That's More Like It! The Big Bird With Two Names, Part 2. Peak District, 24th July 2020

We left the Peak District last Sunday happy that we'd seen the Lammergeier but more than a little bit disappointed that our best view of the bird had been from over a mile away and that I didn't have a single meaningful photo of it. The following few days had seen the Vulture change its habits somewhat and it was being seen reliably in the Cutthroat Bridge area, where it had largely been on the Sunday while we had been up in the hills, although it was prone to ranging far and wide still. Conveniently there is lay-by parking and a small viewing area on the main Manchester to Sheffield Road so the Lammergeier can be viewed without the need for walking miles into the moors as we had done on Sunday. Many photos, some to rival those taken at the previous roost site, emerged online and further whetted my appetite for another tilt at seeing the Lammergeier although sightings had been sporadic and the bird did appear to go missing for long periods. It seemed as if the Lammergeier was looking for another roosting spot and was thus quite transient appearing in many different places. 

There was also the problem of many apparent misidentifications from less than experienced birdwatchers and the general public, many of whom had become very excited that such an incredible bird had taken up local residence. I studied news of sightings of the Lammergeier, on Birdguides and on Twitter, for most of the week to try to establish a complete picture of the birds movements. On a couple of occasions the Lammergeier was seen in two places at once, which of course is actually quite possible owing to it being able to be seen from over a mile away! However, I noticed an interesting theme running through the sightings. Despite the "Bird Authorities" best efforts at rechristening the Lammergeier as a Bearded Vulture, birders in general, myself included, still tended to regard it as a Lammergeier because that has always been its name whereas sightseeing tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of the bird tended to call it a Bearded Vulture because that's the name that was also being pushed by the media, presumably because Vulture sounds more sensational than Lammergeier and, whereas folk will have heard of a Vulture, many wouldn't have a clue what a Lammergeier was. I decided that birders with established track records with identifying and watching birds were to be trusted far more than hikers and people driving through the area so gave much more credence to sightings of the Lammergeier than those of the Bearded Vulture. In the middle of the week, the Lammergeier became difficult to pin down apart from early mornings and late afternoons when most of the reliable sightings came from the Cutthroat Bridge area, indicating that the bird must be roosting in that general area and most likely somewhere on the Stanage Edge. Many phone taken videos and photos being posted online by walkers and casual voyeurs from other areas, showing high flying birds of prey and claiming to be of the Lammergeier, were clearly not the bird but were of smaller Common Buzzards, Red Kites and the like. I realise that all of the above is a generalisation and there are exceptions to any rule and I admit that cynicism is a bad trait that I have in spades but generally it is best to listen to your peers and not give too much trust to unsubstantiated reports. Whenever I look for information on rarer bird sightings, Twitter is a useful tool to use, if good birders post photos and locations then you know the gen is good and it'll be worth travelling to see the bird.

Anyway, at short notice, I had no work on the Friday so Mrs Caley and I decided that what could be worse than trying again for the Lammergeier? We knew it was still being seen fairly reliably in the Cutthroat Bridge area so just had to get there as early as we could, park up, walk the short distance to the viewing area and wait. We managed to leave home a little after five o'clock and arrived at the lay-by just under three hours later. There had been no reports of the Lammergeier being seen while we drove up the M6 so we knew that we hadn't missed it leaving its overnight roost, and we knew that it had been in the area during the early evening before so it had most likely spent the night close by. For the second time in six days, a lot of other folk had clearly had the same idea since the lay-by was rammed and I struggled to find anywhere to park, eventually managing to squeeze into a tight spot between a camper van and another car leaving just enough room to be able to extricate the optics from the boot. I had wasted ten minutes parking and when we joined the other hopefuls on the small hill above the lay-by it was already half past eight. I didn't feel worried though since the Lammergeier tended to appear after nine and sometimes as late as midday. We found a socially distanced space and set the scope up, we were determined to get a better view this time, and scanned around. With our backs to the car, to our left was a ridge where another birder was stood waiting, he would be worth watching as much as the skies since he'd have the advantage if the bird was flying higher up the hillside which would be hidden to us, Ladybower Reservoir was ahead of us, slightly hidden by a stand of conifers, and the vastness of the Howden Moors lay to our right. I recognised a man stood nearby, a fellow enthusiast for a collectible that I have a long standing interest in, but whom I'd never formally met before, from his Facebook profile photo, and after introducing myself asked him if the Lammergeier had shown at all. Richard had been on site from six o'clock and as yet the bird hadn't shown so we had indeed missed nothing. 

