The weekend on Baildon Moor (20-21 May 2017)

It’s a while since I went up onto Baildon Moor to look and listen for the wildlife. So this last weekend I went up around Glovershaw and Golcar Farms, the north west corner of the moor. And I wasn’t disappointed, even if I did get wet on Saturday. Earlier it had been a bright day but soon after getting there on Saturday afternoon it clouded over and started to rain.

There are several distinctive sounds to listen for over on that part of the moor (and the list gets longer as I think about, it but I’ll limit it to the first few I thought of)

Curlew with their eerie call as they drift in to land as per the two photos above.

You can often here the same sound on programs like Heartbeat and similar.

Lapwing can be seen in the meadows keeping an eye on their young…

tiny brown birds.

and the sign comes out each year

but if anything approaches their nests they get rather noisy and will dive bomb anything approaching calling their “peewit” as they wheel about protecting their young

Snipe are also around. Note the blurry blob in the foreground for later.

I love the “chipper, chipper” noise that Snipe make,

but I have recently learnt that the Redhank (above) make a similar noise

and the Redshank breed here too.

Other sounds are Pheasant with their squawk and wing flapping and the “brrmm” as a car goes over the cattle grid…..

But the two sounds I like to hear most are the song of a Skylark as it ascends to be a tiny dot in the sky (sorry no photos) and the “thrumming” of a Snipe’s dive, as shown above. They fly around and then dive and extend two tail feathers that then thrum quite loudly in the air.

Meadow Pipit are also common, and noisy, on the moor.

In one of the photos of a Snipe shown above there is a blurred brown blob in the foreground. This Meadow Pipit was the brown blob. And the brown blob at the top of this photo is the Snipe.

I mentioned that Lapwing protect their young…

and this is what they have to protect them from. A Stoat. Not forgetting Crows, Magpies, Red Kite, Kestrels, the hooves of cattle etc. etc.
Stoats are excellent hunters and I could imagine them easily clearing a field of young Lapwing.

It’s a blurry photo but it looks as though this Stoat have something in its mouth. Note the black end to the tail identifying it as a Stoat and not a Weasel.

Reed Bunting were also showing themselves.

As usual you can click on any of the images and view it larger on Flickr. There are also several other photos on Flickr related to the weekend that you might want to look through.