Ingrebore Valley

Had a day off yesterday. My first thought was to have a day at Minsmere to hopefully see the flock of Penduline Tits currently residing there. Something told me though not to bother though and have day locally, visit the local sites and see what early spring migrants I could find.

To cut a long and boring story short, I spent the best part of 2 hours at "the valley", and saw, well, not a lot really. Kicking myself that I had not gone up the road to Leyton Flats for the Alpine Swift I headed to Cely Woods to brighten the day up with a Lesser Spot or two................ or none. Heading back to the car I dodged the tumbled weed and went home, feeling slightly robbed. At least I hadn't gone to Minsmere where there was no sign of any pendies.

I'm off Friday and Monday again thisend week so perhaps I'll give this local patching another go. Yeh right. With precious few free days I think I may just end up having a day out somewhere, hopefully somewhere with some birds to look at.

I take my hat off to you local patchers. I hope you find something on your patch very soon to reward you for all your effort and of course so I can twitch it!

Mother's Day at Sunny Sarfend

With the sun shining the Blowmonkey clan headed to Westcliffe Sea front for a stroll in the last afternoon sunshine on Sunday. The only Rossi I had managed to get good views of was of the mint choc chip variety. Having already seen Rossi the Ring Billed Gull twice this year not much time was spent trying to locate the yankee bird to be fair. A lovely slow walk along the front was rounded of nicely with cod, chips and mushy peas. Superb.

It's been a long cold winter but at last Spring is in the air, Wheatears and LRPs are arriving, and the first returning Osprey appear to have hit the southern counties of England. So lads put the thermals away and dust off your shorts, let the tick fest commence!

Weird Looking Bird Seen at South Weald

It was late afternoon on Saturday when I saw it. I have never seen such a strange looking bird. From a distance I could see it was no juvenile, it was a bit worn, with a strange shaped beak. Eventually as it got closer I could at last work out what species it was: Jodie Marsh!

Unfortunately I could not get a digiscoped picture, so just in case you can't find her in your Collins, even the new edition, here is a reminder of what the species looks like.

Classy eh.

Jodie aside I managed of note only 3 Goosander (1 drake), pretty quiet otherwise.

Buffleheads my way

At 7.50pm on Saturday evening I was happily tucking into my curry, sipping my 4th Cobra beer of the evening with friends, by 8pm, after a call from Jono, I was getting my stuff ready for a 5am start and the night's boozing had come to an abrupt end! This time the target was an adult drake Bufflehead on the Fleet in Dorset.

Picking Hawky up at 5.15am, we headed to Jono's place in Wanstead where we were picked up in the new Bradders - Jnr -mobile! Very nice. Some 3 hours or so later we arrived at the Fleet, surprisingly to find very few birders. Having not been many more than a dozen previous British records, we expected many more. Perhaps the hoards were waiting on news. At first that seemed like a sensible option as there was no sign of the smart yank. A Red Kite glided passed through and half a dozen Scaup bobbed around among the Abbotsbury Swans, as we contemplated where to start looking for our main target bird along the miles of the Fleet. We decided to head east looking for any footpaths that would allow us to head down to the Fleet as we went we stopped at the next village to look at the map. Just at this moment the pager bleeped and said something along the lines of, "hey guess what lads, the Bufflehead has been found and you are parked in exactly the right place, get out and head along that path you were going to take anyway!" Result.

A mile and a half later we arrived at the Fleet. The Bufflehead was sticking closely to a group of Red Breasted Mergansers. It was some way off towards the far bank, with very poor hazy light allowing only poor digiscoped record shots. Half an hour or so later we headed back to the car very happy.

Next stop was a brief one again on the Fleet for a Black Brant but there were no geese full stop. Then on to Portland we braved the freezing winds to look for Auks. Razorbill and Guillimot were straight forward but there was no sign of the reported first returning Puffin. It was quiet bird wise with just a passing Red Throated Diver, Shag and Fulmar of note.

Chesil Beach

After a stop for provisions we headed north up to the New Forest. The blue shies and breeze we ideal for Goshawk. At our first site at first we wondered whether it was a bit late at gone 2pm but with patience and the distraction of a pair of Woodlark and a showy pair of Crossbill, we were rewarded. Like London buses you wait for ages for four to come along at once. We had four Gos up together showing as well as Gos do, some way off but providing good scope views.

Picture by Hawky

Our final planned stop was another Goshawk site not too far away. Again we were lucky with one distant view. Two and a half hours and major road problems on the M25 later we arrived at Rainham Marshes in almost darkness. From a lay by on the A13 Hawky manage to pick up the two Bewick Swans that had been reported earlier that afternoon. Poor but adequate views were had of the rare for London birds.

