Keeping Watch
A short walk from the door and on the edge of Derby, a tree lined bridal path takes you up a small rise. As the trees give way to hedgerows, the landscape opens out onto a gentle dome of sheep grazed pasture. From a recessed gateway this raised vantage point offers a good view over the North East outskirts of Derby and the countryside beyond. To your right the woods and fields of a local estate provide most of the raptorial interest – and in the right conditions good numbers of birds of prey can be seen with Sparrowhawk, Kestrel, Common Buzzard and Peregrine figuring all year round along with that honorary raptor – the Raven. Summer is the time to look for Hobby with a pair of these elegant, long winged falcons nesting nearby, while Red Kite sightings are becoming more frequent.
Its certainly no Wykenham, Welbeck or Stubbs Mill. There are no Honey Buzzards, Goshawks, Cranes or White Tailed Eagle’s to draw the birders, but as urban vantage points go, it’s not bad and just occasionally it can produce the goods. This morning – with the Sun warming the air, a reasonable breeze and a fair bit of cloud cover – seemed a good time to spend an hour or two up there and I wasn’t to be disappointed!

A good vantage point over wooded areas and areas of mixed farmland can produce bird of prey sightings as well as providing a good spot to observe visual migration.
Common Buzzard is the easiest raptor to see from here and so it proved, as a scan across the skyline picked out no fewer than twenty of these under watched and frankly, often ignored, birds with a single group (or Kettle) of twelve birds soaring together on the same thermal. Across the vista other Buzzards could be seen including a couple displaying over likely woodland spots.
Joining the larger birds a pair of Sparrowhawk were also on the wing, gaining height with their characteristic ‘flap, flap, glide’ before spiralling even higher than the Buzzards, a third bird, it’s size marking it out as a male, streaked low across the open hillside, no doubt hoping to snatch one of the Meadow Pipits that looked to be moving North in good numbers!
A line of electricity pylons snake theirĀ way through the fields to the right and these are often used by the local Kestrels, but today one of the Falcons was soaring and circling above the arable fields before dropping lower to hover above a hedgerow.
So far so good but better was to come! As I watched one of the local Raven pair fly overhead giving it’s characteristic ‘cronking’ call, I picked up a large raptor high up and heading North at speed. Bigger than a Buzzard with a very pale/white body and throat and elegantly long wings. The darker wing coverts and carpal patch standing out, with the flight feathers subtly banded – Osprey! A year tick and only my second ever here!
These fish eating raptors spend the Winter on the west coast of Africa and late March/April is the best time to spot one as they migrate North to their breeding territory on a remote Scottish loch. This one wasn’t hanging about either, in little more than 30 seconds it was a blob on the Northern horizon. It would have been so easy to miss, proving that a large slice of luck can be just as important as timing and location on occasion!
What a morning and what a bird! Not a bad spot for a bit of lockdown raptor watching either.