Patch Birding - Cranbrook, Devon, UK

It's the beauty of patch birding, that a species that is very commonly seen by much of the UK population every week, can be a bit infrequent on a patch. This is the case for me and Feral Pigeons . I live about 5 miles northeast of Exeter, in a new town surrounded by countryside. We have few places for Rock Doves (the species name for a feral pigeon ) to nest, as they preferred rocky cliffs, but many a concrete ledge on a city suffices in modern times. We also don't have much of a town centre with shops / cafes / takeaways for them to forage among dropped crumbs of commutators. As such, I often only see Feral Pigeons on the patch among the vast number of Wood Pigeons and Stock Doves that descend following the grain harvest to pick over the spillages in the crop fields in August and September. So this week it was a nice surprise to see two un-ringed Rock Doves (Feral Pigeons) on the morning of Wednesday the 25th February picking around Ford Farm Farmyard, with the male displayi...

With half term it was a fairly quiet week, with time off work looking after my daughter, the patch walks this week were not as frequent as typical. With no new species added to the 2026 patch list. On Monday the 15th a loop around Rockbeare in the morning yielded a good number of fairly regular of birds, with the march towards breeding evident. Plenty of pairs in suitable habitat, and I think I may have found the site a pair of Long Tailed Tits are nest building.  Black Headed Gull in flight at Seaton On Tuesday the 17th, my daughter was in nursery, and I was off work so I had a rare chance to go of my patch and spend a morning watching birds. I chose to head down to Seaton , as I'd been hoping to get to the bowling green in the town and see the overwintering Black Redstarts and Lesser Whitethroat. I arrived nice and early so went down to Seaton Wetlands Black Hole Marsh for the sunrise on a beautiful / cold morning, and see if I could pick up the Western Cattle Egrets that have...

I made it out on the patch 5 times this week, and had a couple of dry dog walks! 4 of my trips were around the Cranbrook part of the patch, and a couple of these only short sections (fitting into a lunch break), but on the morning of Saturday 14 February, on a day off walk I had a wonderful and fruitful walk around the Rockbeare section (nipping through the closed road at the northern end of Gribble Lane). The theme of this week has definitely been a notable increase in breeding behaviours. In addition to the songs of various male birds which have been getting going for a few weeks now, I've been able to add some other observations about the Robin courtship display seen last week.  This week I've seen "active" courtship between Collared Doves , although as with many courtships from the dove / pigeon group it feels like mild avarian harassment. The males basically pursue the females while strutting around, bobbing their head and cooing loudly, the females fly away, onl...

The common theme for 2026 was repeated, with it again being a wet week where I pulled over 40 mm of rain from my rain gauge, to add to the 221 mm that fell in January. However, this week I did manage my biggest dog walk (a 2 hour effort) in the dry, and had a cracking garden visitor! On Sunday the 1st Feb, I planned to explore much of the Cranbrook part of the patch during my work lunch break. The dog had his own ideas and disappeared off for 20 mins curtailing the ground I could cover. A fairly unremarkable walk, with the only oddity being the largest flock of Meadow Pipets  (35) I've seen since October (when they were enjoying the recently tilled fields). They were within the Great Meadow, picking over the recently flooded patches. Working in the office in Exeter meant no daytime walk on Monday 2nd, so the next was a very soggy lunch time walk on Tuesday 3rd with either light rain or light drizzle near continuous through Rockbeare skirting the edges of the manor estate. I did man...