Hawfinches

Despite resisting for years I've finally caved and twitched some off-patch Hawfinches. Having missed the Hawfinches in Colyton on November 5th I was hopeful we'd get some more but so far my searches around Colyton have produced little of interest. Best of it has been a thrush flock visiting the yews at St Andrew's for a week now, with many Redwings (hundreds in Colyton at the moment) and a few Fieldfares. I'm still hoping to find some Hawfinches of my own but with Shute being only a few minutes up the road it was worth a trip up there to see the birds which have now been present for almost a week.

They were generally fairly distant but it was nice to see my first ones with 4+ there. Hopefully I'll get some better pics of these if they hang around for a while longer; the bird pictured below was the most showy in the short time I could spend there but it was a rather scruffy individual...

Only other bird worthy of note was a Cattle Egret flying over Colyton at 15:00 whilst I was returning from the Hawfinch twitch!

Glossy Ibis and Great Egret (late post)

Sue Murphy found a Glossy Ibis on Colyford Common on 28th October and I caught up with it early the following morning and the day after. I heard a 3rd hand report that it has been seen as recently as Saturday 4th November too so perhaps it's still about but being elusive. Steve Waite had a Great Egret on 29th October and this one lingered for the rest of the day making a change from the usual brief visits of this species. Here are a couple of fairly distant snaps of both birds:

Of more interest is that there were 2 Hawfinches in Colyton on 5th November. Steve Waite found them early morning so I got some kit ready and popped straight out but unfortunately missed them by minutes. I tried again later and had a good look around a wider area but failed to find them. It's a bird I've yet to see (anywhere!) as I've been avoiding twitching any off patch in the hope that I'll see my first here...