![Les Harvey [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://markavery.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Achurch_church_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_490072.jpg)
![By Original author and uploader was Ivan Petrov at bg.wikipedia (Transferred from bg.wikipedia) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://markavery.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/BG-spotted-flycatcher-2.jpg)
I headed off to Achurch churchyard to look for Spotted Flycatchers. Isn’t it awful that I have to have a special trip to see them in my part of the world?
Churchyards seem to be good places for them – but they have disappeared from several nearer churchyards where I used to see them. Achurch is a lovely churchyard though – and made a little bit lovelier by the presence of Spotted Flycatchers.
It was sunny when I left home, but drizzling a few minutes later at Achurch – but the Spotted Flycatchers were flycatching despite the weather.
[registration_form]
The shot of the church reminds me of the chapel in Southampton Common cemetery, where I cut my birding teeth in the 70’s and 80’s, it too was a great place for flycatchers. Spotted Flys were ‘nailed on’ back then and if you were fortunate/ persistant Pied Flys would join them in August. Now it’s a good day if you get either. I do remember finding a Spotted Fly nest behind a loose brick in the chapel one year.
If it’s a clear sky at dawn the sun shines through the ash trees and up my nose. The Yew Trees flutter outside my bedroom window, under the thatch, and produce a strobe-like effect on my eyelids. During the day the Grape Vines do the same outside my office also known as the hall window. If it’s fine we sit out on the bench with our tea in the afternoon and watch them all industriously snaffling invisible insects and doing tumbler pigeon impressions around the lilacs. This is time well spent as we also get to see the comings and goings of everything else – swifts, swallow, martins, and the usual garden stuff. Mistle thrushes harrassing a squirrel up a fir tree. Greater spotted woodpokers flying backwards, according to Mrs C.
Your reference to churchyards is interesting. It has been suggested that a chapel once stood here, before the present dwelling was started c1730. There are two ancient yew trees and the garden is full of snowdrops – why here, and nowhere else? It makes me wonder how many generations of potted flyscrapers have returned here, and the tales they could tell of Kings, Queens, turbulent priests, constitutions and assizes. Ooh I feel a book coming on ….
Lovely post, lovely photos and lovely flycatcher. I made the decision to walk to and from work this morning and was very glad. The air seemed alive with birds – skylarks, a blackbird, whitethroat, yellowhammer to name but a few, swallows flying straight at me and then jinking left at the last minute. The leaves are dark green and the transition to summer seems almost complete. Amazing to think the longest day is three weeks away and the birdsong season is almost past its peak, how did that happen so fast? The young starlings are feeding themselves now as were a scruffy looking bunch of baby blue tits. The white poplar trees near my house were alive with small bumble bees and to round off saw and heard a cuckoo. A touch of melacholy though, a few of the local ashes seem to be struggling and I wonder why. Here’s to yours and others fly archers, may they prosper this summer.
Struggling for Spotted flycatcher this year but 1 Pied Flycatcher has sung for 30 conceccative days in the garden, performs on wires by the green house and certainly acts like a Spotted Flycatcher. He is a cheat as he has a female down below the garden and is trying for a second female. A second male has piched up in my little woodland.
This morning I did my second and final visit to one of my Breeding Bird Survey squares for the BTO. This most productive of the two normally takes about 90 minutes to walk each transect, but the first took 120mins. Lots of birds, but a Spot Fly would be really something. Nice to hear Blackcaps and, later, Garden Warblers, and very close views of the Buzzard (how brilliant to be able to say that), and a Kestrel. A lovely morning.
This afternoon I have to put the data on the BTO web site, which is more time consuming now as they are keen to know whether birds are detected visually, or by call or song. This has prompted the purchase of some instant coffee, as this more exacting process has to be done without errors… and I had an early start this morning!
It is awful that I now see them so rarely. I have seen one this year so far in Scotland, but not at home. They used to be flitting on the telephone wire outside my house. I’ve seen pied flycatchers this year on Dartmoor.
The nearby Lilford Hall was the home of Thomas Powys, 4th Baron Lilford, who was one of the eight founders of the British Ornithologists’ Union in 1858 and its President from 1867 until his death. His aviaries in the grounds of the hall featured birds from around the globe, including rheas, kiwis, Pink-headed Ducks and a pair of free-flying Bearded Vultures. He was also responsible for the introduction of the Little Owl into England in the 1880s.
But you already knew that, didn’t you Mark?
Ed – I did! But it bears repeating. And I often use those three things, with one more, in talks I give. The ‘extra’ thing about the 4th Baron Lilford was that he wrote and published (he had the dosh to do it) the first proper book (in two volumes) on the birds of Northamptonshire. i wish I had a copy but I have read lots of it over the years. There is a great story about a red Kite nest in Spain which I must check and then reproduce here some time.
Mark – you’re quite right. I remember poring over said book in the Cripps Library whilst at Oundle.