Viewing entries tagged
Golden Plover

Comment

RETURN OF THE PINKFEET

Pinks in and out of the mist today!

THE WOBBLY CALLS OF PINK-FOOTED GEESE OVER THE VILLAGE has been a feature this weekend so far. In fact a couple of flocks have passed over the house in the dark while I was looking at my photos for this post. There has been a massive push of Pinkfeet over the last few days down the east coast, Twitter has been alive with them so it has been great to join in the excitement as some of them chose to cross the Pennines and fly down the Ribble Valley. They have all been heading west here, a total of 236 in 7 flocks since the first on Friday evening. It is fantastic to have them back!

This blog post could easily have been ‘Golden Plover - new for me in Ribchester’ instead as one flew over calling at Red Bank, also heading west, presumably a little lower than usual thanks to the low cloud base/mist. Phil has seen them in the fields at Salesbury before but not in recent years. It brought up 120 species for me in Ribchester, not bad for somewhere with no notable habitats. Other migrants today included a few summer visitors still around - by coincidence c.120 hirundines on the wires at Osbaldeston Hall and hawking low over the river there was a magnificent sight. They were mostly swallows but included around 10 House Martins as well.

A late Common Whitethroat was in an isolated riverside hawthorn . We tallied seven Common Chiffchaffs today, including one daft bird singing at Red Bank. Another very conspicuous bird at the moment is jay, they seem to be everywhere in the northwest right now, or maybe just more visible as they rush around stashing food for the winter? The juvenile Osprey seems to have moved on now though, it took my 5KO sightings to 13 this year! Finally, I thought our eight Little Egrets was pretty good until I learned that 46 roosted at Sawley this evening!

Golden Plover collage in the mist over Red Bank

A late Common Whitethroat, surely the last of 2021?

Chiffchaffs are dull compated to Willow Warbler! Look at those short wing tips too!

Very dark legs and only a couple of flecks of yellow = chiffchaff

A damp Red Bank with a low cloud base hanging over the Ribble Valley this morning, there are plenty of hawthorn berries for the Redwings, which will soon be here again for the winter.

Comment

Comment

PENDLE GOLD

A lone European Golden Plover with the Ogden Clough in the background.

PENDLE HILL STILL HOLDS SEVERAL BREEDING PAIRS OF GOLDEN PLOVER, usually high up on the peat hinterland. Their mournful song flights are far carrying and add to a wonderful soundscape of ascending skylarks, parachuting Meadow Pipits and clucking Red Grouse. Twite and Dunlin also used to breed up here but were long gone before I arrived in East Lancs in 2005. I’ve never managed to get too close to goldies, they’re usually quite wary on Pendle but I’m quite happy to settle for a few in-landscape images that I took with Phil Larkin earlier this spring.

A pair of golden plovers on Pendle Hill

Golden skylark at dawn

Cold pre-dawn light skylark, still warming up after the overnight frost

Dawn breaks over the Pennines to the east of Pendle

Comment

Comment

SPRING MIGRATION RESUMES IN THE RIBBLE VALLEY

A big, bold female Northern Wheatear at Alston is no doubt on its way to somewhere far to the northwest of here.

AFTER A COUPLE OF WEEKS OF COLD NORTHERLIES AND FROSTS, as soon as the wind veered to the southeast, spring bird migration picked up again and new arrivals started to appear locally. Although wheatears were spotted on both Gannow Fell and at Alston in March, these were local/UK-breeding birds and the birds appearing on passage migration now are heading much further northwest to Iceland, Greenland and maybe even beyond? One such bird was on the stone bank of Alston No.#1 Reservoir on 23 April, where there was also a Lesser Whitethroat singing nearby. Another bird passing through Ribchester on 24 April (maybe Iceland-bound?) was a White Wagtail on the riverbank opposite Churchgates, see photo below. Cuckoo and Common Sandpiper were back in their usual spots on Friday 23 April, an early hobby was seen circling over Lower Alston Farm and Glynn Anderton saw a swift on Stoneygate Lane, both on 25 April. There was another swift on the same day at Alston but the rarest migrants locally were more Yellow Wagtails, flying north, calling, over Gannow Fell on 24 April and at Alston on 26 April. However, we are still waiting for House Martin, Spotted Flycatcher, Common Whitethroat, Garden and Sedge Warblers around the village so there are still plenty of spring migrants to look for. By the way I don’t intend to post locations for breeding birds from now but if you are a local birder and need help seeing something then please DM me.

