Oct 31 2014
Our birding month was dominated by our holiday in Mallorca where we had some great life ticks, including Black Vulture, Booted Eagle and Eleonora’s Falcons. On the wetland front we had great views of an Osprey and life ticks of Purple Swamphen and Red-knobbed Coot. In general we visited some great sites and will most likely return one spring.
Oct 28 2014
The birding group day out this week was supposed to be to RSPB Conwy and Llanfairfechan but a combination of a poor weather forecast, school mid-term and some flu meant that we were reduced to a group of five and we decided to just have a morning at Marbury Park. It wasn’t a particularly outstanding morning but the weather held and it was quite warm and there was a nice feel of autumn in the air and there were some nice birds.
Oct 14 2014
The first birding group day our after our return from Mallorca was to RSPB Leighton Moss where we were hoping – as usual – that we might get views of Bearded Tits at the grit trays. On the plus side, October is the best month for this it seems, but on the negative side we have said that every time we have been there. I, personally, have only previously seen one pair there and that was in 2009 from the Public Hide; this despite many visits. So when we arrived around 10.15am we were, of course, thinking that we were a little late in the day to be lucky. How wrong we were !
Oct 13 2014
We flew out to Mallorca on the 29th September arriving in Palma where we stayed for four days. We didn’t do any birding there but some friends drove us north from Palma over the mountains and down to Port de Pollenca and during this drive we had great sightings of Black Vultures (Aegypius monachus) in the vicinity of Lluc Monastery high in the mountains. This is apparently the hot spot for this species.
Our hotel in Port de Pollenca was the Hoposa Uyal Hotel. which had the advantage of being only a couple of miles from S’Alufereta nature reserve which was our first birding opportunity there.