Peek-a-boo and Mystery Guest

There are a few broken down buildings around the north and west side of Billinge which always mean that there is good chance of catching up with an owl or two given the amount of good hunting habitat.

I started with a quick view of the Barn Owl nest at Fir Tree Farm on a TV screen in the barn.  Happy to report their are 3 healthy looking chicks and 1 much smaller .... will it survive its siblings attentions and competition for food???

But I have been meaning to catch up with the fella  in the photo for some time however and despite the cloudy, grey conditions he played a game of hide and seek with me!  I think I won as the phot below shows but I'll let you judge ......

A few minutes later co-incidentally I met a man who worked the farm for a long time and he said these Little Owls and their offspring have been present for about 40 years!  Here's to another 40 years of occupation

After catching up with a few of the other locals (kestrel, buzzard, yellowhammer)  I made my way to the small Scots Pine copse to chance my arm for a few crossbills .... and maybe even a two-barred crossbill.  No luck with those but I was happy to see the coal tits and goldcrests. 

However, I was nicley surprised to see a Grey Wagtail feeding around a small muddy pond in the copse with a few chaffinches.  Then my attention was drawn to the hedge by a familiar "churp" which turned out to be a 40 strong flock of Tree Sparrows which were feeding on spilt grain along the path, including many young ones

Despite several promising breaks in the cloud the weather was doing its best to keep birds sheltered as the relative hive of activity of a couple of days ago - Red Barn Lane was surprisingly quiet.  A dozen or so pied wagtails flitted about on the golf course but there was no sign of any yellow wagtails as in recent days.

At least a few swallows are still feeding young in the stables but the berry laden bramble and elder were deserted.

For some reason my attention was drawn to scan the fencelines and fields perhaps in the hope of a wheatear or two when this caught my attention ....

And on the back of the camera it looked worse but by watching it go back and forth to a regular perch I deduced that this could be interesting so I crept a little closer and closer and closer until i could take this ...

A lovely fresh looking Whinchat .... just goes to prove if you get out there and have a good old rummage you'll find something worth writing about :)