Saturday 5th march 2011 - Local Bike Ride

After dusting off my bike I decided to put it back out of retirement, for 2 reasons mainly - in an effort to get fitter and spend less money on fuel. Also I reasoned that I could get about more locally so therefore visit more places in one day than I could on foot. The initial plan was to ride down to Stanwick Lakes, and as this was supposed to be a leisurely ride I didn't want to take anything too heavy so I (foolishly) left my scope at home. Half way down the A6 towards Irthlingborough I noticed that the fields to the west of the road were slightly flooded and were almost white with Gulls!!! So I took a quick detour which found me heading down a track towards the Cherry Hall set of buildings. From here the view was incredible, but as already stated I had decided to leave my scope at home so I had to make do with the bins. I couldn't see any white wings unfortunately and as the weather was now turning misty I had to give up as the birds were too far away to separate any Caspians or Yellow Legs. Never mind the hedgerows made up slightly for this as they were crawling with passerines. This is the site where I'd counted all the Tree Sparrows earlier in the year, and a flock of about 40 were still in the area although they were very mobile. Lots of Yellowhammers were around too with a few Reed Bunting thrown in too. The mist really started to come down by mid afternoon and visibility was getting very poor so I had to head home, but armed with the knowledge that I will be back tomorrow - and this time with the scope!!