A Morning at St Aidan's

16th September 2022

This is only my third visit to St Aidan's so interested to see what birds are around at this time of year. I can never cease to be impressed by the gigantic machine, the BE1150 Walking Dragline known as "Oddball", that now looks over the site having been rescued from the flood in 1988. Wherever you go at St Aidan's it dominates the scene.

The massive jib of the machine is supported by piles of railway sleepers and it is here that a pair of Little Owls have made their home. I have looked for them on my two previous visits without success, but today one of the birds was on full view and happy to have its photo taken.

As I walked down the hill to the reserve I could see that a number of summer flowers were still hanging on and managed to photograph eight species. I have labelled them individually.

Birdsfoot Trefoil

Black Knapweed

Michaelmas Daisy

Ox-eye Daisy

Ragwort

Red Clover

Dog Rose Hips

Yarrow

Not too surprisingly insects were a little harder to find but I did manage to see a number of Migrant Hawkers which were in no mood to settle, and a number of male Common Darters which will continue flying until the first hard frosts.

I also saw two species of hoverfly, the first an Euphodes sp...................

...........................and a female Eristalis tenax, also known as the Common Drone Fly.

Along the western edge of the Western Reedbed an adult Great Crested Grebe was keeping very close to its fairly well-grown humbug, and although the youngster was continually begging for food, the adult made no attempt to catch it any.

Along the eastern track to the Eastern Reedbed, three Dunlin and a juvenile Ringed Plover were making the most of the shallow water before it deepens after the recent rain..............

..............and further along up to six Snipe were well camouflaged in what looks like Water Mint.

Just then all the waders took off in panic and flew to another part of the reserve. The cause wasn't immediately apparent, but after a few moments a juvenile Peregrine Falcon appeared circling lazily over the scrape. That's enough to scare anything off!!

Along the track at the bottom of the hillside a lone Whinchat was searching for food from the barbed wire on the fence-line. I would have preferred a more natural setting. but the wire obviously provides a good vantage point.

But the stars of the show today were the ten Stonechats, six of which were sharing the same fence-line as the Whinchat  and another four that were frequenting an area of Dogwood bushes. This is a juvenile.

There was also a cracking male present. However, what surprised me was that they were all feeding on the black Dogwood berries. I have been watching Stonechats for over 60 years and up to now have only seen them eating insects. Learning all the time!!

And I had to finish up with a couple of flight shots......well, it would be rude not to.

Well, that was my third visit to St Aidan's and once again a fantastic amount of birds on show. Can't wait until my next visit in the New Year.