Wednesday 20th May

Nothing really to report last week until last Saturday when I was driving to umpire a cricket game in Cumbria. Following the Hexham road past Houghton Garden Centre near Carlisle, a large, grey flecked bird of prey emerged from a line of trees and flashed off into the open country to the East.

It seemed to me too big to be sparrowhawk, peregrine or cuckoo. The body was sturdy and the wings large.  If it wasn't a goshawk I don't know what it was but, as so often with birds of prey, it flashed across my field of vision in a couple of seconds so there was no way of being certain.

On Wednesday, took a very long bike ride or the way to Gatehouse of Fleet.  Trying to keep up a tempo against the wind there wasn't much time to check sightings but I did see a bird hovering and singing just north of Shawhead.  I suspected a pipit but it came down in a blackberry bush and I was able to identify a whitethroat.  Later I heard a distant cuckoo in the Glenkilns and another way up in the heights past Laurieston Forest.

Kites Circling

Rather tired on the way back I did manage to stop to photograph the red kites (about 50 in total) above the Bellymack Farm Feeder Station. Then I briefly stopped by a stream and saw only my second squirrel since the end of winter.

Passing through the Glenkilns again, I heard and stopped to look for the cuckoo again.  Then I heard a second one near to the road ahead.  Sure enough, I saw it move off as I cycled towards it and spotted it's outline twice more before it found its way into a small conifer forest to the left.

Otherwise all I saw up there was a couple of pipits and a buzzard. Still no sign of a wheatear.