Hail storm delights

I went back to the undisclosed sight to catch up with the hobbies. Sadly I only saw two, this wasn't too odd about this. Normally we'll get a big flock of hobbies in a couple of locations and after a few days they disperse to different breeding areas around the county. The horrible bit was the weather, I saw a massive grey sky heading my way, no hides plenty of trees (but I wasn't going to hide under them!!) and a two mile walk back to the car meant I was going to have to sit it out. The wind gusted and hail started to fall, hard and bleedin' heavy, it hurt like hell (or hail!). The storm passed over and I grabbed a quick image of a hobby and headed back to the car not before getting caught in another hail storm.

 I went back to the site on Friday morning for the dawn chorus and what a dawn chorus it was. The first bird was House Sparrows chirpping away followed by a Song Thrush, I then managed to hear and locate Blackcaps, 1 Common Whitethroat and a pair of Garden Warblers chasing and calling to each other. Before I got to the reed bed I got the usual suspects of Blackbird, Long Tail Tit, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Wren, Dunnock, Chaffinch, Robin and a Chiff Chaff. I got to the first bit of reed bed and got Reed Warbler, Reed Bunting and Sedge Warbler.


Female Reed Bunting collecting food

A short walk along to the lake and I got a surprise bird...a Grasshopper Warbler reeling away, sadly it was to far away to get an image of and it seriously took me 15 minutes just to locate it skulking away in the long grass, as I got to the lake I heard more Reed Warblers, Blackcaps, Garden Warblers and Cettis Warblers. There is a least 8 Cettis Warblers around the lake (that's a conservative count too). I also heard the Cuckoo calling but it seemed to remain strictly on private land so it meant no images. I also got Great Spotted Woodpecker and Green Woodpecker, Common Tern, 4 Buzzards, 1 Kestrel, 1 Kingfisher and 2 Willow Warblers. Given what the site WAS and the short time it's taken to turn it back to a more nature friendly site I thought it was a brilliant morning, sure it was short on images but a very healthy number of birds were spotted.
Saturday's dull weather and Chelsea playing in the evening meant no birding this weekend, Sunday was jusr recovering from the heart attacks and hang overs, I did get  a call from Ben the plumber who couldn't watch the penalty shoot out and sat in his car on the drive way listening on the radio...two VERY happy Chelsea supporters...........

WEEKEND FUN

With the sun peeping through my curtains at 5am on Saturday, I lept from my bed and got myself down to the ol' pit (Summer Leys and the fact it was once a big gravel pit). I was parked up in the car park and was heading to the hide by 5:45, as I walked around I could see the water level had dropped by a considerable amount and the islands were peeping through. Great, I popped into the Paul Britain hide to be met by Grahame with his video camera already set up. "6 Dunlin, 1 Ringed Plover, 6 Redshank, 2 Snipe, 1 Little Ringed Plover mate" came his cheerful greeting..brilliant a good start to the day.


Record shot of 6 Dunlin and 1 Ringed Plover

Now I felt obliged to publish this record shot above as apparently there was only 4 Dunlin, it seemed despite me showing another birder(who's not fond of photographers) they still refused to believe me, so proof in the pudding etc.

 So after grabbing my images I walked off to the screen hide, and had one of the most amazing encounters. I could hear a Cuckoo calling from the lane behind me, and as I was focusing on an Oystercatcher, it called from the willows right behind/next to the hide so loud it made me jump!!! Camera in hand I casually glanced out the back of the hide the bird looked at me from behind loads of branches before flying off, but not too far away. Now for anyone who knows Summer Leys if you're in the screen hide, on the left is 4 small srubs in a row it perched itself there before flying off to Pete Wilds lake, I would later in the day find a female Cuckoo there too but couldn't/wouldn't get any closer to it. Also on Gull Island was a Curlew.

