I spent the 24th – 26th February in the Scottish Highlands with professional photographer, Pete Walkden. The plan was to photograph Crested Tit, but due to exceptionally mild weather, our plans had to change. Crested Tits will only come to feeding stations in cold weather. Once the weather becomes warm, they take to the tree canopy, as they much prefer to feed on insects, than they do on nuts and fat balls. So I decided that I would try for Ptarmigan and Red Squirrel, so Pete put the plan in place. The following few images hopefully show that my time […]
The start of this saga began on Tuesday 19th February 2019, when news broke across the British Twitching Scene, that a Tengmalm’s Owl had been discovered in a garden at Bixter on Mainland Shetland. The news was immense and by the end of the day the bird was still being watched. It was the first Tengmalm’s Owl to be found on Shetland in over 100 years. Apart from the suppressed bird at Spurn in 1983 and various other records since, this was the first modern day twitchable one. I couldn’t get for one reason or another in the first instance […]
A Firecrest has been present at Attenborough Reserve near Nottingham for nearly 2 weeks. I’ve made two trips to see it and have had some excellent views through binoculars, but so far have failed miserably to photograph it well. I made a trip to North Norfolk on 12th January, which turned out to be a cracking day with a total of 84 species. Highlights were 27 Shore Lark; small numbers of Long-tailed Duck; Red-breasted Merganser; Eider and Common Scoter; Red-necked Grebe; Marsh Harrier; Spotted Redshank & Greenshank; Avocet; Knot and Brambling. Year List moves on to 127 An adult female […]
My birding year kicked off with a day at Rutland Water in Leicestershire. Some good birds were seen during the day including 2 juvenile Shag; a Red-necked, 2 Slavonian and 2 Black-necked Grebes; a Great Northern Diver; a drake American Wigeon; 5 Smew; a female Scaup; a Jack Snipe and a Snow Bunting. The year list was on 69 at the end of the day. Various trips to my local patch at Staunton Harold Reservoir helped to get my site year list off the ground and at the same time added a few year ticks. The highlights being 5 Gadwall; […]