Danebower

Did a new part of the Peak District for us at the weekend, across most of Derbyshire, beyond Buxton and to the border with Cheshire, where it's bleak and the birds are few - but what birds they are!

After all the driving we eventually found a pull in around Danebower and a path down into the valley and the old quarry.
Best of the day was a late summer male Ring Ouzel quite close and quite apparently ticked off with us. This was a lifer so we were altogether happier about the encounter.

Other notables came when a Raven sailed by quite low and flushed up a couple of Red Grouse, the corvid even seemed to lunge for one of them. Better views of grouse came later but the girlfriend had used up her camera battery taking admittedly pleasant portraits of sheep.

Several Wheatears were a nice reminder of Scotland.

Earlier in the week we had a Tawny Owl when we went a short way to Norwood to find darker skies for viewing the Perseid meteor shower. Too cloudy to see many of them, the owl was a cracker though, drove right by it first but it was bold enough to let us reverse the car back to have a good look of it perched on a telegraph pole, headlights illuminating the whole bird. They look so big when you get that kind of view.

Willow Warbler in the garden today, our first since the spring.

Wood Sand

Bit of action up at the pit this week, a Wood Sandpiper spent a couple of days up on the big water. Nice attractive bird, sleeker than the common-er sandpipers, and fairly rare on passage, so a good standard noteworthy tick any year. Brought a few county birders up to our splendid little patch.
Wheatear, Yellow Wagtail, still add flavour, and the Reed Bunting vid comes from Pleasley too.

Today I spent my lunchtime in the gardens at Hardwick Hall, and do you know I saw just the bird I went there to see. Yep, over goes a Hobby while I'm tucking into my cheese sandwich. We are on a ridge so raptor passage does have potential. Had a probable, let's say possible, Honey Buzzard go over during last year's invasion but being at work I was too busy and without bins, couldn't confirm the bird for myself, and it stays probable despite one being reported 10 minutes later a couple of miles away in the right direction.

Edited to add: Another lunchtime, more birds, 2 Ravens over for short time until they could takes the harrassments froms the Jackdaws no mores! Don't get many of those in our part of the county.

Ynys-hir

Another swift post to sum up the best of the birding enjoyed on my camping holiday to NW Wales.

Top spot had to be the RSPB reserve at Ynys-hir, never heard of it? Me either before I went, but I am quite comfortably confident it's the finest RSPB site I've ever been to. Where to begin describing the plethora of habitats? The oak woodlands? The mudflat estuary? The fresh water pools? Or how about the reed beds and open pasture? I could go on.
As you may imagine, this extraordinarily rich variety offers a true wish-list of summer birds in early June... maybe 10 pairs of Pied Flycatcher by our straw count, almost as many Redstart, and best of all a single Wood Warbler - a lifer for the girlfriend and I. May have been too late in the day for the bird's amazing stuttering trill song (listen here), however a plaintive 'tuh' contact call quite unlike anything I've heard from a Willow Warbler of Chiffchaff helped to confirm with our ears what we seeing with our eyes through the thick green foliage.

In at least three of the hides we found nesting pairs of Swallow, probably my girlfriend's favourite part of the whole holiday came in watching them toing and froing, watch out for the video at the bottom of this post.

Other top sights for the two days spent there (we simply had to go back after the first one!) were family groups of Raven and Stonechat, a single Whinchat, display flights from Common Sandpiper, overflights from Little Egret, Sedge/Reed/Grasshopper Warbler among the reeds, Oystercatchers and Lapwings, hovering Common Buzzards, Siskin and Great Spotted Woodpecker visiting the feeders by the visitor centre/shop, and a sunbathing Treecreeper - stubby wings outstretch against tree trunk, to name the highlights.
For me most memorable of all was a Goldfinch nest riding the strong winds in the outermost branches of an oak tree at eye level from one of the hides - rising and falling five to six feet after every gust. We couldn't have planned to see a Goldfinch feeding its day old chicks, which trust me is an extraordinarily privileged view into the precarious early days of those birds.

Some pictures to illustrate all this beauty...

(Goldfinch nest just to right of picture.)

Perky Pied Flycatcher.

Those Swallows.

More Welsh birding to come.

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.

Brief Roundup

It's a been a quiet week, the highlight was a Raven being mobbed by a pair of Sparrowhawks at Ogston Reservoir. Doubly exciting for me because I cycled out there, making the big crow #108 for my carbon neutral list.
You know it sure is fun to be keeping a new lifelong list I can regularly add to, well, at least for now.

As part of their eastward spread, that area of central Derbyshire is a great spot for Raven, just enough upland and just wild enough too for a thin breeding population. It has to be thin really, Raven territories are BIG and they keenly exclude all others of their own species.

Otherwise, like I say, very quiet, so I'll direct you to an interesting blog entry about Blue Tits feeding their chicks brain food - spiders containing an amino acid called taurine, which helps to develop the mental faculties of the young. Read more here, it's one of those, who'd of thought(?) pieces of research.