A very windy wet start to the morning at Fly Flatts with a strong W>5 and horizontal drizzle blowing off the moor. Full cloud then broken with patches of sunshine at 4 degrees.
A terribly quiet morning with 18 Canadas and a few Mallard on the water whilst around 40 Herring gulls headed >NE high over the water. Nothing on the deck other than a few Red Grouse, a real quiet do today but I,m getting the smell of birds up there now and expecting the first Curlew, Oystercatcher and Ringed Plover in a good weeks time.
Another slog at Soil Hill mid afternoon for the sake of somewhere near at hand to go with a check on the Jack Snipe and Woodcock areas of years gone by, as well as the mounds that once held Snow Buntings.
The mounds are now well overgrown as well as 90% of the original habitat with just a few decent boggy areas left. The best bet I could find for Snow Bunting or wader species are the trenches churned up by the quad bikes that go up there. It could do with some trial bikes using the mounds for a period to bring back the rough ground that the Snow Bunts liked.
Anyway, after an hour up there I came away with a Kestrel, Sparrowhawk and single Meadow Pipit. Hopefully they,ll get some machines working up on the top this year and restore it to its former glory. Nigel and myself were promised a scrape up there several years ago but that never happened.
BS