I set off fairly early and had a nice relaxing drive across the Wolds as the sun shone,seeing a lovely Barn Owl hunting the grass verges near to Fox Holes.
I arrived at the viewpoint and as on most of my visits,i was first here,the forest fairly quiet,apart from the lovely song of Wood Pigeons.
The first couple of hours were pretty steady with only a Kestrel and a Common Buzzard and some nice views of a local Roe Deer Doe,but then a flurry of activity saw the pale male Honey Buzzard flying over our heads and out over the valley and subsequently putting on a fine bout of displaying.This has to be one of the finest raptor display flights and it defeats gravity how these wing clapping males stay in the air,what a poser!.
We eventually lost him to the north east,distantly over Troutsdale,but it wasn't long before we had another nice bird to watch,a Red kite.
The Kite also looked like it flew in from behind us and proceeded to thermal up until we lost it giving some nice scope views.
In between watching for raptors some great banter was had with fellow local patch birder Robbie and we had a few passerines which included a handfull of Crossbills and Siskins,a singing male Garden Warbler and a Tree Pipit.
More raptor watching saw us seeing at least 3 different Goshawks,with about half a dozen sightings in all,a Peregrine,10+ Common Buzzard,one of which was mobbed by a Hobby and at least 2 Sparrowhawk.Another very distant view of the pale male Honey was had later,but not everyone got onto the bird.
Sadly the forecasted rain set in and we all decided to call it a day,but it had been an entertaining 7 hours,with 8 species of raptor logged.I look forward to my next visit to this fantastic raptor mecca.
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