Another dull, boring day at the Head, or so it seemed till at 10:45am I flushed an adult male Golden Oriole at The Withies in Porthmelgan Valley, it flew from an isolated bush into the main block. Brief views and unfortunately out of sight for Kathy. Still it was in the there somewhere so I trotted up to the Head to get a phone signal (quite a distance!) and put out the news; leaving Kathy standing sentinel. But would it show again? The last one I found here, I had pinned down in a patch of gorse only for it to do a Houdini act when Paul Grennard arrived. Would this one disappear too?
As I got back to The Withies, a right performance was going on with a holiday-maker loudly chasing a badly-behaved spaniel around trhe bracken slope. Lucky for Kathy though, this put up the Oriole, which had somehow sneaked to the southern patch and she watched it fly off to the north then think again, circle and come diving back into the north patch of withies. I missed it but at least she had good views and was able to work out where it was. A patch of yellow eventually moved but when she tried to show me where it was, it had gone again. It was a bit agitated it seemed and was harshly sqwarking away for a while - a bit like a Jay or Magpie. We knew exactly where it was, we just couldn't see it! We hung around, hoping for a better view for me. Then there it was flying low over the canopy, having sneaked down into the southern patch again (how do they do it?) and giving more prolonged views this time to enjoy the contrasting black and yellow of back, wings and tail as it swooped along. Superb.
And a bit weird to see it it with looming grey clouds and a very light drizzle - not like the normal sightings in Spain! Maybe a bit better though.
No comments:
Post a Comment