Padley Gorge

After a dismal week weatherwise, I took a trip to Padley Gorge on Sun 14^th just gone to meet up with a few friends old and new for a spot of birding… and we had another dismal day weatherwise!

But, the company was good!

Anna, Cherrypie and digi-birder have already given their version of the day's events, Pete may well do in the near future, and only John is a non-blogger, but I’ve had the pleasure of his company on previous outings.

We arranged to meet next to the ice-cream van at about 9:15, but due in part to a petrol-stop, but mostly to not being able to get my body into gear, I thought I was going to be late.

Also the Sheffield Half-Marathon was scheduled to take place that day in Sheffield (you don’t say!).

I’m usually pretty good with directions but I seem to have some sort of mental block with Sheffield, and I could only think of one seldom-used option to enable me to avoid the city centre.

But I missed the turning, and promptly headed fully down the Parkway to Pond’s Forge!

Ah well… at least they’re doing a lot of reconstruction and renovation in Sheffield at the moment, so the road system changes almost daily, and the playing-field was somewhat levelled as no-one else had any idea where they were going either!!!

I negotiated the city centre, passing an awful lot of police and marshals, some of whom seemed to be redirecting a vehicle in front of me onto another route.

I, erm, drove by them and just kept going.

Anyhew… I arrived at out meeting point spot on time, and – phew – wasn’t last. A last minute change of arrangements meant that Pete had had to make a detour to pick up Anna.

This gave me chance to get acquainted with Cherrypie, and reacquainted with John – and to actually find out his name. (I’m sure he’s told me before… I just don’t pay attention sometimes!!!)

Diane soon joined us, and was last to step back as the rest of us “nominated” the expedition leader.

At our rendezvous point we were being watched by a Robin and a few Swallows flew over.

We walked down to Burbage Brook and made our way towards the woodland, quickly accumulating Blue Tit, Great Tit and Chaffinch.

Even though the weather was pretty grim, there was decent amount of birdsong and John, who’s pretty decent at this sort of thing, soon picked up a Redstart.

Further into the trees we got excellent views of more than one Treecreeper, whilst Coal Tits could also be seen foraging in the canopy. In the mirk a Carrion Crow flew over.

One of the target birds, and fortunately (on account of the weather) a guarantee as much as these things can ever be, was our next sighting, Pied Flycatcher. This part of the Gorge is a mini-stronghold for the species.

Special nest-boxes suitable for the Pied Flies have been positioned in the woods to bolster the number of breeding sites and give them a bit of a “leg-up” against the other woodland species. With some success it seems.

It took a little while before we all got a look, but eventually we were all successful, and I was lucky enough to catch sight of both male and female.

(I didn’t bother with my camera, but the following average-ish photos are from a similar visit last year.)

This target achieved, we moved on to try for another, but this time, entirely due to the weather conditions (and nothing to do with the tour guide!), we dipped on the Ravens.

Nevertheless, en route we added Meadow Pipit, and as we approached the Raven location we were met with a very loud and aggravated cuc-ooo call from (guess what) a Cuckoo.

I figured he would probably stay in the trees, but in fact a few minutes later the unmistakeable silhouette of said bird flew across the dank skies in front of us, with a much smaller bird in hot pursuit.

Pete couldn’t tell what the pursuer was, (tut!), so we perhaps miss out on a Mega there!!!

Anyway, lunch time was approaching, and so we decided to head back to the cars and make our way on to the Rising Sun. We were able to add Tree Pipit and Pied Wagtail before reaching the cars, and then Swifts, Jackdaws and House Martins from the pub car-park.

OK, so only 17 species (if I haven’t missed any!) on a somewhat truncated day, but it was a nice little get-together and I think our (fairly) newbie birder friends had a decent time.

Oh, and I had the Potato Skins and the Loin of Pork. Yummy!