Sunday February 1

Today was extremely cold from the outset. A fresh north-westerly cut right through you, and although it was largely sunny, a few flakes of snow drifted down from one passing cloud.

At least the shooting season has ended. Unfortunately the birds were slow to accept their change in status, and the Mallard and six Teal on the pool flew off as soon as they sensed our presence. The pair of Stonechats was still present, and we recorded a lot of gulls heading west. Unfortunately almost all were beyond the northern extreme of the patch so they were distant. We counted 123 Black-headed Gulls, seven LBB Gulls and a Herring Gull.

As we returned to dragonfly pool field it looked like it was to be a duff visit, so I snapped a Robin to have something to show for the day.

Robin

Shortly afterwards we flushed a female Stonechat, presumably different from the pair 150 metres away near the bridle path we decided.

Stonechat

We thought we would divert to check this, and so we walked along the trackway towards the pond. A little way along I heard Dave, with panic in his voice, urge me to look into the sky near Bannams Wood. I did this and quickly spotted a chunky accipiter heading left. A possible Goshawk. We sprinted down the track as it drifted out of sight, and scanned without success. At this point the waters of identification success became rather murky as we spotted two accipiters displaying over Bannams Wood. They were clearly just Sparrowhawks, and were soon joined by a third bird, also a Sparrowhawk.

The display of Sparrowhawk is typical of several species of raptor. They engage in a sky dance in which they climb to a considerable height, then close their wings and swoop downwards until they reach the bottom of an invisible arc and then repeat the process. It's a great thing to see, but it meant we were less confident that we had seen a Goshawk. With only sky as a reference, how far away had it been? Perhaps it had been a poor view of one of the displaying Sparrowhawks.

We scanned for Stonechats (none to be seen) and returned to the cars. Here the story was to take another twist as Dave spotted a distant accipiter flying away from us to the west of Bannams Wood. It looked interesting. I suggested we drive to Church Farm and scan from there.

We arrived, crossed the road, and started a sweep of the countryside from Bannams Wood, now to the south of us, across to the flashes to our west. Pretty soon we got onto a raptor in the west beyond the flash. For a split second I thought Raven, but no it was an accipiter, and a big one at that. Dark above, pale below. Too long-tailed for Buzzard, too broad-winged for Sparrowhawk. It swung around and we briefly lost it behind the hedge we were looking along, then it reappeared one last time only to disappear behind the wooded Mars Hill.  It had still looked big. We conferred. It had to be a Goshawk.

On checking the maps when I got home I established that our distance from Mars Hill, and therefore from the bird, was just over one kilometre. Not the best view, but no Sparrowhawk would look big at that distance.

This was the first Goshawk we had seen here since November 2013. That bird had obligingly reappeared and shown pretty well, for a Goshawk. Lets hope this one does the same.