Sunday 4th December was a stunning day, crisp, blue skies and sunshine, a great day to play around with photography at one of my local birding patches. Melbourne Pool is an OK place for common ducks and gulls and there is also the chance of something else turning up. I really wanted to try and […]
It is looking like this winter will be another Waxwing Year, as many thousands of these beautiful birds have arrived into Britain during the last 6-8 weeks. Most of the big numbers are still located in Scotland and the NE Coastal areas, but smaller flocks have managed to arrive further south in recent weeks. A
Not done a great deal of late. Last weekend (6th November) I visited the North Norfolk coast to see, more than anything else, a large flock of Shore Lark. Apparently the flock at Holkham Gap had increased to 68 over recent weeks, making it one of the largest flocks in Britain for many years, maybe
In recent weeks I have discovered a large concentration of Little Egrets at my local patch, Staunton Harold Reservoir. Up to 20 birds have been present, (3rd largest flock in the Trent Valley so far this year) but there seems to be a consistent flock of around 15 birds sticking together. Fish fry must be
Saturday 29th October was spent in the North East – Skinningrove in Cleveland and South Shields in County Durham. A couple of good birds were on offer including one that I had not seen before, a sub-species of Black Redstart. A first winter male Eastern Black Redstart, of the race semirufus, had been faithful to the rocks
Well in all my years of birding, I’ve never known an autumn like this one. There has been an unprecedented arrival of Siberian vagrants right across the country from Shetland down to the Isles of Scilly and the birds keep arriving. I’m guessing that September and October will also go down as the best months
With continuous easterly winds blowing from Siberia and Scandinavia it was inevitable that our coast line would soon see the arrival of rare birds in good numbers. The question was though, what vagrants would turn up? Shetland was taking most of the glory, as is often the case during late September into October. One of
The Pallas’s Warbler is a tiny little gem that is a rare migrant to our shores. They often arrive after large influxes of Yellow-browed Warbler, as have occurred during September 2016. A stunning little warbler that is always worth a trip to see, as was the case this Sunday (9th Oct) when several arrived on
