Finningley

Mute swan and cattle by Fiveeighths Road 

I decided that I needed an adventure to boost morale. A black-winged pratincole had been showing very well for the past few days just outside Finningley near Doncaster and the public transport looked very doable so I headed over thataway. As always the tricky bit involved getting to Oxford Road and making the connection but I got to Doncaster safely just before lunchtime, walked over to the bus stop indicated by Google, (the centre of Doncaster has horribly signed bus stops by the way) and half an hour later the 357 dropped me off at its terminus on Wroot Road in Finningley.

By Croft Road 

It was a short walk to the corner of the main Bawtry Road and not very much longer to Croft Road, the beginning of the path down to where the pratincole had been sighted. The couple of dozen cars parked at the top of the road confirmed a twitch was on. There's a look to cars parked for a twitch that I can't explain but immediately identify.

I walked down the road, encountering smiling people on their way back telling me the bird was showing well. It was a muggy, cloudy lunchtime and the sun was busily burning through the clouds, it promised to be a warm afternoon. The large whites and ringlets were already fluttering about the long grass along the verges. Blackbirds, blackcaps, dunnocks and chiffchaffs sang in the trees, greenfinches flitted about and magpies bounced about in the adjoining fields.

The end of the metalled road was marked by a workmen's cabin and a locked barrier. Luckily I'd seen enough people limbo dancing under the barrier to know to carry on beyond. What looked like an old quarry pond by the cabin was well-stocked with coots and black-headed gulls and a pair of dabchicks hinneyed at each other. The first damselfly of the day, a blue-tailed damselfly, distracted me as I was negotiating the barrier.

Fiveeighths Road 

The maps tell me that the rough path beyond the barrier is Fiveeighths Road and it forms the local boundary between Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. It felt like it was going on forever but the journey wasn't much more than half a mile, just dead straight. Along the way there were lots of singing chiffchaffs, wrens and reed buntings, goldfinches twittered about and blackbirds and a pair of bullfinches rummaged about in the bushes. The ringlets and large whites were joined by meadow browns and a red admiral and common blue damselflies zipped by at ankle height.

By Fiveeighths Road 

A large pool hove into sight on the Nottinghamshire side of the road. A herd of mute swans loafed on the bank with a herd of cattle. A lot of coots and a few mallards and tufted ducks drifted about on the water. I could hear but not see a curlew, an oystercatcher and a few lapwings on the far bank with some coots were a bit easier.

I was told to walk down as far as a big yellow gate and the pratincole could be seen from the end of the pool there. I got there and could see that the road got wilder and more heavily wooded further along, confirmed by a lot of gatekeeper butterflies and speckled woods in the verges. There was a scrap of reeds by the roadside, enough for a sedge warbler to sing from. But there were no people. A chap walked in from the field by the side. "Just round the corner, mate, showing nicely." Thank you sir.

There's a black-winged pratincole in that there grass

Just around the corner in the field were a group of people scanning the far end of the pool. There were constant to-ings and fro-ings but there were never more than a dozen people there at a time which is a nice size for this sort of thing. A big twitch isn't fun. The pool was a bit distant, the naked eye could pick out black-headed gulls and the dark objects were probably the lapwings I'd been hearing. A quick scan with the bins confirmed these and found a few mallards and a redshank, too. "It's been showing well but it's sat in the grass at the moment and you can't see it," I was told.

Any fears that it might have been one of those days was almost immediately quashed when a bird rose from the grass and started wheeling round. I've never seen any variety of pratincole before so I wasn't sure what to expect. Photos and pictures tell you to expect a swallow-winged wader with hardly any bill but the immediate impression I got was of a large pale brown swift. It was an odd shade of brown, too, a cold olive tan or greyish yellow ochre that I've only ever seen on cars in the 1970s. The black underwings were very apparent as it wheeled around, rising above the trees on the horizon and the next minute skimming over the water. Distance and the speed of the bird were too much for my reflexes and the camera's response time. As quickly as it had appeared it disappeared into the grass. A few minutes later it was back again and just as big a challenge to keep track of. A very nice bird. And a tip of the hat to the patch watcher who found it, this isn't the sort of site you just stumble across.

Lapwing and black-headed gull
I could manage to get a photo of some of the supporting cast.

I made my way back with a couple of whitethroats joining the chiffchaffs along the way. I stopped at a gate overlooking an island of drowned willows in the pool and had a scan round. I was joined by another chap who said he'd been told there was a black-necked grebe here. "I've found a few dabchicks," I told him, "But there's a bird in those willows at the end of the island that could be it." The bird in question had been puzzling me as it looked not right for a dabchick but I couldn't get a good view of it, either it was obscured by willow twigs or it popped up from underwater into a brightly sunlit patch of water and was straight back down again. It was the length of time underwater that was leaning me to think it was a black-necked grebe. At last a grebe bobbed up in a dark patch of clear water and was immediately identifiable as a dabchick. So I was kidding myself then. Well no, a readily identifiable black-necked grebe then bobbed up in the middle of a lot of willow twigs behind and bobbed back down again almost immediately.

A further scan of the pool added pochard and little egret to the day's tally.

The walk back to the bus stop was considerably shorter than the walk in. I had ten minutes' wait for the next 357 to Doncaster and half an hour for my train back to Manchester. We were running a bit late and I became concerned that I wouldn't have time to get a ticket for my train home — my monthly travel card ran out on Sunday and my local train was ready to leave Oxford Road the minute the train I was on reached Deansgate, giving me about a minute to make the connection. Then I remembered I had eight free single tickets in my pocket, compensation for cancelled trains, so that was all right then.