After about an hour I was amazed to hear the lovely purring of a Turtle Dove. Now almost lost as a breeding species in Derbyshire and suffering a massive population decline over the whole of its range it was a real treat to sit and listen to the song. I made a recording but I put one on the blog in 2018 so rather than post another here's the link to that post with a more detailed write up on their occurrence.
I was thinking that this was a very early date to record one but on consulting Roy Frost's Birds of Derbyshire he records the 26th April as the average first date for the period 1978 - 2011 so this date was spot on.
I enjoyed nice views of a female Sparrowhawk sat in the pine trees which is a fairly rare sight for me, I'm seeing them daily in the air but seldom landed.
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| Eurasian Sparrowhawk -female |
On the edge of the moor I encountered a pair of Tree Sparrow. They have a very peculiar distribution locally with small groups often occupying a tiny area, sometimes no more than a few hundred metres square and often around housing where food is put out. If anyone has any locally in the Matlock - Bakewell area I would be interested to hear about them and may do a distribution map for the area (you can e-mail me at andysbutler@aol.com).
During the ride I heard seven Common Whitethroat, one Lesser Whitethroat, 2 Cuckoo and at least a dozen Swallows so the number of returning migrants has increased rapidly with the fine weather during the past week.
Returning home I had a message from Ken to say he had seen a Swift flying up the valley, a little later both Simon and Alan also reported Swifts so I spent a couple of hours watching the sky and finally just as it started to rain a single bird flew close past heading steadily north, a fantastic sight and my 100th species, seen locally by foot or bike, since we started lockdown!
