Christine's walking & birds blog

Driving across moorland east of Ledmore, I was startled by a huge bird rising from the ground to the right of the road. A number of hoodies and ravens and a buzzard that went up with it distracted me for a while - and I next spotted the eagle in the distance, heading for a low ridge to the left.


It had looked so large I'd expected it to be a sea eagle - but clearly it was an immature goldie. Perhaps it was a female, although as I saw it at unusually close quarters even a male bird would have impressed with its size.

There was probably a carcass lying hidden in the rough grass of the moor, but mindful that this was a meal to the birds, I curbed my curiosity and drove on.

Parking at the end of a forestry track, I'd walked for only a few minutes when the sound of crossbills came faintly to me, and soon a handful went skipping over chattering and vanished beyond the conifers. At one point, an awful racket came from the forest, and the birds flew about agitatedly in places I didn't have a good view of. An unseen wren took up the general hue-and-cry and churred loudly from a tangle of dead branches on the ground. I wondered if there was a pine marten in there, but although I waited for ages, the noise eventually died down and I was none the wiser. After a bit of walking and retracing of steps I finally found eleven crossbills settled and feeding in a larch tree.


I could see only one definite adult male (the red bird). It flew to the top of the tree at one point and lifted its wings away from its body in what might have been a warning or threatening posture. I believe the deep yellow birds are males, and this is borne out by the presence of a red smudge on the flank of the individual in the picture below.


Below is a picture I took up the quarry road in August last year. At a distance, the spruce trees looked as though they were dying back - but zooming in with the camera, I realised that the pale, yellowish clusters were young cones. Already, you could see that the cone crop was going to be phenomenal.


Crossbills are said to breed at various times of the year, in order to take advantage of ripened cones; and this was confirmed by our sighting of three streaky juvenile birds not far from this site in November last year.

Driving home, I spotted a few more crossbills from the car, and also a fairly large flock of siskins. Approaching Ledmore Junction, I glanced up into the sky - and immediately braked and reversed into the nearest passing-place. A golden eagle - maybe the one from the drive out - was hanging in the sky, and I clicked off some shots from the car.


I say "hanging" in the sky but of course it was moving slowly over me all the time, which must be why I failed to get a sharp shot! The bird wasn't flying; it was simply sailing, using whatever little wind there was - and the only time I saw it move its wings, it was not so much a flap as a sort of grudging twitch of the fingered ends, casual and lazy and oh-so-cool. Absolutely fabulous.