Out and About in June

I had a day's holiday yesterday and used the morning to complete a section of the British Trust for Ornithology's Breeding Bird Atlas.

This involves walking a transect through an area (defined using the Ordnance Survey 1 x 1 Km grid), for an hour and literally recording every bird you see and hear on a sheet. The idea is to come up with an idea not just of what birds you can find, but also their population density.

My hour's walk took me through Castor Hanglands and then up to Southey Woods. A nice walk on a warm day with lots of bird song all around.

There were no particular highlight species found, but good numbers of blackcap (10) chiffchaff (10), whitethroat (6), chaffinch (8 - mainly in Southey) and great spotted woodpecker (6). But as ever with these surveys, there was only one winner; wood pigeon - and that by some way - at least 20, and I must admit after a bit you give up with pigeons!

Surprisingly I didn't see any birds of prey: no kites, buzzards, kestrels or sparrowhawks.

I did see a kestrel later that afternoon though - a pair over Swaddywell at about 4.30pm. My main reason for visiting Swaddywell though was to check out the dragonflies on a bright warm afternoon and I wasn't disappointed: emperor, black tailed skimmer and broad bodied chaser were all around in good numbers, also two blue tailed damselflies. Earlier I had seen a banded demoiselle in the garden at Helpston!