Cricket List Lifer - Common Crane

I was padding up to bat yesterday when I noticed three birds circling to the north-west...and they werent the gull sp. as I expected but three long necked soaring birds. This left Crane or White Stork. The build was all wrong for storks - wings too broad, neck too long and thin. They were three glorious cranes and as they circled towards me a fourth joined from the west. I couldnt let slip to my team mates why I was taking ages to get my gear on for my first knock of the season but I was glowing inside. A self found first, a year tick, a village tick but who cares about that - Cranes are awesome birds. My feeling is that these are different birds to those which were around Tophill last week as they seem to have been tracked to Scotland. These birds were passage birds forced low by a sudden formation of storm clouds in a cloudless sky, huge anvils who no doubt bedevil migrating soaring birds. They drifted off to the northwest after about ten minutes and I managed a terrible practise innings.

Oh and included below are the promised pictures from the last beatrice survey.

Beatrice

The islay shots will follow tomorrow