Thursday, May 29, 2008 - Wyre Forest Pied Flycatcher
With the summer doldrums drawing closer I'd decided a while back to draw up a list of birds that I should target over this period. These birds were ones that I could reasonably find without travelling too far. The list comprises: tree pipit, wood lark, common redstart, firecrest, dartford warbler, nightjar, woodcock, spotted flycatcher, pied flycatcher, crossbill, wood warbler, stone curlew, quail, nightingale, mandarin duck and willow tit. The ones crossed out I'd already managed to see on my visit to Crowthorne Woods recently. Some of the others were ones that I could expect to get in similar habitat and others were specialities to various regions that weren't too far away. Today, with another of my fortnightly morning's off due, I decided to work on this list with a trip to the Wyre Forest. The particular birds that I was after were: tree pipit, pied flycatcher, spotted flycatcher, mandarin duck, common redstart and dipper (not on the list but a bird that one can find there). I asked around on an internet forum and got detailed instructions as to where to go. Despite the terrible weather over the last few days today seemed dry and with a reasonable forecast for the morning at least I headed off at around 9am to avoid the morning rush hour traffic.
This was the longest journey that I'd made so far on a birding trip, being about 85 miles and although I could go on the motorway part way, there was a fair amount of cross country driving on single carriage way A roads so the journey took about 1 3/4 hours. In fact it took a bit longer as I got a bit lost on the way there. I arrived at the car park, put on my walking boots (because of the recent rain) and headed off along the track. There was a small river on the right-hand side with a steep wooded bank, the left-hand side was initially more open terrain with bracken, some heather and scattered birch trees. I was told to look out for tree pipits on this left hand side and soon heard one singing close by (I'd been swotting up on my bird calls some more and was pretty confident in identifying it from the call). I scrambled up a small ridge to get to the area where the bird was and soon tracked him down to a clump of three oak trees not too far away. Unfortunately it seemed that rather than doing the full parachute song flight the bird was singing from within the tree canopy and was rather well hidden. As it was a target bird I was prepared to spend some time looking for it so I repeatedly moved around, staring up into the canopy, hoping either to catch sight of it singing or for it to move. It initially started in the first tree and then seemed to move to the second and then the third so it was moving around but I kept missing it. Finally I saw it do a small parachute flight from the third tree back to the first so I got a brief but definite sighting.
I moved on to the Lodge Farm area which seemed to be the hot spot for the various birds I was after. At this point I met three fellow birders who seemed to be on their annual trip to the Wyre Forest. They were talking about how little they'd seen this year compared to last, in particularly redstarts of which they'd seen none. I asked what they had seen and was heartened to hear that they seen both pied and spotted flycatcher and they even told me exactly where to look. I followed their instructions and soon found myself in Knowle Coppice. I went to the area they mentioned and decided to sit down and wait. The wood was similar to Crowthorne Wood in that the birds were rather quiet (mostly contact calls rather than out and out singing) and it was only by being quiet and listening that they could be detected. I soon spotted some movement in the canopy and focused in to find a rather nice spotted flycatcher though it quickly moved on. A short time later I saw further movement and this time I was rewarded with an excellent view of a pied flycatcher. I also thought I briefly heard (and maybe even saw) a wood warbler though the view was so brief as not to be decisive.
Well pleased with progress so far I decided to go down to the river in the hope of seeing the dipper and the mandarin ducks. With all the recent rain, the river was high and coloured and there were no ducks to be seen anywhere. I did see a grey wagtail collecting insects presumably for a nest nearby. I decided to walk along the river a little way to see if I could spot a dipper. I soon came across a tit nesting in a tree stump and initially got rather excited as I caught sight of a black head and bib and started thinking about marsh or willow tits. Eventually when I got a good enough sighting I found it to be a coal tit.
With no luck on the dipper nor the ducks I headed back in the other direction along the river and soon found a gate into a meadow. I thought that I'd pop in and perhaps have my lunch there and followed the path along the edge of the meadow by the river. At that point a dipper popped into view and spent a few minutes bobbing up and down on a rock in the stream at close range. I was just looking for a picnic spot when I saw that someone had beaten me to it. There was a fellow birder picnicing nearby (I could tell by the large telephoto lens). I soon got into discussion with him and he said that he'd not seen any mandarin ducks though there were usually quite a few in just this area. He was also lamenting the lack of redstarts so there definitely seemed to be a theme here. I thanked him for the information and headed back the way I'd come. I spent some time looking for redstarts on the way back but to no avail though I did get some good views of a spotted flycatcher again. I even explored the very pretty orchard that I'd been told was a great place to see them but had no luck so I made my way back to the car park and headed off home, well satisfied with my crop of 4 birds from my target list.
Another four birds for the year list and one more lifer. I've now managed to achieve my revised end of year target of 175 already! I am clearly being too pessimistic with my targets. I am therefore going to have to revise it again, this time to 200. The end of year target is of course pointless as it doesn't really make any difference to the number of birds that I see but it gives me something to think about. With 10 birds still on my summer hit list that would take me quite close to this target but of course it's getting harder all the time to see new stuff as I tick off more and more. We'll see how it goes.
172: tree pipit
173: spotted flycatcher
174: pied flycatcher (LIFER)
175: dipper
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About Me
I used to be a birder in my youth but rather lost interest in my teens as other things became more interesting. However recently I've rediscovered this interest and would like to share my sightings and thoughts in this blog.
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