Puffins

I had a great family holiday in Northumberland. We stayed in a cottage just over a mile north of Belford and about four miles from the coast. Very peaceful, good company, lots of walking, a few beers and we even managed to squeeze in a bit of bird watching. In fact the whole family volunteered to do the Billy Shields all day birding trip to Inner Farne and Staple Island with me.

I am not sure that is exactly what I had in mind but I am glad they came. They all seemed to enjoy the experience, including being attacked by the Arctic Terns. Although my two sons were probably not so enthusiastic about a well aimed deposit from one of the gulls that just missed me but gave both of them a traditional welcome to the islands.

Staple Island was the first stop and fortunately I had been warned not to take the big lens. A 200mm or better still a 100-300 zoom is probably ideal. I felt sorry for the guy that had lugged his 800mm up the steps from the boat. It would have been almost impossible to get far enough away from any of the birds to get a picture.

Puffins and Shags were the main reason for visiting Staple Island. I have seen lots before but I have never been this close to them.

It was nice to get the picture opportunities but it was also a bit disconcerting. There was no need for any field craft or any need to take care to avoid disturbing the birds other than by not stepping on their nests. I am sure people got pictures as good as or better than mine just by walking up and pointing their mobile phones at them.

You should have seen the one that got away

 My initial thoughts were, are we disturbing the birds and should we be here at all. Then you see a Shag on a nest with a couple of chicks (Shaglets?) and a group of young children sitting round the nest within touching distance. The bird does not seem to be concerned. It may well have nested in that spot before and knows that it is not at risk and in fact is probably safer from predators by being choosing to be close to people.

Plenty of opportunity for Puffins in flight but perhaps not enough light to be able to freeze the action.

Shags, probably the least concerned of all the birds by the presence of people.

I was really there to photograph the Puffins and Shags but there were a good selection of other birds on offer. I was quite suprised to find that I only came away with a single picture of a Guillimot. Perhaps I should have spent longer concentrating on them.

Razorbill

Fulmar

Guillemot

Kittiwake

In the afternoon we moved on to Inner Farne, seeing a similar selection of birds plus the Terns.

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.

Short-eared Owl

It would have been nice if a few of the rarities reported around the country over the past couple of months had spent a few days in Sussex. It would have been even nicer if we had seen some decent weather. Birding you can do when its raining, bird photography needs good light. I think I have managed five blogs in the past two months and it has been a struggle to come up with any material for those. Fortunately Monday was a good day, weather wise, and Dave and I set off to pursue some decent pictures.

We headed east along the coast but it was a slow start to the day. There was nothing worth photographing at Widewater and nothing out on the sea. We found one Purple Sandpiper at Shoreham Fort but it only gave fleeting views and a single Rock Pipit on the harbour wall.

The Great Northern Diver did not show at Shoreham Port. A great pity, as with some of its summer plumage still showing it would have taken a good picture. I had seen it over the weekend but that was in pouring rain and near zero visibility.

Our next stop could have been Brighton Marina but with a Red-throated Diver reported at Newhaven Marina we decided to give it a miss. Bad mistake, there was a long-eared Owl sitting out in the Marina giving great views. Worse still the Red-throated Diver had moved on and apart from a few Herring and Black-headed Gulls there was nothing in Newhaven Harbour.

The first decent weather for photography in a long time and we couldn't find any birds. Fortunately Tide Mills came to the rescue. There were two Short-eared Owls quartering the fields and scrub area at the back of the beach. I think food must be in short supply for them to be out hunting at eleven o'clock in the morning. They were easy to spot as the crows were up mobbing them for most of the time that we watched.

Short-eared Owl

We walked out to the Harbour arm to have a look for the Purple Sandpipers but, having been delayed by the owl, the tide was receding and we were a bit late for the best views. All I could manage was this shot down on to one bird feeding in the gloom around the legs of the pier.

Purple Sandpiper

A Guillemot swimming and preening just off the beach was a bit unusual

Guillemot

and there was the ever present Stonechat.

Stonechat

Nothing unusual found on the day but it was nice to be out taking pictures again. We went out again this morning, this time to Southsea Castle looking for Purple Sandpipers. This time the tide was too high and there were none about.

We only had about an hour before the light disappeared and the rain returned. I spent most of that time trying to get a picture of Chiffchaffs that were feeding in the garden next to the castle. No luck with that but I did pick up another Rock Pipit and a couple of the usual suspects.

Rock Pipit

House Sparrow

Pied Wagtail

Kumlien's Revisited

It had to be revisited. I know that however good the picture I take, there is always a better one out there waiting to be taken. BUT .... to wake up and find that everyone has better pictures than you! The excuses start, poor light, bird too far away, luck of being in the right place at the right time, I only wanted a record shot,....no you failed.

