Nightingale Walk

Great blog, Trevor - and wonderful photo of the male sparrowhawk. I have noticed a male and female over the village in recent days.

Tonight was the annual Langdyke Nightingale Walk - this year around our new reserve at Bainton Heath. Sixteen people joined me for the walk and were rewarded by some wonderful sounds - at least six singing nightingale on the heath and two grasshopper warbler; as well as whitethroat, blackcap and willow warbler and a cuckoo calling in the distance. We spent a good hour tramping through the scrub, but as luck would have it the best song of the night was from a nightingale right by where we had parked!

Iain Stowe was lucky enough to find another earth-star - a quite rare and unusually shaped fungus (photo to follow).

I heard four nightingale this morning on an early morning walk around the new plantation at Castor Hanglands - one more than last year in that area of the reserve.

Finally thanks to Chris Britton and Kate Condor who both report cuckoo calling in Helpston this week - so perhaps they really are back in the villages this year.