Hardcastle Crags 30/12/07

Sue and I went out early to the crags this morning to beat the crowds that turn up once the cafe is open. We got there at around 8.45am to an empty car park. First bird seen was a Missel Thrush going hell for leather with a Sparrowhawk on its tail. The chase lasted much longer than I thought it would as hawks seem to break off quite early if they fail to ambush. This chase ended when the thrush dived into some scrub. The hawk made off straight away, I thought it might at least hang around in case the thrush was panicked into flying again. Sue unfortunately missed all this as she was doing up her walking boots, wellies are much quicker and you dont miss as much :-))

Not that much around in the woods up to Gibsons mill, though we did have good close views of a Dipper perched on a fallen tree across Hebden water. The bird was singing a very strange little trilling song, we have never heard a Dipper sing before, just the "clicking" noise they make as they fly up and down stream. In a group of conifers we watched a large party (30 or so birds) of Great, and Blue Tits with at least half the group made up of Goldcrests. I have never seen so many Goldcrests together before. It was too dark to make out if any Firecrests were amongst them. Just before Gibson Mill we heard and then spotted 6 Jackdaws in a dead tree near the track. We watched as two of the birds did a very strange tail wagging dance. The both lowered their heads and raised their tails whilst standing side by side and did a weird tail waving display, they kept the rest of their bodies still and just waved the tail up and down rapidly ! It really was most peculiar to watch and lasted a good couple of minutes.I have never seen jackdaws do this before, is it a pairing dance or sorting out pecking order ?

We walked back from the top end of the crags and added Long Tailed, Tit, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Blackbird, Wren and Robin to our morning list. The car park was packed when we got back around 11am as all the late comers arived in full Berghaus/Northface gear, boots and gaiters for the very strenous walk along the track to the Gibson Mill cafe :-)) We used to laugh at this when we did a lot of hill walking in the dales. We would get up and get up the dales for 6am and then have our 12/15 mile walk on the tops and see no one. As soon as you get back down towards Bolton Abbey thousands of "walkers" in all the latest designer gear and gaiters would be stolling up and down the river for an hour before heading for the nearest cafe/pub to claim they had been out walking.