Sunday, October 11, 2009

soil hill-yesterday afternoon

a walk up to soil hill yesterday in the wind. at first i thought i shouldnt have bothered as there was no bird call and besides crows mobbing a kestrel way off no sign of life at all. as soon as i walked onto the top however i flushed a snipe. it flew forward and landed at the first scrape. i saw it land by a aptch of bulrushes so tip-toed over to it. however as soon as i got there the snipe rocketed out of a bunch of grass-not where it landed and as it did so a second eurupted from a nearby scrape. i managed to get a few quick shots but the one here is the only decent one which shows and snipe traits. they flew off towards ogden and warley moor.

after walking round the top i had only flushed a skylark i headed down to the pools i managed to find nothing on the way down but when i got there a pair of mallards were flushed. after a qwuick scout round ispotted a stonechat on the wires going over. i tried to sneak closer to it but it saw me and flew in to the reeds. there it was joined by a second.

there were no other birds besides these, the kestrel was flying about a bit and two mipits flew over but besides that nothing of any note.

4 comments:

David Sutcliffe said...

Well done to get out onto 'the hill' and get the shots of Snipe and Stonechats

AndyC said...

Did the Snipe call,when you flushed it and did it fly up high and then back down .???jack snipe maybe.??

Nick Carter said...

Bill looks a bit long in the photo for Jack??

Daniel Branch said...

the snipe did call, it was a pretty weird call too a bit like a broken trumpet but once it took off it flew quite high of in the direction of fly flatts