First Cuckoo and First Dragonfly of the Year

Having thought I would not be hearing a Cuckoo this year I heard either the same bird or two different birds in two locations this morning. Either way I heard the first Cuckoo of the year for me 😃

I opened the bedroom window at about 6 o'clock this morning and heard a Cuckoo singing from over towards the cliff tops. There are no mature trees over there just hedgerows so maybe it had just arrived? We listened to it for a while and I went to get my binoculars and camera, on my return the bird had flown inland and was now singing from the golf club area.

I got ready asap and went over there but I couldn't relocate it. I had to go and do a bit of shopping then and when I came out of Tesco's I heard a Cuckoo singing very close by from the trees along the Trans Pennine Trail. As I tried to find it, it flew over the car park and went west. My friend Jon heard a Cuckoo from the north side of the Mere shortly afterwards so maybe that was the same bird. I delivered the shopping then set off and walked through Freeport down to the Mere but didn't hear any Cuckoos singing.

Along the south side there was the usual dearth of birds on the Mere, apart from a couple of Common Terns over by Swan Island. However it was a lovely WARM morning for a change and I took my coat off to let the sun see my bare arms for the first time this year - it was a morning for firsts 😂

A couple of singing Blackcaps, Sedge Warblers, Cetti's Warblers and a Chiff Chaff accompanied my wander through first and second fields and I started walking along the path to Heslop's. Half way down I saw a dragonfly over the fence going past me so I turned round and followed it, hoping it would stay somewhere near the fence line. It did, and what I first thought was a female Broad Bodied Chaser turned out to be a female Four-spotted Chaser. My first dragonfly of the year.

Four-spotted Chaser in Heslop's

Overhead I heard a crow making a racket so looked up to see what had disturbed it and saw a Common Buzzard and a Marsh Harrier being mobbed by the crow. The Marsh Harrier and Buzzard were having a bit of a fratch and the crow just seemed to be joining in.

Marsh Harrier and Common Buzzard agreeing to disagree

 Quiz

Agree to disagree. But disagree to part - which song does this line come from?

The answer will appear in my next post.

 

Back home I had yet another another first of the year - a Brimstone butterfly in the garden 👍😎 usually I would have seen Brimstone far earlier than this but at least I've seen one now. The weather this Spring has been weird and probably very damaging for loads of breeding creatures. Hopefully the upward change in the temperature will allow things to get back to normallity.

Five of the seven common frogs basking in our pond today

 

Hare Krishna

 I wasn't far from home and my eyes had nearly opened, when I happened upon a brown hare. I was leaning on a gate, quietly meditating and thinking what a lovely day it was, when I saw it approaching. Panic - get camera out, be quiet, don't let it hear you...

Full frame, but just a little closer please

Nope. This is as close as I get.

The camera was in quiet mode but it still made the hare run

Have you ever noticed what big feet Brown Hares have?! They are gigantic - I wonder if Mountain hares have big feet too? They would be useful in snow.

The hare ran into the field edge so I shouldered my camera and set off along the road, only to see the little devil running off along the road in front of me. Big feet in evidence again, along with a good view of the hare's eyes that are set so that it has a 360 degree view of the world and can see approaching threats behind it as well as in front and the sides.

Mid air shot

Enough Eastern mysticism for one day - I carried on and wondered what else would turn up. I am still waiting for the first Cuckoo. Last year I only had 2 of them, one close to the Mere and the other towards Great Hatfield. We didn't hear one from the house which is the first year since we arrived we have missed out. Looks very much like this will be a second year of cuckoolessness.

Here are a couple of photos of Cuckoo at the Mere from 2015 and 2019.

2015 - May 19 right on the water's edge, 2nd field

2019 - 17 May on the fence at Snipe Ground (aka Heslop's)

This year is a good year for getting photos of singing birds. I have been lucky enough to see many birds in song and close enough to a lot of them to get images.

