Christine's walking & birds blog

Taplow, Bucks

There have been three or four whitethroats singing in the field at the bottom of the estate for a week now; but a lesser whitethroat was a great surprise, rattling away in the hedgerow.

Oxfordshire/West Berkshire

We parked at Ashdown House, west of Lambourn, and started off with the steep pull up Weathercock Hill. Swallows skimmed over the yellow oilseed rape and two buzzards were airborne. On the edge of the sheep field there were two male whinchats.


A merlin was seen all too briefly on the Ridgeway near Waylands Smithy. We lunched at windy Whitehorse Hill serenaded by skylarks, and turning south saw a male wheatear on Uffington Down.

Meadow pipits were displaying and our first small tortoiseshell butterfly of the year was on the wing. Towards the end of the day the sun broke through and even I began to feel warm. But back at Weathercock, the whinchats were nowhere to be seen.

Littleworth Common, Bucks

On a day of blue skies and sunshine, a blackcap was singing fluently near the top of a wind-swayed birch on the edge of the common. A chiffchaff engaged in some agile aerial fly-catching, and perched for a couple of seconds on a low garden fence.

As I clicked off a picture of the garden fence (minus the chiffchaff), I could have sworn I heard a raven. I walked out into the open and was just in time to see this bird flying north-west.

The lovely cadence of a willow warbler's song drew me back to the trees, where I saw my first one for the year.

A Mandarin drake was on the smaller of the ponds. As I walked back to Park Lane across the paddocks, two buzzards and a kite were circling.

The walk made a nice change from the rather bleak Egypt Woods where today, a pair of siskins provided the only interest.

Egypt Woods, Bucks

A late afternoon walk brought a large flock of finches high in larch trees. Several chaffinches and at least one redpoll were present.

It was only possible to try a shot when some of the siskins came down to feed on these beech buds. They still managed, most of the time, to appear resolutely head-less; but I like the colours, and the shape of the tails against the sky.