Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Spurn trip in pictures

Spent a few days at Spurn last week, fairly quiet but a wader ringing session was good and was nice to play with new camera. Off to Morocco/Western Sahara soon so will post about that when I'm back.
























From Hes East, first photograh of a Water Rail from the site!

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Brents

Photographed this Brent Goose at Spurn on Friday (23rd)

Seemed to be hanging about with a family of Dark-bellied Brents but is it a bernicla or has it got a bit of nigricans in it?

Opinions welcomed








Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Gloucestershire

Went down to Gloucestershire yesterday with a few targets to see.

Started off at the Dartford Warbler near Cheltenham which showed incredibly well! We arrived to this amazing little site that is basically a park in Cheltenham with an area sown with a wild flower mix where this bird was following a pair of Stonechat around. Showed really well at times even feeding in the nearby Sycamore trees several times! Shockingly the first Dartford I've seen for 12 years! So really enjoyed this bird.



Well overdue at Spurn, this year?!



  Feeding in Sycamore and sub-singing away




Then went onto Slimbridge WWT where the female Ferruginous Duck was in the Asian Pen! Really strange watching it swim around with the captive Baer's Pochards and getting chased by White-headed Ducks!





It then proved it wasn't part of the collection and flew off to the South Lake





We then toured around the hides, really enjoyed the large amount of birds there, so much to look at! The Tack Piece is really impressive with ton's of ducks, waders, swans and geese all over it!


Finished the day at Hawling where 2 Short-eared Owls put on a decent display despite us arriving a bit too late as well as a Barn Owl.