Kendal

Juvenile kestrels

The weather was promising sun and heavy rain so I smothered myself in factor thingy, picked up my raincoat, got myself an old man's explorer ticket and headed North.

The Barrow train was running so I thought I'd have a go at connecting with the common rosefinch in Kendal. I'm never sure which are good omens and which are using up a day's luck but it was still a nice surprise to see a red kite as the train passed Whinny Brow Lane near Forton. Had we been going through Yorkshire I'd have recognised it in an instant, this side of the hills it took me a couple of moments to register it. There seems to be a dispersal of kites into the Northwest lately, there have been a lot of reports in Greater Manchester (usually the day after I've been somewhere). My first brown hawker of the year zipped down Carnforth's Market Street as I got something to drink for the wait for the 555 to Kendal.

On the A591

My luck ran even better: the bus was going on to Windermere so I could stay on a few stops and save myself a bit of walking. I got off at Ratherbone Road End, crossed the dual carriageway and wondered if this was wise. I'm not a big fan of walking along dual carriageways, even when there's a good mown (not scalped) walkway on the verge like this. The unmown verge was awash with cow parsley, yarrow and meadow geraniums and here and there there'd be wooded outcrops of rock covered in ferns and maples and foxgloves or topped with dwarfed gorse bushes. Great tits and blue tits fidgeted about in the trees as I passed.

The old Windermere Road 

Today's reports of the bird were on the old Windermere Road, an almost deserted remnant somewhat like an ox-bow lake as the A591 Windermere Road took a straight route past. I almost missed it: I turned onto Hollins Lane, looked at what looked like a farmer's pull-in and walked past it. I realised my mistake a hundred yards down the lane, retraced my steps and joined the right road. The last report of the bird singing was less than an hour previously so I had hopes. 

Along the old Windermere Road 

It's a short stretch of road, about four hundred yards long with a couple of houses and a farmhouse with a cluster of farm buildings at the Northern end, a big house at the Southern end and fields in between.

About a dozen each of swallows and house martins flitted about, the martins nesting on the houses and the swallows on the farm buildings. Tree sparrows flitted between the hedgerows and the farmhouse and goldfinches twittered about the treetops. 

Swallows

Three young kestrels were perched on a telegraph pole and spent the next hour doing clumsy practice flights between the farm buildings and the fenceposts at the other end of the field across the road.

I slowly paced the length of the road then retraced my steps to see if I'd missed anything. Dunnocks, great tits and wrens fidgeted in the hedges, blackbirds sang from the trees and a nuthatch sang from the trees a couple of fields away. I stopped and listened twice at a singing tree sparrow which was quite unlike the rather nasal 1-2 1-2-3 of a rosefinch. About twenty minutes in a family of greenfinches arrived and the male started singing from the telephone line. About quarter of an hour later a chaffinch started singing from one of the trees. 

Greenfinch

I had hoped that the arrival of the other finches presaged the appearance of the rosefinch but it was not to be. I paced up and down the road for an hour trying not to look like I was casing the farm buildings for a burglary. A couple of other birdwatchers drove up, gave it a couple of minutes and drove off. In the end I gave it up. If it can be such hard work seeing the spadgers I know are in my garden then there's lots of scope for not finding a similar sized bird in umpteen acres of farmland, assuming it hadn't flown off to one of the copses on the other side of the dual carriageway.

Walking along the A591

Walking along the A591

I walked back into Kendal, passing lots of woodpigeons and jackdaws in the fields and swifts, swallows and house martins overhead. Westmoreland was indecently picturesque, every glance over the fields looking like a British Railways Board poster.

Walking along the A591

Walking along the A591

I picked up the Manchester Airport train at Kendal, changing at Preston because so many airport trains had been cancelled they needed a longer train to accommodate everyone waiting on the platform. Other than that it was a straight run home.

Am I disappointed not to find the common rosefinch? Yes, of course I am. Was it a wasted day? Certainly not, I had a good walk in splendid scenery and saw plenty of birds along the way. Which is the whole point of the enterprise.

The old Windermere Road