Saturday 16 October 2010

Saturday 16th.October 2010

As I said on yesterday's post , after leaving Knoll Park , I stopped off at Sevenoaks Wildfowl Reserve on my way home , in even gloomier conditions .
There were only 3 cars in the car park , which didn't bode well . A quick look at the large lake behind the visitor centre , produced Cormorant , Great Crested Grebe and Tufted Duck .
I would like to state now that this post is not meant to upset certain members of the Blogging community .
Moving on , I headed for the Willow Hide , seeing very little of interest , apart from a Little Grebe on the way . The hide was empty , and when I opened the shutter , the following was what I saw , the pictures have been brightened to make them viewable :
Mute Swan - 2 adult & 1 juvenile , Coot 30+ , Egyptian Geese - 1 adult & 1 juvenile ( pictured )
Pied Wagtail 1 , Mallard 15+ , Gadwall 7 ( male and female pictured )
Wigeon 6 , including this showy male in eclipse plumage ,Teal 10+ .
With light fading by the minute , a visit to the main hide produced Greylag Goose , Shoveller, Moorhen , Lapwing , Black-headed Gull , Snipe and Grey Heron .
Before returning to the car , I had a look at the feeders alongside the hide by the Visitor Centre .
Needless to say , Tits made up the majority of visitors , with Blue Tits most numerous ,closely followed by Great Tit . A flock of Long-tailed Tits were around , but never came to the feeders . A female Great Spotted Woodpecker also made several visits .
An unexpected visitor was this Magpie . I'm not sure who was most surprised , as the blurred shot shows a landing and simultaneous take off .
With not much else about , apart from this Giant Polypore-Meripilus giganteus on a Willow , I headed for home .
And finally , I have been ear-wigging in on a comment conversation between ShySongbird and Dean , regarding common names for fungi . In my experience , books , depending on the writer and the area where the writer lives , have different common names , which , in my mind , makes sense to use the Latin name as well as the common name , the Latin name hopefully, should be the same in all books .

4 comments:

Warren Baker said...

One day Greenie, a male tufty will visit my patch lake :-)

ShySongbird said...

A good collection there Greenie, I hope it didn't give Warren a relapse of his man flu :)

I rather liked the photo of the spooked looking Magpie.

Yes, I think that is good advice concerning the fungi. I looked again on google and it says the Aniseed Mushroom (Clitocybe odora)and the Horse Mushroom (Agaricus arvensis) both have an aniseed flavour so I suspect that is where the confusion on other websites arose leading some to think they are one and the same. I have to say though I have never noticed an aniseed flavour in Horse Mushrooms.

Phil said...

Interesting picture of the Magpie Greenie. They are such a wary bird, not surprising after so much persecution.
Also really like the Wigeon shot.

Anonymous said...

I didn`t click on to what you was on about Greenie, till i read Songbirds comment.

Including both latin & common names, now that`s another thing that somehow gets lost between my brain & the keyboard.