I know my Port and Wey Blog is supposed to be Portland and Weymouth, but with the opportunity to see lots of Hawfinches at Cattistock Here, it just had to be done by going "out of area". It was a good 50 minutes from Portland but well worth the visit with at 21 Hawfinches recorded. In fact looking at BirdGuides when I got home, there were in fact 31+ seen earlier in the day.
They are probably the easiest birds you will ever identify in flight with those distinct white wing bars and continuous twittering. In fact I had some recordings of Hawfinches on my phone (just in case I needed them), but these sounded nothing like those on my phone. Their calls were almost Yellow Wagtail like.
When Dawn and I first arrived at the Church there was another birder from Wells and he had seen 3 earlier and by the time we left he had also seen the 20+ birds. They are not a finch that likes to keep still and were continually flying from tree to tree. Their favourite trees seem to be the Hornbeams where they liked to be high up in the canopy.
Dawn and I also found several birds twittering away in a Yew tree, and despite our best efforts we couldn't see a single bird, even though we were only 2 or 3 metres away from them. How they managed to hide themselves away in the foliage was a real mystery.
Also here were many other birds including a Firecrest in the church grounds, Redwing, Coal Tit, Nuthatch and Treecreeper. There was a male Sparrowhawk which gate-crashed the Hawfinch's tree, just seconds before they had taken off. The latter 6 all new for the year.
I did manage a few record shots and a short video, so at least we had a record of these lovely birds:
Church of St. Peter and St. Paul
Church of St. Peter and St. Paul
Dawn looking out for Hawfinches and she found loads.
The tall trees at the back was their favourite perch.
Here are few shots of the target bird the Hawfinch
Hawfinch
Hawfinch
Hawfinch
Hawfinch
Hawfinch
Hawfinch
Hawfinch
Hawfinch
A Greenfinch
The male Sparrowhawk
The male Sparrowhawk
Birds Recorded here were: 1 male Sparrowhawk, Black-headed Gull, Herring Gull, Stock Dove, Wood Pigeon, Collared Dove, 1 Green Woodpecker, 1 Great Spotted Woodpecker, Pied Wagtail, Grey Wagtail, Dunnock, Robin, Blackbird, Redwing, Song Thrush, Goldcrest, Firecrest, Long-tailed Tit, Coal Tit, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Nuthatch, Treecreeper, Wren, Magpie, Rook, Carrion Crow, Jackdaw, Starling, House Sparrow, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Greenfinch and 21 Hawfinch.