After photographing various warblers I changed sites. For now the site is remaining undisclosed (Got to get Ben and Phil down there) as I could not believe what I saw...18 Hobbies hawking high in the sky with Swifts, unfortunately Saturday afternoon there was some high grey clouds bubbling up so the images weren't brilliant, but I went back Sunday when the skies were blue. Sadly I only counted 11 birds but the site is so big the others could have been elsewhere.
GREAT WEEKEND



Saturday/Grey skies

Summer Leys Nature Reserve

Black Tail Godwit

Well I decided yesterday (02 May 2012) to venture down to Summer Leys, a lot of interesting birds were being reported and I've not been down for a while.
On arriving I noticed two things 1:The scrape was flooded and 2:The number of swifts/housemartins and swallows flying around. So I decided to keep walking around to the Screen hide, on the way round I located the Ring Ouzel in the butterfly meadow. Sadly as soon as it caught a glimpse of me it decided to hide in the long grass and didn't come out. As soon as there was no-one around it would re-appear..but as anyone who knows Summer Leys will tell you with the number of dog walkers and joggers around there was no chance of getting an image of the bird. Not to worry as I soon heard a Cuckoo calling from Pete Wilds lake, my first of the year bumped into Mike Alibone who was busy setting up his scope so I left him to it, I did notice in Mary's Lane the number of Blackcaps, there seems at the moment a lot of these, every bush seems to hold one or two competing for female attention. I next went to the screen hide where the water level is less than 8 feet away from the hide, there was one Black Tail Godwit (pictured above), Garganey and a Redshank. There was also a couple of Black Terns too, but a bit too far away.

CETTIS WARBLER

I then decided to walk up the old railway line, found a few Willow warblers, Garden warblers and a lot of Cettis warblers, at least 6 individuals showing and calling very well.Whilst waiting for one to show in the open another birder (John) and myself heard a Nightingale calling, first one I've heard at Summer Leys, sadly the bird never showed very well. Unlike the Cettis warbler pictured below which was very showy until another Cettis showed up and they flew into the undergrowth. I carried on up the railway line up to first flooded field. Hoping the reported Cattle Egret might be in it, sadly not just some strange looking Canada Goose/Greylag goose hybrid, at first I was hoping it was a White Fronted Goose, but when it wandered right up to me and started "honking" at me I knew it must be an escapee. I then crossed over the main road and caught up with the Cattle Egret, my first for this species and now leaves me with all three egret species found in the UK, Great Egret,Little Egret and now Cattle Egret, not bad for a nature reserve so far inland. A good day despite the lousy weather.


CATTLE EGRET

HYBRID GOOSE CANADA/GREYLAG

If you haven't already check this link out, it's for Northamptonshires bird recorder Mike Alibone's website, very informative http://northantsbirds.com/

Also more images in my Latest Update folder at my website at http://douglasmcfarlane.zenfolio.com/

Drought? What drought?

With Northamptonshire being declared a drought zone and Anglian water imposing a hose pipe ban, it hasn't stopped raining. The River Nene has burst it's banks in certain spots too. I begining to think announcing a hose pipe ban is the modern day equivalent of doing a rain dance. I've done no birding to speak of and been busy with work. However that's not a bad thing. I work on an industrial estate in Northants called Brackmills, and there's some good birding habitat despite it being an industrial estate.
Birds permanently on the estate include Little Owls,Buzzards,Kestrels,Lapwings,Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers. There's also an ever growing Gull roost on one of the warehouse roofs including Lesser Black Back Gulls,Herring Gulls and Common Gulls and occasionally a Peregrine Falcon will make an appearance.
However I was gutted to see from our local bird reports there was about 140+ Northern Wheatears in the county, gutted because I had the weekend shift and it was pouring down with rain. Out of desperation to point my camera at something I took my camera into work with me and on my lunch break went to see what I could find.
What I found was Chiif Chaffs and in a carpark/grass area that includes a pond was 6 Northern Wheatears and fishing the lake 1 Common Tern. Behind the pond is a steep grass area that had Skylarks singing away, sadly it seems the crows had also noticed them and kept landing in the nesting area and coming out of the grass area with eggs!!! Below are a couple of images of the Nortern Wheatears sadly in poor light....

NEW WEBSITE

With the weather being so lousy and cold, really hate the cold. I decided after a long time to have a go at a website. I opted for Zenfolio as they had the simpler options in terms of their layouts, packages and ease of use, especially the uploading of images. Very simple. Also there's a lot of people opting for Zenfolio which was important to me as I know of someone who lost thousands of images when the web hosting service they had chosen went out of buisness, which meant he lost the majority of his work. You can find my website here at this link http://www.douglasmcfarlane.zenfolio.com/ please have a look and give me some feed back on the guestbook.

