On a lovely late Spring Thursday, the ‘Select' group of just 6 members of the Birding group, went to Yarner Wood and Emsworthy Mire near Bovey Tracey and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine whilst we looked for our target birds. The first ones soon appeared, the Pied Flycatchers (or as somebody Spoonerised, Fried Pie Catchers). The pair was flitting about so we didn’t get that good a view of them at this point. But at the top of the wood we had better views of a pair going about their parenting duties catching insects for their young.

We then crossed the road to visit heath land at Trendlebere Down hoping to see warblers..... I don’t think we saw any but we heard the Willow Warbler and Chiffchaff, some good views of Stonechats and we heard a far-off Cuckoo. The mystery bird ........well that will have to remain a mystery as we couldn’t put a name to it.

After enjoying an alfresco lunch a’side the babbling Yarner stream we made our way to Emsworthy Mire where last year we saw many Cuckoos. This afternoon we came away only hearing it a few times and only in the far distance except once much louder which gave us the impetus to go across another field to see if we could see it but we left a without being able to give it a tick.

But we were able to give another of our target birds a jolly big tick when we saw a pair of Redstarts not far away in a tree and wow, isn’t the male is a striking looking bird. We were able to have a good look at him. This brought our list up to 18, not many for this time of year but on Dartmoor you get some “A” list birds...and some surprisingly late blooming bluebells.