Whilst Walking The Dog
Who would have thought that after intensively watching an area for more than forty years you could find a new bird whilst walking the dog. Well, on the sixteenth at dusk, I threw a biscuit into the local Trub brook to encourage my golden retriever to dive in to get all the dirt off him. As he plunged into the water a Water Rail flew out from under the bank and was last seen flying off towards the sewerage works – the first Water Rail I have ever recorded in the area!
Waxwings are still around but berries are now few and far between. On the fourteenth I filmed sixty feeding on yellow berries at Hyde and on the seventeenth seventy were feeding on white berries in a cemetery at Oldham. How much longer they remain with us remains to be seen
At two thirty pm on the twelfth, ten Whooper Swans flew over Hopwood from a North West direction and disappeared East in the direction of Tandle Hill. I understand that a few minutes later they landed on Hollingworth Lake.
In the early hours of the fourteenth I was awakened by a Tawny Owl calling in the trees outside our bedroom window. This was answered by several House Sparrows chirping in our attic! Did they know they were safe?
Gordon Yates
January 18, 2009
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