Foot It: Day 5

Another day tramping the Surrey countryside to see as many species as possible for the Foot It Challenge.

Today I walked the snowy 12 mile round trip to Papercourt Sailing Club lake near Send primarily to find the recent male scaup on the stock pond, unfortunately that particular pond was iced over and devoid of any birds and the bird couldn't be located on the main lake.

But over the course of the day I did add 12 species to my Foot It list.

My first interesting siting was a mammal. A red fox seen on the opposite bank of the Wey Navigation canal.

My first new bird (for the year) on the main sailing lake at Papercourt was one of several great crested grebe. The duck flock in the centre of the lake held mainly tufted duck, with a few pochard and gadwall, a couple of teal and a single shoveler. The plentiful black-headed gulls were joined by several common gull roosting on the water.

On the lakes edge I disturbed several common snipe whilst trying to photograph the waterbirds and a great-spotted woodpecker was heard drumming in a nearby oak tree accompanied by a singing chiffchaff which I couldn't locate.

Eurasian coot.

I took another route home from Papercourt along the lanes that cut across the water meadows into Pyrford past Newark Abbey. This is where I found the bird of the day. After watching a kestrel hunting over the meadow a large raptor glided into view, a wonderful red kite. An increasingly common bird in counties such as Buckinghamshire but still relatively unusual in Surrey.

Further off in the snow covered meadows geese were calling.

Canada goose, Egyptian goose and greylag goose were all present by the frozen river with a rather unattractive greylag x canada hybrid amongst them.

Greylag x Canada goose hybrid among Canada geese.

Overhead several wigeon took flight together with a couple of cormorant and up to a dozen common snipe were disturbed from the frozen grasses.

The weedy fields and willows by the brook held plenty of interesting birds. Goldfinch and reed bunting were feeding on the remaining teasel seeds. Blue tit and long-tailed tit were foraging among the trees together with a green woodpecker while a flock of meadow pipit fed in the snow.

I scanned the fields and picked out six lapwing huddled by the ice and overhead a flock of forty fieldfare flew noisily into a nearby alder.

The final addition of the day was a brown rat that scuttled down its bankside hole by the local canal.