Saturday, December 07, 2013

Spurn Flooding

Extensive flooding at Spurn on Thursday night, bit surreal to see, I'll let the photos do the talking.


Fire brigade evacuating Kilnsea, bit surreal getting the riot act read to us whilst having a pint in a flooded Crown and Anchor and basically being told that we will more than likely die

Water coming over the road near Kilnsea Wetlands

River Humber on the road at the Crown

The Crown car park

The morning after the night before

The Riverside Carpark

Looking across the triangle from Borrow Pit bank, about the only bit of land not under water! Canal Scrape on the left of picture!

Water flowing off Clubleys

The view from Numpties looking north from the Warren

The ringing Lab

The Trap and Warren Compound

Barry's old house and the back of the Warren compound

The front of the Warren

A Shelduck sat in the sheep field at the Warren! Note the debris on the road 

High tide warning....

The beach now comes up to the back of the Warren, with the footpath to the seawatching hide wiped out

Where the road has been wiped out south of the Warren

The 'road'

3 Telegraph poles were wiped out

The new road is now under 3ft of sand off the beach!

The road torn to pieces

Weren't allowed any further south than here due to live wires! Before there were 3 posts where there were no dunes protecting the road, now there is 8 post lengths!

The southern corner of the triangle overlooking Canal Scrape, the sheep narrowly survived on a small island

A casualty of the flood

Stonechat overlooking a very wet Kilnsea Wetlands car park

View from Kilnsea Wetlands hide

Short-eared Owl in front of a knackered Beacon Ponds hide

A lot of extra water on Beacon Ponds!

Little Tern breeding habitat....

The flow of water leaving ponds

The hide took a bit of a battering!

The ditch where the Great Snipe was filled with gas cylinders and debris from the Campsite

The view across the car park at the Bluebell and Borrowpit!

The campsite was badly affected with several caravans wrecked

No londer a Sandy Beach!

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Parrot Crossbill Lickey Hills CP

So it turns out that yesterday one of the 15 Crossbills that my dad (Trevor Jones) photographed yesterday at the Lickey Hills CP is a male Parrot!

Being a first for the region! (Worcestershire, West Midlands, Warwickshire and Staffordshire) There might be a fair amount of interest in the bird this weekend so thought I would give some more details on the bird and where it is etc

The bird is at Lickey Hills CP, best place to park is at the visitor centre here http://goo.gl/maps/IxpXL as you go down Warren Lane the visitor centre is on the right as you get into the car park. Park up and then walk along the main track going away from the visitor centre heading south, as you go along this path about 100 yards theres a small pool on the left http://goo.gl/maps/yRw9w surrounded by large scots pine where the Parrot along with 20 Commons were feeding and then dropping down to the pool to drink, today they flew in had a quick drink and then flew off towards the visitor centre.

Best of luck to anyone trying to look for this bird, fingers crossed some better photos get taken!

Male Parrot Crossbill from yesterday (Trevor Jones)


Common Crossbills for comparison (Trevor Jones)

Photo taken today, probably the Parrot Crossbill but not conclusive photo/views (Trevor Jones)

Monday, September 16, 2013

Too long!

As I am now living at Spurn I find I have a lot less time to blog, thought I'd make the effort for a bird like the Great Snipe that has been around the last few days







And having read the Advanced Birding book I reckon it is a juv/1w due to the markings on the base of the outer tail feather, pale belly, fresh plumage and that it is ridiculously tame!




Monday, July 15, 2013

Recently

Been up to quite a bit recently so haven't really had time to do a blog post! 

I have managed to graduate, been to Scotland for a while working and various other bits!

For now here's some photos from a 2 day trip to Islay, highlights being 6 singing Corncrake, plenty of Chough, hundreds of Marsh Fritillaries, 4 Narrow Bordered Bee Hawk Moths, awesome views of Golden Eagle and lots more!

Juv Chough

Adult Whooper Swan 

Juv Stonechat, everywhere and doing well breeding wise it seems!

Marsh Fritillary, thanks to a tip off from Becky and Lorna from the Islay Natural History Trust and if your ever on the island go to the Museum! Check out the blog here http://islaynaturalhistory.blogspot.co.uk/

Small Copper

Early Northern Marsh Orchid I think

Narrow Bordered Bee Hawk Moth

Will update the blog as and when I find time to sort through masses of photos!

Saturday, May 11, 2013

2 Patch Ticks

Last night I had a walk round Hes East and 'found' a Sedge Warbler! Pretty rare here as the reeds are only just starting to get established, so only the 3rd patch record. Missed the previous 2, last August and Spring 2010, so was nice to get one back, they'll probably end up breeding next year!

This morning had another walk round the site with the clear highlight being an Adult Little Gull that I first picked up at 10:33 in flight at the west end of the site just as it started raining, it then had a bath and stayed around the western scrapes with c.15 Black-headed Gulls then flew off east once the rain stopped at 10:57 and we watched it disappear as a dot! This bird represents the second record for the site (my first) after I missed an adult and 1s last June.

These 2 take me onto 145 for the site!

Digiscoped with Canon S95

 Haven't said much about the Panasonic FZ-200 recently, still very impressed by it and these last 2 days highlight exactly why!

Got these shots of the Little Gull as I first picked it up flying round before it went down. Not amazing you can tell what it is though and it would get it accepted if I was jammy enough to get a Caspian Tern fly through!




Then managed this shot of the Sedge Warbler. Hopefully put this kinda shot into practice whilst kicking round in the iris beds on North Ron later this year! Could help to nail all sorts before it disappears into the vast iris beds up there!




Wednesday, May 01, 2013

sibilatrix technology


Today I saw a Wood Warbler at Strensall Common

I took this photo


Made this recording




and made this sonogram



Technology is amazing right?