Just a Tick

Slim pickings at Labrador Bay

I went to this RSPB reserve for the first time on Sunday. It is a strip of fields and grassland on the Devon coast, between Teignmouth and Torquay. The site slopes steeply down to Lyme Bay, so it is quite a spectacular. The main attraction is the cirl bunting and the notice board advised looking in the stubble fields: so I wandered north from the car park on the path beside the first stubble field., after about 20 metres a few birds flew up from the corner of the field. The first one looked like a fieldfare, but it flew right away. Half a dozen others perched in the hedge and looked at me. The first three were chaffinches but the other three were genuine cirl buntings. A life tick - too easy!
I noticed a couple more foraging on the ground in the field. Time for photos, but my camera was in my bag, so I had to take a minute to get it out; the birds just sat and watched me. Then I had to look down to mount it on my monopod and when I looked up again, everything had disappeared!
I got my boots very muddy as I walked around the field and around the next one, but I only saw crows. At the end of that field I spotted a falcon flying in the distance which one of the crows mobbed half-heartedly - I thought it was a young peregrine and a couple of very bad photos eventually confirmed this. A minute or two later I glimpsed another falcon and I heard the unmistakable cry of the peregrine. But that was the end of the excitement: the wind got fresher, the clouds built up and nothing else was happened.
I will return, but my camera gear will be at the ready before I step off the car park.