13 – 18th March. Well after that wonderful flurry
of activity last week, with birds coming in threes, there was only ever going
to be one outcome.... a period of calm and quiet contemplation, or put it
another way, boredom, depression and birding withdrawl symptoms.
Well,
there were some good things. 2 appointments at the Derby Royal hospital enabled
me to completely relax and catch up on two months of reading unread Bird
Watching Magazines, following which I was able to sale through the blood
pressure tests. Mark you, on the first test, the machine didn’t work, and the
nurse said I must be dead; she said she would try it on herself to confirm it
worked, as she was alive...it did, and I wasn’t!
Coming
home on the bus on Friday, the 2 Derby Peregrines were sitting on the Jury Inn
sign, overlooking the nest box, so that augers well for 2016.
Saturday 19th March. A high to end the week. Chris and I decided to join 16 other birders
on the DOS walk to the Upper Derwent Valley to look for Goshawks. Whilst not as
cold as last year, these deep reservoirs are always windy, but the light was
great and we duly walked up to the Derwent dam wall for our first scanning of
the skyline.
A single
Red Grouse on the skyline was spotted very quickly, and then to the delight of
the leader Andrew a single Goshawk was spotted. Only my second ever Goshawk,
the first on 12th March 2007, also on a DOS walk.
From
there we drove to the far end at Kings Corner and walked to Slippery Stones. No
Crossbills sadly, but everyone was thrilled to see 4 more Goshawks, 2 of which
looked like juveniles, quite close together. So that produced the High 5!
That was the
key bird we had come for, and, despite enduring the enjoyment of Windy Corner
on the way back, purely for the record, our total list was Coal Tit, Nuthatch,
Peregrine, Canada Goose (thrill!!), Buzzard, Cormorant and Mallard. I parted
company from the group on the way back, and found a Grey Wagtail at the Howden
dam wall, thereby helping my 2016 list to move on to 140.
Just in
case you wanted to know (he said modestly), when I was setting up this blog last
year, it took a while to produce a page heading that looked eye-catching and in
conjunction with my computer adviser Julian, we produced the picture of an
Arctic Tern which heads up my blog page.
The
picture from which it was produced was taken in June 2007 during a trip to the
Farnes, and anyone who has done this fabulous trip will not only have savoured
close-ups of Puffins, Shags, Guillemots and seals, but will, if you have
landed, know what it is like to be welcomed by the breeding Arctic Terns.
Experienced
visitors know what to expect, evidenced by the different styles of skull protection worn,
and which range from motor cycle helmets, building site hard hats, to brollies.
What is forbidden – obviously - is the egits who wave their coats so stave off
the birds, a practice which can badly damage the birds. After all we are the
visitors on their patch ... they don’t nest on OUR side of the ropes.
In my
opinion a trip to the Farnes should be on every birders bucketlist!
Word has
it that Ospreys, Sand Martins are other summer visitors have crossed the
channel, so the next couple of weeks should be good birding weeks. We’ll see.
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