Week 8 08-06-2014 Birds Spotted 1

It was another relatively quiet week for new birds, but a great week all the same for capturing interesting specimens through my lens. This is going to be my last blog before I upgrade to a new lens. I've deliberated hard about which one to go for, but the Canon 400mm prime looks to be the most sensible choice for me. I've grown quite fond of taking bird in flight shots, and this particular Canon is much better than the zoom equivalent. You'll hopefully see an upgrade in my images very soon.

In the meantime lets take a look at what happened this week. In fact, let's look at the one new bird I saw.

Green Woodpecker
What an amazing looking bird. We went to Queen's Park Golf Course as I've often seen this gorgeous looking birds there in the past. They love flying down onto the greens where they have easy access to insects and can be quite hard to see due to their colouring. After hanging around the large pond there we walked off-course and eventually spotted one quite some way off in the distance. While they are immediately striking with their bright green plumage and red heads, it's their brilliant laughing calls that really give them away. This one was clearly excited as it was making quite a lot of noise. My first shot wasn't great as he was far away and on the ground, I was lucky enough to get a nice shot of it in flight though. Woodpeckers have bounding flight paths that can make them quite tricky to shoot, so I'm quite pleased with the way it eventually turned out. Also known as the yaffle (due to its laughing call) the Green Woodpecker is our largest woodpecker with over 52,000 breeding pairs. It's always nice when you go out with the hope of seeing something and have it actually happen and while it was the only new bird I spotted this week it was certainly worth seeing.

As you can see, they're well camouflaged when they are on the ground.

And here he is in flight, look at the gorgeous patterns on the wings.

So I only saw one bird this week, which puts my grand total on 55 birds, with just 217 left to spot. A near miss this week included a Bullfinch. I got a photo, but it's terrible quality, so I won't be including it here. Maybe I'll get it next week, along with that pesky Peregrine.

So to finish off this week here's a selection of birds and insects that I saw while visiting the pond and the Throop part of the river Stour.

Even the most mundane birds look great in flight, as this Black-Headed Gull proves.

There were a family of Mallards at the pond. Lovely.

They weren't keen on getting wet though.

You certainly don't expect to see 10-inch Terrapins in the UK!

A male Mallard showing off.

A Mistle Thrush in flight.

The obligatory Robin shot.

A resting Damselfly.

A Black-Headed Gull splashes down.

A male Moorhen looking out for his chicks.

He got chased off by a duck though.

Annoyingly this Grey Heron was in a very shaded and dark area.

An opportunistic Black-Headed Gull.

I don't recognise this Damselfly, but it had a strange fluttering flight like a Butterfly.

A very tatty Red Admiral.

Hungry fish!

Hoverfly.

A final Black-Headed Gull flyover.