Then just as I cleared the final hurdle and lunged for the finishing line of the A56, I startled two Grey Partridge that quickly took flight and dropped into some deep grass. Great to see that they are still hanging-on locally and only a couple of miles from my house!
I am particularly interested in the status of once common farmland birds and hopefully over the next year I shall encounter some other farmland species such as Tree Sparrow, Yellowhammer and maybe even a Barn Owl.
Other birds of note were 2 Common Buzzard and a good number of Swallows - very few House Martins about though...
Until later.
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