Ring Ouzels at Cat and Fiddle 20th May 2014

Ring Ouzels at Cat and Fiddle 20th May 2014

After our morning at Goyt Valley with the birding group our small select group of “lunchers” stopped off for some lunch at the Cat and Fiddle – it only had one beer on pump and one in bottle. The pump beer was a blonde beer called Brazilian ! The bottled beer was £3 a half and was rubbish. The food was poor. In short it was a mistake going there for lunch. It wasn’t a total waste of our time, however, as we managed to get a life tick there.

We took the road from the Cat and Fiddle (A537) towards Buxton. Just before the junction of the A54 there is a small cut through. Turn right on to that and then turn right when you meet the A54. About a mile down this road you will see a stone tower on your left. Just past there there is a lay-by on the left. Park in there and walk back up the road. You come to a path that takes you rightwards away from the road. Follow this and look at the stream and posts on the right of the stone towers.

When we did this, the first bird we glimpsed was a male Ring Ouzel. We soon lost this bird but eventually we located not just the one but a pair, a male and a female. It looked like they were probably nesting on the scree there because we also saw them mobbing a juvenile Buzzard that seemed to know about the nest. Both birds spent a long time mobbing this bird until it eventually flew away. The birds then proceeded to feed on the grass nearer to us and we got fantastic views the whole time.

A couple that we met sitting on a raised bit of ground near the tower pointed a bird out to us that didn’t look to them like a Buzzard. A good look in the scope showed it to be a ringtail Hen Harrier. This bird hovered in the wind above the road just like a Kestrel – but it absolutely wasn’t. As we were watching these birds a few Wheatear were showing well and we also got one or two Meadow Pipits. We spent a very long time watching all these birds (down by the stream, on the wooden fences and stone walls and among the scree on the hillside) and when we eventually decided it was getting too late, we returned to the car – just in time to see the Hen Harrier and a Buzzard having a tussle right above us.

There aren’t many days that are so full of year ticks but to polish it off with a fantastic life tick was, as they say, something else.

Bird Sightings : near Cat and Fiddle Inn