Beauty on the Gallows

Torrential rain this morning allowed me time for a trip up to Gallows Farm Reserve. A Wood Sandpiper had been found here last night and it was still present first thing.

Initially I thought I had missed out - a bit of a common theme recently after missing out on 2 Spotted Crakes and yet another Purple Heron (now officially my bogey bird I think)-, but after a while sat in the hide in the company of Dave Cleal, a bird flew out of the undergrowth and after a while settled on one of the islands - it was the Wood Sand.
 After hiding away for all that time it then made up for it by showing really well out in the open for the next hour and a half that I stayed. A Whinchat and a couple of Snipe were the best of the other birds on site
 

Returning migrants and local breeders

A visit to Ravenstone Sewage Treatment Works today to check for migrants came up trumps.
I had found an early returning Whinchat on the 19th of July and this had been present since then along with another on the 30th.
 One of these greeted me on the fence on arrival and the other was soon located on the top of the corn. I thought I had found another when another similar bird flew  across the top of the crop, but this one had big white patches on it's wings - a Stonechat - now very hard to find in the county and my first here this year.
 A bird on the track ahead of me turned out to be my third chat in about a hundred yards,- a female type Wheatear.


Whinchat

Wheatear

Working in Lathbury in the afternoon a real treat was a family group of Spotted Flycatchers in and around the allotments, 2 adults and 4 youngsters. These really are a scarce bird in North Bucks nowdays. I am presuming they have come from the nest I discovered over the road in the village at the end of June and as far as I'm aware are the only ones around locally this year.

juvenile Spotted Flycatcher

Juvenile Spotted Flycatcher