Black Bunny

I took the opportunity, in the fine weather, to do an other TTV (timed Tetrad visit) for the BTO atlas project. Today's tetrad included most of Whitfield and I enjoyed exploring some of the North Downs Way, that follows the old Roman Road, near Pinenum.

Overall the number of birds, and the variety of species I encountered was rather disappointing, although I did enjoy bumping into a noisy and very active flock of Long-tailed Tits. The bird above looks as if it is in urgent need of renewing it's rather tatty tail feathers.

This one look rather more spick and span, but the group wasn't attracting any of the more unusual species that sometimes travel with tit flocks.

Even in the fields where there were some handsome horses, as is to be expected in this area, there were few birds to be seen, amonsgt the commoner birds, Blackbirds and Chaffinches seemed to be the most numerous.

One animal that I did encounter was a completely melanistic (black) Rabbit. Although it isn't that unusual, it is the first I can remember seeing since I was on Skomer, of the Pembroke coast. Here the black Rabbits are famous as they form a high proportion of the population.

I only saw the one black Bunny, all the others were quite normal. This one was so encouraged by the rare sunshine it allowed me to get quite close to take this photo.