Redstart below Scout Scar escarpment

Redstart singing on his display post

At last!  Each spring I have a date with redstart, traditionally the last week in April or the first week in May when they arrive from Africa.  Here,  below Scout Scar escarpment. For some years a male sang from a whitebeam rooted in the cliff-face and rising a little above it.  Fresh leaf-buds of whitebeam and a handsome male redstart.  I've spent hours listening to his song.  In the peace of the morning several males would be singing  to attract a mate, to defend a territory.   After that long migration the bird has a small summer territory, with  a nest hole in a tree or a niche in the rock of the cliff-face.   When walkers appear the bird vanishes below the cliff and returns when they've gone.  The last couple of years there have been fewer redstart singing and I'd hope to find them well before 15th May. 
Looking down into the tree-tops is a good  viewing point. Song comes from somewhere below the cliff-edge, resonating song.  The redstart sings to attract a female, sometimes with brief display flights before he resumes  the same perch.  Whitebeam and woodland trees are now in leaf which makes the bird much harder to find but, after a long and lavish  prelude of song,  I find him in the top of a dead tree.   
​ How beautiful he is!  I wonder at his history in this place.  Redstart,  the name highlights the glorious colour of his orange-red tail which the bird fans-out in display.  Redstart from Anglo-Saxon. I wonder when first mankind gave him that name, and it was recorded.   He's a small bird and  at some distance but somehow the light catches soft peachy feathers on his belly and a wavering fringe of blue-grey above his eye.
Once again, a cuckoo calls from somewhere on Helsington Barrows but faintly, so  I follow his call for a while and then head for Scout Scar escarpment where the flora of the cliff-face is at its best.
The first mountain everlasting appear, and cobalt blue flowers of milk wort.  Mouse-ear hawkweed adorns some of the anthills, taking advantage of the fine soil created by the ants. Leaves have fine hairs, soft as a mouse's ear.

For the Flora and Fauna of Scout Scar and Cunswick Fell go to the gallery ( link below) and scroll down.  There are images of Scout Scar escarpment redstart from previous years too.
            umbria Naturally
https://www.cumbrianaturally.co.uk › gallery

17th May     Passing the redstart territory, I stopped to look and listen. A blustery wind drowned out birdsong  and  in poor light  his  perch was lost amongst woodland trees.  
Once again the cuckoo was calling.
I found myself being seen-off by a pair of stonechat.   Both birds flitted from tree to tree,  encircling me.    If they'd kept quiet I might not have noticed them and would have walked straight on.   As it was, I stopped to admire them.   My second stonechat territory here this spring. 
One moment there were louring clouds, foretelling rain. Then bursts of sunlight.  I love days like this, so much more dramatic than cloudless blue skies.  There's a male stonechat in the dead tree, left of the leafy  tree on the right of the image.  With ash die-back and such a cloudscape the scene looks stark but constantly changing light, and challenge, is the reality of birding.