A Crooked and Craggy tale

Last Sunday reports came through of a Crag Martin flying around the crooked church spire in Chesterfield but being in deepest Lincolnshire I deemed there wouldn't be enough time to go for it, it disappeared after 2pm anyway, incredibly the bird turned up again the following morning and showed several times into the early afternoon before disappearing again, the pattern was repeated on the Tuesday so hopes were raised that it would remain to the weekend however they were soon dashed when there was no sign of it on the Wednesday. Unbelievably it was seen again yesterday, no idea where it has been but the twitch was back on, I teamed up with Mark and Paz and we arrived just after first light soon spotting a Peregrine on one corner of the church munching away on what we hoped wasn’t a Crag Martin, the morning wore on, a skein of Pinkfeet went over but there was no sign of the Martin by 9am, nor by 10, by 10-30 optimism was beginning to wane then around 10-45 a cheer went up, thankfully it had returned, huge sighs of relief all round and we enjoyed watching this superfast Hirundine flying around the church for the next hour or so, just after mid-day it disappeared and the forecast rain started so it wasn’t long before we called it a day, three very happy birders with another lifer in the bag.

early morning Peregrine eating breakfast

Crag Martin, after keeping us waiting it then performed well

though extremely hard to photograph

this was the best shot I managed