The whimbrel roost at Alston is one of the highlights of the birding year as northbound birds (again probably heading for Iceland) spend a few days staging in meadows of the lower Ribble Valley. The evening of 24 April saw a new record of 147 birds, watched from the central screen along Pinfold Lane. Apart from a handful of early evening birds, the main arrival from the surrounding fields is usually just after sunset and is a sight and sound to behold. The Lancashire synchronised count on the evening of 25 April totalled 1294, with an awesome 488 at Barnarce! Alston scored a very respectable 141. There will be another synchro-count on 2 May. Up to three gorgeous breeding-plumaged Black-tailed Godwits (of Icelandic origin) were at Alston in recent days, along with three golden plovers on 23 April, also in breeding plumage. These were northern birds, a couple of them with solid jet black faces. Golden-spangled beauties headed far away from here. Looking ahead, the showers on Tuesday will probably ground an interesting shorebird or two at Alston and the next couple of weeks is usually the best period of the spring for them here.

Winter visitors are not quite all gone though! Phil Larkin photographed a late Whooper Swan over the river from ‘The Tush’ very early on 25 April!

White Wagtail, Ribchester 24 April. ‘White Wagtail and Pied Wagtail: a new look’ by Peter Adriaens, Davy Bosman & Joris Elst is a good reference and this bird looks to have a Grey Scale score of c7 on its scapulars and flanks putting it comfortably lighter and outside the range for subspecies yarrellii (i.e. Pied Wagtail) and a score of 0/1 for the extent of grey on the flanks, which strongly suggests White Wagtail but does not completely rule out Pied. The head pattern is spot on for a male White Wagtail though with a very sharp demarcation of the black hood and grey mantle and a large gap between the black on the sides of the neck. The rump can’t be seen clearly in my photos so is of no use either way but without seeing the rump I can’t completely rule out an intergrade.

Whimbrels coming in to roost at Alston Wetland

Whimbrel motion blur at Alston Wetland

Two of the northern European Golden Plovers at Alston

And the winner of unnecessary sign of the week is…

Comment

Comment

RETURN TO PENDLE

A steady passage of northern golden plovers across Pendle Summit was the highlight of my first visit since last May. Check those black faces!

THE MOURNFUL CALLS OF GOLDEN PLOVERS ECHOED ACROSS PENDLE SUMMIT this morning. As well as a song-flighting, local breeding bird there was a steady movement of goldies heading northeast off the summit just after dawn. I haven’t seen anything like this before. Just the occasional party but never a continuous movement of birds. They all appeared to be black-faced northern birds as well, flying uphill to the summit from the Ogden Clough direction and obviously bound for somewhere far away from here. The largest single group was 13 birds but most parties were only five or six. The movement had stopped by 0800 and totalled 127 by that time. This more than made up for failing to find any dotterel on what would have almost a certainty 15 years on this date in light SSE winds. There is plenty of time yet this soring of course. Also on Pendle were four wheatears and a few Red Grouse of note and below the hill I only saw one displaying lapwing but at least there is still a Tawny Owl in its usual spot.

Unfortunately the hill is in a bad way these days. The new ‘mega path’ is eroding already (hardly surprising considering its design) and the walk to the summit now looks more like a dual carriageway is being built up there. The way the beautifully weathered gritstone was treated during the works was a disgrace with caterpillar tracked vehicles driven over the ‘mini-Cairngorms’ area that was once a favourite spot for dotterel and now the rocks below the landslide trail have been smashed up during recent repair work. There is more litter than there used to be, including face masks (a new phenomenon) and dog shit bags (on old one). There is now even a stall selling snacks by the Pendleside stile. While new folks wanting to visit might still enjoy Pendle, those who had been before the ‘improvement’ works will be shocked by the sad state of the hill now. On a brighter note I haven’t seen the grass as short on the summit for many years and there is plenty of dotterel habitat away from the hideous pathways.

Badly eroded ‘road’ to the summit. What ever were they thinking of?

Mega path showing signs of wear already

Recent repairs now include a pipe under the path

Unsightly smashed up gritstone blocks on the landslide (old weathered ones to the rear and right).

Comment