A walk to Stockton Brook and back (including first singing Greenfinch of the year).

I spent the New Year in Bath and while I was there I heard a male Greenfinch "wheeeeze" but today I spent five or so minutes listening to the lovely song of another male, closer to home this time, in a hedgerow in Stanley Moss.

Singing Greenfinch in Stanley Moss.

While I was listening to the Greenfinch I noticed the fruiting bodies of this Cladonia lichen. There was a large patch of them (1m x 0.5m) growing amongst compacted and grazed (by horses and rabbits) grassland under a deteriorating hawthorn hedge. Pretty little green discs!

Cladonia sp. lichen.

Also continuing to display signs of courtship are Blue and Great Tits and Starlings, the last of which were singing from perches, presumably beside their prospective nest site. Meanwhile, what I assume was a pair, of Stock Doves completed a circuitous flight of their home range. There were a couple of these doves feeding in my garden this morning as well.

Stock Dove, Woodpigeon and Jackdaws feeding in my garden July 2013.

Rather strangely there was a single Meadow Pipit pecking at titbits on the frozen ground of a wet field adjacent to the Caldon Canal between Endon and Stockton Brook. It's unusual to see one of these on there own so I wonder if it is sick or injured and chose there to rest for a while.

Sky over Stockton Brook from Stanley Moss this afternoon. 

On my way home the call of a Willow Tit attracted my attention on the disused railway line between the white bridge and Station Road. This is a regular haunt of this species in the winter months.