I spent a total of six hours freezing in the cold today. After doing the wild birds, our remaining rescue hen and the llamas and goats, I rushed back indoors, packed up my camera and set off for a forest. I had read about a flock of colourful crossbills living less than 20 minutes from home. A lovely gentleman on a forum told me where to go and explained the birds normally spend their time high up in the trees, but come down a few times a day to drink. I thought it was worth a try.
Of course, it would have helped if I had used the right car park to start with. For some reason, my Sat Nav couldn’t find the road on my instructions, so I drove to the village and asked for help. I had no idea at the time there were TWO car parks. It was also a shame that the detailed description almost exactly matched – head north for 300 yards until I got to a small clearing on the right with a tall tree by the path. There was even a small stream where I was sure the birds would soon land to drink.
Three hours later, I hadn’t seen a single bird, crossbill or otherwise and I was beginning to feel the cold. Heading back to the car, I decided to go home, but by a sheer fluke, I found the road that wasn’t on my Sat Nav. Thinking I would just take a quick peek, I turned left and in no time at all found the main car park. The temptation was too much, so I parked up again, changed into my wellies and grabbed the camera. The signs were encouraging as there were several keen birders not far up the track. I told one how I had been waiting in the wrong place for three hours and he replied that I hadn’t missed much.
This time I found the clearing and tall tree, just as I had been told and I smiled to think two such different places could match the same description. This spot was drenched in sunshine, where I had been freezing in the shade. The birds didn’t drink from a stream, but rather from puddles in the tyre tracks where the ground had been cleared. Now all I needed was the birds. Sadly I stood for another 1.5 hours until the gentleman I had been chatting to called out to say the flock was near the car park. He had walked down to find me and so we watched as they flitted through the treetops, too far to photograph, but close enough to see the green colour of the females and the brick red of the males.
Back home, I just had time to change my (now muddy) clothes before starting the zoo again. We finished well over an hour ago and I’m still shivering. Which brings me to the title of this blog post. Some time ago I promised that I would show you some more images from all my trips out during the summer. Back then it was the heat giving us problems, but that’s now a distant memory.
The dark green fritillary shown above and the Essex skipper shown below were photographed in Lullingstone park.
Back to East Blean for the rare heath fritillary below.
A six-spot burnet moth on a scorching day at Noar hill.
And finally a comma and brimstone, also at Noar hill.
