Bank holiday on the patch

After the three days in Wales and with legs and back suffering a little, It's 6.15am before I arrive at Fisher's Green . The barriers are still locked and surprisingly so to is the electronic gate at the farm. So it's back down the road and I pull into Fisher's Green lane and park in the small car park just outside the main car park at Hooks Marsh, which is also still locked.

Leaving the car I walk alongside Hooks Marsh Lake. There's plenty of birds singing and I soon locate my first patch tick of the day when a Garden Warbler pops up at the top of a nearby bush.It's one of several seen on the walk to Hall Marsh scrape.With so much rain in the last month water levels are to high to attract waders, with just a single Little Ringed Plover all that is present. Heading off towards Bowyers Water in the hope of finding the Grasshopper Warbler that had been reported while I was in Wales, I can hear plenty of Sedge Warblers and at least two Cetti's Warblers. There's also a Cuckoo calling in the distance, I try to spot it but have no luck, and there's no sight or sound of the Grasshopper Warbler.

I move on to Turnershall Marsh and take a look at the wooden statues that have recently been craved and positioned in the area. There are some impressive pieces among them, The frog is probably my favourite.

The walk back to the car is pretty un-eventful, and so it's back to Fisher's Green car park and a walk around to Seventy Acres lake. The lake holds plenty of birds with resident species mixed in with some summer visitors.Common Terns are noisily flying over the lake, and there's another patch tick when several Swifts are spotted high up in the sky.

There's one bird that I am particularly after and scanning the trees along the far edge of the lake I spot the bird I'm after. A single Hobby perched high up in one of the bare trees.

On the walk around to the Goose Fields I can hear Nightingales singing with at least five birds noted. With not much of interest on the Goose Fields and the farmer letting off a rocket to scare the Canada and Greylag geese away form the newly sown crops I move on to Langridge Scrape, again the water levels are much to high and there is hardly any exposed mud for any waders. Only four Lapwings are present. There is a final patch tick of the day however when five House Martins appear over the scrape. Not a bad morning, with four patch ticks and one year tick added. 

Legs aching and work tomorrow it's time to head home.