Cove Community Woodland

Half an hour at Cove Community Woodland on the way home from work. I hardly ever go there, which is a DISGRACE, cos it gets good birds - a stand of tall trees on the coast just south of Aberdeen. Cove is where people who work in Aberdeen go to sleep at night. In the best tradition of Community Woodlands it's bordered by new housing estates and is full of little twiggy saplings planted as landscape work.

In fact this is my fourth visit. Cop this for a hit rate.... 1st time I went, it was for a Greenish Warbler Phylloscopus trochiloides. Second time was for a Hume's Warbler Ph. humei. third time was 'on spec', and I bumped into a Yellow-browed Warbler Ph. inornatus and a Barred Warbler Sylvia nisoria (the Phylloscs were getting a bit repetitive). I thought these last two were finds, but when I got home they were already on Birdguides. Grrrr.... you expect that sort of thing in Naaarfalk, but in underpopulated Aberdeenshire it's a bit unnecessary.


Today's birds... wellllllll..... in a mild north-easterly, today seriously lowered my average for CCW. Let's leave it at that. But I did hear a smoke alarm going off in one of the houses across the fields, and then smell what must have been someone's tea.

Dog walkers.... why? I say why? WHY go to the trouble of picking up your dog's crap, putting it in a wee plastic bag, and then throwing it into the bushes where it will stay forever? Us birders have to walk through that, pishing as we go.