Bird song on Doverow Hill

First event of the year for the Stroud Wildlife Survey Group, and Jen was leading a bird walk around Doverow Hill. We parked in Westrip, and approached the hill from that side rather than Stonehouse. The main skill in bird spotting is to listen for them, something which I possess zero skills at. But we have the Merlin aop to assist and Jen is able to tell us how to distinguish the various sounds and also short cut hints for remembering them. The birds we spotted straight away were the green woodpecker, song thrush, great tit, dunnock, wren and blue tit. We had also been given the location of a tawny owl nest in a dead tree, but we couldn’t see any evidence of one. After a while of traversing the hedgerows at the bottom, we then made our way up to the top. Twisting beech tree limbs There’s quite a spectacular set of trees at the top of Doverow hill. At one time it was a private plantation and as a result has a lot of interesting species. There’s a giant beech with limbs looping all…