A fine Boxing Day walk around Stallance Farm, with Sutton Valence still gripped by ice.
Along the footpath below the Castle, I disturbed a Little Owl from what was the usual spot some twenty years ago – a mature tree at the bottom of a line of hazels. The owl skimmed the pasture in the direction of South Lane and alighted on a fencepost, where it eyed me beadily for several minutes.
In the orchard there were dozens of Fieldfare and Redwing, and in the hedgerow a fine male Bullfinch among the haws. I tried to conjure up a Tree Sparrow or Brambling, but there were very few small birds around.
The stream that cuts through to the Harbour was only partly frozen, allowing a Common Snipe to feed there. It was perhaps telling that when flushed it refused to tower away as you’d expect, but dropped back down quickly to the mud.
What I had in my mind as an untidy, swampy pond just the other side of Heniker Lane is now quite manicured – and nothing birdlike there but a plastic heron. Large farm buildings have appeared nearby, and the fields around seem rather more hemmed in, less mysterious, than before.
The track back up through the Stallance orchards to Nutbrow produced more thrushes, plus a fine male Yellowhammer and a Green Woodpecker. I was slightly surprised to find not one but two reservoirs on the East Sutton side of the track – the newer one is larger, with as yet no vegetation around it, while the original is more enclosed by trees than I remember. Both were frozen and birdless, bar the odd Moorhen fleeing the perimeter and scrambling into the trees.
The climb up the hill through the ex-farm buildings (now expensive-looking converted family homes) was unremarkable, and I wandered back along to Cherry Hill, up the sledging track to Bowhalls and back along the school playing fields without seeing much more than a Great-spotted Woodpecker.
