Pleased

Loving life in Derbyshire, albeit just about 100 yards into the county. We can take a 10 minute walk and there's Dipper, Little Ringed Plover and Little Owl variously around the village. It's also a little pleasure to see Mallards in the street when I go to work in the morning.

Went to a talk at the local RSPB group, good stuff on farming with wildlife and the Higher Level Stewardship scheme. Learned a wee bit about margins, scrapes, etc, travelling through the countryside in the week after it's easy to spot the what ifs on the local farmland. What if the hedgerows weren't all massacred at the same time, what if the roadside verges weren't mowed so short, what if more farmers became stewards of our natural heritage as well as providers for the table. I suppose there's a whole can of worms there, economically and politically, but what if it saved the future of our wildlife?

And what if I posted another video?

Down at the mill, it's the Dipper again, for a cool half a million you can get it on your garden bird list.

Dipper at'Mill

Nice bird in the village today, unusual this far east in Derbyshire, it's a Dipper, of course. Well worth all of that 5 minute walk down to the mill. Looked territorial too, so fingers crossed on that, even if it means a hard time for the regular Grey Wagtails.
Technically a good county bird for Nottinghamshire listers when it flits onto the opposite bank of the Meden.

Also, while a Coal Tit calls outside my window, a couple of good birdy articles in the Independent this week, well, one good, one bad:

Triumph of the Bumbarrel - AKA the Long-tailed Tit

The Sound of Silence - The Cuckoo is Vanishing

Lathkill Dale

What unseasonal warmth! Did we sleep away the winter so quickly?

Well, I can tell you, it remains chilly of a morning down in the Derbyshire Dales. With my free weekends rapidly running out, the girlfriend and I chose a walk new to us, up and back down Lathkill Dale in the heart of the Peak. For a Sunday it was hardly busy, so the scarcity of birds was somewhere toward surprising. Two pairs of Dipper were skittish dazzlers, and the odd languid Buzzard sailed over late morning, beyond that Great Tits, Robins, Goldcrest and Song Thrush added birdsong to the atmospheric mists. Something about the acoustics up there, the slightest twitter is so rich!
Grey Wagtail were a notable absence, I suppose still huddling for warmth down on the broader reaches of the river where the sunshine can find them.


And now for something completely different... walking my niece to the park yesterday I observed behaviour from a pair of Carrion Crows quite new to me. One of the birds was eagerly pecking under the guttering of a house along the street, making me half-wonder whether it was searching for the eggs of early nesting sparrows. No, that wasn't it. Peck, peck, the crow grabbed and pulled out an enormous cob sandwich! Almost immediately thereafter in came the second bird, chasing away what was evidently an intruder raiding the food stash of the resident pair. It must have been watching them store the items there.
Of course I never have my camera when I really need it.

Back up Lathkill Dale, along the ridge above the valley, my first butterfly of the year, a stately Peacock for the Peaks.

It's Dipperdale, surely?

Isn't Britain wonderful? We're all of us in such easy reach of so many different landscapes. Over weekend the girlfriend and I picked out the unmatchable limestone beauty of Dovedale, on the Derbyshire/Staffordshire border. There was one bird, a favourite, that she wanted to see again, a species synonymous with Dovedale - the Dipper.


Notice the blinking? Its eyelids look white or even silvery. That's called a nictitating membrane, somewhat like see-through eyelids or goggles by another name, which allow the bird to search for underwater food (mostly insect larvae, fresh water shrimp). Neat huh?
They also have a special preen gland and undercoating of feathers to keep them dry, and their blood is richer in oxygen than most other perching birds, all adaptations for a sub-aqua lifestyle.

I really doubt there is any place in the world where you can get closer views. The Dippers along this most popular stretch of the Derbyshire Dales barely register the presence of passersby, and with just a little patience you can be within feet of them.
The heavy rains of previous days made for a high river which perhaps explains why for our visit the Dippers fed almost exclusively duck-style, swimming and diving from the surface rather than skipping in and out of the fast waters around the rocks. For me it remains a bizarre sight, this bird not unlike a Blackbird, so at home on the water. Look...


By the way, I should probably explain that winter in the valley is really too dark to get decent still photographs, at least not with the primitive kit I carry. Far easier to instead record the day on video, even if it's only lo-res stuff. Most of these I digi-binned through my 8x42s.

So real crackers, one of those bold and brilliant birds complete strangers birders and bird novices alike, will stop, watch and talk to each other about. Top #10 British Bird for anyone's money.

Plenty else in the dale too though, dozens of Siskin and plenty of Nuthatch showed well in the car park, that universal companion of the Dipper - Grey Wagtail were just as numerous, Raven were a nice touch over the woods and again relatively decent views for such a shy species. Redwing, Treecreeper and Buzzard, kept things interesting away from the water.
Last bird of the day was a redhead Goosander on the river. She should probably think about moving down to a lake or reservoir for the winter.

There was more wildlife treat though, a bonus; stellar views of a Weasel foraging the river bank. You can never expect such a thing, but just by going out you win the occasional lottery and there it'll be. Memorable stuff.


The Goosander.

A couple more video links:
Dipper 1
Dipper 2

Last word, be careful on the stepping stones and think twice about crossing them in winter. We saw one accident with a mother and her kids ending up on their bottoms in the water, and it was only luck really that we had a blanket and spare coat to lend them from our car.
This isn't the time of year to be getting wet folks.

May is the month for...

...visiting gladed woodland, such as the at the RSPB's reserve at Coombes Valley (east Staffordshire).
Primarily because the Pied Flycatchers are showing. This one was a lifer for me and what a lifer! In the one hide overlooking a small pond he was closely attending to a nestbox, hardly more than five or six yards left of where you sit. I doubt I've ever seen fewer birds from any other hide, still for me this one still remains one of the very best.
Seemed all the female were on eggs, as we only saw male Pied Flycatcher, at least six different birds.

The other species Coombes Valley is famous for at this time of the year is Redstart. They were fewer, or at least more elusive. The best showing was a male hawking for flies on the island in the small pond. The only flycatching of the day, and it wasn't from any of the flycatchers.

Other notables were a pair of Raven being mobbed by Carrion Crows. The size difference so remarkable that at first it appeared to be a Buzzard being guarded away. Great and Lesser Spotted Woodpecker showed only very briefly up among the leaves, though Nuthatch was much more accommodating and even let us see a courtship routine in which one bird fed the other. And in the car park a still very dull chested Linnet gave off a five minute performance of its song.

Beautiful bluebell woodlands made the walk a delight.



















With plenty of light left in the day we realised Dove Dale was good for a shot on the way home, and thus we detoured, arriving around five, by which time the big Bank Holiday crowds were melting away.

What we hoped for were the Dipper I'd promised the girlfriend. We hadn't found any at Coombes Valley, indeed it seemed unlikely anyone would spot Dipper there when the paths only cross the brook rather than running along it. Anyway, along the Dove we found our target, four or five of them that have clearly been emboldened by the masses that walk along the river during the warmer months. Fantastically close views, within ten yards of that bobbing underwater feeding technique. We even heard their song, a bizarre gurgle, a mixture between the throat warbles of a Blackbird and twisting versus of Reed Warbler. Nothing else quite like it.

Elsewhere on the river we found a Mallard with 17 very young ducklings, a record I defy you to break, and a Goosander with 6 of her own. Close views of her too, the sort you just don't get in the Winter.Red-legged Partridge were also around.

At the end of the day the count came up to just 50 species, some real crackers in there though.
Birds thrill again!

Video 1 - Pied Flycatcher singing
Video 2 - Pied Flycatcher singing