UKC

Just back from a lovely day on the slate and as I was bringing up my second on Combat Rock (Watford Gap area) when three twitchers walked past. One of which shouted up to us that there were rare birds nesting near where we were.

I checked the guide book when I got down and the only area I knew of that was restricted was North Wall area, which by anyone's standards is not near Watford gap area!
I walked over to them and had a polite chat about what information I had and what he might know that we didn't.

He wasn't very forthcoming with information, only that there were a Nesting pair of Choughs about 50m to the right of Combat rock.

He wouldn't tell us exactly where the nest was for some reason about that we might tell an egg thief or something.

I mentioned that we use (this) an internet forum to keep track of bird issues as the information does change and I hadn't seen anything.

I told him that he should happen contact the BMC but he seemed a little clueless as to who or what they were!

I'll be contacting Elfyn tomorrow regarding this but I just wanted to see if anyone else knows about these Choughs close to Watford gap or is that man talking crap?

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

Yes there are choughs, but they nest nowhere near, in an area that would be rather too "adventurous" to visit, and they've coped so far with us lot.

Mark Dicken

In reply to hoseyb: yeah, i got a reply from Elfyn about it. The guy in question was obviously just wanting to impress his friends he was showing the birds to.

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

You've gotta watch those twitchers - they really don't like climbers, they think we are all egg thieves!