A rainy day

Me and Andy joined the York Bird Club field outing to the North York Moors today. We started the day at Wykeham Raptor viewpoint but a cool cloudy morning coupled with no wind meant the Raptors weren’t performing although Crossbills and Turtle Doves put on a reasonable show, late morning a common Buzzard eventually got up then half an hour later we picked up a Honey Buzzard on the other side of the valley, it showed again a bit later but there was no displaying today, we retreated back to the cars for lunch when a heavy shower came over. Next up was Fen Bog but it was fairly quiet here, a distant view of a Whinchat being the best of it, then the heavens opened up again so we soon carried on into Bransdale, unfortunately we just couldn’t escape the rain and by the time we reached the Ring Ouzel site it had become quite persistent, we carried on at a steady pace just seeing what we could from the cars with the rain finally clearing as we headed back down the other side of the valley, we stopped at another Ring Ouzel site, there were plenty of the usual Moorland birds about, Lapwing, Curlew, Meadow Pipit, Whinchat etc and a few of the group who walked along the stream managed to connect with Ring Ouzel as well, we called it a day after that.

Butterwort

and passing steam train at Fen Bog