A half tweet

We have not been doing very well on the tweeting front, out here in the country, but there have been fly-catchers in and around small field spotted above, between our cottage - a barn (or shed) conversion - and the road. Presumably the field is grazed often enough for it to provide food and shelter for the flies.

On the afternoon that we arrived, fly-catchers were to be seen swooping low over the sun-lit field, probably a mixture of martens and swallows, although we were too far off to distinguish one from the other.

Then early one evening, seen from a different angle, they were to be seen flying around, high over the field.

And in-between times, the odd bird had been seen in the yard outside our cottage. But still no positive identifications. Pity I forgot to pack the trusty monocular. And the rather unsatisfactory National Trust freebie is in glove compartment of the wrong car; a compartment which I might say is never used for gloves. Funny how the name hangs in there.

PS 1: a clutch of buildings called Forestoke, to distinguish them from the various other stokes a little further to the west. Stokes on patches of decent land below the moor, but above the woods above the Dart, this last being in quite a steep valley at this point.

PS 2: a little later, I learned from a resident that swifts do not come to Forestoke for some reason. Although I do remember a memorable occasion, at dusk, watching swifts swing around the church tower at Slapton, a little to the south. And we have had some compensation for failure here by tweeting a buzzard this afternoon, over the woods by the Dart, from the grounds of Buckfast Abbey, a bird we have seen there from time to time in the past.

PS 3: this same resident did not care for the famous cuckoos of Holne Moor, in part because they tended to roost in the trees round about and make a great deal of noise.