Harden Moor & St Ives

Saturday 16th April a.m.
 We were expecting a lie in this morning after seeing the weather forecast of snow and heavy rain for this morning, Wrong! We woke up to sunshine and blue skies with a temperature of 2°C.
Harden Moor
We got out of the car where we usually park and had a scan where we saw the Wheatear last week but no sign today.We saw a bird moving fast from our left low down almost like a bullet shape, we got our bins on it to see a male Ring Ouzel which then changed direction headed towards us passing just a few meters away & landing in a distant tree.Wow, what a start the camera hadn't even come out of its case yet, not that we would have got a picture the speed the bird moved.We spent the next hour trying to re-locate the bird but had no joy.There were a number of other birds around though including Kestrel, Little Owl,Sand Martin,Pied Wagtail & Lesser Redpoll. Several Willow Warblers were also seen but very flighty looking for food, not singing very often so no snaps of them today.

The only bird slow enough for a snap, Pied Wagtail

keeping a watchful eye above

St Ives
  We then moved through Harden to St Ives which is on the other side of the moor and we went to the Coppice Pond which lies in surrounding woodland.On the lake were Greylags,Canadas,nine Tufteds,
Coots nest building,Moorhen,Mallards & a Mute Swan (yellow tag 101).It was much easier to get some snaps of these.There were also a good number of Willow Warblers near the pond and a couple of Chiffchaff were singing.We spotted a couple of Jays passing through and in the distance we were surprised to hear a Tawny Owl calling.The morning was rounded off well when as we were getting into the car a couple of Nuthatches appeared in the tree next to us,needless to say the camera was back in its case so the morning ended much as it had begun.

Greylag

Moorhen

Tufted Duck

St Ives Coppice Pond 16/4/2016