A Fairly quiet start on the paddocks and bomb crater field with a few Fieldfare over and a chiffy being the only notable birds. I headed for the areas of thicket that surround the west of the filterbeds, where a Bullfinch had been seen/heard recently. As soon as i had walked under the railway and away from the noisy works taking place in the underpass, i picked up a soft melancholic call. A Bullfinch, Calling regularly, i spent ten minutes looking for the bird with no luck.
A few minutes later i was up on the "raptor watch point" ha! and not long after a Common Buzzard drifted into sight, headed north. I struggled with the camera and cannot for the life of me get it to focus on distant black spot in the sky . (anyone got any advice using manual focus on a canon sx50 hs please lemme know!)
The bullfinch began calling again from the field that borders coppermill lane and i was able to connect with it and take a few record shots. A few alarm calls from a near by tit flock made me look up and see another large raptor against the cloud directly above me. Bins up, Boom! It was a Marsh harrier! Boom again! The first i've had on the patch since autumn 2009. The bird performed nicely for me, Soaring and losing/gaining height for about 5 or 6 minutes It appeared to be an adult female, on the grounds that by now i would thought that a first winter male might have some grey in the wing and good light showed it to be particularly clean dark bird with little cream colouring. I might be wrong though...
A couple of minutes later a paler Common Buzzard than before gunned west over .
Three golden eyes (1 drake) were on number 5 and thats that.
I wont post my attempts at photographing the raptors (just blue) but heres my shots of the female bullfinch...cowfinch?
oh god they're bad, but you can kind of tell yeah?
JP
@jarpartridge
I know where I'm going tomorrow. Well done! GH
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