Scone Palace

Scone Palace was great afternoon out, despite the lack of benches on the estate,  our main reason for going was to see the Snowdrops, but also knew that there was a "Company" of Hawfinches (yes, that's the collective noun for them!) in the grounds and they didn't fail us, we saw four but up to 40 had been reported. They were staying very high in the trees though, this female posed in the sun;

while this male was awkwardly hiding behind branches;

The snowdrops were magnificent;

Going back to birds it was a good day, with a Treecreeper giving me a very shady photo opportunity;

There were loads of other birds, but no photos I'm afraid; Greenfinch, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Nuthatch, Song Thrush and a brilliant fly through, at a rate of knots, by a sparrow hawk with some poor creature in its talons, had no chance to see what it was though, probably a bird!

The grounds has resident domestic Peacocks and Peahens, it would be churlish not to photograph any of them so I chose this Leucistic Peacock.

Bewdley - Hawfinches

While we were at Upton Warren last Thursday, we got chatting as you do, with another birder, who pointed us in the direction of the Treecreeper whose photograph I included in my last post. He asked us if we had been to Bewdley to see the Hawfinches. Well we didn't know about them so, over the weekend I kept an eye on the Worcestershire Birders website and saw that at least 21 had been reported in the Jubilee Gardens on the Sunday.

So after having checked that the weather wouldn't be too bad on Monday afternoon, we took the 30 minute drive to Bewdley and made our way to the gardens.

We soon found a small group of birders, who told us we had just missed one by 5 minutes! The usual story when you try and go and find a bird that has eluded you. We have never seen a Hawfinch, so we thought that that would continue, until a few minutes later one popped up onto the top of a conifer in the gardens. It was fairly distant but after having had a good look through he bins, I managed some record shots:

 a female also turned up and settled briefly in a Larch Tree just behind this male, she didn't hang around and the shortly after our obliging bird made a sharp exit.

After this we went to find the loo, then returned to the park, we had another couple of sightings of single Hawfinches, one landing in the top of a tree right above us,

giving a closer if somewhat unsatisfactory view, having said that, you get a good impression of that awesome beak!

So I suppose you could class that as a twitch, but seeing is it's an area we visit quite often, I will still say it's birding! Once the above chap departed we went for a little amble along the River Severn which was very pleasant until the north wind decided to get up, so we retreated back to the car and made our way home.