RSPB Big Gardenwatch

This weekend is the RSPB's gardenwatch/survey. All a bit of fun for serious bird watchers, or as some have said to me over the last few days..a bit pointless, not very scientific etc. I don't agree. One it gets the none serious birders to take stock which birds are visiting their feeders in the gardens, two it pulls in greater number of survey results year after year giving conservation bodies such as the RSPB a pool of valuable information of what certain species are doing what and which are in serious problems, three it encourages  people to feed our smaller feathered friends during the winter months and the more people that do that the better for our birds. Also if you can spark the imagination of youngsters and get them interested in nature at a young age and they carry that on into adulthood then surely that's a positive thing! I decided to do my survey this morning (Sunday 29th) and started at 8:30 am for the allocated hour watch. My results were varied and for the survey only counted the species that came into the garden and not the one's which flew over.

Starling, Juvenile

The most obvious bird in the garden and eating me out of house and home is the starling, on our housing estate we have a small flock of circa 200+ birds, which is increasing in numbers every year, about three years ago we only had about 50 birds. The other bird which is the first I see every morning and actually waits and watches me top up the feeders is the House Sparrow. I'm lucky as I've got two breeding pairs in my garden which bred three times this year. They are my morning alarm clocks, chirpy buggers. Dunnocks and Blue Tits and Wood Pigeons were the next most common bird in the garden.
One surprise visitor was a solitary Coal Tit. Near my house we've got a 30 acre parkland with a lake and a wooded area on the perimeter. It's not uncommon to see coal tits, treecreepers and great spotted woodpeckers, but our house is some distance from the wooded area so don't often get them on our feeders.
Half way through the survey a Sparrowhawk flushed every bird, the first bird back was a Goldfinch (just the one) and one Robin which started fighting with one of the resident Dunnocks.
There was some surprising birds that were not around have not seen this winter on the feeders that I had on my feeders during the summer. Missing birds included Song Thrush, Long tail Tits, Great Tits and Greenfinches. I regulary see Song Thrushes and Long Tail Tits over at the park so I'm not too concern about them. However I'm not seeing Great Tits or Greenfinches either on my feeders or at the park, when in previous years there's been plenty. Listed below is my survey results and a lsit of "fly-over" birds (those that didn't come into the garden)

Birds that visited Garden.

6 House Sparrows, 2 Dunnocks, 3 Blue Tits, 5 Wood pigeons, 2 Collared Doves, 2 Magpies, 1 Goldcrest, 1 Robin, 1 Goldfinch, 20-25 Starlings, 2 Chaffinches and 4 Blackbirds (1 female and 3 male)

Birds that flew over garden

4 Bullfinches, 10 Common Gulls, 12 Black Headed Gulls, 4 Crows, 2 Jackdaws and 1 Sparrowhawk (male).

Coal Tit

Blue Tit

House Sparrow

Dunnock

Long Tail Tit, juvenile

Goldcrest, with crane fly

WAXWINGS

This winters star bird is definately the short  eared owl. But last years wintering visitor that semmed to be the favourite was the waxwing. Again another visitor that winters here from the east. The funniest quirk about this bird tends to be it's choice of location. Often photohgraphed and watched in car parks at supermarkets. The waxwing for me was a bogey bird that I always seemed to miss out on, so when it seemed the whole country was swamped with these brilliant visitors I made every effort to catch up with them and take them off my bogey list and put them on my tick list.

The Northants waxwing turned up at garden centre chain store's carpark. It was quite amusing when I turned up to see loads of birders all decked out in camouflage clothing trying dodge the shoppers and the hand carwashers trying to valet cars, sadly these birds had settled into bushes right in front of the carwash.

Waxwing, Bombycilla garrulus

I headed of for a nearby housing estate called Mereway. I approached the doctors surgery on Rowtree Road and noticed in the very large bush/hedge a large group of Redwings and the shape of a bird I didn't recognise..waxwings. I parked the car up and noticed their call straight away, a call that along with the turtle dove I will always remember. I stood on the pavement just in front of the bush, next to a main road and started to photograph the birds. Sadly I had never seen these birds in the flesh, so a lot of the images I got were incorrectly exposed but I did get a few.  There was circa 25 birds tucking into the Rowan berries, they seemed unbothered by the presence, only flying off when an idiot or two would blast their horns as they drove past. They soon came back though. Hopefully I'll get a chance to photograph these stunning birds again, it's looking a bit doubtful for this winter, however sice I took these images on the 26th February 2011, there's a slim chance we might get them again...a very slim chance!! I would like to thank Phil who gave me the idea for this post have a look at his website please at http://www.philmanning.org.uk

Waxwing with Rowan berry.