WILLOW WARBLERS RETURN

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Willow Warbler singing in East Lancs

WILLOW WARBLER IS ONE OF THE EARLIEST RETURNING TRANS-SAHARAN MIGRANTS, with most arriving in the first week of April. They have poured back into East Lancs this week and are busy establishing territories. I stopped off at a regular site for them today to find four males singing in an area of young conifers. Eventually the trees will grow too tall, becoming unsuitable for the warblers and they will have to find somewhere else. Sadly they are declining across the UK but appear still to be very common in East Lancs.

ELOC year list: 100. Little Owl 101. Gadwall 102. Willow Warbler

MEANWHILE BACK IN EAST LANCS

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Barn Owl number four this week!

BACK IN EAST LANCS spring migration is starting to pick up pace. Northern Wheatear and Ring Ouzel were back in one of their regular haunts last weekend, Common Chiffchaff was singing at work this week and shorebirds have returned to Alston, including Little Ringed Plover and Common Redshanks. An afternoon at Stocks today added another four, thanks to hanging out with the Breakses, notably an Osprey, which spent the whole evening at the reservoir including catching a large fish, which it had to swim to the shore with, it was obviously either too weak to take flight with, or the fish was simply too big? Fantastic stuff, albeit rather distant. Hirundines swarmed over the waters here - Sand Martins as well as a few swallows and a pair of Red-breasted Mergansers were my first of the year in ELOC. Other interesting sightings included roding woodcocks and a couple of oddities, a leucistic Carrion Crow and a presumed Lesser Black-backed Gull X Herring Gull hybrid. So my ELOC little year plods on but I will stay miles behind the front-runners as I'm not twitching any of the uncommon birds that have been turning up lately.

ELOC Year List: 91. Common Redshank 92. Little Ringed Plover 93. Northern Wheatear 94. Ring Ouzel 95. Common Chiffchaff 96. Sand Martin 97. Barn Swallow 98. Western Osprey 99. Red-breasted Merganser

IBISBILL

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Ibisbill, Choglamsar, Ladakh

IBISBILLS WINTER IN SMALL NUMBERS IN THE INDUS VALLEY in Ladakh. These strange shorebirds are unique in filling an almost dipper-like niche along the fast flowing mountain rivers of the Himalayas and surrounding ranges of Central Asia. Their long curved bill is used to glean invertebrates from the shallows around invariably rounded stones along the edges of rivers and streams. In fact it is difficult to find a photo of them that does not have defocused smooth limestone rocks in the background. My first were almost 20 years ago in Nepal but here they were constantly disturbed by folks extracting gravel from the riverbeds for road construction. It was nice to see them relatively undisturbed along the sacred Indus in Ladakh, prayer flags fluttering from the nearby iron bridge across it at Choglamsar. Another unique feature is their purple legs during the breeding season (apparently the legs of ibisbills change color to a crimson similar to the bill shade shortly after death!).

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Ibisbill, Choglamsar, Ladakh - the waters of the sacred Indus turned rose gold in the evening light.

THE MOORLAND MADNESS CONTINUES

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Pendle Hill trig point looking towards the lights of Burnley.

THANK GOODNESS THE RAIN SEEMS TO HAVE STOPPED at last and both hikes up Pendle Hill this weekend were dry. That's 13 times so far this year. I could even see some daylight on Sunday after which I went for a spin around some of my old Bowland patch adding skylark at Champion Moor and stonechat at White Greet to the ELOC year list in the process. A male Brambling, found by Nigel(!), was on the feeders at work on Wednesday and Thursday and a small flock of 6 Lesser Redpolls was near the board house at Stocks today. No owls this week and I am still to see both Short-eared and Little in the ELOC recording area this year - a sign of how badly they are both doing these days unfortunately. There are also still quite a few other soft birds missing too, like kingfisher, Green Woodpecker and Red-legged Partridge for instance. I'm still not really trying though!

ELOC year list 89. Eurasian Skylark 90. Common Stonechat