This year has been very poor with very few sightings throughout the area whereas 2014 produced several breeding pair and numerous sightings in my area. On May 5th 2014 I clocked 8 breeding pair holding territory in the vicinity of Fly Flatts, most of these breeding successfully. I also had sightings at Cold Edge Dams, Ned Hill track and Leeshaw reservoir.
Numbers were well down in 2013 with just a male bird seen at Fly Flatts and a female at Paul Clough.
Breeding was proved in 2012 at Ogden with a pair producing 3 young, nesting in bracken, but again no higher upland sightings, whilst 2011 found 1 male down the Dailie fields, not a regular area for Stonechat.
Going back to the sixties when I started birding the Stonechat was a rare bird in the area and I was a few years into birding before I actually started getting sightings. Strangely enough, my first ever Stonechat was on South Stack in Anglesey and after that I started getting them slowly increasing around my patch. By the 1980s they were regular breeders around Cold Edge Dams with as many as 12 breeding pairs to be found during one summer but this only lasted a couple of years before numbers drastically fell again. Since then numbers have been up and down year by year.
Oddly Stonechats have left Soil Hill where they could be found on every visit going back not so many years, this is possibly due to disturbance from the ground work going on up there although there are still plenty Teazle's growing which seemed to be the plant that attracted them most.
The reports above are only my own account of the Stonechat and I know other local birders have their own reports of birds seen around the area.
Many years ago I was lucky enough to watch a West Siberian Stonechat (,Maurus,) whilst on autumn vis mig watch and each year after days of easterlies sightings are reported though mainly down the east coast. There is also an East Siberian as well as another 4 sub species but the maurus is the one we are most likely to see although I,d be happy this year with just a plain common European.
I,ve done the above article to keep you amused or bored for 5 minutes due to birding being abandoned today with a covering of snow this morning which turned to heavy rain throughout the day non stop with fog thrown in by mid afternoon.
Breeding Stonechat from previous years.
BS