15th January 2017
Sunday was another grey and
drizzly day, but I decided to head out for a walk in the afternoon. Whitlingham
is now out of reasonable walking distance, so I decided to give Catton Park a
look, mainly just to check how long it would take to get there.
I was pleasantly surprised to
find that Catton Park is less than 15 minutes away, so I dare say I shall be
making fairly regular visits once the days lengthen. The main area of parkland
was fairly busy with joggers and dog walkers, so I kept mainly to the woodland
fringe along the south-eastern edge. I saw a range of common woodland species,
whilst a Treecreeper and a Nuthatch both called unseen. Equally pleasing was
the look of some horse paddocks between the woodland and road, which will
hopefully tempt Yellow Wagtails or Wheatear on passage (although probably
won’t).
Despite a few hard frosts there
was quite a bit of fungi about in the woods, with 16 species recorded. Of these
two were of particular interest, Common
Bird’s-nest, reasonably common but a nice species to see, and Fenugreek Stalkball, which I had only
seen once previously. A ten minute wander across the parkland highlighted a
promising woodland edge area (8 Blackbirds and 2 Song Thrushes feeding) and
reminded me of some of the big old trees that may hold some good insects.
I returned home satisfied that I
had a good local area for wildlife walks, even though the number of bird
species is likely to be rather modest.
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