Today's singing Chaffinch

Yesterday's singing Lesser Whitethroat

Singing Sedge Warbler from a couple of days ago

Singing Meadow Pipit from early May

Singing Goldcrest from late April

At last the hide overlooking the Mere opened on Monday. I waited a few days for the probable inital rush of visitors to subside before I walked in early on to get a look from the viewing gallery. I didn't enter the hide as I reckon you get better views from the top. Not much there unfortunately for me, apart from a male Marsh Harrier dropping off nesting material.

Marsh Harrier with building material

The weather continues to be cool for mid May but I have transitioned into shorts at last. I have regretted this on a few occasions but I'll stick with them 🤣😎

Where The Bee Sucks - It's Music Jim, but not as we know it

Cowslip looking good

The cowslips are well and truly out and, as usual these days, a word triggers a memory. This time "cowslip" brought to mind a song we were taught in junior school. I could only remember the first two lines that went:

Where the bee sucks, there suck I

In a cowslip’s bell I lie.

 I had to Google the song to bring back the rest of the words and I was really surprised to find that it was by Shakespeare and is from The Tempest. The rest of verse is:

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat’s back I do fly

After summer merrily.   

Merrily, merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

We used to learn all sorts of old folk songs in junior school that I don't think are taught any more. The Skye Boat Song, The Happy Wanderer, Hearts Of Oak and such like. Probably only oldies of my generation remember them.

Bluebells are in flower as well but I can't enjoy the full beauty of these flowers as I usually do in the wood along the walk to the (still closed) hide. A few are visible from the wood edge though...

The new month of May has been a disappointment on the temperature front with every day so far struggling to reach double figures. This just isn't good enough and it needs to change! 😂

Warblers are singing loudly each morning as I walk along the south side of The Mere and it's a wonderful sound. Chiff Chaff, Willow Warbler, Blackcap, Sedge Warbler, Lesser Whitethroat and Whitethroat all present and correct - just need to hear a Reed Warbler to complete the expected list. (Grasshopper Warbler is also absent but although we expect to hear one or two in early Spring, they don't hang about.)

Singing Whitethroat

Whitethroat

 Our resident warbler, the Cetti's, aka the bane of my life, is doing a great job frustrating the life out of me. It sings loudly from deep undergrowth and has managed to avoid me successfully training my camera lens on it for nigh on 10 years. Blurry, out of focus, twigs in the way, dark - you name it I've had all sorts of so called photos of this little blighter. It happened again this morning but it was my fault this time. 

Cetti's are skulkers and do not usually sit out in the open so you can get a clear shot, well not at The Mere they don't, so imagine my amazement when I saw a Cetti's on a branch with nothing in the way. Up up up went the camera, click click click went the shutter, zing zing zing went my heart strings as I thought I'd cracked it.

Just out of focus Cetti's Warbler this morning

As above, out of focus

Ditto

Turns out I had my focus setting wrong (again). I'd been photographiong birds in flight so I set the camera accordingly to have the centre section of the viewfinder sensitive to auto focus. Therefore the hawthorn leaves are in focus but the Cetti's isn't. It should have been set to a centre point focus but given the bird was only out in the open for a few seconds I didn't have time to correct it😢

There are a few Linnet still feeding in the fields around the set aside, but that has now been ploughed and harrowed - hopefully more wild flower seeds will be planted this year as this has been a great success over the past few years with good numbers of finches feeding there through winter.

Linnet

Little Egrets continue to visit us every now and then and it is surely only a matter of time before they breed near by. I see them in Stream Dyke more often than I see them at The Mere, but this one was a The Mere today.

Little Egret

To finish off the post here are a few random photos that I fired off today and yesterday.

Looking for the White-fronted Goose that is still with us this morning, I saw the head of a Greylag pop up behind an undulation.

Greylag Goose

Searching for a couple of Ring Ouzels that Jon saw briefly this morning, this sheep looked to be hugging the tree:

Hebden Bridge ancestry

Yesterday I went to Bempton for a long-ish walk and saw this fine example of perfectly ploughed and formed fieldmanship:

Potato field in the making perhaps

Laters everyone, bye for now.