Our annual trip to the Scottish Highlands commenced on 25th April 2013, returning on 29th April 2013. Usual stuff and usual fantastic B&B accomodation. The weather throughout the trip went from atrocious, to spring like, with some warm, albeit brief, interludes of sunshine. Funnily we managed to dodge the bad weather and never got wet but did […]
This building in Vardo sums up Arctic Norway. Tony Davison© Day 1 – After a 5:15am start from home, on Friday 12th April 2013, Glyn, Mike, Richard and myself caught our Scandinavian Airlines flight from London Heathrow to Oslo, we knew there would be a downside though – we had a five hour wait in Oslo for our
Local Patch news from Staunton Harold Res for the last few days. Saturday 6th April – The highlight was a second summer Yellow-legged Gull. This bird has been around for some months now, visiting the reservoir on and off. Monday 8th April – I was pleased to find a pair of Mandarin in the middle of
Where are all the spring migrtants? This is one of the latest Springs I have known. Usually I have seen numerous Sand Martin & Swallow by now and even the odd Willow Warbler. Nothing yet and it is still very cold with a really raw easterly wind blowing almost continuously. The temperature managed to get
Good Friday, 29th March and decided to re-visit the Barmston, Bridlington and Scarborough area of East Yorkshire. A great area for birding and at the same time I really wanted to catch-up on the 1st winter/1st summer Kumlien's Gull that has been frequenting Barmston Beach everyday since we last visited this area back in February. I was begining to
Winter hit our area with avengance this weekend (23-24th) and it is March, supposedly Spring. I have lived in this area of South Derbyshire all of my life and I have never seen weather like this since about 1963 and certainly not in March. It is more like Siberia at the moment and walking up to my local
A Lesser Scaup was found at Ogston Reservoir, Derbyshire (First County Record) yesterday morning (16th March). I got the news around 11am but unfortunately for me, I had other arrangements pre-planned and could not escape to see the bird. Never mind I thought, it's a duck, ducks usually stay for more than a day. No
Sunday 10th March birding at Rutland Water in a howling gale and snow storm! Spring has taken a backward step for the time being. Despite the snow and freezing wind chill, a few good birds were around but took some finding in the poor conditions. A winter plumaged Slavonian Grebe and a Black-necked Grebe were together
