Hawfinches at Wimpole Manor, Cambridgeshire

The weekend saw the 48th Bird Observatories Council meeting being held at the BTO's headquarters in the Nunnery, Thetford. Four of the Hilbre Bird Obs committee made the journey to deepest, darkest Norfolk and a good time was had by all! It was great to catch up with representatives of most of the other UK bird observatories and be present when Alderney Bird Observatory got their accreditation. It was also a good opportunity to meet up with old contacts at the BTO and put faces to names of those people we'd dealt with either by phone or email.

With Steve and Chris commencing their birding and gastronomic, sorry birding,  tour of north Norfolk on the Thursday it was left for Al & me to travel down on the Friday. With my car needing two new tyres after failing its MOT it was down toAl to drive and he picked me up around 09.30.

An uneventful journey had us pondering where to stop off for a bit of birding and checking the map we found that a group of Hawfinches had been seen regularly in the car park of the National Trusts property at Wimpole Hall. A quick detour and we soon found ourselves watching 5 Hawfinches as they performed brilliantly a few metres away feeding on  seeds from some kind of tree with winged fruits. It didn't look like Ash and it doesn't look like Lime.

 Apart from having the privilege of ringing one of these huge finches on Fair Isle a couple of years ago and being relatively close to a well known site in N Wales these were the best views I've had of a group of Hawfinches.

A great couple of days at the conference and good views of Muntjac Deer from the Nunnery windows, Kingfishers in Thetford town centre and Red Kites along the A14!

Many thanks to Al for the use of his photos.