North Yorks Moors

Out with Mark on Sunday and we spent the day on the Moors starting with a slow drive around Bransdale, there seems to be a good number of Redstarts about this year and at our first stop we found an area with several pairs, one pair nesting close to the path showed well. We carried on and were pleasantly surprised to find there wasn’t much other traffic about early on allowing us a few photographic opportunities from the car with Red Grouse, Curlew and Golden Plovers posing, as we reached the head of the valley the day had started to brighten up and with it came an increase in visitors so the journey back down the other side was a bit quicker although we stopped by the little bridge as always, we soon located a singing male Whinchat on top of a tree but there were no Ring Ouzels showing today. Early afternoon we headed over to the Raptor Watchpoint at Wykeham to be greeted by the news that no Honey Buzzards had been seen during the morning, we gave it a couple of hours without success although several common Buzzards and Goshawks showed well, we headed home via Troutsdale and  a walk along the stream at Hilla Green found several Grey Wagtails and a pair of Kingfishers plus a couple of Willow Warblers were acting more like Wagtails, perching and flycatching from the rocks, a bit further along we got good scope views of a perched Goshawk and several more Buzzards including a very pale individual, almost pure white on its breast and belly, it really stood out.

Common Heath male

Common Heath female