Saturday 10 October 2020

Field Lammergeier

The wandering Lammergeier spent yesterday in Lincolnshire. I started the morning in Yorkshire and ended the day in London.  All sensible routes from Yorkshire to London pass through Lincolnshire....


Well what can I say? OK so I'd seen the bird in the Peak District in August, but that was
a damp squib really. Yesterday was an altogether different experience, albeit rather incongruous to see the bird in a muddy field munching on a dead rabbit. Then again I would not call Derbyshire peak Lammergeier habitat either, but given the views I got I am prepared to accept the Lincolnshire fens as an acceptable location. What was a damp blob on a hillside was transformed into a beast of staggering proportions - dwarfing the corvids hoping for scraps. Magpies appeared as mere Blue Tits, Rooks as Robins Even the Buzzards came across as utterly puny. It flew, it glided, it flapped, it walked, it ripped up tenderised rabbit, did a crap, rolled its eyes and a whole lot more besides. In short it did everything it didn't do last time and gave the assembled line of twitchers a display none of us will forget in a while.

The only unglossy element was the pathetic parking employed by almost everyone there, turning a busy road into a one way street. What is wrong with parking somewhere safe and then walking, like Pete and I did? I do not believe in internet naming and shaming, but extra marks to the guy in the white Hyundai for whom the far side of the road was insufficient and who then moved to the near side directly opposite the bird and starting papping away, thus creating a chicane for the articulated lorries to deal with along with the single file problem. Idiotic. 





6 comments:

  1. What is the general feeling for the origins of this bird? Is it likely to get accepted as a wild bird? And no, I'm not planning a lincolnshire twitch depending on your answer!

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  2. As if! You know I never leave the patch if I can help it! Just curious innit

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    1. I have no idea. Word on the street is from the Alps born of wild parents (though how the mysterious "they" know this I don't know), but the population is added to by releases so possibly not self-sustaining.

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  3. Impressive - but will this bird survive?

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    1. It moved south from Lincs to Sussex shortly after I saw it, and then at some point last week it was seen to climb high up and depart south over the Channel and back to Europe. Good luck to it!

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