Having consulted all my weather forecasts this morning, I concluded that the best of the available conditions were likely to be found north-east of the Shire, so I made a return visit to Brandon Marsh. Which was… marshy. The five-hides path wasn’t exactly closed, but a couple of warning cones at the start of it seemed to suggest that caution was needed, and I hadn’t gone more than another thirty metres when I decided that, as I was on my own, it would be irresponsible to wade through the flood water that was now covering the track, or try to climb the bank to avoid it. So I turned back. Something something something… old dogs… new tricks… who knew?
Deprived of hides, which didn’t feel like much of a loss to be honest, given how little success I had from them last month, I picked my way carefully along a very muddy bank between two pools, to get to Horsetail Glade. There I met a couple of other people, and endured one of those “jam tomorrow” birding conversations that we all enjoy so much: “Oh yes – the Firecrest was here this morning. All round this area. No sign of it now though.” Indeed. There was neither sight nor sound of it now, and though Merlin did pick up the calling of the Marsh Tits, there was no visible sign of them either.
In better news though, I’d barely speed-skated down to the Conservation Area barrier and placed some ground food on top of it, than the Nuthatches appeared. A pair of them, working in tandem, carried off as much seed as they could pick up, presumably to store in case of later shortages. It’s tricky, though not impossible, to sex a Nuthatch, and this one is giving slightly mixed messages, but the main rule of thumb is that males are more richly coloured than females, especially around the flanks and under the tail, and given the strong orange of this bird’s flanks, mottled with white and shading to chestnut brown below the tail, I think it’s most likely to be a male.
R: L2, C5, D5.
