We headed down to Great Hampden in Buckinghamshire with up to five hawfinch being reported there from the middle of the week - there had been a suggestion four had flown off, and only one was seen on Friday - perhaps coincidentally four were recorded down the road at Steps Hill ...
We parked by St Mary Magdalene Church and set out to where a pin had been dropped on a map by an observer the previous day. The wind was fortunately not cold, and the jays and pheasant kept us company. We had limited views of birds in the hedge and trees beyond and tried to leave space - we were a bit confused by the information of the birds being in hornbeam - although there were two trees, they both seemed unlikely spots - we watched and waited regardless. After a while we circled round and came across red kites, kestrel, a large flock of chaffinches, and of course more jays.
After an hour and a half we thought we'd expand our search and went for a look along a footpath through the woods. Almost immediately we had a goldcrest above and could hear nuthatches to our right. Other than a few tits and a wren we found little bird life in the wood.
We reached the opposite side of the wood and looked down the slope seeing two flocks of doves, red kites, buzzards, three black-headed gulls and a few pheasants; in a very distant hedge there was also a roe deer. Being a ‘fun guy’, I like seeing fungi when I am out walking at this time of year - I was pleased to come across some very large bracket fungus on a tree on this side of the wood - I climbed onto a fallen moss-covered trunk and took a photo out into the valley.
We returned through the woods and back to look at the hornbeam once more - no joy. We turned back to the cars to grab a coffee but just short of the gate to the cars we stopped to watch redwing feeding in the yew and had three nuthatches (and three jays) pass through. A couple of horse riders talked to us as the made their way down the path and, as they opened the gate to Hampden House, a couple of birders came through the other way. It took just a few tens of seconds to find out we'd probably been looking in the wrong place - we followed them along the footpath, across a field, and through a copse. On the other side we stopped and viewed another copse which is apparently favoured by the hawfinches (crucially containing a hornbeam) - we spent about half an hour around here before the other birders moved on and left us to our vigil.
Another ten minutes passed and there was sight of any birds arriving or leaving the copse and so we decided to make tracks. Kevin Heath got the edge of the trees when I noticed a bird high in the branches above … very high above. A quick look through my bins and I called him back- it was our bird! We took a few photos and were joined by a young lad that said he had taken up birding recently and had come to see the hawfinch - but didn't have any bins himself. The bird was silhouetted against the sky and so we popped to the other side of the trees and took a few from there for good measure. Another couple of birders (we presume husband and wife) appeared to join the views. A further ten minutes passed, and the bird eventually dropped down into the hornbeam at the end of our copse and out of view.
We said our goodbyes and eventually got back to the cars for our long overdue coffee break - we watched redwing, fieldfare, jays again, and finches as we chatted and walked around the church. It was getting towards lunchtime and so made our way back to Banbury happy with our mornings work.
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