Hello from sunny Scunthorpe

poppingjay · #1 (**permalink**) 10-03-2010, 08:11 AM

Hello everyone

I thought I'd finally sign up after a long time of lurking and reading as this is truly a great site. I'm only a very amateur spotter of wildlife but I've noticed the more I look, the more I see and this site has been very helpful in allowing me to identify what it is I am looking at. I've got several bird feeders hang in a buddlia bush in the garden that I can see from where I'm sat typing now, where I offer mixed seeds, peanuts, fatballs etc..... my children accuse me of being obsessed haha! - I haven't watched the telly in months

I've been getting lots of visitors.... at least a dozen house sparrows, 2 or 3 dunnocks, a lone starling that seems to be quite acrobatic, a resident pair of blackbirds and I've seen coal tits and long tailed tits passing through. Non of them seem to be too perturbed by my fat tail-less cat (who couldn't catch a cold) and usually gets chases away by my chicken. I also get wood pigeons and collared doves that come to eat the chicken corn, last year they were all fledging into my chicken run and lining up on the fence.

And finally, I rent a small field on the outskirts of town to keep my elderly horse in, where, dare I say it.... a scruffy brown 'eagle-type' bird has been hanging about for a few months now, I believe this to be a buzzard? He's brown all over and usually looks like he's just stepped out a tumble drier. There are robins, chaffinches and other small birds that like to clear up any crumbs that the horse drops.... I've even seen a robin sat on the side of the bucket while she is eating.

I'm sure that's enough from me for now..... haha! I'm wearing blue socks

Johnny Redgate · #2 (**permalink**) 10-03-2010, 08:23 AM

Hello
I lived on the coast of Lincs a few years back and did a bit of a project on the ironstone quarries north of Scunthorpe back in the mid 1980s. What a fantastic place they were then with ironstone cliffs full of fossils, deep lakes and spoil heaps covered in orchids. I know that Roxby Gullet was turned into a landfill site (of course my project suggested keeping it much the same as it was with some minor landscaping). I hope some of the "gullets" have been retained as wildlife sites without prior landfill. Do you know the area?
Johnny

poppingjay · #3 (**permalink**) 10-03-2010, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Redgate

Hello
I lived on the coast of Lincs a few years back and did a bit of a project on the ironstone quarries north of Scunthorpe back in the mid 1980s. What a fantastic place they were then with ironstone cliffs full of fossils, deep lakes and spoil heaps covered in orchids. I know that Roxby Gullet was turned into a landfill site (of course my project suggested keeping it much the same as it was with some minor landscaping). I hope some of the "gullets" have been retained as wildlife sites without prior landfill. Do you know the area?
Johnny

Hello Johnny,

Yes I know where you mean, I'm a dog walker by trade and it's an area I use quite a lot. It's still an ongoing land fill project but much of the area hasn't really been touched. The old workings as you know cover a huge area of land from Dragonby across to Flixboro and right over to Winterton. The lakes remain and the last few years of ample rain has lead to quite a lot of flooding and boggy areas, not so great for the men in the diggers but I expect the wildlife likes it