A Slice of Paradise

After an aborted trip to Connah’s Quay - cut short because of a maintenance day when rather surprisingly two members were wandering around the Ash Pool picking up litter and thus disturbing all the nesting birds – I decided to seek refuge at Garth Wood.

The heavy rain had put a dampener on most of the inhabitants, with the notable exception of a young Great Spotted Woodpecker that was manically calling from the bowels of an oak tree. After a few minutes I located the almost perfectly circular nest hole about four metres up the trunk, where sure enough peering out from the entrance was a dirty-red capped youngster.

After the parents failed to show, I moved along the path to check on the Pied Flycatchers. I had picked up a male singing about a month ago, but when Ash Cohen visited a few weeks ago it had managed to successfully pull! Sure enough, after a blank fifteen minutes, first the female, and then the male bird appeared and both were carrying food.

Clearly busy, I left the flycatchers and moved to the other side of the wood to check-out the section of stream where I had watched an adult Dipper four weeks previous. The dry section of the bank I had sat on last time was now sodden with the heavy rain, but carpeted with hundreds of glorious bluebells.

Instead of trampling over the flowers I parked my backside on a damp stump. And waited. My luck was in: after a couple of minutes, one, then two, and a little later a third Dipper – all newly fledged – appeared on a rock in the middle of the water.

Their parents were not long behind and they were soon occupied in feeding the trio of hungry mouths. I sat silently for over an hour and thought what a real privilege it was to enjoy a brief window into their lives – a much better afternoon than had I opted to twitch my umpteenth White-tailed Lapwing from hundreds of yards away through a metal fence…

Garth Wood 29.05.10

1 Great Spotted Woodpecker (juv)
2 Pied Flycatcher (pair)
5 Dipper (inc 3 juv)
1 Buzzard
1 Marsh Tit (heard only)

Until later.