Dave, Roger and I set off on a
day’s birding in Derbyshire and our first port of call was a site near
Grindleford where we have seen Wood Warbler in the past. There was no sign of any Wood Warbler but we
did see a smart male Redstart, our first Spotted Flycatcher of the year and a
few Tree Pipits and a Siskin. There was
also Sparrowhawk, Cuckoo, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler,
Blackcap and Treecreeper. A drive to the
railway station at Grindleford only produced another Great Spotted Woodpecker.
We then drove the short
distance to the top of Padley Gorge and had a pair of Redstarts close to where
we had parked. We walked the short
distance over the moor to the gorge and saw a Pied Flycatcher in the first
piece of woodland. We thought it was a
female as it was quite brown but after searching for a singing male we
established that it was the female-type singing and it must have been a
first-year male. We heard another
Redstart whilst in the gorge and on exiting onto the moorland we found a pair
of Stonechats the male looking rather resplendent in its summer plumage. We also saw a Cuckoo, a Whitethroat and a
Tree Pipit and a couple of Green Hairstreaks and several Latticed Moths.
Male Stonechat
Tree Pipit
It was again a relatively
short drive to the next location at Upper Burbage and after some lunch we
walked down the track to view a rocky outcrop.
We spent quite some time at the sight and eventually heard out target
bird, Ring Ouzel, calling but we couldn’t locate it. Dave then picked it up in flight and it was
joined by a second bird on the outcrop.
They were a pair and we then had some nice views of the pair as they
moved around on the rock face. The
female eventually disappeared and left the male calling in a small bush. A Cuckoo also provided some excellent views
but the only other birds we saw were Meadow Pipits, a single Pheasant and a
very distant Curlew. We drove to the
other end of the valley as we had heard that there had been Whinchat there
earlier today. As we walked along the
path we found another superb male Stonechat but there was no sign of the
Whinchat. There was a distant male Ring
Ouzel on a rocky outcrop and a Raven was seen perched close by and a Cuckoo
flew over.
Cuckoo
Our final call was Hathersage
where we hoped to find Dipper. We
initially looked over the bridge and found the water level quite high with all
the normally exposed rocks covered but we did see a female Grey Wagtail. Walking further downstream we found a
juvenile Dipper on a small stream running into the river. There was also a Redstart singing and we
eventually saw it briefly singing from the top of a bare tree. A female Mandarin was observed with two tiny
young on the river.
The weather had been good day
and we saw four out of the six birds we were hoping for, which was not too bad.
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