1500 hrs at Fly Flatts at the Chat site, Nab Water Lane with 2 hours to kill whilst the dogs were at the groomers so I set my stall up with scope, cameras and bins at the ready. No Whinchat or Stonechat present today but with a lot of distant scoping with the newly arrived BV we started to pick one or two species up.
Around 15 Red Legged Partridge were on the distant walls with 2 Kestrels overhead.
Suddenly a small raptor was picked up mega distance away and when scoped it was found to be a female Merlin which flew a little closer onto a wall but in such poor grey light it was out of reach for a decent shot even at 1200 mm, Big Bertha with a x2 converter.
Then it all went pear shaped. A Peregrine flew across the moor behind the Merlin and whilst we were watching that for a few seconds the Merlin flew and was replaced in the same distant spot by a juv Kestrel. With the Pere out of the way we continued to try for photos of the Merlin before realizing that we were now photographing a Kestrel.
Nothing else showed so a quiet but entertaining 2 hours as I headed back to Pellon to pick the dogs up. On passing Fly Flatts the water was void of birds and no sign of passerines along the top road, not even a Wheatear.