Category Archives: General

It is now six weeks since I found my first Dipper’s nest of the season and the young have just fledged. During that time less than one inch of rain has fallen leading to probably the most successful breeding season they have ever had. I have spent several days awaiting the young fledging but as usual they have eluded me.

Several visits have been made during the last week to the Ribble Valley to continue the search for Woodcock but none have been encountered. On the plus side there were plenty of Redstarts and Pied Flycatchers singing in the woods, with my first Common Sandpiper of Spring feeding on the river.

I have now finished my film shows for the Winter season with the Pennine Birds DVD having sold very well. It is now being sold at the Yorkshire Dale Field Center in Malham, one of the most prestigious places in the Pennines and it is still available through my website..

In forty years of filming birds at the nest I have only ever found five Green Woodpecker’s nests and only then when they had large young ready to fledge. It would be too much of a risk to try to film them at any other time. On the 9th April in a high Pennine Oak wood I found a tree with just the starting of a Green Woodpecker’s hole. The big attraction was that the hole faced South for good illumination and fifteen feet away was a dry stone wall with a stone missing at just the right height for the camera. It was too good an opportunity to miss! The next day I sneaked along the blind side of the wall and carefully peered through the hole in the wall towards the tree. The male Green Woodpecker was resting by the hole so I had to wait for twenty minutes for him to fly away to feed. During this time I hid myself and the camera on the other side of the wall and waited. An hour later he returned and started to chip away at the hole giving me some unique film of how a Green Woodpecker drills a hole in a living Oak tree. It was a once in a life time experience.

The incredible Spring weather this weekend has produced the earliest fully leaved Hawthorne trees I have seen. On Hopwood on the tenth a Whitethroat was singing plus many Willow Warblers and at least twenty Sand Martins were at the recently dug out sand bank. Twenty two degrees centigrade produced many Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell and at least two Orange Tip butterflies.

The thirtieth species to visit the garden this Winter proved to be a new bird in the form of a male Pheasant. Where it has come from is a mystery as none have been seen in the forty three years we have lived in the area. Its life expectancy is probably not that long if the local Fox has anything to do with it!

In the last week some time has been spent in the annual search for Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and Woodcock but so far to no avail. As I didn’t find the nest of either last year perhaps the odds are in my favour this year?

It was good to sit in a hide at a Kingfisher site during the week. The aim was to film copulation and although this did occur during my visit it was too far away from the camera to film.

This week’s photo is of a male Long Eared Owl roosting close to its female who was down on eggs in an old Magpie’s nest. This pair always run the gauntlet of disturbance from campers and Easter this year is going to be a particularly bad time for them with it being so late.

On the 17th March two young Tawny Owls fledged from a nest box in Castleton making them the earliest I have ever recorded in the last fifty years. The first egg would have been laid on or about the 15th January and it begs the question did the owls know when they laid their eggs there would be very little snow after that date? I have often thought that birds can predict the weather ahead and this early laying re-enforces this theory.

During the week I have filmed a pair of Long Tailed Tits building a nest in a fork in a tree. This type of Long Tailed Tit’s nest is not that common and I have only ever seen one like it before,

In the hills a female Long Eared Owl was incubating eggs on the 19th, which is five days later than last year. Another pair were together and ready to commence breeding and a Woodcock was still present in an area of bracken and hopefully may stay to breed.

A search for Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers failed to locate any at an old breeding site in Yorkshire and this species is now in serious decline. This wood did in fact produce Bluebells in flower and Sycamores in leaf!

We have just returned from spending five days in the Cairngorms where we hoped to film some good snow scenes for a future DVD. What we had was fifteen inches of snow as we arrived and five days of breath taking Winter scenery.

At the ski center car park, high up Cairngorm, Snow Buntings were feeding and provided us with some good film. The snow was waist deep and made it impossible to venture up the high slopes in search of Ptarmigan.

Some time was spent searching in the old Caledonian forests and finally we found Crested Tits at three localities, with film being taken, despite their incredible speed. It was also good to see the forests full of Red Squirrels and not a Grey Squirrel in sight!

On the lochs that were not frozen we watched Goosanders and displaying Goldeneyes. At Loch Garten the cameras were being put into position on the Osprey’s nest in readiness for the male’s arrival in the next week. We stayed at the Grants Arms in Grantown on Spey and would thoroughly recommend it to any visiting bird watchers.

It has taken forty three years but finally a male Blackcap has appeared in the garden to feed. So the apples I put out to attract the Waxwings have proved useful after all! Three days this week we have had more than twenty species feeding including a record four Reed Buntings on the eleventh.

The breeding season is now well underway and during this week I have found the nests of Long Tailed Tit, Tawny Owl, Wood Pigeon and three Dippers, two of which were already incubating eggs. When will the first Summer visitor arrive?

On Hopwood a Woodcock was present plus one solitary Redwing. Both might soon be on their way to their Scandinavian breeding grounds.