Black Redstart

Just a few pictures from earlier in the week. Best picture opportunity was the Black Redstart at Shoreham Fort. It has been around for a few weeks now but it's such a good looking bird that we always drop in for another look when passing. 

Black Redstart

It is not easy to get a good picture but the results are well worth the effort. I am sure that I will be going back for another go.


A walk out on Chantry Hill gave us Ravens, Buzzards, Grey and Red-legged Partridges, Fieldfares, lots of small birds including Mipits, Skylarks and 30 to 40 Yellowhammers but no sign of the usual Corn Buntings. I am keeping my fingers crossed for the Partridges with just one week to go before the close of the shooting season.

Yellowhammer

At Waltham Sewage Works a Grey Wagtail, probably a dozen or more Chiffchaffs, and a Goldcrest on the access road.

Chiffchaff

Goldcrest

A Rock Pipit at Seaford Head but no Kittiwakes and another visit to the Newhaven Hume's Warbler but still no picture.

Rock Pipit

Perhaps best of all my garden birding has picked up. I don't get a lot of variety but this morning I had a Blackcap on the feeders and later I was able to photograph it, tucking into a pear that I had put out. Whilst I was trying to photograph that a Redwing dropped in and finished off the last of the holly berries.

Blackcap

Redwing

It was very misty in the garden this morning but there was just enough light to be able to get the pictures.

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

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.