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Another amazing day at RSPB Minsmere. A slow start, but boy did it soon get exciting.

On the scrape there was a festival of gulls with great black-backed, lesser black-backed, herring, black-headed, Mediterranean, Caspian, yellow-legged and kittiwakes (thanks are due to local RSPB volunteer for help with ID and this article from Bird Guides.) We also saw black-tailed godwits, redshank, Canada geese, oystercatchers, avocets,  shelduck, common terns as well as ringed plovers on the beach.

Before reaching the Bittern hide we also saw grey heron, greylag geese, great crested grebe, mute swans, little egret, coots, moorhens, sand martins, swallows, a reed bunting and great spotted woodpecker with young.

However, the main spectacle of the day was a display of marsh harriers and hobbies right in front of us at the Bittern hide.

Before the day was over we even saw Cetti’s warblers (but I was not quick enough to grab a photo).

Click below for a gallery of a selection of my photos from today.

So lovely to be back at RSPB Minsmere in Suffolk on the east coast of England even though we only had time for a brief evening walk out along the North Wall to the East hide.

We were very sad to see that the sand martins had abandoned their cliff nests near to the entrance but we were not too disappointed as apparently they had moved to the nearby Dunwich Cliffs and we still saw hundreds of them them dashing across the reed beds enjoying their late evening feed.

The abandoned sand martin nests

Sand martin

We saw two types of tern (I hazard a guess at common tern and sandwich tern),

thousands of  black-headed gulls, and other gulls including a mediterranean gull. There were lots of waders on the scrape (and an incredible din); however, it was quite difficult to see clearly how many there were as we were facing straight in to the sun but we could certainly make out avocets (one of our favourite birds).

On the way back we could hear bearded tits and Cetti’s warblers and saw male and female pheasants. Not a raptor in sight though, but it was a good start to our week.

Click below for gallery of photos.

There wasn’t much bird activity on a Sunday afternoon walk through Lower Woods Nature Reserve near Wickwar until right at the end when a Kestrel was conserving its energy by watching carefully for prey from the telegraph wires.

A couple of years ago we had stayed on Skye on our way to the Outer Hebrides and thought that it would be fun to explore Skye and its near neighbour the island of Mull.

The trip was a great success with magnificent landscapes and (in the end) plenty of wildlife to see and photograph.

Here I have displayed some of the wildlife we saw but I have made a blog of our trip (see index) where (for our benefit mainly) there is a brief description of our itinerary and some photographs of some of the magnificent scenery and the wildlife.

The highlights were the white-tailed eagles (sea eagles), the divers (such as great northern divers, red-throated divers, red breasted-merganser, eider duck),  oystercatchers, hooded crows, siskins, wheatears and a twite.

I have tried to provide links to the craft centres and different venues we visited but need to work more on this. Amendments and additions will come soon.

Female white-tailed eagle

Female white-tailed eagle

Male white-tailed eagle

Male eider duck

Buzzard

Male and female eider duck with accompanying gull

Hooded crows

Wheatear

Twite

Siskin

Great northern diver

A dipper in flight

Itinerary

Days 1 & 2 – Friday 12th/ Saturday 13th May

Day 3 – Sunday 14th May

Day 4 – Monday 15th May

Day 5 – Tuesday 16th May

Day 6 – Wednesday 17th May

Day 7 – Thursday 18th May

Day 8 – Friday 19th May

Day 9 – Saturday 20th May

Day 10 – Sunday 21st May

Day 11 – Monday 22nd May

Days 12 & 13 – Tuesday 23rd/ Wednesday 24th May

A morning’s birding on the Severn Estuary: I started at Aust Warth but could only see a whitethroat so I moved on to the Pilning wetland in the hope of seeing the reported  black-winged stilt.

Whitethroat

Other birders reported that it had been showing well at the front of the ponds but it had now moved to the back. I was able to locate it by going down the lane leading off the main path (where I heard a cuckoo) but it was still quite some way off. The one benefit was that I was now out of the cold wind; unfortunately the light was not good.

Black-winged stilt

There were also lapwings (6), pied wagtails (3), little ringed plovers (6), and a greenshank not too far off. On the way back I saw 3 male reed buntings and another whitethroat.

Lapwing

Greenshank

Pied wagtails

Little-ringed plover

Reed bunting

I counted a dozen swallows too.

A flock of 9 yellow wagtails were reported but I didn’t see them. There were shelduck and tufted duck on the wetlands and more shelduck (6) on the warth and on the estuary.

On the way home I stopped at Aust again and had a very good view of a kestrel.

Click below for gallery of photos from this morning.

Just a small window of opportunity this morning to get some fresh air and enjoy nature and I was well rewarded in the hour and a half on my walk around Duchess Pond in Stoke Park, Bristol. Quite chilly to start but it soon warmed up especially with so much activity.

I saw 4 chiffchaffs and a wood warbler (probably feeding some young), a long-tailed tit, a reed bunting, a whitethroat, a wren, 6 swifts flying around (but not coming close to the pond), a heron and a cormorant fishing quite successfully, 4 Canada geese and a good number of mallards (but only one duckling on view). On the small pond there were 2 coots and a moorhen and in the meadows behind masses of crows and jackdaws.

There were white butterflies and a tortoiseshell butterfly and a fisherman who had caught an eel. As well as the beautiful hawthorn blossom there were yellow and purple irises around the pond.

ChiffChaff 

Wren

Long-tailed tit

Reed Bunting

Whitethroat

Wood warbler (I think)

Cormorant swallowing a fish

Grey Heron grabbing a fish before the cormorant eats them all

A bee making the most of the yellow irises.

