30 Days Wild - Day 3 ~ 3rd June 2015 ~
Today was quite a contrast in terms of wildlife in comparison to yesterday!
This morning I was lucky enough to spend a couple of hours shadowing a consultant ecologist who was carrying out botanical surveys in my local area. It was a really interesting experience and I am very grateful to the ecologist for letting me accompany him! As well as learning about botany and quadrat sampling, it was a great chance for me to bird some areas that I wouldn't otherwise be able to have access to.
On my short wanderings around the site, I saw (and heard) lots of Linnets, Whitethroats and Chiffchaffs, there was a male Reed Bunting singing a lot, as well as loads of Skylarks and a single Woodlark flew over calling as well. I also accidentally flushed a roosting Nightjar, which isn't ideal but I did get a fantastic view of it - it was a male as it had massive white patches on its wings which the females don't have. There were also quite a few hirundines passing through - mainly Swallows and House Martins but at one point a small group of Sand Martins came hurtling through making a chattering noise and performing some superb aerial acrobatics!
The highlight of the day, as if the above wasn't enough, was in the form of a singing and song-flighting Tree Pipit!! Now this is a bird I don't see very often at all, and certainly not at any site less than 15 minutes from my house! It is also the first one I have seen this year which made the encounter even more special.
Once all the quadrats had been sampled, I headed home via my patch, stopping to admire a beautiful wildflower meadow and enjoying the shade from the sun that the woods provided.
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