Scenes from a Parkland Walk

Scenes from my latest Parkland walk. 

It was in the sunshine with a temperature of 21 degrees celsius.

It was just like Summer again, even the wind was warm.

This Goldfinch below was certainly enjoying the weather.

The leaves of the various Oak trees in the Parkland are just turning brown now.

Walking up a path alongside a rail track I was following a Green Woodpecker. It kept moving along on to another convenient perch each time as I moved closer. I say it, as I was not sure at that time if it was male or female. These shots are heavily cropped. You can see that it landed on an old disused telegraph pole.

Then it tried the old Woodpecker trick of hiding behind the pole

Anyway I lost it for a while and on returning back down the pathway I later heard it calling again. From the direction of the call I knew roughly where it would be. An open field close to the pathway is known to be a favourite place of the local species. Sure enough I could observe it over a low hedgerow, but still at some distance. As you can see from the images below it was a female of the species.

From this shot below you can observe its large claws that enables it to hang on to the side of trees.

Mushrooms and toadstools can be found everywhere now and these were alongside a pathway.

In a meadow known conveniently as Heron Meadow, I observed two Grey Heron. There was a dispute going on and the Heron in the background didn't appreciate the one in the foreground being on 'his' patch. Eventually the interloper possibly a younger one, flew off to another part of the meadow.

To show how unusual our weather is at the moment I found this Dog Rose still hanging on in a sheltered spot.

Similarly this Red Campion was still blooming well.

Quite a few Dunnocks were observed on the walk like the two below.

Something to gladden the eye was this new arrival, a 'South Devon' calf.

He was already making friends with this 'Belgian Blue' calf that I featured a while ago which as you can see is growing well.

Finally, I watched a large group of Long-tailed Tits moving though the Hawthorn trees.