Just a short post as I’ve had a very happy morning due to two things.
The first thing is that I played my last match of rugby for the school today; quite sad but I’m very happy to have had such a good school rugby career over the past 8 years. This game also gave me a few nice “day ticks”. The first being a Sparrowhawk which flew high over the playing fields before the game and then returned back to the gardens this time flying very close to the ground and only just missing the top of a fence.
Next up was probably my first good flyover ID; a Meadow Pipit. What gave it away was the call which made me look up and seeing it bouncing off in a north westerly direction. Some Goldfinches added to the flyovers and then the Oystercatchers came in to land on one of the pitches that weren’t being used. During the game I spotted some very distant Ducks flying about over Edinburgh, probably Mallard based on size.
Once home I had a look out the back window out at the field and saw the pair of Magpies taking twigs up to their best which I can actually see quite clearly from the house. The top of the dome pokes out from the leaves. Then I scopes the other Magpies that were hoping about in the field and noticed what looked like maybe a Rabbit or some smallish brown thing. A harder look on a higher magnification revealed that I was looking at two Grey Partridges! A great garden tick and I think I’ll add it to my patch list as they are in the Braid Burn Valley… technically…
Ran downstairs to get my camera from next to the computer and then proceeded to take as many pictures as possible. Posted in the Lothian Birding forum on BirdForum to let people know incase they wanted to check them out.
A very happy morning for me 🙂 (pics to come)
Birding with Gus 