Mole Valley Bird Race

I met Ian Jones at a suitably ridiculous hour for the sixth annual Mole Valley Bird Race. As always, pre-dawn on Leith Hill was the plan but a stupid navigational error knocked us back up to 20 minutes and to our horror it was fairly light as we arrived on Duke's Warren to a chorus of at least three Cuckoos, including a female. After an anxious few minutes, a Nightjar churred but we were too late for Woodcock and had missed Woodlark too. A circuit of the heath and the wooded valley to the west added singing Redstart, Willow Warbler and Whitethroat, as well as Stonechat and Siskin. At least three Garden Warblers were in song and we heard a small number of Treecreepers in the woods, as well as a Nuthatch, which can be tricky to locate at this time of year. Juvenile Long-tailed Tits and Robin were my first of the year.

Buckland Sand Pits provided three drake Mandarins, a Sparrowhawk mobbed by a Mistle Thrush, three Egyptian Geese, a Reed Warbler, two Lapwings, a Red Kite, a few Buzzards, a Kestrel, a Pied Wagtail, six Tufted Ducks, Grey Heron, Garden Warbler, two Little Grebes and three Great Crested Grebes, a few Swifts, a Lesser Black-backed Gull, and best of all perhaps 60 Sand Martins which had suddenly taken a liking to one of the cliff faces and were busying around their nest holes. Much smaller numbers of House Martins and Swallows were also around.  At this point we were joined by Darragh Culley for a few hours.

Sand Martin at Buckland Park Pit

drake Mandarins at Buckland Sand Pits

At Betchworth Quarry Ian spotted the old female Peregrine loafing on the grass.

Along the River Mole behind the Dorking Wyevale garden centre, we found a Grey Wagtail with food, plus a Kestrel and two Buzzards.

Leatherhead offered a Black-headed Gull - always a valuable species for this race. Also a brood of five Mute Swans, Grey and Pied Wagtails and a Grey Heron.

Mickleham produced Kingfisher and Little Egret (three) for our day's total, as well as Red Kite, two Buzzards and Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers.

Juniper Bottom was extremely quiet, with Sparrowhawk, two Buzzards, a Kestrel and a Green Woodpecker noted.

Denbies Wine Estate was twitched, yes twitched, for Starling! Far more interesting was the apparent House Martin colony.

Darragh left us and Ian and I headed towards Leith Hill again. We stopped at Chadhurst Farm, adding Red-legged Partridge and noting few birds of any note at all beyond Pied Wagtail, Swallow, Canada Goose, Greylag and Buzzard.

At Leith Hill again, this time we tracked down a pair of Dartford Warblers and heard/saw a Woodlark in spectacular song flight. Sadly, Tree Pipits are not present on the hill this year but it is great to see Dartfords and Stonechats breeding on site again.

At Newdigate Lakes early evening, we had a pair of Mute Swans with seven young, 10 Tufted Ducks, Little Grebe, Kestrel, Reed Warbler, Pied Wagtail, Red Kite, Grey Heron, Red-legged Partridge, a few Swifts, Greylags etc, while Reed Bunting was added to the day list.

Mute Swans at Newdigate Lakes

Our failure was protracted last thing at Capel where we didn't hear Nightingale, but did hear a Reed Bunting and young Great Spotted Woodpeckers.

My worst-ever Mole Valley Bird Race, my team finishing last on 76 species.

Juniper Top/Bramblehall Wood, Richmond and Holmethorpe SPs

I'm not one for whistle-stopping but planned a three-site tour for the day. I started by parking at the Whitehill car park and Mickleham, hearing Hawfinches calling as soon as I opened the car door. Making my way to a reasonable viewpoint over Bramblehall Wood, around 20 birds were showing in the trees on the other side of the jumping field. I began to wonder whether I wasn't quite in the right place for big numbers, and/or was too late, but at 08:35 I looked back at the trees to see them brimming with Hawfinches. I took a quick photo but as soon as I started to try to count the birds they exploded into the air and revealed that the numbers were immense. They disappeared to the east too quickly to get an accurate count, and I was a little too stunned to try to make sense of the numbers but there were easily 300+. Five minutes later, up to 100 more flew in the same direction - at the time I remained cautious and kept the count at 300+ but seeing Steve G's count of 420 the next morning vindicated my true feeling that I had seen in excess of 400 birds. With such a spectacle, the figure is by the by. At least four Marsh Tits were also noted, including a couple of singing birds.

