Christine's walking & birds blog

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.