Jul 31 2015
New Species added to 2015 Year List in July = 3
Running Total for the 2015 UK So Far = 150
New UK Life List Birds In July= 1
A quiet month in the garden. A small group of Starlings eat daily, a Wren is an ever-present feature and is nesting in the Virginia Creeper at 1st floor level in the garden opposite our back garden. A juvenile Robin was seen once as were some juvenile Blackbirds. A small number of Goldfinch visit daily but it is generally quite quiet.
Jul 24 2015
Having watched the postings about a Red-footed Falcon being seen regularly just outside the gates of Chatterley Whitfield Colliery near Stoke the temptation was eventually too much and armed with a post code we set off one morning wondering if we stood any chance of finding it. As it happened, it could not have been more obliging and with a simple one hour drive we had added a new bird to our life list. Not only that but we also added another lovely bird to our year list.
Jul 22 2015
We filled in a spare Tuesday morning with a visit to Burton Mere Wetlands. It was a fairly overcast day but this can sometimes be useful at this site as bright sunlight causes a lot of glare. A quick look at the main scrape revealed the usual high numbers of Black-tailed Godwits nut there were also a couple of Ruff and a pair of Little Ringed Plovers. The ducks were all in eclipse plumage already. We had heard that there had been a Tawny Owl spotted by the fishing pond so we decided to have a look around there.
Jul 10 2015
With the end of the birding group term, we have been looking for interesting places to go for short days out. Recent reports of sightings at RSPB Old Moore encouraged us; a possibly breeding Little Bittern seen many times over several days, an American Wigeon and a Gull-billed Tern were all birds we would be very happy to see. Unfortunately we didn’t see any of these but we were not on our own and even several days later the Little Bittern had, like the other birds, not been seen since. On the positive side we did get a lovely “year tick”
Jul 03 2015
The year seemed to be rushing past so we took the opportunity of another fine day to visit the Woolston Eyes reserve to get our annual dose of Black-necked Grebes and, of course, a “year tick”. In this we were not disappointed and we also got a single Ruddy Duck, not a first for the year but a pleasant bird anyone and one we have come to expect to see from the last hide on our round trip of the site