A walk this morning took in Cowcroft Wood again. Bluebells are now out but not in any great numbers, there are wide areas where they are just in leaf. I must read up on wild flowers, I recognise the celendine and primroses, both giving fine shows but ther are others that I can't identify. On the birding front the walk was mostly the usual suspects, tits, chaffinches, blackbirds, robins, wood pigeons and assorted corvids. I heard skylarks and pheasants, it was very striking how far the pheasant's call will carry. The high spots were a green woodpecker in the wood and house sparrows in Ley Hill. The sparrows seem to concentrate at one end of the village where there are a lot of privet hedges. Red Kites are no longer unusual although always special but the number circling over Great Missenden on Easter Day were striking. I didn't make an exact count but it was the sort of sight that I used to associate only with the villages along the escarpment from Chinnor down towards Benso...
Once upon a time you could find me birding on the Thames marshes almost every weekend through the winter. For various reasons I am now seldom able to travel to good birding sites. I am lucky, however, to live in the beautiful Chiltern Hills and this blog is to document the birds that I see on my own patch.