2 Renovated properties with vacant possession - Carsington Area. Summer let available.

I’ve had a bit of a conscience this week, following a chat with a birding friend last week.

I had noticed that for want of a better description, he seemed to have gone off the boil bird-wise. He told me, this was back in September time last year, that he was not sure whether he would keep birding as he was finding it too much pressure. At the time I tried to give him some encouragement, and he said he was OK but he wanted to get his own plans sorted.

When I spoke to him last weekend, and asked if he was back to his old self, he told me he was, and he knew what the problem was. He had got himself in the frame of mind that getting more bird ticks was paramount, and as his numbers were increasing at too slow a rate he had become discouraged and disheartened.

And this is where I came in. If you are a follower of my blog, you will know that I regularly tell you how my bird count is going, and what the birding of each week has done to increase my YTD count.  You will also know that I quote progress for several others, and I am beginning to feel that, in at least my friends case, I have been having a subliminal effect on his bird thinking. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I can do something about it. And I will. 

Apart from the rare and special occasions YTD’s will disappear from my blog for other people. I have no desire to bring pressure, and as another friend put it (even as she wrote down her sightings throughout the day!!!) birding should just be enjoying, in other words, how MUCH you enjoy your birding and not how MANY!!

To cheerier matters!   As you will know from last week, the DWT has been doing some makeovers at Carsington on two (so far) of the Osprey nests. And they’ve kindly sent me some photographs that DWT people took.

Rebuilding a nest

Reassembling the Oak tree nest at Fishtail Creek

The renovated nest at Lane End.

Thanks to the DWT... thank goodness it was not me doing the climbing!!

Last Tuesday 5^th March it happened again!!    I got to Rufford Country park at 8.32am (left home at 7.25) to meet Christine, and be told…”Missed!”  Before I got there she saw one Hawfinch in a fellow birders scope, and he had seen 4 before she arrived. A’int it always the way.   I think I will have to try an early run to Cromford – at least I can get there in 25 minutes, and I don’t have to battle with the traffic like the A38.

Anyway, armed with a take-away coffee, we sauntered (and I do mean sauntered) round the Rufford lake and through the woods. Here’s the first evidence. Greeted by a nice male Mandarin Duck, cohabiting with Mallards.   Then we heard AND spotted a Song Thrush. Last year I saw one on January 1.. this year it took 66 days!!

A nice male Mandarin Duck in Rufford Park.

Around the ice-house used to be a good spot for Marsh Tits, and I went prepared with a bag full of seed to put on the stumps of felled trees, only to find that most of the stumps had gone, and there was only a narrow fence rail to drop seed. Pity, but we know we will see Marsh Tits at Rutland, and that is on our forthcoming itinerary.

I don’t know the north of Nottingham well, so after Rufford, Chris led the way to Clumber Park and the visitor centre  with a couple of target birds in mind. I have heard many times that the Chapel area is good for Hawfinches, but not for us nor other birders today. But other scope-toters gave us the location of the Great Grey Shrike, on the south lawn the other side of the lake. Without having brought my water waders, this meant a short yomp was in prospect, convincing us that an excellent soup was the priority to reinvigorate the muscles.

We had almost reached the recommended viewing point/bench in the GGS area, when Chris suddenly adopted a pointer dog mode, having spotted a white dot on the top of a bush 50-60 yards ahead. Brilliant!  After a few minutes viewing the Shrike flew on, and we walked to the said bench. After another 15 minutes, and continuously looking with another birder, in the direction it flew, I turned to come back, and immediately saw the Shrike sitting prominently on a spindly tree behind us!!!, even closer than it was before.

And as a bonus, walking back to the visitor centre, in an area called the Grotto, looking over the bridge at a shallow wet weir….. a lovely Grey Wagtail…non-stop moving and the diagnostic long quivering tail.

£4.50 to enter the park as a non-member… at £2.25 per good bird, worth every penny! (or should it be £3 for the Shrike and £1.50 for the Grey Wag??)

QI: 10^th March 1831, the French Foreign Legion was founded!

Finally my bird hide comment. They won’t like me saying it, it’s a bit like treason, but I can’t open the windows in the new Janet Ede hide at Carsington, as I only have 2 arms. You need 3, 1 each side to hold the catches up, and one in the middle to push up the window.    Solution?  Take away one side catch… the catches are strong, and one would be enough to hold the window open.  Last time I was in there, I had the window resting on my head!!

The migrants are coming…. let’s hope the  Carsington osprey nests make-overs pays dividends….as we always said, if a pair did “unite”, then our problems would really start.   So bring on the problem!!

Happy Birding.