The only duckling to be seen

A distant swift

Moorhen

One of the two coots on the small pond

Click below for my gallery of photos from this morning

More flora than fauna on our walk through Lower Woods Nature Reserve (http://www.gloucestershirewildlifetrust.co.uk/reserves/lower-woods). We could hear chiffchaff and other warblers but could only see robins and blackbirds. It was a gloomy day but the bluebells and wild garlic looked magnificent. A beautiful walk.

Just a brief walk around Stoke Park on a gloomy, chilly morning: the highlight was a Grey Heron which caught half a dozen fish in quick time. I also saw a Robin, a Whitethroat (?), a Long-tailed Tit, a Blackbird, a Cormorant and 2 House Martins.

Reports of a Short-eared Owl took me to Aust on the Severn Estuary. No luck with the SEO but sight of a female Marsh Harrier as I arrived and then close-ups of a pair of Kestrels. A Reed Bunting then took the same perch once the Kestrels vacated it.

I then went back to New Passage. 8 Shelduck on the estuary and on the Warth, 2 Canada Geese and a Pied or possibly White Wagtail. No Little Ringed Plovers on the flash but then I spotted 2 at the back of the wetlands. There were also broods of ducklings and 2 Coots with chicks.

2 Little Egret flew in and 4 Lapwing displayed around them.

On returning home I then had a quick walk around Eastville Park. It’s so sad to see the resident Grey Heron struggling with some sort of netting around its bill. Hopefully help will come tomorrow. Good to see a Grey Wagtail too but no sign of Kingfishers for ages.

Click to see the 2 galleries of photos:

Another marvellous day out on the Somerset Levels: this time with Allan Chard, another birder from my local patch in Bristol. He took me for my first visit to RSPB Greylake, where I was hoping to see Sedge or Reed Warblers.

There were glimpses of Lapwig, Little Egret and Sand Martin before all the excitement started. I’m afraid my hearing let me down as Allan announced something of interest and starting shooting away and, whilst I was looking for Warblers at the top of the reeds, he was taking great shots of a stoat on the path in front of us. Before I had worked out what was going on the stoat was almost standing on our toes and my feeble efforts to get a shot were all out of focus. But I was not disappointed as within seconds, on seeing two other photographers snapping away, we soon realised that there was a Sparrowhawk on the far side of a pool and I got some good shots (which were a first for me).

After Greylake we went on to RSPB Ham Wall. The highlights here were Great White Egrets, a brief glimpse of Marsh Harriers, Glossy Ibis, a Great Crested Grebe chick, Shovelers and Pochard.

After a quick bite to eat (thanks Allan for sharing your lunch) we crossed the road to Shapwick Heath.  Here we had good views of Hobbies, Cattle Egret (11 in all), Little Egret,  Great White Egret,  Black-tailed Godwits, Greylag Geese and goslings, House Martins, a Buzzard and amazingly close views of a Marsh Harrier. Plenty of butterflies around too.

It was quite cold but bright throughout the day and, although I have probably forgotten many of the species we saw, we had a fantastic day’s birding. And as well as Bitterns booming we heard our first Cuckoos,

3 galleries of today’s photos

I suppose it was clutching at straws trying to photograph birds in such dismal light but hey ho!

Not only was it very gloomy on the Severn Estuary but it was very cold too, especially  after the lovely warm weather we have had recently.

A couple of local birders suggested I might need a very large flash but were nonetheless helpful in pinpointing some Little Ringed Plovers and Wheatears. In the end I only managed to locate one of each species. The LRP was a first for me.

I love seeing the Northern Wheatears: Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss in their very enjoyable book “Wonderland” describe them as “… crispness personified, natty dressers without a feather out of place. Soft grey, buff and peach tints contrast with dark wings and glaring white rumps, from which they get their English name: wheatear is a garbled version of a much older name meaning ‘white arse’”.

Migration is an amazing phenomenon but even more so when you consider (again taken from “Wonderland”) “many Wheatears breeding in northern climes leave their wintering grounds south of the Sahara, cross the desert and head through Europe to the British Iles before flying across the North Atlantic via Iceland to Greenland and beyond. On the way back in September, fattened by Arctic insects and with a following wind, they can migrate from Greenland across the ocean to south-west Europe in a thirty hour non-stop journey of 2,400 miles.”

I saw a distant Buzzard and a Little Egret made a brief appearance on the flash before deciding too that it was much too cold. The Sand Martins on the wetlands gave a good display but really it was much too dark for me to photograph – but it doesn’t stop you trying.

I also met a couple from Yorkshire who were “down” (to use their words) continuing with large sections of the British Coastal Path; this morning they had come from Portishead and were about to cross the Old Severn Bridge into Wales to catch a bus back to Bristol so that they could join up with some friends tomorrow to walk some of the Mendips. The husband was keen to talk “cameras” and before he had had his say his wife was already 800 yards ahead, clearly having suffered similar jargon-riddled conversations before.

As well as the large number of Sand Martins (50+) there were large flocks of Starlings (50+) and 4 Pied Wagtail and small numbers of House Sparrows in the lanes.

An explosion of blossom and ducklings at Duchess Pond in Stoke Park.

These are the first ducklings I have seen this year. There were 3 Mallards with 11, 10 and 3 ducklings. Does it mean the third one has already lost many of her brood?

Full steam ahead

A proud mum

Dad seems to have done all his work

I believe this is a St Mark’s fly – so named as it comes out about St Mark’s day (the 25th April) – also known as black gnats , hawthorn bugs, love bugs.

Only 1 Moorhen and 1 Coot on the pond … and a flyover Magpie …

All sorts of life feeling the warmth of the sun

A Speckled Wood butterfly

Just so cute 

Click below for all the photos from a short trip around the pond