A late afternoon visit to Castlemartin Corse

We visited the Corse for a change to our normal routine late in the afternoon. We didn't see the marsh harrier noted earlier in the day by Richard C, but were happy to see two short-eared owls in the rushy tussocks near Starman's Hall.

"I can see you"!

Prior to that, a small flock of 16 stock doves was feeding up slope near one of the fence-lines. Here a flock of c. 20+ reed buntings was gathering before heading off to roost. Very few other small birds were around other than a few skylarks, meadow pipits and a few thousand starlings.

We didn't see many lapwings (c. 30-40 at most) but large numbers of jackdaws accompanied by rooks fed alongside the starling flock. Many more Jackdaws flew over the valley at dusk, perhaps heading to the roost at Stackpole - probably in excess of 1,000 overall.

A merlin briefly chased a chaffinch heading to roost in a scrub patch but it failed to connect and headed off to hunt along the reedbed.