Birding Group Visit to Old Moor RSPB 1st May 2012
Our morning out to Old Moor was really more of a day out as it took us two hours to get there. The highlight of the journey was getting a close – if fleeting – look at a male Hen Harrier as we were coming over the moors just before Stocksbridge. Although he weather had been lashing it down for days it managed to keep off largely for our day out though it was very dull and windy. This was the first time that I had been to Old Moor so I was interested in what it was like. First impressions were fairly good but it has to be said that if it had been a lovely sunny morning I think we would have seen the Whitethroats, Lesser Whitethroats and Sedge Warblers that had allegedly been seen. As it happens we didn’t see any of those birds and even hearing them was difficult due to the wind and the ambient motorway noise that is quite bad at parts of the site. We did go round all of the hides and we managed to see a few year firsts.