Another day, another quest to find some Hawfinches…so off I headed to The Holy Trinity church in Street after seeing multiple reports, ironically, on Twitter. I spent an hour or so wandering round to no avail, but did meet a lovely chap from Mark also after the finches, when I decided to have a bit of a break for lunch.
Fully satiated with a cornish pasty, I returned to the churchyard to find another Hawfinch hunter. Together, we finally managed to locate the unmistakable shape of a Hawfinch at the top of a nearby tree, before it handily decided to fly closer and into one of the tall trees inside the church grounds. We got a wonderful view of this impressive, but shy bird (and a few record shots – nothing to qualify for my challenge!!), before it flew into some deep cover and sadly didn’t return into view whilst I was there.
On the way back to my car, I took the opportunity to take some shots of a Goldfinch flock feeding in a tree at the roadside. I know I’ve only just complimented the Hawfinch two seconds ago, but I’m not sure there’s a finer looking songbird in the UK than a Goldfinch.
I then stopped off for a walk around RSPB Ham Wall, and was fortunate enough to get a great view of the Ring-Necked Duck hiding in plain sight with a group of Tufted Duck. The Ferruginous Duck was also spotted onsite, but sadly at too far a range for my lens – however, it isn’t on my list, so the blow of not being able to get a good shot was softened somewhat!
And no blog post from Ham Wall would be complete without a shot of my favourite little poser…
Oli Gilman Photography 
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