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Jan 26 2014
Big Garden Birdwatch : 26 January 2014
Big Garden Birdwatch : 26 January 2014
It seems a long time since you could sit down and make a good list of birds in your garden during a sixty minute period. Last year was a total blank and this year was not a lot better though we did get a couple of nice ticks. We have been on holiday so have not being doing much garden observing of late so it is hard to say of the male Blackcap we saw has been around for a while or whether it was a brief visitor. We also got a Wren which was nice but, other than that, it was a pair of Blackbirds, a pair of Great Tits, A Blue Tit and a Woodpigeon. That was our lot. We did see a Redwing and some Goldfinches from our window but not in our garden.
Jan 04 2014
Parkgate High Tide : 4 Jan 2014
Parkgate High Tide : 4 Jan 2014
Our first outing of the year after the Christmas and New Year period was to Parkgate where there was due to be a high tide (10.1 metres) due at 1pm. We got there by 11.20am but all the parking spaces on the upper level of the old baths car park but we did get a spot on the lower level. Our preference for the top level was as a result of the bottom level flooding during the now legendary high tide of 5th December. At that high tide the winds had been so strong the tide quite high and the air pressure so low that the whole area had flooded. Would we experience the same this time ?
Jan 03 2014
Winter Redwings in Chorlton
Dec 30 2013
2013 Annual Summary
Summary 2013
We had several holidays or breaks where we had an opportunity to see birds we would not normally see or just to get our “year list” up to speed. These included our first guided birding during a visit to Norfolk and Cambridgeshire in March, a visit to Somerset and Dorset in May that enabled us to get to many wetland reserves, short trips in July and August to Angelsey and East Yorkshire and, best of them all, our trip to Scotland in October which took in visits to Montrose Basin, Loch of Strathbeg and environs and on our return a stopover at WWT Caerlaverock. In between we had three great days of birding in the Highlands of which more below. November was largely a birding group month for us as was the first half of December but in the last two weeks of December we went on a splurge of “twitching” that gave us some great year and life ticks.
Dec 30 2013
Summary December 2013
Summary December 2013
Garden
December started a little damp and temperatures were a bit up and down sometimes being quite mild and at other times cold. The garden birds are still finding food in the wild and the Blackbirds started the month still eating berries from the trees. The Robins and Tits are clearly still able to find some insects and you can see little columns of gnats spiraling above the middle of the lawn. On the 5th we had a brief visit by a Sparrowhawk eying up some Goldfinches. By the end of the month the weather had got much colder with strong winds some days but, even then, there seems to be quite a shortage of birds around. Even the Goldfinches are a bit on and off – surprising. We did get a small flock of Redwings a couple of gardens down and three Blackbirds are regularly visiting our garden now. The general impression, however, is of a dramatic lack of birds of any kind compared to most years ! A nice little end to the year was the visitation of a flock of forty Redwing on a tree at the end of our garden. They dropped down, six at a time, to feed on the Rowan Tree in our opposite neighbour’s garden. A single Mistle Thrush looked on a bit worried about the tree being degraded.
Dec 28 2013
Buff-bellied Pipit and Siberian Chiffchaff, Burton Marsh 28th December 2013
Buff-bellied Pipit and Siberian Chiffchaff, Burton Marsh 28th December 2013
Siberian Chiffchaff, Burton Marsh, Dec 2013
The reported presence of a Buff-bellied Pipit and a Siberian Chiffchaff at Burton Marsh was too much to resist and with just a few days of 2013 left I was determined to add another tick to my 2013 year list – indeed a it would be a life tick ! Being a Saturday we were pretty sure that we would be in the company of a few other birders but I wasn’t really expecting the eighty to one hundred birders that must have been there whilst we were.
We took the same route as we would have done if we were going to Inner Marsh Farm but we kept on the road as it bears right along the edge of the marsh (Station Road). We found a parking spot there and set up the scope. Continue reading
Dec 22 2013
The Pensarn Hoopoe : 22nd December 2013
The Pensarn Hoopoe : 22nd December 2013
Hoopoe Pensarn December 2013
I had been looking at the presence of this bird at Pensarn for quite some time on the bird alert services, Rare Bird Alert and Rare Bird Network, the latter of which I now access via Twitter. Both had been showing the bird for weeks after it had presumably been blown off its migratory journey to Africa due to very bad weather – it had landed at Castle Cove Caravan Park in Pensarn near Abergele where it seems to have been roosting under a caravan. The caravan is almost entirely unoccupied in winter so there isn’t much disturbance and the bird has been feeding quite well during its unscheduled stay.The worry is, of course, that it will not be able to get back on course and when the winter sets in and the ground freezes it is going to find it hard to feed. It may need to be rescued before it dies. With very high winds the day we went, and more to come, it is remotely possible that it could get back on track – but hard to imagine. In any case, for the moment it is doing well.
Dec 14 2013
Search for Crossbills, Broomhead Reservoir 14th December 2013
Search for Crossbills, Broomhead Reservoir 14th December 2013
Two barred Crossbill Broomhead Reservoir Dec 2013
I had been looking for weeks at the sightings of Two-barred and Common Crossbills listed on the Birdguides “Bird News Anywhere” site but had not yet found the time to get over to Broomhead Reservoir which is nearly at Sheffield. On a Sunday and the weather looking reasonable, we decided to give it a bash. I still was not sure whether I could rely on the Ross’s Goose at Marshside two days ago to give me the tick that took me over last years species count so this opportunity to add to my 2013 year list and, indeed, to possibly add two life ticks was too good to miss. Continue reading
Dec 12 2013
Visit to Marshside RSPB 12th December 2013
Visit to Marshside RSPB 12th December 2013
I had been reading about a sighting of a Baikal Teal that had been seen at RSPB Marshside on Sutton’s Marsh, viewable from the path and just behind the sewage works so we decided to drive up thereto see if luck would shine on us. Of interest, also, were reports of a Possibly/probably (?) escaped Ross’s Goose and a Long-tailed Duck. With three chances like that we thought we would bound to be lucky at least with one or more of them if not all. So it was with high hopes we set off on a not too bad day, weather-wise.
Dec 11 2013
Provisional Bird Group Venues for Winter Term
Provisional Bird Group Venues for Winter Term