Dave, Roger and I set off for
Budby Common this morning where there had been some Parrot Crossbills reported
over the last few days. We weren’t
exactly sure where to go on arrival but walked along a couple of tracks that
were hopefully in the right direction.
The first birder we saw hadn’t seen them and also didn’t know the right
location. We continued walking and Roger
spotted two birders and so he and I walked in that direction. On reaching a gate we could see a group of
birders appearing to be observing a small group of pines. Dave had gone off in a different direction
but we saw him walking across the common towards the birders and so Roger and I
went down a track towards them. As we
approached the pines I saw several birds on top, two of which were nice
males. After a short time they dropped
down out of site and we joined the rest of the birders. We saw birds several more times in the pines
and were watching them when they took to flight and landed in a small deciduous
tree a little further away. There were
in fact fourteen of them and after a short time they flew again and landed in a
different tree and much closer where they stayed for about ten minutes before
flying again but this time some considerable distance and out of site.
Parrot Crossbills
We walked around the triangle
hoping to see a Great Grey Shrike that had been frequenting the area recently
but with no joy. As we were walking back
we saw another birder scoping something from the track and when we got closer I
noticed it was Bob from Rutland Water.
He had a male Parrot Crossbill in his scope and we eventually saw three
males and two females.
Male Kestrel
Our next port of call was to
be Clumber Park, which was just a few miles away. We passed through the entrance as drove to
the old ornamental bridge. From the
bridge we saw a couple of Mandarins and twenty Goosander and two Kingfishers
flew along the edge of the lake and circa forty Lesser Redpoll flew over. There was a small feeding station where we
had parked the car and we saw three Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Coal Tit and
Marsh Tit.
Great Spotted Woodpecker
As Rufford Park was no too far
away we made a visit to hopefully see Lesser Spotted Woodpecker but the area
they are normally seen was very quiet.
Dave did see a Hawfinch but it flew before Roger and I got there,
although Roger did see a bird fly away.
There were plenty of Redwings and a few Fieldfares and we did have a
selection of common species including two Treecreeper before it started to rain
and so we set off home.
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