So it was back to Littlehampton for another go at the Kumlien's Gull. The first hour or so was spent at the East Beach sitting in the car under torrential rain. When it eventually stopped the gulls started to appear but there were not as many as yesterday and there was no sign of the Kumlien's. We did get a flyby from the Glaucous Gull but it was out of range of the cameras. A pity as it really looks elegant in flight.

The only consolation, a Guillemot, paddling past close inshore. A great view as I had never really seen its swimming action before.

Guillemot

Then we got a shout from Owen Mitchell on the west side of the river to say that they had found it on the beach there. What to do? Its a couple of miles drive through the town centre to get across the twenty metres of water that separated us from the bird. We went, and of course by the time we got there it had flown. No one had managed to track it but it was probably sitting back over on the other side of the river where we had just come from.

This time we waited and after about an hour it suddenly reappeared.

Juvenile Kumlien's Gull

No excuses this time, the light was good, the bird was posing well. There is still the fear that you haven't managed to capture the image but this time everything was OK.

When you first arrive, identifying the Kumlien's amongst a thousand other gulls looks impossible. What you are looking for is the juvenile without the black tail and once seen it's fairly easy to find again. The difficulty is when its not there and you are trying to search a large flock that is continually relocating.

Juvenile Kumlien's Gull on the left - no black tail

Coming in to land

Carrying a Whelk

Posing for a last picture

It had been a good mornings birding and we decided to relocate to Beeding Brooks to see if we could locate our first Owls of the year. We had a couple more hours waiting about in the cold but eventually had views of two Barn Owls and one Short-eared Owl. It was almost dark when they appeared and impossible conditions for a decent shot so just treat the following as a taste of what could have been. I think this calls for another revisited blog.

Short-eared Owl

Barn Owl

Bempton Cliffs

Continuing a return journey from Scotland with a one day stopover in Flamborough.

The journey out of Scotland and down the Northumberland coast took me past dozens of good birding sites, Bass Rock, St Abbs Head, the Farne Islands, and Lindisfarne, to name but a few. I did make a couple of quick stops around the Druridge Bay area but I needed to get some miles under my belt before I stopped. The plan was to pay a quick evening visit to Bempton Cliffs and then to spend the next day birding around Flamborough Head.

That plan quickly went out of the window when I saw Bempton Cliffs. The number of birds is truly spectacular. There were tens of thousands on the cliffs, on the sea, and carrying out a spectacular aerial ballet in the sky above the cliffs. I spent the evening there and most of the next day. A quick one hour trip around Flamborough Head and it was clear that this was an area that had great potential but needed days of detailed searching to cover all the available sites.

Bempton added picture opportunities of Puffins and Gannets to those sea birds I had already seen on the trip.

Gannet In flight

Gannets in Love

Gannets at War

Part of the six thousand pairs of Gannets that use the cliffs

 There are around 38,000 pairs of Kittiwakes, 60,000 Guillemots, 15,000 Razorbills, along with assorted other sea birds including around 1,000 Puffin. Puffin numbers are in decline though, with hundreds being washed up dead on the beach. They were emaciated and with little body fat and it is thought that this is due to the prolonged bad weather in the area. This is a natural occurrence known as a wreck but highlights the risk to the colony with up to 10% of the areas Puffin population dead, with many of the survivors in poor breeding condition, and with the sand eels they feed on in short supply.

Survived the storm but tired and hungry

All the nesting holes gone

No room here either

The colonies have always been at risk. Locals used to take around 130,000 eggs a year to supplement their diet and to trade. That no longer happens so there is scope for recovery but what it really needs is a marine conservation area off the Yorkshire coast to safeguard the birds food supplies. Unfortunately at the moment none of the proposed sites have been designated by the government.

Fulmar and Guillemot

Guillemot

Razorbill

One of the more interesting birds on the cliffs are the Rock Doves. These are the ancestral form of the common feral pigeon that we see around our towns. True Rock Doves breed in caves and on steep cliffs on sea coasts and in mountains. I am sure there must be cross overs between the two populations and I often see birds with the correct makings around where I live, but it is nice to see these flocks and to recognise them as a true wild bird.

Rock Dove

They all look pure breed

There were also plenty of birds along the top of the cliffs although these were regularly disturbed by the visitors. The chances of seeing these improved drastically as you moved away from the car park.

Skylark

Tree Sparrow taking a dust bath

The drive home from Flamborough took most of the day. I had a quick stop in Bridlington harbour where I found Turnstones wandering around the car park looking for scraps just like you would see Sparrows back at home. I also stopped just off the A1 at Paxton Pits by St Neots. It is rated as one of the best sites in the country to see Nightingales but it was really the chance to photograph the Hobby that caused me to visit the site.

Nightingale

Hobby

Hobby

My panning technique is definitely improving

And, to round off a good trip, I noticed  a Red-crested Pochard in the bottom of the frame whilst I was photographing the Hobby. Can't wait to go again.