River Cole, Hodge Hill.

A walk along the River Cole from Burney Lane in Stechford up to the newly rebuilt Cole Hall Lane Bridge which cost £1.6millon and back again with The Raven Public House along the route. Even though the bridge has been rebuilt at great cost, the council wallahs needn't pat themselves on the back too much because the surrounding area and the River are a complete disgrace, if you look over the foot bridge twenty feet away, there were hundreds and hundreds empty plastic bottles, saying that they are always there and because there has been significant flooding on the river of late, the banks of the river and where the water had flattened the vegetation was festooned with litter and man made debris. There was also a size able amount of fly tipping including many settees, pain tins and industrial construction waste making ports of this route a complete shit tip, most people just deserve these natural habitats.

Anyway back to the birding, whilst taking a photo of the bridge I noticed the unmistakable flash of the Kingfisher's iridescent blue dart across the water, I could see it so clear I could also tell it was male because of the black lower mandible unlike the females which is red. It was also great to see many House Sparrow along the route, I must have seen and heard hundreds of them today but this has always been one of their strongholds. Today was also my first sighting of a Fieldfare this Autumn, it was a lone Fieldfare foraging on the rugby field adjacent to the bridge along with some Redwing and Song Thrush. This is another location with a healthy Carrion Crow population with at least a couple of hundred present today. I didn't see many Starling today, only about forty, hopefully they were off somewhere else foraging.

Birds seen today were Kingfisher, Great Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Greenfinch, Goldfinch, Robin, Wren, Dunnock, House Sparrow, Starling, Pied Wagtail, Grey Wagtail, Fieldfare, Redwing, Song Thrush, Blackbird, Carrion Crow, Magpie, Woodpigeon, Feral Pigeon, Grey Heron, Moorhen and Mallard.