Hawfinches

I moved on to Richmond where Franko kindly helped me see the eastern-type Lesser Whitethroat around his garden, along with Tony Q. In the afternoon I picked up Josh B to head to Holmethorpe Sand Pits for an experimental check of the gull roost there, yielding a 2CY Yellow-legged Gull.

eastern Lesser Whitethroat

2CY Yellow-legged Gull

Canons Farm, Banstead Woods, Headley Heath and Juniper Bottom/Top

With more meetings this week, I'm spending a little time back in Surrey. I walked with Geoff B through Canons Farm and around the southern part of Banstead Woods. It was the latter site that made the day, us finding two Hawfinches around the yews and larches at Fames Rough, distracted by a pair of Ravens as they flew by. A female Stonechat was in Hither Field and a Grey Heron was heard cawking as it flew over. At the farm, two Red Kites entertained us as we packed up, a Little Owl was on view on the side of Horse Pasture and flocks included 20 Skylarks and 80 Linnets. A Great Black-backed Gull flew over.

Jamie McK and I parked at Headley Heath in the afternoon and walked to the Juniper Bottom/Juniper Top area. A pleasant walk, standout moments were the flushing of a 2cy female Sparrowhawk from its Woodpigeon kill at the heath, and a calling Marsh Tit at Juniper Top. A Meadow Pipit was also on the heath.

Raven at Banstead Woods

Red Kite at Canons Farm

Back in Surrey

Great Northern Diver at Papercourt GPs

I made my way back home from university yesterday afternoon to spend the weekend having a casual look around the local area. I stopped off at Papercourt Gravel Pits on the way and succeeded in finding the first-winter Great Northern Diver that showed well at times on the main pit; a flock of four Mandarins circling the lake was a decent supporting act. Rain stopped any further play and I waited until today to get back out. The plan was to check out Juniper Bottom (to see whether any Hawfinches had returned), then Banstead Downs Golf Course (to see whether any Firecrests had returned) and to finish up with a few hours at Canons Farm. My first venue didn't offer me any Hawfinches but threw up a nice surprise in the form of a Firecrest while a couple of Marsh Tits were present. It then started raining so I decided to briefly visit the golf course before sitting the deluge out in the hide at Beddington. It didn't take long to find two Firecrests along the usual wooded footpath at the golf course  - it's fantastic to see Firecrests back at this site for at least a sixth winter; I wonder how for how many years it was an undiscovered wintering ground before they were stumbled upon in 2008? Beddington was relatively uneventful, I failed in my quest to find any interesting gulls but enjoyed good views of a Water Rail and a couple of Tree Sparrows, while two Common Snipes flew over. Eventually the rain subsided and I could finally get to Canons, although it was nearly the end of the day and I didn't have long before dark so didn't find too much!

Wet day ends up shining

This morning was truly depressing, with unbirdable conditions at the farm. I sat in the car with the wind behind me, window down, trying to keep alive a degree of concentration and hope - to not much avail. I decided to break the morning up by having a quick look at the Hawfinches at Juniper Bottom, which I hypothesised would be a slightly more pleasant place to be, situated in a valley. Even though it wasn't quite as windy the conditions were negligably more bearable so I left after only hearing a handful of the birds from deep in the yews, and three Marsh Tits.

I returned to Canons and the latter half of the daylight hours were generally more forgiving so I slopped around the muddy fields, enjoying myself thoroughly in the end despite being wetter than most frogs. For the time of year, there were some decent local birds on offer. The first of which was a very pretty female Brambling. This was with the growing flock of Chaffinches which now numbers over 250 but has been pretty healthy for a few weeks now. I've taken every available opportunity to grill this flighty flock but despite my best efforts hadn't reaped the reward until now, and the Brambling was about within the first twenty birds I scoped through! Sadly it was lost to view and the entire flock moved off about five minutes before Jamie arrived.

