Salcombe Hill

I've decided that Salcombe Hill is where I'm going to go birding in the coming months and hopefully I'll be able to see a few migrants if not something rare. It certainly isn't a well known birding spot but I don't see any particular reason why it shouldn't get it's fair share of spring and autumn migrants. When I looked it up it has only had one notable rare bird and that was a Black-headed Bunting (adult male) in 1951! I'm hoping the reason there are no reports of anything more recently is that nobody does any birding there. I went up there a couple of weeks back to take some photos of the habitat and I think it looks quite promising, only time will tell though.

When I first arrived I could see a snow shower approaching and took a few shots before taking cover in some holly trees.

It was pretty heavy too!

The snow shower moving off...

...towards Beer Head. The Cliffs in the foreground are at Weston.

 There's plenty of gorse and bracken.

Some pasture..

Some nice grassy slopes similar to the ones at Branscombe Mouth.

And for the days when I'm feeling energetic. I nice walk down to Salcombe Mouth.

This prominent rock is known as the 'frog stone' for obvious reasons.

There are also some nice wooded areas.

View over Sidmouth

Nice view of my house too.

There were lots of these in the gorse bushes.

All in all what's not to like, there's some great habbo, let's just hope I see some good birds. Fingers crossed!

We've been at our new home four just over four months now and although we haven't got our own garden my 'garden bird list' isn't too shabby at 35 species. Considering I can't put any feeders out I've been amazed at the amount of birds just feeding on naturally occurring seeds in the shrubs outside the flat.

The gardens out front. The buddleias are especially popular with Goldfinches in particular but just last week I was thrilled to see this feeding on them....

A gorgeous male Siskin.