A very pleasant morning to be out on the Hill today. Walking down the North Slope I heard what I thought was the call of a Snow Bunting, but it sounded far and I only heard it once, so after a short wait I decided that I must have imagined it, or the bird must have flown over unseen.
Fortunately, a couple of meters further down and this superb male Snow Bunting flushed off the path in front of me, before landing again a few meters ahead. It spent the next 10 - 15 minutes feeding here, sometimes at quite close proximity to me, before it flushed and flew south, appearing to drop onto the summit.
Sadly the bird could not be relocated to the summit after over an hour of searching, including myself, DJS, JJL and DP. It may be it continued on its way south, or that it went into another area where access is more limited, such as the quarry. Hopefully, it will reappear.
Either way, a brilliant bird to liven up the cold morning.
Snow Bunting is my 100th species on Soil Hill this year!
6 comments:
Very fine.
Love the shots Daniel and good for us all to meet up there today.
Nice one Daniel.. A great scout about.. even if some of us missed out! Great photos and Snow here today so an apt omen.
John
Very nice Dan. Top moorland birding. Are you not gonna have a go at assigning it to race ;-). Looks like you've got mantle shots?
I put it down as a 'nivalis', based on the white rump, so I hope I'm not wrong haha
Check Martin garner challenge book on snow bunt races (and poss his old website).. including checking whether uppers ground colour brown or grey (tho I've sometimes found that hard to judge). Have fun
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