Odiel Marshes

The Odiel Marshes sounded too good to be true. Easy access, good selection of birds, excellent views from the road which runs through the heart of the area, and particularly good for photographers. We had to go and of course, it was too good to be true. It was worth the visit but we did not see the selection of birds we were hoping for, the light was poor and the road was closed blocking access to the last four or five kilometres of the peninsular.

Best bird of the day was undoubtedly this juvenile Osprey, blue ringed LHO, hatched 12th June 2017 at Aberfoyle Scotland. He is carrying a lot of bling and a backpack but still a great bird to see.

Perhaps I should start collecting pictures of GPS packs!

There was a good selection of waders around but nothing exceptional and no sign of the Red-knobbed Coot that we had been hoping for.

Curlew

Greenshank

We then spent the rest of the morning checking out a mixed Gull and Sandwich Tern flock before heading back to the Coto Donana. Unfortunately nothing close enough for a decent photograph.

Sandwich Terns, Audouin's, Lesser Black-backed, and a Kittiwake seated bottom left

Interesting ring information. As well as the Osprey we had two Spanish and three Portuguese ringed Audouin's and a ringed Sandwich Tern. Perhaps it is not common practice to report ring sightings in this area but I was surprised that none of the five Audouin's had been reported since hatching between three and five years ago.


Memory of the day, the flocks of birds we could see wheeling over the peninsular well beyond the road closure that stopped us. We could have walked but we had already experienced one session of torrential rain and there was no cover to be seen.

Mallorca - s'Albufera

I have just returned from a weeks birding in Mallorca. It was good but perhaps not quite as good as I expected. We saw around ninety five species and I ended up with fourteen life ticks so it can't all be bad. However, we lost a day to bad weather, travelling around the island was a nightmare, with thousands of racing cyclists clogging up all the roads, and despite generally good lighting conditions the picture opportunities were limited.

So much for the moans, how about the good points. The main one, in a week, I only saw one dog walker, bliss, no disturbance for me and no disturbance for all the ground nesting birds.

We stayed near Puerto Pollenca giving easy access to the Albufereta, the S'Albufera, the Boquer Valley and the mountains in the north of the island. It was also close to our first target bird the Audouin's Gull.

In the 60s this species was down to around 1000 pairs worldwide. Conservation has enabled a recovery in numbers but it is still endangered and one of the worlds rarest gulls. You wouldn't think so standing on Pollenca beach. Wave a bread roll in the air and you have plenty of volunteers to have their picture taken.

They even come in pairs although there wasn't much sharing of food between them.

Still at least it gives them something to do whilst waiting for the next bread roll.

Our first full day was at the Park Natural de s'Albufera. It is a great place but don't go there on a Sunday. The locals use it as a somewhere to go for a walk with the family and it was full of people. Weekdays it is a bit quieter. You see a lot of the birds that you would find in a wetland in the UK but there are also some unusual ones and some like the Black-winged Stilt are just a bit more common than at home.

Black-winged Stilt

The Park also gave me four life ticks in Purple Swamphen, Collared Pratincol and Squacco Heron, although none of them gave me a decent picture, and Zitting Cisticola that gave me no picture at all.

Purple Swamphen

Collared Pratincol

Squacco Heron

Not life ticks but other great birds seen included Osprey, Great Reed Warbler, Night Heron, Red-knobbed Coot, and the very common (over there) Kentish Plover.

Osprey

Great Reed Warbler

Night Heron

Kentish Plover

Red-knobbed Coot

The Red-knobbed Coot is part of a program to reintroduce the bird to the Albufera from mainland Spain, hence the neck band.



On the southern edge of the s'Albufera you will find the Depuradora, a sewage works with an observation platform giving views across the settlement pools. This and the narrow road leading to it were the must visit location for our trip and the next blog will cover this area.

American Wigeon

Last week Dave and I paid a return visit to Scotland. The key reason for going was to see a number of Butterflies that we do not get in the South of England but I was also hoping to see the King Eider "Elvis" that has been based around the Ythan Estury and Nairn for the last couple of months. Needless to say Elvis waited until we had booked our hotels and then did a disappearing act.

To stop the blog getting too long I have split it into three parts covering birds in the first and butterflies in the next two.

First stop on the way up was at Old Moor RSPB where an American Wigeon and a Little Bittern had been reported. We had limited time so it was unlikely that the Bittern would appear whilst we were there but the American Wigeon would be a life tick for me. Well we saw it, but it was very distant.

American Wigeon

American Wigeon

Compensation, of sorts, for the poor shots of the Wigeon came in the form of close views of a Green Sandpiper and Redshank.

Green Sandpiper

Green Sandpiper

Redshank

We spent about an hour looking for the Little Bittern but it had not been seen all day, so in the end we decided to move on. We did have one scare whilst we were there, when a "common" Bittern flew over being mobbed by an assortment of Gulls, and other birds. Any other day we would have been overjoyed at the sight but not on a day when there was a possibility of a Little Bittern. 

