A tale of two waders ... Spotted Sandpiper at Buttermere ... Golden Plover at Geltsdale ...

Another bird-filled week with good skua movement on the Solway on Tuesday ... the winds brought two Bonxies , a few Arctics and more than ten Pomarine Skuas with lovely 'spoons' ... rather a low point was failing to find Wood Warblers in NY47 and NY57 ... a singing Common Crossbill and displaying Tree Pipits helped to mitigate ...

A visit to Buttermere this morning to see the summer plumage Spotted Sandpiper for its sixth day ... a striking looking bird with colourful bill and extravagant spots made the Common Sandpipers look quite drab ...

... initially resting behind the shore line and visible only through two wire mesh fences ... then walked down to the water's edge and was a little more active for a time ...

... a superb looking bird in the striking setting of Buttermere ... and in sunshine !

Yesterday ... and back in the Geltsdale uplands ... from the exotic to ... well, the more familiar but nonetheless wonderful Golden Plover with its haunting calls and its attachment to those wild places ...

This sentinel male was giving one of the alarm calls typical of this time in the season ... as were several other birds on the plateau ...

The sonogram interestingly shows a number of overtones and the rise in pitch of this particular call ...

With all the Golden Plovers in this area no longer singing, the behaviour  of birds at Nenthead in recent days was contrastingly held back ... they were still singing and performing display flights ... and with Ring Ouzels present in good numbers there ... Black Grouse and Short-eared Owls ... and a Woodcock sat out in the open in a small field ... quite a birdfest !

Short-toed Lark ... in Northumberland ... just 12 miles from the Cumbrian border

There are no accepted records of Short-toed Lark for Cumbria ... but this week one turned up in Northumberland, a mere 12 miles from Cumbria ... Catton Moss is a place that looks just like vast tracts of Cumbria ... in fact it looks just like where I spent the day today on the Geltsdale Reserve ... and the stony track looks just like the one I walked up today ...

Northumberland has hosted a few but the last was five years ago ...

I spent almost two hours yesterday waiting for the bird to reappear where it had apparently walked off into rough grassland ... I gave up and walked down the track ... and there it was perched in the middle of the track ... I was able to attract the attention of the only other birder still present and we both watched it for about a minute before a pick-up drove by and flushed it deep into the grassland ... just time for a couple of poor phone-scope shots ...

... as I sat today looking out over the seemingly endless landscape of Geltsdale, I mused about whether there might be another one out there somewhere ...

Geltsdale ... Golden Plovers ... singing Ring Ouzels

The season moves on ... Golden Plovers were singing only early in the morning this week ... as I walked the boundary fence one was calling nervously from vegetation on the estate side ...

But Ring Ouzels were much more vocal with birds singing from different places ...

... one was producing two distinct songs ...

... the first was what I think of as the typical song ... two, three or four pure whistled notes ...

... the second was a series of three similar notes but with a much more buzzy quality ...


The sonograms illustrate the different quality of the notes.  ( A Willow Warbler song is just ending before the first song - traces show on the sonogram. )

Geltsdale goes to Bowland ... still in search of harriers ... this time Pallid Harrier

By way of a change we went to the Whitendale Valley yesterday in the hope of seeing a near-adult male Pallid Harrier.  The bird had been found the previous Wednesday by fieldworkers looking for Hen Harriers in this area that was once a stronghold for them.

As we walked up the valley and arrived at the favoured location the bird came into view almost immediately ... it performed wide circuits of the narrow section of the valley ...

... flying quite high and disappearing over a rise only to reappear moments later ...

... the elegance and rakishness of it was striking ...

... so different from our own Hen Harriers ...

... sometimes on one ridge of the valley ... and then the other ...

... and at times performing the most exuberant and aerobatic skydancing I have ever seen ...

... mostly at an incredible height ...

Pallid Harrier has a breeding distribution from the Ukraine, across Central Asia to Mongolia ... it winters largely in Africa and the Indian Subcontinent ...

... in between bouts of skydancing the bird went lower down the valley side to an area where it plucked grass in its bill and indulged in some nest building activities ...

... after two hours or so the bird had been continuously active ... flying circuits ... skydancing ... nest building ... 

... an extraordinary spectacle ... given by a very rare bird ...