Tuesday 10 February 2015

Moorland sightings

On Monday morning, early, I was on Hulne Moor doing the Bird Survey inside the Park walls.  The birds were entirely unremarkable, but the stars of the morning were two Fallow Deer bucks.  The first I saw was young with not much width in the antlers, but the second, which rose out of the heather about 50 metres from me, had the characteristic palmate form of antlers.

The other thing that surprised me was that there was a line of molehills right up on the top of the moor alongside the 'golfball' fence which seemed a very unpromising location for moles.

Then  today Jane and I were out on a different area of moorland north of Alnwick when we spotted a group of Carrion Crows plus a Raven.  At first we assumed that the crows were mobbing the raven, but then a Ring-tailed Hen Harrier emerged from the ruck and moved away to quarter a different part of the moor.  Not a unique sighting, but an unusual one.

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