Attingham Park NT

As I said at the end of the last post we managed to book a slot with the National Trust at Attingham Park in Shropshire for Monday just gone. It was pretty well organised when we got there, with a socially distanced check-in. Once in the park it was a one way system around the estate, with various route options, the house itself was of course closed, but we only ever do the house on our first visit to any estate, we go for the walks in the main part.

The first part of the walk past the house, with the bonus of our first House Martins of the year, then out onto the grounds was a bit busy for our liking with a few people not distancing properly, but we soon diverged from the main route and were out on our own. The first wildlife, although not truly wild were the resident Fallow Deer;

Just after these photos, the heavens opened and we took shelter under some Oak Trees, this happened to be a good move as from our shelter we saw, Nuthatch, Treecreeper, Long-tailed Tit and I think a Spotted Flycatcher.

Once the rain stopped we carried on, not seeing much else apart from Crows, Jackdaw and Woodpigeon, then as we turned a corner there was a bird sitting on the end of a bare branch about 80 yards away, a female Redstart, we were over the moon! We then found the male, near a convenient bench, so we settled down and watched. In the end we had two pairs of Redstart hunting and disappearing into the trees and back to the nests.

Just after this we were back in the woods, plenty of birds singing but with the dense foliage, much more difficult to find, although another Spotted Flycatcher did give us a view.

As we headed back towards the house and the car, we took a few opportunities to sit and watch (and rest!) and were rewarded with a nice male Blackcap:

So a lovely day and 3 new species for the year, so we crawl on to 117, way behind this time last year but we had been to Lesvos, so that boosted our 2019 total somewhat.

Who knows what's next!