Harden Moor

Sunday 22nd March a.m.
A sunny start to the day but chilly at just 1.5°C as we started on Harden Moor which is just above Cullingworth.We first looked on a distant wall to see if there was a Little Owl in the same spot as we saw them last year, & we were in luck & an added bonus of a Pied Wagtail which was watching us.
Then a little further on we parked the car & checked the moor where some heather was cut back last year seeing Meadow Pipits, then another bird appeared, a male Wheater, our first for this location.
We moved on seeing a Blackbird guarding some old berries,Robin,Dunnock,Goldfinch,Chaffinch,
Wren & Song Thrush.Then on top of some rocks we spotted another male Wheatear, Gulls were moving past overhead & in the quarry we spotted a couple of Stock Doves & Curlew could be heard calling on the moors.We then found the resident Lesser Redpolls which were very flighty but after some time we managed to get a few snaps.To round our visit off a Kestrel was hovering in the distance, a good mornings birding.
P.S.
As we were compiling this we looked on Brian's West Yokshire Birding blog to see he had over 200 Whooper Swans at Mixenden, check out his great pictures.Needless to say we stopped everything hoping for our first ever Whoopers, see how we got on later...

Lesser Redpoll

male Wheatear

Blackbird on guard

Dunnock

Pied Wagtail

Robin

Song Thrush

Stock Doves

Wren

male Wheatear Harden Moor 22/3/2015

Lesser Redpolls - male seems to be feeding female