Tree Sparrow juveniles and the Small Argent and Sable

 I saw my first juvenile Tree Sparrows of the year today, these were at Stonedge. I've mentioned before that the only other place I've seen them locally is Uppertown but there must be other locations that have small populations and its hard to understand why it has such a restricted distribution in the area.

Tree Sparrow - juveniles

Whilst on the moor I came across a nice example of the small, day flying, moth the Small Argent and Sable. It's an attractive moth whose lave feed on the widespread Heath Bedstraw and consequently the moth can be seen right across the moors at this time of year.

Small Argent and Sable

Lockdown day 35 - tonne up and an unexpected migrant

Back on the bike I cycled up to Matlock Forest on Sunday morning, only a few kilometres but all up hill! 
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.

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!