Chough

It is fair to say that I wasn't chuffed. I was walking a stretch of the Anglesey Coastal Footpath with the wife. The walk looked good on the map but with the temperature heading into the nineties it was starting to get uncomfortable. The cliff path included a good number of steep climbs and the camera gear I was carrying, in expectation of getting some pictures of the Chough, was starting to get heavy. 

At one point, I did think I saw two Chough in the distance, but the wife , who is not really a birder, pointed out that if they look like crows and sound like crows they probably are crows.

I had to do the 400 steps down to South Stack Lighthouse. The birds could be down there. But the 400 steps back up, when you know they are not there, were a bit harder. Fortunately I could make frequent stops to look at the birds out on the cliffs. Guillemots, Razorbills and a few Puffins and there were Lesser Black-backed Gulls and a Rock Pipit in the grounds of the lighthouse.

Guillemots

Razorbill and Puffin

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Rock Pipit

I tried the RSPB Visitors Centre and Ellin's Tower, all reliable spots for the Chough but still no luck. It was not looking good and we still had the walk back to the car at Holyhead to look forward to. We were about to give up when one of the wardens suggested we try a spot about half a kilometre further south along the coastal path. I wasn't really hopeful. If they were there we should have seen them flying by now but it was worth a try.

Well worth a try as it turned out. I was just about to turn back when I spotted a group of five or six sitting on the top of the cliffs. They seemed reluctant to move, the heat was obviously getting to them as well. Still, it gave me a few good picture opportunities.

Chough

A dog walker then appeared and the birds dropped over the edge and down the cliff.  Despite extensive scanning of the cliff face I could not find them again. A great result and the walk back to the car didn't feel half as bad as I had been expecting.


The next morning we headed back to the Visitors Centre in the car. The idea of a full English or in this case a full Welsh, whilst sitting out on the veranda overlooking South Stack and the Irish Sea, was too good to turn down.

As you might expect, no effort needed today. When we arrived the Chough were sitting under the feeders in the garden and then when disturbed moved to the roof of the Visitors Centre. A great breakfast, great views, and Chough flying back and forth as well.

And one final picture. We saw lots of Silver-studded Blue butterflies around the area. Snails are not really my area of expertise but I will give it a try..........

Silver-studded Blue with White-lipped Banded Snail (Yellow Form)

any corrections to my identification will be gratefully received.

Irish Birding

Whilst the birding has started to improve of late my photography seems to have taken a real nose dive. I have seen some good birds, but most of my shots have been taken at a distance and in this hot dry weather the air quality and heat haze have had a devastating effect on picture quality. The trouble is that I know this and I should have been spending more time getting closer to the birds.

Still this is a diary of what I have seen and photographed so you get the bad as well as the good.

The first success was the Turtle Dove which had been at the top of my hit list for a couple of months. I had looked at various sites and despite hearing them on a number of occasions there had been no sightings. My luck changed when I picked up Dave and we headed over to Pagham North Wall. It was all very quiet on the wall but we did manage to spot the Turtle Dove in the trees by Honer Farm. The bird was very mobile though and despite waiting a long time we could only get distant shots.

Turtle Dove

Dave was only carrying a 400mm lens but his pictures looked better than the ones I had taken using a 500mm and 1.4 converter. Heat haze, air quality, or just better skills?

I then headed off on a touring and walking holiday with the wife taking in Pembrokeshire and the South and West of Ireland. It was not a birding trip but I did have a target list and was intending to get a few hours birding along the way.

Pembrokeshire gave the first opportunity when we spotted Chough whilst walking over Stackpole Head.

Chough - It looks as though Junior still wants to be fed!

You can actually see the heat haze in the back of this shot

 Dave had told me to look out for Black Guillemot when we arrived at Rosslare Harbour and sure enough there was one there albeit a bit distant.

Black Guillimot

 One thing that I had not expected in Ireland was a complete roll reversal of Crows and Rooks. A Hooded Crow was top of my target list and I assumed that it would be easy to get a good picture of these as with Crows back home. In practice they seemed very shy and wary of anyone approaching them. The Rooks however had filled the vacant slot of picnic scavengers and were quiet happy to have their pictures taken.

Rook - beautifully groomed for the photo shoot

Hooded Crow - looking a bit tatty

Definitely does not want his picture taken

 There were lots of Terns about. We looked at the Tern Colony at Lady's Island Lake hoping to see a Roseate Tern. No luck with that but there was an Arctic Tern that ventured close enough for a picture.