Less than five minutes after we arrived, the chap higher up on the hillside was pointing at something in the air, everybody turned to see what he could be looking at, surely the Lammergeier. I followed the direction he was looking and there it was, the Lammergeier was travelling quickly, and not so distant this time as it had been on Sunday. However, disappointingly, the bird was flying away from us, but at least at the range I could identify it easily unlike on our visit the previous weekend. The Lammergeier was in view for maybe ten-seconds before disappearing over the ridge, how I wished I was stood where the birder higher up the slope was since he could clearly still see it. As I pondered how I could get up there and whether it was possible for Mrs Caley to get up there, I looked over the conifers and saw that the Lammergeier was flying towards us! I alerted all those stood close, all of whom were having an excited natter about the first sighting, or lack of for those that missed it. "It's flying back toward us", I said probably a bit too loudly in my own excitement. I checked that Mrs Caley was watching the bird, she was, and thought, "Wow!". What a bird!

Lammergeier

The Lammergeier was still far from flying directly overhead but its immense size made it easy to watch against the solid clear and blue sky. For such a huge bird the Lammergeier actually appears very compact, mainly because the wings are so broad. The head is black and is de-marked from the pale underparts so appears to stretch out prominently, the impressive hooked bill and shaggy neck feathers, the "beard", are also distinctive. The tail with the missing central feathers, a feature that has made the bird so easy to identify with good views, is actually short in relation to the wings and I wondered how it managed to manoeuvre so well with only a few of the normal amount of feathers.

I was urging the Lammergeier to fly closer, almost mimicking the Reeves and Mortimer "Dove from above", muttering under my breath, "Come on, come on, that's it, come closer, closer, come on". Surely it would continue flying directly towards us and give us all that amazing flyover that we all eagerly anticipated. And then, with no warning and to my immense disappointment, the Lammergeier turned and began sailing away from us. Damn! This time the Lammergeier didn't bank back and just kept going away, over the conifers and up the opposite hillside towards the spots where we'd watched for it on the Sunday before. A couple walking down a path on the hillside got a massive surprise when the Vulture practically buzzed them, from our viewpoint it looked as if it passed just metres above their heads, how I wished we'd had that luck.

The Lammergeier put in another very brief and distant appearance about fifteen minutes later but that was the last we saw of it. Further reports through the day put it flying all along the Howden Edge, imagine the views and photos I'd have got had I been sat at Dovestone Tor like I was last Sunday! Sometimes the birding gods are not with you. At least we'd seen the Lammergeier well and would be eternally grateful that we'd arrived at half past eight and not at nine o'clock!

We stayed above the car park for nearly five hours waiting in vain for the Lammergeier to return. I introduced myself properly to Richard and we chatted about our shared collecting interest and also about birds and birding in general. Richard is fortunate enough to live in Yorkshire so has much more access to rare and scarce birds than we ever have in Oxfordshire. He very kindly allowed me to use his excellent photos of the recent Black-browed Albatross at Bempton Cliffs, which we tried to see a few weeks before but were a day too late, for my blog. The wait wasn't completely uneventful though, there were other birds around of course, a pair of Curlew were frequently seen flying over the opposite hillside. A Kestrel made several close passes as it travelled over the valley.

Kestrel

An unexpected year tick presented itself in the shape of an Osprey that sailed high overhead. We hadn't been to Scotland this year and had missed the few Ospreys that had flown through Oxfordshire airspace earlier in April and we'd been planning a trip to Rutland to add Osprey to our year list so this was a bonus. Shortly after the Osprey had passed over a report via Birdguides said that the Lammergeier was seen over Cutthroat Bridge! The twenty or so of us still there all looked at each other and asked, "Who saw it then?" Nobody had of course and we all wondered who had and where they were viewing from. I checked Twitter, a local Sheffield resident had Tweeted it out, interestingly as the Bearded Vulture. Maybe the Lammergeier was flying around at the top of Stanage Edge again but how it got there without anybody seeing it was beyond me, unless of course it flew over at cruising aircraft height. Just a few minutes after the report another Tweet appeared from another birder saying that the Lammergeier was actually at Margery Hill, some seven miles to the North. Now while I know that Vultures can fly quickly, there was no way that one could cover seven miles in a matter of minutes, so one of the reports was obviously bogus. Another couple of minutes and a photo emerged from the second reporter, at Margery Hill, of the Lammergeier. Clearly the report of the bird being over Cutthroat Bridge was the dodgy one and was a case of mistaken identity, probably the Osprey flying over at height had caused the confusion. The original Tweet was taken down quickly after the second emerged. All giving some proof to my theory explained earlier in this piece.