Day 2 was mostly about butterflies but we ended up late afternoon at an Osprey site that Dave had visited before. I was expecting another Loch Garten or Bassenthwaite lake where you are kept four hundred metres or so from the nest. When I found that we were standing only sixty or seventy metres away I was a bit wary of disturbing the birds.  However, there was a well used footpath going past the spot and groups of kids moving through between us and the nest tree and neither the movement or the noise seemed to bother the parent Ospreys.

It was late afternoon and the lighting was poor so the picture opportunities were limited but it was great seeing the birds so close and getting glimpses of the chicks as they moved about in the nest.

Both parents on the nest with one of the chicks also visible

Male on his favourite perch

The weather looked even worse on Wednesday so we decided to spend the afternoon over in Oban harbour looking for Black Guillemots. Whilst we had both seen them before neither of us had managed to get a good picture. We stopped off first at the Corran - Ardgour ferry just off the A82. This was our fallback site if Oban failed to deliver. We could see the Black Guillemots on the sea loch and also landing on the pier on the other side of the crossing  but we decided to carry on to Oban rather than take the ferry across.

Oban delivered but we had our doubts for a time. We eventually managed to track them down to the sea wall just in front of the cathedral.

Black Guillemot

A Rock Pipit turned up whilst we were photographing the Black Guillemots and there was also a tame Chaffinch that had joined us for lunch one day that was worth recording.

Rock Pipit

Chaffinch

The bird list for the five days sits at around seventy which is not too bad when you consider that we spent most of our time looking for Butterflies. As ever, time was all too short and there are many more places that I would have liked to visit during the trip.

Dipper

A weeks walking holiday with the family in the Lake District kept me busy but still left me with a few opportunities for birdwatching. Top of my birding list, whenever I am in the mountains, is always the Dipper and this year I was fortunate enough to find a pair about a quarter of a mile from our cottage nesting underneath a bridge.

Dipper

They always appear to be such an active bird, constantly in and out of the water gathering food, and then flying back to the nest with mouths full of assorted invertebrates. They also seem very tolerant of people. This pair where nesting under a busy footpath with children throwing rocks into the river, where only a few minutes before I had seen the birds searching for food. Fortunately most people don't seem to notice nature happening around them and the nest in a shaded spot underneath a small bridge went unnoticed by the people passing by.

Dipper at the nest - The camera lies,
 the nest was much darker and harder to spot than this picture shows

Feeding the young

searching for food underwater

and on the rocks

Must be a lot of young to feed

It's a fascinating bird to watch as it walks or swims underwater looking for larvae or flies up and down its stretch of river with rapid wing beats just a few inches above the water.

Also on the river were a small group of Grey Wagtails. Not as close as I would have liked but at least this one kept its tail still long enough for a picture.

Grey Wagtail

Bassenthwaite Lake with its Osprey observation point was only a couple of miles away. Checking the map it did not look very promising. The nest site looked to be about a mile from the observation point and would be well beyond the range of my camera. Still there were telescopes provided at the observation point, it would be a year tick, and there was always the chance of a flyby.

Spot the Osprey - Camera view about the equivalent of a pair of 10X50 binoculars

Heavily cropped and a bit of a mess but it is a year tick

We saw the Osprey (just) through the telescope but there was no flyby. In fact the Osprey did not leave the nest and adjacent tree in the time we watched.  More details on the Bassenthwaite Osprey at http://www.ospreywatch.co.uk/ . There is also a public hide on the A66 that would give good views if the birds were fishing out over the lake.

Up on the hills there were plenty of Wheatears on show and they all seemed to be males. I had a go at getting pictures but they were all very skittish. Then early one morning I found this one sitting on the wall close by the cottage. He seemed a lot slower than the rest and looking at the picture you can see some form of wound on its chest, possibly caused by a pellet or some form of parasite. He still looks good though, so I just hope he made it up on to the hill and found a mate.

Wheatear

2012 Review

Poor weather and Christmas commitments have meant that the camera has not been taken out for its regular walk for a week or so. Instead I have been reviewing my first year of serious bird watching and looking back over some of the pictures I have taken.

I was very clear when I started the year that I was interested in taking pictures of birds and  not in twitching or in maintaining tick lists. The twitching I can still do without but the tick list I found impossible to resist.

I have taken pictures of 156 different species this year. I have seen a few more than this but not managed to take pictures of them all. These misses range from the easy, Mute Swan, through to a Hume's Leaf Warbler which I could see but just could not get into the viewfinder. Very frustrating.

So here are a few of the pictures I enjoyed taking this year.

Black Redstart

Kestrel with prey

Kingfisher

Linnet

Redwings always manage to look blurred, as in this picture, but it is clear that the berries in front and
 twigs behind are all sharp so this is marking and colouration on the bird.

Spotted Flycatcher 

A rather washed out looking female Stonechat.  She was feeding a nest of young but seemed keen to have   
her picture taken and flew back regularly to show me what she had caught.

Wren

And finally I had to include a picture of the Warnham/Adur Osprey. I spent a long time trying to get a picture of this bird until one day it came swimming past pretending to be a duck.

Later on I managed to get a few pictures of it trying to lift a large fish out of the Warnham Mill Pond.

I hope you enjoyed the picture. Good luck with your birding in 2013.