I'm lucky enough to live in a good birding area near St Austell in Cornwall. There are vast stretches of wasteland where china clay has been extracted and much of this land goes undisturbed for years. There are bogs, streams, ponds and moors and plenty of farmland as well. This leads to a good variety of birds in our area. We have had some rarities over the years, a migrating Montagu's harrier stayed around for a few days and our local wildlife recorder was once lucky enough to see some baby grasshopper warblers leaving the nest. Oddly enough one of the most interesting birds appeared not in the wasteland but in the garden behind ours. A sharp eyed neighbour spotted a waxwing and this drew a lot of attention from local birders and from the local press. Amongst our regular visitors we have a colony of sand martins and now the blackcap has returned with it's melifluous song filling the air. The chiff chaffs are making their usual racket but they have to compete with large numbers of great tits and the twenty or so canada geese on the pond. There are really too many birds to list them all. If ever you are in the area take a walk around some of the clay tips and you won't be disappointed.
Trisha
