Moorland visit

A decent weather forecast  this afternoon so we were off on our first Spring visit to our moorland patch in Nidderdale to see what upland birds had returned or overwintered. It's a fairly exposed site with surrounding hills rising to over 500m and on this visit there was still traces of snow in the higher gullies. Our first bird heard was the yaffling of a Green Woodpecker, which was our first of the year. Crossing over the reservoir dam looking for Crossbills, unsuccessfully, we saw both Mistle and Song Thrushes in the plantation and had distant views of a pair of Red Kites and a couple of Buzzards but no sign of the resident Ravens. We met up with a friend who was doing a survey of Adders and he said he had seen Ring Ouzel a short way down the track so we set off towards where he said in hope. We caught up with good views of Wheatear, Meadow Pipit and Red Grouse but no sign of the Ouzels. We were beginning to lose the light by now so as my eyesight is not too good in poor light we started our return trip. There were good numbers of Canada Geese and a few Canadas on the water and many Oyster Catchers and a few Redshanks on the edge. A good start to what we hope will be an interesting season in one of my favourite sites.