A day in the forest

As the weather wasn’t as bad as I was expecting this morning I decided to chance another trip up to Wykeham to try and photograph the Turtle Doves, I saw a couple of Buzzards along the A64 on the way then as I got there and turned down the Nursery road I flushed a bird off the perimeter fence, it was a Cuckoo and it just moved up the fence a bit, this was a bit of a bonus I thought I'd missed the chance of photographing these for another year, unfortunately it wouldn't let me get right alongside it and I ended up having to stop short and photograph it half hanging out of the car door, it eventually dropped into the field and fed there for a while before being flushed by some walkers, I staked the Nursery area out for the next hour or more but again there was no sign of any Turtle Doves, however just as I was about to leave I saw a large Raptor drifting behind some trees and as it came out the other side it revealed itself to be a male Honey Buzzard, another bonus. I moved to another area of the forest where a large clearing held a good few Tree Pipits, I spent a bit of time photographing them and having a general wander around, there was also a Spotted Flycatcher in the area, I retreated back to the car and had lunch when the only shower of the day came over, not bad when I expected it to be raining all day. I then headed over to the valley we discovered last year and spent a bit of time there, a common Buzzard showed well, and Sparrowhawk and Goshawk put in brief appearances but there was no Honey's today, I returned via Troutsdale making several stops along the way then as I got to the Snainton end there were a few birds in the road near some farm buildings as I got closer a Wood Pigeon flew off then I realised the smaller birds were a couple Turtle Doves unfortunately I’d got too close and off they went, oh well you can’t win em all. Stopped off at West Lilling on the way home to listen for Quail, one duly obliged but it only sang a couple of times and was fairly distant, a Little Owl was more obliging though and there were also a good number of Yellow Wags and Corn Buntings around.

Gos diving back into the trees

Little Owl at West Lilling

Thunder and Spotshanks

Out after work and I thought I'd go and see what was happening down at Blacktoft Sands, I drove through a pretty hefty thunderstorm coming through Howden it created a lot of standing water but fortunately had gone through by the time I got to Blacktoft although a couple more passed over while I was there, the reserve was generally fairly quiet although a few Waders are starting to appear now most notably two Green Sandpipers, two Greenshanks and half a dozen Spotted Redshanks on Marshland Lagoon, as to be expected with all the rain the lagoons are still very full and whether this affects Wader passage or not remains to be seen, the only other things of note were a Little Egret high over and the Harriers making the most in between showers.

as the noisy brigade entered the hide

Swans in the rain

Another Swift trip

Another week another Swift, Sunday found me and Andy heading East to Bempton Cliffs where an Alpine Swift was present for its third day, it was quite a trek to the trig point which was actually more Buckton really, and brief views were had en route as it shot past along the top of the cliff but once at the point, which was its favoured area we were rewarded with absolutely spectacular and prolonged views for 45mins or more although photographing it was a challenge in the very windy conditions, we took in the seabirds on the way back, Gannet numbers are incredible now but generally I’ve seen the cliff faces more densely packed. After lunch we headed off to Wykeham, I dropped Andy off at the Raptor viewpoint then headed off to the Nursery fields with the intention of photographing Turtle Doves but typically there were none showing, I gave it a while then joined Andy but the Raptor watching wasn’t much better, maybe it was just too windy, he'd had juv Goshawk before I arrived but the next couple of hours only produced two or three common Buzzards, a Sparrowhawk and a Peregrine, we had another look at the Nursery fields as we left and managed to find one Turtle Dove although that soon departed there was also several small flocks of Crossbills flying around.

young Tree Sparrows in the car park

Whitethroat at Wykeham