I took advantage of the opportunity on Thursday, when I took the train out to Gretna and cycled back at gentle pace to Dumfries hoping to see a few things on the loops off the 'low road' via Cycle Track 7. I must have missed a signpost as I ended up riding straight to Eastriggs, but on the next loop towards Annan, I noticed a large flock of birds flying overhead and tweeting away merrily before landing on the telegraph wires in the distance.
My first reaction was that they would probably be goldfinches, but on getting out the binoculars I could see that they had nowhere near enough colour about them. Annoyingly they had their backs to me, but I could see they were not chaffinches as they did not have a white wing bar, just a white outline to the tail. I could see that one bird had some streaking on the side of its chest, and then one of them turned round to reveal a reddish breast.
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| Linnets On Wire |
From the same place, I had a view of a skylark ascending and on rejoining the tourist route, there was a woodpecker hammering violently in some bare trees but I couldn't get a view of it.
I stopped for lunch near Powfoot Golf Course where a couple more linnets flew over. After that the wind got a bit more chilly and I rode faster towards home, only hearing some curlew and seeing a couple of buzzards.
On Saturday I was at Cragside House in Northumberland, where there wasn't much active on a still, cool day barring a few small trout. But there were a couple of duck diving on the same lake and I was able to identify that they were scaup. If I have seen scaup before I don't remember it or haven't known it, so that was pleasing.
Just before leaving this morning, there was a greenfinch at the top of a conifer, singing his head off.
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