Its worth a visit
Lapwings begin to gather and young Shellducks take to the sky.
17/07/2018 17:30Its a pleasant surprise when you check up on something and all is better than expected.I was checking up on a brood of young Shellduck this morning finding them in their usual spot and still 8 in number when to my pleasant surprise the whole brood just took off sand flew a hundred yards or so into another safe location.This is the first time to my knowledge Shellducks have bred in the Dewsbury area and its nice to see the whole brood making it to the flying stage.
Young ducklings are still appearing on the river Calder between Dewsbury and Ossett with 3 new broods of Mallard this morning totaling 20 ducklings.
Its good to see a Barn owl inspecting a newly erected nesting box at Ossett this morning and I hope this is another new bird to the area.Our resident pair of Barn Owls are busy feeding young ouside the nesting box at the moment and these can usualy be seen hunting aroung the Hostingley Farm area between the canal and the River Calder.
Lapwings are starting to assemble around the Dewsbury Sewage Works area with 36 birds being present there at the moment hopefully this number will increase in the coming weeks.
It is very encouraging to see our local Sand Martin colony so busy at the moment and this morning I counted some 72 nesting burrows not all being used but certainly a good percentage of them have birds going in and out feeding young.
A pair of Kingfishers have fledged 3 youngsters this week with one of t5he youngsters sitting at the entrance to the nesting burrow accepting food during the last 3 days.
A pair of Common Buzzards where displaying over Mill Bank Thornhill this morning.
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