Osprey

A small falcon flew rapidly along the opposite slopes. I had spotted it first, watched it for a while before calling, "Hobby across the road". I never expected to see a Hobby in this environment, I usually see them over reedbeds and marshes. We get a number of Hobby's on Otmoor through the summer and I'm very familiar with them so I was little bit irked when somebody else tried to shout down my identification and even suggested defiantly that it had been a Merlin. Another case of some people seeing what they believe they should see, Merlin is much more common and expected in a moorland habitat than Hobby, rather than what they actually do see. I poured water over his fire though when I showed him a back of the camera image shortly afterwards.

Hobby

We gave up at just after one o'clock, with the Lammergeier seemingly so far to the North it was unlikely to reappear for some time, if at all, and we had another quarry on our hit list for the day. Another friend, Simon, who had been lucky enough to photograph the Quail featured in a previous blog of mine, had also recently Tweeted about some Willow Tits that are regularly seen at a feeding station at Carsington Water, about thirty miles to the South. Willow Tits have become all but extinct in Oxfordshire and there are few in neighbouring counties. It is also a species that I'd never managed to get a good photograph of. Firstly though we stopped at the Bird Cafe at Bamford and enjoyed our first coffee and cake outside of our own house since the Lockdown. It was a slightly surreal experience with the staff kitted out in face visors and latex gloves and having to leave our contact details with them. I'm not entirely at ease with the new guidelines on visiting cafes and pubs yet. The Bird Cafe is so named, similarly to the now sadly demised Pottery Cafe near Insh in the Highlands, because of the bird feeders that are placed close to picture windows so that customers can enjoy the comings and goings of the birds. Whilst we ate and drank we saw amongst others, a Nuthatch, Siskins, Coal Tits and Chaffinches. My type of cafe and if I'm ever in the area again, which may be quite soon since I still didn't get the prolonged views and the photos of the Lammergeier that I wanted, then I'll be sure to visit it again.

Simon had said that the feeding station was just a short walk from the Sheepwash Lane carpark at Carsington but, I'm sorry mate, your legs must be a lot longer than ours since after walking for over ten minutes and still not coming across the feeders, we were ready to give up, it had already been a long day as it was. Fortunately I urged Mrs Caley on and a little bit further on we found the wooden screen that overlooked the feeders that were set in a stand of trees and fairly dense undergrowth. Within seconds of taking a seat at the hide slats, a Willow Tit appeared on a bush just to the right. I fired off some shots before the Willow Tit disappeared but I hadn't judged the exposure correctly and I had neglected to compensate for how dark it was under the trees so the photos don't really accurately portray the bird.

Willow Tit

The feeding station here consisted mainly of an enormous bird table which was absolutely covered with bird seed. The seed was attracting many birds, mostly Great and Blue Tits, as well as Chaffinches, Robins and Dunnocks. There were Squirrels taking advantage of spilt seed under the table. 

female Chaffinch

Great Tit

But we had come for the Willow Tits and we didn't have to wait long for the same or another to appear, this one flying directly onto the table where it selected a seed and then flew back into the trees. 

The Willow Tit, bird species number 199 for the year, is very similar to the Marsh Tit, which is  more common down our way but surprisingly still missing from this years list, differing in having a pale panel to the wings, a more substantial black bib, cleaner white cheeks and pale fringing to the tail feathers. All features that could be seen quite clearly on the bird just metres away on the table. We spent half an hour or so watching the birds use the feeders and had five visits from Willow Tits in that time. 

As we drove home after an enjoyable day, we contemplated on what we'd seen. Birdwatching is so interesting and thrilling because of the subjects. Birds are just so varied that you can't possibly become bored with them. In the morning we had enjoyed the awesome spectacle of the majestic Lammergeier with its ten foot wingspan and impressive bone crunching skills and then in the afternoon we had watched at close quarters the diminutive Willow tit which weighs in at roughly 1/500th of the weight of a Lammergeier! What isn't to like?