I've been working in China for the last week so nothing really to report on the local birding front. I managed to catch a pretty horrible stomach bug whilst out there and couldn't eat anything for the best part of three days. Feeling a bit better Sunday I headed out to check some of my nest boxes near the house with very mixed results - out of 16 boxes checked three had birds on eggs, one brood of Great Tits were ready to ring and one brood of Blue Tits (in my garden) were dead in the box! Given the recent good weather and the fact the chicks were only 1-2 days old I'm not sure what happened - even if one parent had been killed the other would have tried to carry on feeding them. Very strange.
Walking the fields gave me an opportunity to pick up on a new Lesser Whitethroat territory - one that has been used in previous years and there were at least two more Common Whitethroats singing. Swifts were also new in and I had a rare flyover Yellow Wagtail.
Back to work on Monday and as I was travelling home for a dentist appointment I saw a distinctive raptor silhouette being mobbed by local Carrion Crows about 1/2 mile from my house and well within my local patch boundaries! A RED KITE!!!! I subsequently discovered one had flown down the Mersey estuary earlier so it may be that bird.
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