Tuesday 1 November 2016

Sundays outing

Sunday morning Phil had the great idea of going up the Neuadd to look and see if the regular Great Grey Shrike had turned up yet. On getting there it was foggy but there were winter thrushes everywhere, there must have been hundreds of Fieldfare and Redwing also big flocks of Starling and Wood Pigeon. As we walked I heard Brambling but could not make it out in the fog. As we got to the Lower Neuadd two birds flew out and as I watched the Chaffinch the Brambling called again and Phil got it flying away. We also had two Common Crossbill flying over. Near the reservoir itself we also found a flock of Reed Bunting feeding low down. At the Upper Neuadd Reservoir there was no water and we found where all the Chaffinchs were going, they were feeding in the reservoir and there must have been at least two hundred birds. We had a good look for Brambling but we had no luck. We also found this Badgers Scat and also took some shots of droplets of water on a Spider Web.
We also stopped at Talybout on Usk and had reasonable number of Wigeon and teal, a small flock of Little Grebe and one Marsh Tit .
 Shaggy Bracket

Next stop was Llangorse Lake where there were loads of Canada Geese at the point and a couple of Mute Swans trying to kill everything. We found some fungus on a cow pat which I think it could be Eyelash Fungus .

Last of all I found this wasp on a gate post when I nearly put my hand on it.

6 comments:

  1. Good morning out, really enjoyed the walk. Just a pity about the fog.

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  2. Yes phil alway a good crack and great to be out looking for stuff and got to stop making me to take shots of poo phil or people will start talking .

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  3. I've seen that dung fungus and like you, also thought, at first glance, that it was a Scutellinia eyelash fungus, but looking online, it actually seems to be a Cheilymenia of some sort; possibly C. granulata.

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  4. Cheers Mark and smart fungus and only wish i had closer lens to take shot.

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  5. The next time I come across some, I will collect a specimen to examine at home; but how successful I'll be in identifying it to species, will depend on what info (spore sizes, shapes and ornamentation) I can find online for the Cheilymenia, because I haven't got any books describing them.

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