Lee Harrison's Nature Photography.: Local Area..

I have a trip round the local turfs today with my Dad, I havn't bin out for a week so I was up for a good day, first we started off at Marshside, all the usuals knocking around, Reed and Sedge Warblers singing in the reeds, plenty of wheatears around the sand plant and reports of a Green Sandpipers and whitethroats sings near Crossens.

Unfortunatly we didn't manage to catch up with the whitethroat or the green sandpiper but plenty of othes knocking around including 3 Little Ring Plover, and Ruff feeding infront of Nell's hide:-

Wheatear

Greenfinch

Kestrel

After we had finished at Marshside, we decided to head over Mere Sands Wood, nothing unusual around, chiffchaffs singing in the tops of trees, no sign of the Crossbills today and no Redpolls either, but we got some nice views of the Nuthatch, and buzzard as we walked around:-

Nuthatch

Bullfinch

Buzzard

After Mere Sands, we decided that we'd go home and et some tea but as soon as we'd finished, we were back out to White Coppice trying to add more to our daily tally, and we managed to add a few more, including:-

Willow Warbler

Greater Spotted Woodpecker

Raven (a very nice surprise)

And last but deffinatly not least this bird?????? we thought definatly a Falcon of sum sort, we, though it was a merlin at first because of the size of it, it was tiny but when I think back to the sights we've had of the Merlin at Marshside, it seemed smaller than that. After looking at the pics and trying to find what it was, we really have no idea, it has a brown back and wing, an unmarked buff breast, not many head marks apart from a very distinct eye strip, witch if you look closley, you can see.