Great Grey Shrike - Matlock Forest

 After an absence of 4 years a Great Grey Shrike was seen on Farley Moor in Matlock Forest yesterday. Fortunately for me it was still there this morning and performed well in the sunshine this morning. It was hunting in a clear fell area just inside the main entrance to Farley and spent much of its time sat on top of the dead pine tree, left as song posts for the Nightjars.

Whilst I was there it looked to be taking small prey, presumably beetles off the ground but yesterday it was seen to take a Meadow Pipit and skewer it on the tip of one of one of the pines! The used to be called 'butcher birds' because of this habit of keeping a larder.

It is quite a pale bird, with almost white upper tail coverts and a large area of white at the base of the secondaries as well as the typical white at the base of the primaries suggesting that the bird has come from western Russia rather than Scandinavia. 

It is similar to a bird Ken photographed in 2012 possibly of the race homeyeri. 

I written a more detailed analysis of why I think this bird is Homeyer's Grey Shrike Lanius excubitor homeyeri on my Wildlife Diaries blog.

Great Grey Shrike

 

Whooper Swans over Beeley Moor

With mild, wet and overcast weather over the past couple of weeks there have been few birds of note but today Ken picked up 4 Whooper Swans crossing the moor then over Whitesprings heading SE roughly towards Ogston. 

I was up on the moor but managed to pick them up over Alicehead but saw little else. Most of the Stonechat have left the moor now but I saw a pair today.

Whooper Swans © Ken Smith

The mystery of Woodpigeon movements

This morning I witnessed a huge movement of Common Woodpigeon flying south over the eastern edge of Beeley Moor towards Matlock. I had parked up on Screetham Lane at about 07:40 and started scanning the fields for Lapwing. In the distance, looking east towards Kelstedge I could see a cloud of birds above the horizon which I realised were Woodpigeon. I scanned across the horizon and there was an unbroken column of birds flying south. The column were all following a similar line, occasionally moving a bit nearer then a bit further away as the column wandered by no more than a km and remained almost continual from 07:45 to at least 08:30 when approaching rain reduced visibility.

Initially I attempted to count them but they were moving quickly and there were too many. Instead I set a 1 minute timer on my phone and counted everything for that time which gave counts of 280, 320, 370, 220, 260. Using an average of 290 around 13k birds had passed me in that time! Visibility was deteriorating but I could still see birds moving in the mist so there were doubtless several thousand more before I lost them in the rain and moved off at 9:00

Woodpigeon crossing Alicehead

It was difficult to get a photo as the birds were distant but the image above conveys something of the sight. I've counted 257 birds on the above photo.

The autumn movements of the Woodpigeon remain something of a mystery in the UK. We do not get large number of immigrants arriving in the winter nor do birds migrate south to continental Europe so it seems likely that these movements are internal within the UK with northern birds moving to the south or south-west.

It was an impressive sight and brought to mind images of Passenger Pigeons migrating in North America.