I spent Sunday evening and most of Bank Holiday Monday in the company of my mate Martin McGill. Martin is still on crutches and is making a good recovery from his accident. He can't drive at the moment and so collected him and we spent Sunday evening birding in the Forest of Dean. Cannop produced three Wood Warblers, two of the showing well and singing. Near to Ruardean we heard a Turtle Dove singing and managed decent views of him busily trying to attract a mate. The decline of Turtle Doves is areal tragedy, I haven't seen one near home in Lancashire since the last breeding pair at Mere Sands Wood in the mid 90s. Despite the valiant efforts of the various conservation NGOs I'm not overly optimistic of a recovery any time soon so I'm always delighted to see one and of course make sure the record gets put on BirdTrack so that it's captured by BTO and RSPB. Wood Warblers seem to be going the sane way although their decline isn't as catastrophic as Turtle Doves.
Martin is keen on his Odonata and was pleased to see a couple of Broad-bodied Chasers (see below) while we were out.
We popped into Nagshead where I managed to see my first Spotted Flycatcher of the year, nocturnal searches for Nightjars proved fruitless at three sites - I'll be back in June, when its hopefully warmed up a little for those.
On Sunday we resisted several twitching opportunities and headed over to the Cotswolds searching for various raptors, we managed several Red Kites (record shot below) and Hobby but failed with a couple of target species despite thoroughly searching.
Martin knows the Cotswolds well and keeps an eye out for scarce breeding species and we ended up searching for Corn Buntings finding groups of 30 and nine. Not a bad bit of birding in the company of a top mate.
We even we managed a tea and cake stop in Sherborne and watched a gang of Morris dancers doing there thing - very enjoyable!
No comments:
Post a Comment