Birding Group Visit to the Upper Goyt Valley 20th May 2014

Birding Group Visit to the Upper Goyt Valley 20th May 2014

We had been to Macclesfield Forest, which is quite close by, two weeks previously and not seen a great deal. This visit to the area was an entirely different kettle of fish. We parked up at the second car park near the southern end of Errwood Reservoir and crossed the road to the reservoir side. As we walked along the road we stopped at a bird box. one of the modern concrete kind, and we watched a pair of Pied Flycatchers coming and going. We were so taken with this display that it took us a while to notice an even more splendid birding sight at our very feet.

Down on the slope that leads from the main road to the stream that runs along the bottom, among the carpet of bluebells in a small clump of leafs we saw first a Single Woodcock and then another behind it. They seemed very aware of us (and we were quite a big group) but kept settled down among the leaves content to keep a wary eye on us. To our amazement, we soon started to a third and then a fourth bird. We had a family group of two adult and two juvenile Woodcocks. It was hard to know where to look with the Flycatchers gadding about and our need to look at the beautiful Woodcocks. In the end we probably spent the best part of the first hour of birding having not walked much more than a couple of hundred metres !

We eventually decided that we had to move on so we left the Pied Flycatchers and the Woodcock family to their own business. We walked further up the road, all the time looking for Redstarts. Willow Warbler is a reliable bird here and we heard and then saw one or two of them – my first of the year for some strange reason. As we walked along a Tree Pipit landed on a tree at the top of the slope where the dykes are and sang loudly. I got the scope on him and he gave us all a fine tune.

We walked down the path that leads to the river level, all the time looking for Dippers, but when we got to the bottom we were distracted in trying to find the Goldcrests that we were convinced we could hear. We kept seeing tiny birds darting around at the top of Fir trees but we could not latch on to them. What we did latch onto, however, was a Spotted Flycatcher that eventually perched right on top of a tree and showed itself well but briefly.

We turned right at the top of the steep stairs and walked back along the road and then onto the rise of the left that takes you past the stone dyke where we have often seen Redstarts before. I was getting a bit anxious about not seeing any and a bit cheesed off that I had missed the Dipper I had been looking for all the time. And I missed a Siskin !

As we walked along the path we heard a Cuckoo call and this was the first time most members of the birding group had heard one in the north of England for a few years. We had, of course, heard lots of them when we had been in Somerset and Hampshire a couple of weeks ago but there was something particularly pleasing about hearing one of “ours” oop north.

We walked the length of the dyke to no avail as we did not see a single Redstart. On the way down the slope at the end of the path (or at the crossroads to be more exact, we had good views of at least two Spotted Flycatchers in the trees very near the car park. One individual even posed beautifully on a bare branch in open view for several minutes to give everyone a very satisfactory tick.

It appeared that one or two people might have had a glimpse of Redstart during the morning but I wasn’t happy so when we got back to the car park I suggested that we walk back along the road for a bit more just to see. We waved the others goodbye and four of us walked back to where we had seen the Woodcocks before but they were gone now. Perhaps due to a person with a dog running up and down the banks where they had been. We looked again at the Pied Flycatchers and actually got a better view of the male this time. We could hear a Redstart in a tree close to us but search as we might, we just could not see it. It was only as we gave up and started to walk back that one decided to show itself atop a tree in beautiful sunshine. I got the scope on him and we all had as much time as we wanted to look at him as he showed all his plumage, turned round to show the white stripe on his forehead and, after a bit of preening and wing flicking, he was off.

A final flourish was a pair of Pied Wagtails and a single Grey Wagtail polishing off a splendid morning’s birding – but that wasn’t all that happened that day !

Bird Sightings : Upper Goyt Valley