have to walk when you,re in mid air.
Cold Edge Road.
in the pics to find Greylag.
A real summers like day before the promise of a weekend of severe gales then a week of wind and snow!
Leeshaw this morning was clear with 0 % cloud cover and sunshine on a light W>2 at 4 degrees.
An overlap of winter and spring birds with several winter Fieldfare and Redwing along with spring Oystercatchers, Curlew and Lapwing. I remember years ago I.H. and myself standing at Leeshaw watching Swallows flying around in the snow around Easter time.
The 2 Tufteds from yesterday had moved on and replaced with a pair of Teal across on the far bank whilst a pair of Goosander were still present on the water.
Around 100 Fieldfare and 50 Redwing were mobile around the fields whilst Canada goose numbers are increasing daily. A fly over Raven was unusual for this site.
Mid afternoon and a stop off on the road above Cold Edge Dams on the way to Fly Flatts following a grapevine text reporting that MH had found 9 Whooper Swans on Cold Edge dams.
Luckily the birds were still present, most of them sleeping on Leadbeater Dam giving me chance of a few distant record shots.
On then to Fly Flatts in warm, still conditions but not the conditions that I like up there and not bird producing weather. With the sun up on full power and next to no SE wind the midges were out in force and the sky to the south and west was a dazzling milky white making sky watching poor.
The highlight of the watch was a skein of geese over the west moor into the sun heading south. I quickly put the message out and rang DJS who was near Cold Edge Dams at the time reporting Pinkies but thinking South was an odd direction for Pinks. I blew up the photos in the camera , and even though they were silhouetted, I could make out that they were Greylags.
Minutes later Dave rang to say a group of Greylags had just landed at Cold Edge. So no Pinks but an unusual sighting for Fly Flatts.
Good to meet AC and NCD up above Cold Edge who stopped to see the Whoopers before they set off on another birding mission.
Leeshaw reservoir
43 Canada
18 Greylag
1 Cormorant
1pr Goosander
c 100 Fieldfare
c 50 Redwing
2 Oystercatchers
1 Curlew
1 Raven
sev small gulls
Cold Edge Dams
9 Whooper Swan
Fly Flatts
42 Greylag................>S
3 Red Grouse
1 Raven
2 Buzzard
BS