Grey Day at Manor Farm

Overnight I didn’t hold out much hope for today’s walk, the weather forecast was predicting dark grey clouds for most of the day so I was a little surprised to wake to a bit of hazy early morning sun, the type of sun that holds no heat and can’t quite break through those thin clouds.

The weather was unlikely to hold, my back was stiff (two days with over 12 miles walked and 4 cycled are starting to take their toll), and I needed to pop to a couple of shops.

So I made the decision to make my route one to Stony Stratford nature reserve, carry light gear (bins camera and macro lens, I have my eye on some early snowdrops) and then head to the shops in the small market town that Milton Keynes enveloped many years ago.

Grey Day at Manor Farm

This of course means my route doesn’t actually include the lakes, so my bird numbers are down, but it does give me the chance to see the less watched part of my patch, and so I started off (as I quite often do) entering the patch via the old churchyard (my snowdrop place) and headed off down towards the river valley.

Snowdrop

Snowdrop Flower

It’s amazing how wrong you can be. After a few minutes the sun broke through and it remained sunny until I returned home.

Heading through the churchyard there were growing signs of spring everywhere, the Bullfinch seem to be pairing up, bird song is getting louder and more intense, there are signs of buds growing on the trees and the Snow drops are flowering beautifully (there were even some daffodils coming out further along my walk).

Pink Lichen

Leaving the Churchyard

It was after leaving the churchyard that things really began to pick up, the cattle fields were full of thrushes, winter visitors like Fieldfare and Redwing being augmented by our resident, Song Thrush, Mistle Thrush, Blackbird and Starling, every where I looked they were picking through the grass and leaf litter.

While continuing around the fields a small flock of 6 Greenfinch flew over calling, as did a lone Linnet and a lone female Reed Bunting. This was pretty much it for birds for the rest of the walk bar a lone Goldcrest behind the pub.

Not the greatest post today I’m afraid, but the walk was pleasant enough.

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