With a full team aboard we headed up the A19 to visit a nice little village church that`s graveyard is full of wild Daffodils at this part of spring, very nice! A male Sparrowhawk showed really nicely whilst sat on top of a hedge, so along with Buzzards and Kestrels it made it a nice place to stop at.
Its that time of year again when our reptilian friends wake from there slumbers and we visit Skipwith Common, Yorkshire to see if we can glance either, Grass Snake or an Adder. With us all searching around the place for about 40 minutes, Chris managed to locate a Grass Snake. He picked it up and we all managed to marvel at the beauty of this not seen very often reptile. I then held the snake for a short while, whilst the lads took the various pictures of it. After carefully placing it on the ground the snake headed off into cover, a nice experience. It was a little smelly though! We did not manage to see or hear any Woodlark, that are usually around but it was a little windy. A singing Chiff-Chaff was nice to hear.
We headed towards Swillington and called in at Lemonroyd WTW but failed to locate any Water Pipits, after all its time for them to leave and head for their breeding grounds. At RSPB St Aidan`s we managed to meet up with Dave W and his pal from Huddersfield (I have an aunty in Huddersfield) who gave us some information as to what they had seen. Firstly, we managed to locate the Tundra Bean Goose that was happily walking around feeding with a few Pink Footed Geese, secondly about 12 Black Necked Grebe`s were now present on the reserve. We saw about 4 of them as they were slowly moulting into full breeding plumage. A Bittern was booming deep in the reed beds, but we didn`t manage to see any hirundines. Our final call was at the dragger to hopefully manage to find the Little Owl that resides there. After a little search our friends from the RSPB set up a telescope on a Little Owl that was sat just below the ladders at the side of the huge jib of the dragger. A good end to a nice days birding.
