Pennington Flash

Hobby 1 chasing sand martins near the yacht club
Sand martin 200+
Willow warbler 3 singing
Chiffchaff 3 singing

Year: 187 (Hobby)

Houghton Green Flash, Winwick

Yellow wagtail 2 mm
Grey wagtail 2 m&f
White wagtail 1
Pied wagtail 5
Gadwall 4 (2 pairs)
Barn owl 1 pellet

Male grey wagtail

Appleton Reservoir, Warrington

Sedge warbler 1 singing
Blackcap 1 singing
Sand martin 100

Year: 186 (Sedge warbler)

Alder Lane, Winwick

Alder Lane looking very flooded and very good at the moment. I just had a short stop today, but still managed to record a wheatear in the horse paddocks and two each of redshank, oystercatcher, teal, shoveler and gadwall on or around the flood.

Great Crested Newts

With night time temperatures now reaching a positively balmy 7'C, great crested newt season began in earnest last night. A combination of bottle trapping, torch searches and egg searches means long days, late nights and early mornings. I checked in at my hotel at 23:45 and checked out again at 06:30 following a 12 hour day. As the daylight hours get longer over the next couple of months, the newt nights will get even later and the mornings even earlier, until you wonder if it's even worth returning to the hotel. At least we saw some newts, which isn't always the case. Obviously, everything you see here is fully licenced.

Two male great creasted newts in a bottle trap. Apart from the crests and large size, notice also the white band in the tail and the yellow fingertips. Also in the trap, a couple of beetles and a caddisfly larva.

You can see the crest and the belly of the top newt quite well in this photo.

Male and female palmate newts in an identically sized bottle as a size comparison with great crested.

Male palmate newt. Much smaller than great crested, perhaps only half the size. Notice the webbing between the toes on the back foot.

I noticed this folded leaf floating around on the surface of the water like a little boat. On investigation it turned out to be the handywork of a female great crested newt, which had laid its egg on the leaf and then folded it over for protection.

You can see the egg in this photo.

Here's another great crested newt egg I found on a grass leaf. Unlike frogs and toads, newts lay their eggs singularly.

Houghton Green Flash, Winwick

Yellow wagtail 2 males
Little ringed plover 1
White wagtail 1
Shoveler 2 (pair)
Gadwall 4 (2 pairs)
Tufted duck 4 (2 pairs)

Houghton Green Flash, Winwick

Yellow wagtail 4 males
White wagtail 1
Shoveler 2
Gadwall 4
Swallow 1
Sand martin 5
Willow warbler 1
Little grebe 1

Houghton Green Flash, Winwick

Yellow wagtail 1 male
White wagtail 1
Grey wagtail 2
Pied wagtail 5
Little ringed plover 3
Swallow 1
Shoveler 2 (m&f)
Gadwall 4
Little grebe 1
Tufted duck 1 m

My earliest ever yellow wagtail in the UK, by three days.

Year: 185 (Yellow wagtail)

Yellow wagtail , with a grey wagtail in the background.

Grey wagtail.

Appleton Reservoir, Warrington

Water rail 1 where the stream enters the reservoir at the southern end
Swallow 1
Willow warbler 1 singing
Chiffchaff 4 singing

Opposite-leaved golden saxifrage Chrysosplenium oppositifolium. Not a true saxifrage, the English name always seems a little odd to me, since saxifrage litterally means "rock-splitter" yet this plant is not an alpine and certainly not a rock-splitter, growing in marshy places in the lowlands! Still, it's not the first dodgy English name (or latin name for that matter!). Notice that the latin name is C. oppositifolium. The purple saxifrage which I saw yesterday is Saxifraga oppisitifolia, in otherwords purple saxifrage is the true "opposite-leaved" saxifrage!

Purple Saxifrage, Ingleborough

It's the time of year for flowering purple saxifrage Saxifraga oppositifolia so we decided to spend the day looking for it on Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales. Ingleborough is made up of layers of sandstone and limestone, topped by a cap of hard millstone grit, which is what gives the mountain it's distinctive flat topped appearance. Purple saxifrage is a limestone loving species, which on Ingleborough grows exclusively on the thin layer of limestone just below the summit cap. At 2,415ft (736m), Ingleborough is the second highest peak in the Yorkshire Dales, so just getting to the limestone layer is challenge enough, but we made a round walk of it which ended up in about a 10 mile walk. Add to that the fact that although the species flowers at sometime in April, each year is different, sometimes we have a cold spring, in other years it might be a mild spring. Therefore it's perfectly possible to climb the mountain and find the plant but discover that you are a week too early and it's not flowering yet, or a week too late to find that it's nearly gone to seed.

I managed to find  the saxifrage easily enough, in fact there was quite a lot of it, and it was nearing full flower, unlike my last visit here five years ago when it was nearly over. A splendid saxifrage, well worth the effort! Also today I managed to find the limestone loving fern, green spleenwort Asplenium viride.

There were plenty of wheatears today, my first of the year, and a single red grouse, but no ring ouzels or Emperor moths.

Year: 183 (Wheatear)

Purple saxifrage.

Green spleenwort

Wheatear.

Ingleborough.

The geological layers of Ingleborough.

Hawfinches and skydancing harriers

A fascinating day today despite the poor weather, watching hawfinches and marsh harriers. We started at Sizergh Castle in Cumbria where unbeknown to us there was an organised hawfinch watch on the car park. This meant that half of the car park was coned off and nobody could park near the feeders and we all had to watch from the shelter of the verander of the National Trust cafe. Of course this meant that the birds were a little more distant, but undisturbed they showed more often and for longer periods. It also meant that we were sheltered from the persistant rain and even better, we could get a cup of tea!

It was great to be able to watch such enigmatic and elusive birds for such long periods and so well. I have seen hawfinches well in the past of course, but never for so long, and especially not on the ground. Usually it's a very brief  appearance low down, or more often a longer appearance but silhoueted high up in the tallest trees. Not today however, at least seven birds were feeding on the ground on and off for around an hour and through the telescope afforded excellent views. The weather was poor, it rained most of the time and it was very dull, but apprently these were just about the best conditions for seeing the birds. Photography though was virtually impossible at such a range and in such conditions.

One thing that surprised me was that the males and females were generally quite easily seperable. The males had bright, almost golden crowns, something I've never noticed before, whereas the females were more of a dull brown. The males also regularly fed the females as part of pair bonding. Most of the time they were silent, but on one occcasion they flew up into a tree quite close by and were very vocal, ticking like robins, and for several minutes the air was full of their calls.

Even on this poor photo you can see that the closest bird is a male, due to its golden crown.

Now the male is the bird on the left.

We spent the afternoon at Leighton Moss where there was a lot of marsh harrier activity. We counted at least six birds, three males and three females. One of the males near lower hide seemed to be establishing territories with two females and was occasionally seen skydancing and performing food passes.

Not the sharpest photo, but I was pleased to capture this food pass as well as I did, given the poor weather.

Other birds seen (or heard) on the reserve today included my first willow warblers of the year, singing Cetti's warbler from the Causeway and my first marsh tit of the year.

Year: 182 (Willow warbler, Marsh tit)