Venus Pool - New Year Corn Bunting

A quiet start to the year with a tally of 41 species to help give me some enthusiasm. Cold and with white skies, little to offer for photography! Bird of the day was this Corn Bunting, one of three seen today...

Happy New Year everybody!

Children of the Oilseed Rape

I would have preferred the more romantic post title 'Children of the Corn' but you can't get away from the incandescent fields of yellow nowadays. And don't my eyes (eyedrops at the ready) know it!!
Oilseed Rape looks set to turn our green and pleasant land yellow now but the birds just get on with what they do...

Corn Buntings with their rattling jangling call, hypnotic or what?

The sound of Spring/ Summer?  Skylarks strutting their stuff...

And foraging in the roadside grit!

A chance Wheatear, probably passing through?

And of course Yellow Wagtails, but they deserve a post all on their own!

None of them need eyedrops either, so far as know...

Isombridge - Grey Partridge and Co!

A final hour of daylight spent in this haven of agricultural 'good practice' was spent with Grey Partridge in mind. There were other species occupying this niche to enjoy!

Like this smart male Yellow Wagtail...

Or several Corn Bunting! In fact, with the car window open, it was rare not to hear them every 100m or so!

Belting out the familiar burst of song...

But finally, the object of my desire... keeping a weather eye on a good year to keep a yearlist tempts you to do this :-) Grey Partridge aren't that easy nowadays!

Wait a minute, we have a pair!

Showing nicely despite the evening gloom..

All this with a couple of miles of urban Telford!