A Morning at Aspley Heath

3rd December 2025

My first visit to Aspley Heath in search of Crossbills. A perfect day for it too with wall-to-wall blue sky and flat calm conditions so you could hear a pin drop. So all I needed now was some Crossbills chip-chipping to give away their presence. Perfectly quiet at the moment apart from the tantalizing call of a Nuthatch high up in a stand of Scots Pines.

Looking for a very small bird in a maze of closely planted trees is not easy but the call helped, and I soon tracked it down although had to wait until it came out of the shade before I managed a couple of shots.

Now back on the main track and once again in listening mode. I did here some calls now and again but most were either distant, the birds were seen flying away or not seen at all. I did eventually track five birds which landed in the tops of a line of Larch trees at least 100 yards away, but because of the fantastic light I did manage to get a couple of shots of this male.

They then flew, towards me for a change, and landed in a Silver Birch next to me. Unfortunately, as opposed to perching on top of the Larch, they perched inside the Silver Birch and therefore were obscured for much of the time behind a multitude of small twigs. However, after a bit of manoeuvring to get a line-of-sight and get round the sun, I did manage to get a few shots before they flew into some adjacent Scots Pines and started feeding deep inside.

Well, got there eventually and thanks to Ian Conn for the information.