The weather seesawed back to ‘Dreary’ today, and I felt the need of some bird therapy. There were no interesting bird alerts anywhere within a fifty-mile radius though, so I took the line of least resistance and went up to Hillers, to spend an hour in their hide.
A couple of miles out of the village I spotted a Buzzard sitting in a tree by the side of the road, so I stopped the car a respectful distance away and picked up the camera. I didn’t have the angle to shoot through a window, so I eased open the door and slithered out, but I’d only got one foot on the tarmac when the Buzzard, inevitably, took off. A high-speed burst of frames only netted me a couple of keepers, but given the distance and the poor light, I’m reasonably satisfied with the image I’ve added as my second photo tonight.
At Hillers the woodland clearing was busy with birds both large and small. The small ones encompassed the usual tits and finches, but sadly there was no sign of the Siskin and Brambling I saw there on my last visit, and though Merlin detected a Redpoll somewhere nearby, I didn’t spot it myself. The large ones were a little more varied than usual: as well as the expected Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges picking around under the feeders, first a Raven, and then a Buzzard, came and sat in a nearby tree, watching the songbirds feeding. This caused exactly the kind of consternation you’d expect, and though personally I doubted that either of the potential predators would be quick enough to pick off a songbird, the little guys were taking no chances, and every CRONK of the Raven, or twitch of the Buzzard as the branch on which it was perching moved around, caused an immediate mass evacuation of the clearing.
Over the course of the hour, without including any suggestions from Merlin that I couldn’t confirm myself, I logged 24 bird species, which is quite high for this site. Given the discussions I had at Croome yesterday, it was interesting that this count included not merely a Blackbird and a Song Thrush, but a Mistle Thrush as well – the latter taking my total for the year to 150 species.
R: L2, C2, D7.
