Plasticwatch?

I nearly choked on my carrot cake the other night, hearing what Bill Oddie had to say about a certain Hooded Merganser on Autumnwatch. He stated the bird was found 'exhausted in a ditch in Dorset after flying across the Atlantic'. However, Bill was 'twitching' the Merganser as part of a feature to demonstrate the phenonema of twitching to none-birding viewers, so this should be taken with a pinch of salt.

The waters muddied further when Birdguides upped the longstaying Radipole Lake bird to mega status later last week. The reason for this; I believe, is that whilst no one has been able to prove it's plastic, they havn't been able to prove it's not wild either so it would be unfair not to give it equal status to the Fife Hoodie.

There's arguments both for and against, but it seems this Hoodie will have a hard time being accepted, being as it seems so happy (for the forseeable future) feeding on bread with the Mallards, Geese and Gulls at Radipole.

Anyway, no tick! I'm getting rather close to 250 now and I wouldn't want to prop up my list with anything that's less than kosher.

Back to birding....

Saturday morning we had a walk round Sherbrook Valley, Cannock Chase. We had 7 Stonechat, Skylark (heard), Meadow Pipit, 15 Fieldfare, 1 Redwing, 2 Reed Bunting, Green Woodpecker, lots of Coal Tit and Goldcrest

There was some rather interesting fungi...

It looked like bread rolls attached to the tree and it had a rather sweet smell. Does anyone know what this is called? [EDIT - apparantely this is called Birch Poly Pore - thanks Tim! ]

We then went to Belvide for a couple of hours. We saw the two Tundra Bean Geese, which was a WMBC tick and the views were so good that it outshadowed by far my first Bean Goose, which was seen distantly at Slimbridge, at the beginning of this year.

We also met Mr Steve Nuttall AKA Belvide Birder who has kindly sent me this picture of the Beanies....many thanks Steve.

Tundra Bean Geese by Steve Nuttall
http://www.surfbirds.com/blog/Belvide84

We also saw Stonechat, 420 Golden Plover, 1 Dunlin, Shelduck, lots of Redwing, Tree Sparrow, Sparrowhawk and on the feeders in the wood a Marsh Tit and a Nuthatch.