Arctic Tern

Arctic Tern

And, sitting on the beach one evening we watched a long procession of close on a hundred Sandwich Terns fly past carrying Sand Eels. I assume they were also heading for Lady's Island Lake but the odd thing was that there was not a single Common Tern amongst them.

Sandwich Tern

We spent a few days around the Killarney National Park and the Cork and Kerry peninsulas and I spent most of the time with one eye on the sky waiting for a White-tailed Eagle to appear. I had one slight panic when a couple of ravens drifted over a hill we were climbing but that is the closest that I got.

Lots of the usual small birds about and lots of Juveniles in confusing plumage. I got some nice pictures but I am still trying to work out what they are.

No black Guillimots as we left Rosslare, so I was unable to improve on my record shot taken on the way in, but I was tipped off that the Tuskar Rock Lighthouse, just off the coast, was a good area to look out for Manx Shearwaters. Sure enough there were lots flying about. Most were distant but I did manage a couple of decent shots before the boat disappeared into a fog bank.

Manx Shearwater

My overall impression of birding in Ireland. There are not so many species about and some of the sites are hard to find or access but overall nature is having a better time of it over there. There were far more birds and butterflies about than I see in England.

Spain

I have just got back from a week in Spain on a non birding Holiday. We spent the week exploring the influence of 800 years of Moorish occupation on the country and very interesting it was. I had left my cameras and telephoto lens at home but did manage to squeeze in a little Canon SX50. I say little but it has a zoom lens that gives the equivalent of a 35mm camera 1200mm lens plus a 4x digital zoom. Very impressive figures but it only has a 12.1 Megapixel sensor, it still has all the problems of hand holding such a long lens, and a zoom lens will always be a compromise on quality. Still it could be a useful way of obtaining record shots when carrying the full photographic set up is not an option.

The route we took was mostly through the cites of central southern Spain and only included a couple of places where I had expectations of seeing birds. The first was Seville Cathedral which I had read was a stronghold for the Lesser Kestrel and the second was Ronda where I could expect to see a variety of birds around the gorge and cliffs. There were no Lesser Kestrels at Serville but Ronda did not disappoint. There were dozens of birds floating on thermals about 50 metres below the cliff top and lots of small birds in the bushes along the top. Viewing was great but positive identification and, even more so, good pictures were difficult and I only had an hour before we had to move on.

Chough were easy to identify as they swept up and into nest holes on the bridge, but checking my pictures later either the camera has a shutter delay or the operator was suffering a brain delay from too much Rioja the night before.

Not my best ever picture!

In Flight

There were Pallid Swifts and at least five Kestrels on the cliffs and there may have been a few Crag Martins as well, but they were all too fast and too far away to get any decent pictures. The Kestrels could have been the Lesser Kestrels that I had been hoping to see but the only positive identifier I had was the colour of the claws and that is not very helpful when you are looking at them from above.

Fortunately things did improve when we moved towards the coast. I am reasonably confident on this being a female Red-backed Shrike and as I was taking the picture a Hoopoe flew past. Fortunately I remembered about the bird in hand being worth two in the bush and settled for getting one decent picture.

Female Red-backed Shrike

See comments below from Richard T. It looks as though this is actually a Woodchat Shrike. Checking Collins again I am inclined to agree with him.

There were also plenty of Spotless Starlings around.

Spotless Starling

Smart Looking Birds

The coast around Malaga had a more colourful selection of birds. I have yet to see a Ring-necked Parakeet in England and the Monk Parakeet was a new bird for me.

Ring-necked Parakeet

Monk Parakeet

There was also another bird that so far I have been unable to identify. It's probably an escapee but I am hoping its short tail will give me some clue as to what it is.

Suggestions for identity gratefully received

I also managed to get record shots of a couple of other birds including the Hoopoe so given the time I had available for birding this was not too bad a trip. Its interesting seeing the different birds but not as satisfying as adding to my UK list.

The SX50 will not be replacing my 500mm lens. It was ok for record shots but the real quality was missing from the picture and I found it quite difficult to handle. There are buttons all over it and I found myself brushing against them and switching the camera into the wrong mode just as I was about to take a picture. It was also quite difficult to hold such a  lightweight camera and long lens combination really still whilst setting up and taking the pictures. However, if you need to travel light, need a back up camera, or are just getting started in bird photography then it is worth looking at. My one cost about £310 as compared to a new Canon 500mm lens at about £8500.