Dusky Warbler in the bag.......at last

Dusly Warbler is officially no longer my bogey bird! After 3 previous dips I managed to catch up with the Walthamstow Resevoir bird first thing this morning. I picked up Shaun bright and early at 6am, arriving at the Fisherman's car park 30 minutes later. We had to wait 20 minutes for the gate to open before parking up and heading over the road to the resevoir, joined by Steve Bacon, who we bumped into in the car park.

We walked the mile or so to the bird's favoured area and was surprised to find we were the first on site. Being a 1st for London we thought there would be a big crowd but I guess many people had managed to catch up with the bird during the week.

Within a few minutes we had located a couple of warblers feeding in brambles along side the canal about 100 yards. One was definitely a Chiffy, olive coloured in appearance, the other was much paler, this had to be it, if only we could get enough on it to be sure. We watched the bird for about 20 minutes, skulking in brambles and feeding along the top of the canal wall until eventually it sat out for a few seconds providing slightly better views, that was it! By now there was probably a dozen or so birders but most could not get on to it being a good 100 yards plus away. The bird then flew across the canal and began feeding in the sunshine along the fence line. We moved round to position ourselves opposite the bird then enjoyed great clear views from as close as 30 feet as the bird moved along the fence line most of the time feeding out in the open. Happy with Dusky Warbler on the list (life list 364) we moved on, via the Slavonion Grebe on the reservoir.

Picture by Priscille Preston - thanks!

We headed to the Girling Reservoir just up the road where we counted double figure Black Necked Grebes, Great Northern Diver and Goldeneye, but despite Shaun and Steve trying to string some shabby looking Great Cresteds we could not locate the reported Red Necked Grebe.

Via a McDonalds breakfast we headed up the A10 to Broxbourne to try for Hawfinch that had been reported earlier this morning and the previous day. A muddy 45 mins later we left Hawfinchless, to head home.

It's great to get a lifer locally, let's hope there's more to come in 2010.

Dusky Warbler still not on the list ........yet!

Wednesday saw me dip Dusky Warbler for the third time. Having dipped the (F)LBJ in Cornwall 2007 and in Norfolk in 2008, this time I managed to dip much closer to home, in Walthamstow, East London. Just half an hour from my work place in Stratford I managed to get out of the orifice early at 3pm with my colleague/mate Pete, a non birder, who fancied coming along for the trip, and who luckily for me drives to work.

30ish minutes later we were parking up on Black Horse Lane and heading along the canal toward the north east corner. It was only at this point that I realised that I would have to undertake some kind of army assault course procedure to get across the canal! Poor old Pete couldn't manage it and opted for sitting in the late afternoon sunshine while I headed over the edge of the reseviour to view into a fenced compound. I was met by the usual, “it was showing well about 2 minutes ago mate, it’s probably doing a circuit and will be back again”. Yeh right.

I spent the next 1.5 hours with my bins glued to my eyes, unlike most of the others who were chatting and generally not looking for the bird at all. About an hour in, I thought I had it. I called it but before anyone with a scope could get on it, it flew 10 metres and buried itself into a bush, and didn’t reappear. I can’t tick that, although I think there is a good chance it was it.

Birdguides has been reporting the bird showing well, each day since so I’ll be heading back first thing tomorrow morning (Sat) with Shaun, who also dipped out earlier on Wednesday, no doubt with many others desperate to add Dusky Warbler to their London list. Watch this space!

Another Green Winged Teal Stripe Up for Hawky

Sunday saw me and Hawky up in Leicestershire/Rutland for the day. We met Bagsy (Hawky's Dad) in the car park at Rutland Water about 8am before heading off along the muddy trail to where up to 3 Long Eared Owls have been roosting for some time now.

On route we encountered some showy Tree Sparrows at the feeding station and a 3 Bullfinches in the wood as the path begins. 3 Goosander were just about the only birds on show from the hide we stopped off at, before we arrived at the owl roost. Through the dense thicket we could just about see 2 Long Eared Owls, obscured by branches and brambles.

Heading back a flock of 20+ Lesser Redpolls were seen in flight and a probable Hawfinch, only seen taking off and flying away from us caused quite a bit of debate on the bird's ID.

Back at the car park we headed to Eyebrook to try and find Hawky's bogey bird, Green Winged Teal. Hawky has been particularly unlucky with this species, having eluded him on an estimated 20 twitches. We spent the next 2 to 3 hours checking out what seemed every bloody Teal. Along the way we found 3 Smew (2 drakes) and 2 White Fronted Geese, and a Red Kite, but yet again for Hawky, no Green Winged Teal.

Not as Ruddy common as they once were!

but Red Kites are getting more common by the minute!