Welcome to my birding blog - first launched 12th March 2012...
9th June 2022 ff
A bit of a Lull!
It's that time of year. Birders turn their eyes to orchids and butterflies while they remain alert ready to react to any unforeseen rarity that turns up in their neck of the woods. On that matter, what is a neck of the woods? Anyone know?
Well I've certainly been a bit quiet myself. Diesel at sky high price, Covid going full tonto and Boris refusing to fall on his sword. As usual.
June 9th: North Cave
Probable southern marsh orchids
A very worn painted lady!
Common blue
Aggressive, ruthless but very smart looking birds - lesser black-backed gulls.
June 10th: My cat, Jeti
Three years old, Jeti died June 10th after being hit by a car during the night. We live down a very quiet road and her death was hard to understand or believe. A phone call from a veterinary practice told me she'd been identified from her chip. Picked up about thirty yards from our house. I'd spent the morning in the garden calling her.
I know all cats are special to their cat-loving owners [and we've had a good few over the last 49 years] but Jeti was different in that she considered herself to be my cat and she had little to do with my wife. If I was in the garden, Jeti was. She loved to climb - walls, fences, trees - anything! She would follow me like a dog, talking incessantly and if I sat down on the bench in the vegetable garden she would come and sit next to me or roll around on the ground at my feet.
I miss her every morning as she would wait on the extension roof to be let in through the window.
June 15th: Blacktoft
Very quiet.
Mallard ducklings
June 16th: Jay in our garden
From a trail camera video clip
182 UK 2022
26th May ff
1: It doesn't feel like Summer!
May 26th: Blacktoft
A pleasant afternoon watching the marsh harriers. Taken by surprise when a bittern did a long flight past Townend and still visible as it disappeared in the direction of Marshland. I was a bit late getting a fix on it but a good year tick for me - number 176.
A few of the afternoon's photos.
The bittern.
June 3rd: A brief visit to Saltholme. Very quiet everywhere. Just snapped a couple of pictures at Phil Stead hide. Can't remember what I was hoping to see - but clearly I didn't see it!
June 5th: a slightly more purposeful trip to Scaling Dam to find a woodchat shrike along the Roxby road. Flighty and always distant but a nice bird to see. Followed up with a visit to Lockwood Beck. Couldn't find the spotted flycatchers although I know they're there.
2: Birding on four wheels!
June 7th: All the photos in this final section were taken during a 2 hour period whilst I sat in my car with the driver's window down and camera and bins in my lap. I think it went rather well! Photos from Harwood Dale.
179 UK 2022
21st May 2022 ff
So near and then so far away!
May 21st: Potteric Carr YWT
It's always quite a long walk to anywhere at Potteric and Piper Marsh was no exception but it was worth it. The hide was quiet and the chicken of the woods just outside kept quiet too.
Chicken of the Wood
Inside the hide I immediately saw a pair of black-winged stilts. A lapwing and a particularly clumsy Canada goose were making life difficult at times.
Can't help feeling those long legs can be a nuisance at times!
May 22nd: Holme Fleet near Saltholme
Now we're in far away land. From the little off-road parking area at Holme Fleet a young little gull was showing. A long way off!
May 24th: Old Moor
A lesser yellowlegs at Wath Ings was also about as far away as it could be. Still, I tried!
Walking back a footless black-headed gull and a rather ragged robin showed well!
175 UK 2022
13th May 2022 ff
Doing the Wheldrake Trudge!
13th & 14th May
For those of us who are getting on a little or for whom health reasons may curtail one's energies, Wheldrake Ings would be ideally suited to a miniature narrow gauge all-electric self-drive little railway to take birders to stations at Tower Bend, Pool Junction and Swantail Terminus - stopping of course here and there to see things like a singing gropper! If it turns out to be a big money earner ambitions could later focus on an extension to Bank Island with stations below the current English Nature centre and at Cheesecake turntable!
Excuse me a moment. Some men in white coats have just arrived. I think they're carrying a straitjacket...
Ok. They've gone now. I write this having walked three times recently - once from Bank Island to Cheesecake and then all the way to Swantail and twice more from the Wheldrake Ings car park all the way to the far end. Once to see if there was anything around and twice to see the glossy ibis. The third of these visits did result in a distant view of one ibis on the Refuge seen from near Pool hide and flight views of cuckoo.
[The first visit and walk from Bank Island feature in the previous post]
A few photos from these visits on 13th-14th May.
Little grebe
Roe deer
Swallow fly-watching!
Female banded demoiselle. Rather splendid!
Willow warbler
Common terns from Pool Hide
Reed bunting
May 15th - a quick drive [about 1.5 miles] to Newlands Lane, Poppleton to watch a dung heap! Yellowhammers, pied wagtail and this female wheatear. I had a report of a yellow wagtail but I never saw it.
May 17th: Staveley and Nosterfield. I drove to Staveley and parked in the village at the roadside outside the Royal Oak inn. From there it's a quick walk down the footpath at the side of the pub to the Western Lagoon. Saves a lot of time!
Eventually the pectoral sandpiper appeared. Red kite overhead, garganey, common terns and avocets present too. Here's the pec.
On then to Nosterfield for a black tern that had, in fact, departed overnight. Not to worry, I headed for Flask Lake and parked in the village lay-by.
May 18th: a trip to Harwood Dale via Troutsdale. Missed my target species of turtle dove but just a few minutes spent at 'Dipper Bridge,' Hilla Green proved worthwhile. I simply watched from the bridge.
Didn't know they have metal legs!
170 UK 2022
26th April 2022 ff
I was standing at a bedroom window when suddenly...
Of which more later. First of all it's a look back to:-
April 26th: Saltholme roadside gave a very distant view of two sleeping Egyptian geese. It's a good year for photos of birds that are too far away!
Dorman's Pool had something a bit more recognizable.
April 30th: a long walk at Acaster Malbis. I don't think I went far enough or perhaps I went the wrong way and I saw few birds. Yellowhammers were very nice...
Eventually I reached a magical woodland with robins, tits and thousands of bluebells.
May 3rd: Fairburn Ings, Burlands Lane, Poppleton and North Duffield.
Cattle egret at Fairburn New Flash.
Wood sandpiper, Poppleton
From Geoff Smith hide at North Duffield: mute swan on nest and a male whinchat.
May 4th: Blacktoft Sands
Marsh harriers, shelducks
May 6th: Seaton Carew beach for the little terns.
May 9th: Bank Island and Wheldrake Ings.
First of all I walked in the direction of Cheesecake Hide. At one point I turned round and looked behind me. I don't know what made me do that but this is what I saw.
In case you were wondering, it's a stoat.
From the hide I spotted a drake garganey.
Walking back I froze when a hare vanished just in front of me in long grass. Camera ready. It soon popped up really close and stared at me as I took these photos.
I said: 'Hello there!' and it ran for its life!
I decided to take the path to Wheldrake Ings - something I'd not done before. Several good views of the river. A whitethroat on a dead branch and lots of orange tip butterflies.
I never saw the cuckoo which teased me all morning - sometimes very close by, sometimes quite distant. At Wheldrake Ings car park a pied wagtail was looking for food.
As for the opening title of this particular post: Swifts finally appeared over the garden this morning, 11th May - one day later than last year. They always make me feel happy as they screech across the sky.