Brambling in Broadfield

After Jamie gave up and headed home, I headed down Reads Rest Lane to look for the Stonechat and to complete the circuit of the farm, planning to go around the back, around Ruffett Wood. When I looked back at Reads Rest Cottages, a large white blob sitting in the rear entrance to the main cowshed caught my eye and I knew what it was without lifting my bins - Barn Owl! This is the fourth time I've seen it in the last week, and all but one of these encounters has been in daylight which is freaky for this species at the farm as they've always been extremely nocturnal and elusive before. I found it particularly out of character for it to be sitting in the open air for all to see, overlooking its territory well before sunset. Anyway, this it was doing and I enjoyed the rare opportunity to admire it settled in good light. At 5.50pm, a similar time to when Josh and I saw it hunting on Wednesday, it took to the air and started hunting over Horse Pasture, landing on a fencepost and in a holly bush, flying right past me and hovering and diving - the full show. Great scope views and opportunities for record shots. I was very happy indeed. To add the icing to the cake the male Stonechat and the resident Red-legged Partridge also showed - not forgetting that two Mallards flew over earlier, making it a very worthwhile afternoon's patch birding!

Barn Owl, Reads Rest/Horse Pasture

Stonechat

Hawfinch galore!

Hawfinches, Juniper Bottom

I started the day at the patch, with a fly-over Cormorant being a just about due year tick (62). Also 5 Canada Geese over, my third sighting of the year. Jamie arrived and after a little while we headed off, picking up Josh on the way, to Mickleham in the hope that a visit to Juniper Bottom at the same time that Steve had his dozen Hawfinches yesterday might reap a reward. We arrived on site and set up at the area, immediately hearing the tsiks, twiks and tsuks of clearly a number of Hawfinches in the tall conifers on the right hand side of the path. After a short while, birds started diving in their dozens into the yews on the other side of the track while more continued to call to the right. We were gobsmacked and had no idea how many there were but it was well over thirty at that point. Later, a massive flock erupted out of the pines and flew south east along the valley, we independently counted this flock as sixty-odd birds. Calls continued to come from the original location and after a short while another load flew up and circled before landing nearby, Jamie and Josh counting about forty in this group while yet more calls from the yews. So, we all reckoned a conservative count of ONE HUNDRED birds was on. It could well have been a bit more but probably wouldn't have been more than 130. At one point fifty birds were visible in one scope view sitting in a bare tree further down the valley.

The birds themselves were, as always a pleasure to watch as individuals but the sight and sound of such a number of these scarce finches was just mind-blowing and almost unbelievable. As you'll see from my previous post, we had no luck at all yesterday afternoon, and apparently birders had nada this afternoon too so it seems like they are a morning job if you're planning on visiting.

Here's directions:

"Park at the Whitehill car park on Headley Lane at TQ 176 529 and walk SSE for c650 yards till you reach tall conifers on your right with open leaf litter bottom (shortly before pile of ash surrounded by stakes), this is TQ 180 524 - the birds spent a lot of time in these pines and also flew to feed in the yews on the other side of the path and also visited bare deciduous trees further down."

Woodcocks and owls

Started the day in the excellent company of Ian at Canons where we failed to see anything that might have been there for the fog, the only bird of any note was a Siskin over. When Ian left I had a quick check at a regular Woodcock spot and was amazed to see one just sitting there! This happened in the exact same spot just a few days more than a year ago. The light was crap and and I only had my SLR to hand but managed some record shots nonetheless. I got a text from Steve Gale about a flock of Hawfinches near Box Hill, just falling within my local area circle and the LNHS area so I was very keen to see these - I arranged to go with Phil and he picked me and Jamie up from the farm. We didn't see our quarry but heard a Tawny Owl hooting in the daylight and had a nice view of a singing Siskin. Phil needed to go so he dropped us back at mine and I took Jamie back to the Hawfinch site, again with no luck but up to five Tawnies hooted and a couple of Marsh Tits called away, best of all though was a Raven that flew over, tumbling and calling away!

Woodcock, Banstead Woods

Based on the Tawny Owl activity there, we thought it might be worth a listen at the patch as we needed this for the patch yearlist so we toddled back there (almost running a Woodcock over on the way, near Mickleham). We gave the usual Barn Owl field, Harrier Field a good look just in case but as per usual over the last few months there was no sign of life. Heading towards Banstead Woods, we followed Reads Rest Lane up to Lunch Wood at which point Jamie whispered (in excited shouting style) 'Barn Owl!' and lo and behold an unmistakable ghostly figure drifted past us, turned the corner and wasn't seen again. Magic! So I hadn't been seeing it/any because I'd been looking in the wrong place! Hopefully it will be regular over following evenings. No Tawnies though, despite Jamie putting his mastering of the call to good use - all owls in Banstead Woods must have been able to hear the desperate hoots but they all decided to blank him. Never mind, I'd sooner have seen the Barn Owl than heard a Tawny.