On Thursday I drove down to Sizergh Castle on a twitching mission as it is a known venue for seeing hawfinches. Setting off early I parked about 8.10 a.m. and joined the other twitchers in the cafe area, surveying an area of the car park that had been blocked off with cones..
Ater only about 10 minutes or so, a male hawfinch did appear in the tree immediately in front of me but only showed briefly before moving on. A half hour later, what looked like it might be a female landed in the top of the same tree but proved to be a nuthatch, as did a couple of other visitors to
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| Bullfinch |
And that was it apart from a brief stir of excitement when this bullfinch (see picture) briefly visited the same tree. After that it was all tits and chaffinches. So it was a case of very mixed feelings - great to have seen a bird as rare as a hawfinch, but I didn't get a proper look and certainly no chance to get the binoculars or a camera on it. It reminded me of the time I saw the goshawk at Kielder two years ago, when I did manage to see the bird the warden identified as a goshawk, but only at a mile range using binoculars.
Around the cafe there was talk of how bird food used to be put out for the hawfinches and the car park wasn't cordoned off. One chap reckoned he had been visiting for several years but had taken a long time to get a good sighting. I had a quick walk around before leaving at 10.30 and met a Welsh lady who reckoned she had just had a hawfinch in her binoculars, but whatever it was had moved on when she looked again.
Today, with good temperatures forecast, I took a run on the bike to Ae and Lochmaben which was quite productive
Along the cycle track to Locharbriggs I heard several chiffchaffs singing, the first of the year for me though I know they've been about for around ten days. Over the moor at Amisfield, there were quite a few meadow pipits to be seen and skylarks to be heard though they seemed to be flying very high. Eventually, I did spot one parachuting down onto far end of the moor, plus a lone buzzard trying hard to find a thermal and a couple of curlew.
At Lochmaben I visited the bird feeders next to the Castle Loch in the hope of getting a view of a
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| Peacock |
Noting that the temperature was getting as high as 14C (wow!) I had wondered if this might be the day when I would see my first butterfly of the year and sure enough there were three peacocks on the road past Amisfield Tower, two of them sunning themselves on the road.
That alone made it worthwhile getting out and forgetting about the state of the loft for a day or two.
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