Pendarves Wood: Creepers & Peckers.

Today was pitched by the MET office as a blue sky and full on sunshine affair, thus, it was with this prediction I planned an outing to Penny Woods. The MET office had not been wrong…

I arrived at the woods at around 8am (after a 30 minute walk) and immediately heard a woodpecker doing what comes naturally. I attempted to head towards the noise, but found that knee deep mud and overgrown flora quickly stopped me in my tracks.

My first stop was at the lake. A Cormorant (or was it a shag… never really paid much attention to it… probably not the latter) was gleefully floating around. Moorhens foraged around in the weed and a Coot was busy building a nest in a small reed bed situated 20 meters out into the lake. The swans too had their nesting area ready and I managed to film them mating in order to fill it. A couple of Mallards pottered around at the rear and a duo of L. Grebes sat in the weeds.

The lake rarely holds any surprises, which is a shame as it’s so close by. The Tufted Ducks have moved on and the Teal, which made an emergency landing during bad weather, has long since fluttered off.

I continued my walk around, filming what I could. I managed to capture a Wren showing off to a female and also managed to badly film a ChiffChaff.

Back at the lake, this time on my hands and knees crawling around so not to be spotted, apart from by the swans who came over to see what I was and if I was carrying any bread (Johnny Kingdom aint got a thing on me). As I lay on the ground, filming one of the swans, a Treecreeper landed on the tree next to me. I managed to roll on my back and film him for a moment, but he was backlit from the sun and to compensate the gamma had to be turned up to 11. This in turn meant the quality wasn’t very good, but hey ho, it’s another tick on my 2007 list.

As for insect life, this was still pretty thin on the ground. Another month and it will be action stations for me and my camera, but until then I shall have to contend with;

Bumble Bees still dominated the arthropod sightings; a peacock was still the only flippin’ butterfly to be found and a possible Syrphus Ribesii (that be a Hoverfly don’t ya know) was busy feeding on some Japanese Knotweed… how exotic.

Throughout the entire trip the Woody kept pecking away…