Walland Marsh - 1000hrs - warm, dry, sunshine/cloud, nw 2 - With nothing much happening on the local patch we headed out for a session on the Marsh, searching for the Black Kite of the past two mornings. An hour from Tickner`s Lane resulted in a decent hooked-beak count with up ten Buzzards, five Marsh Harriers, three Kestrels and a Hobby, plus several distant unidentified soaring raptors and a possible kite sighting, but the view was so brief I could not be sure. Whilst scanning from the seed dump BP arrived (who`d found the Black Kite) and we nattered for a while commenting upon the numbers of raptors, but he`d had no sign of the kite today. I later checked out the Cheyne Court area but there was just the usual harriers present.
There was, however, plenty of other farmland birds heard and seen during our tour, including Common and Lesser Whitethroats, Yellowhammers, Skylarks, Reed Buntings, Tree Sparrows, two Corn Buntings and six Turtle Dove scattered across Walland.
Lade - 1900hrs - By late afternoon the wind died away to nothing: cue a wander over the pits on a gorgeous calm evening, one of the very few this summer, with me old dad who was astonished at the range of wild flowers on the shingle ridges. We also had good views of the adult Stonechats feeding their brood out of the nest.
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