Patchwork Challenge Trip 1 (2nd January) 37 Birds

While I enjoyed last year's Patchwork Challenge, I found myself flagging at certain times of the year and I eventually trailed a long way behind local birder Martin Wood, who also patches at Longham Lakes and has his own blog.

This year is going to be different though, so I made a concentrated effort to get out of bed early and I was at the lakes for 8.20 in the morning, which is a pretty good effort for me.

Things got off to a cracking start in the car park with the lovely trill of one of many, many Robins that I would see on my 2 and a half hour walk. A quick walk over to the adjoining horse field got me three Carrion Crows and two Mistle Thrushes, which were patrolling a second field for food.

After a few worrying minutes I found the Great White Egrets

Of course, my real target for the day were the overwintering Great White Egrets, which would mark my first two-pointers for the year. I rapidly crossed the car park to the lakes, passing a couple of Magpies and Blackbirds, and spying a fair number of Coot on the North Lake.

As I walked up the causeway I could feel my breath quickening as I couldn't see any sign of the egrets. I spied Little Grebes, Great Crested Grebes, Cormorants, Tufted Ducks, and Mute Swans, but the Egrets weren't where they normally were. Just as I was starting to think I'd missed them for the year, a call up above alerted me to a Little Egret, which was quickly followed by one of the Great Whites!. Following its trail, I soon spotted the remaining two birds, and carried on with my walk.

There were lots of Robins on patch. This image made it onto the official Springwatch twitter feed.

The hedges along the back of the lake yielded fiery Wrens, a small party of Great Tits, a lone Chiffchaff and a Blue Tit. I walked down to the far corner hoping for Bullfinch, but they weren't to be seen. I did find Wood Pigeons and a small flyby of Feral Pigeons though.

Mallards where on the far side of the North Lake and I also discovered around 16 Pochard, with several red-headed males amongst them. Walking back behind the south lake I met some birders who suggested combing the trenches for waders and rails.

Cormorants were everywhere. You can see the Pochards and Great Crested Grebes in the background.

I didn't say any, but I did find a couple of Redwings, a small party of Long-Tailed Tits and a lone Starling and female Chaffinch. I also spotted some Song Thrushes in the back field as well as a flock of Canada Geese, a smaller group of Mute Swans, and a smattering of Black-Headed Gulls and Herring Gulls. There were plenty of Jackdaws in Samual's Wood, but I saw no new passerines, which was a little disappointing.

The small island at the back of South Lake yielded 3 Gadwall (I'd later see a total of 17) but my walk back to the larger island was largely uneventful. A small number of Teal were roosting, as well as around 4 Snipe. Pleased with my total, I headed back to the car.

A pretty lousy image of one of the many Redwings I saw.

I spotted a Pied Wagtail probing around in the car park and decided to try the adjoining field one more time. There were a large number of Redwings around so I decided to walk along a smaller path to see if the group held Fieldfares within it. It wasn't easy traversing the path, but I found my first patch Coal Tit, Goldfinch, and a pair of Greenfinches too. I met up with yet another birdwatcher who confirmed that the flock didn't hold any Fieldfares and that they typically arrived in February.

All in all, a pretty good start for the year and I'm currently ahead of last year's record of 24 birds by a comfortable 13.

Current patch total = 37

Here's the list in full
Robin
Carrion Crow
Mistle Thrush
Blackbird
Great White Egret
Magpie
Coot
Little Grebe
Great Crested Grebe
Tufted Duck
Mute Swan
Cormorant
Little Egret
Wrens
Great Tit
Chiffchaff
Blue Tit
Wood Pigeon
Feral Pigeon
Mallard
Pochard
Redwing
Long-Tailed Tit
Starling
Chaffinch
Song Thrushes
Canada Geese
Black-Headed Gull
Herring Gull
Jackdaw
Gadwall
Teal
Snipe
Pied Wagtail
Coal Tit
Goldfinch
Greenfinch

Patchwork Challenge - Longham Lakes Visit 13 18-Sept-2016

Yes I know, it's been a terribly long time since I've done an update.
Life has gotten in the way and if I'm honest, a death of decent sightings on previous trips have put me off writing about them.

I'm back though, and massively behind Martin, but today was a decent little day, and it's given me the bug again, so I'll try and get more solid updates going forward.

When I got to the actual lakes there were a large group of people, around 20 or so who must have stumbled onto the lake as there were no cars in the car park to support them. They were a pain in the ass, talking loudly, scaring stuff and paying no heed to other people. As I was taking photos at one point a stone made a huge splash in front of me scattering the birds I was taking images of and causing me to say some harsh but deserved words to the gentleman that threw it.

It was a fair way away, but crops quite well.

I hung back, leaving them to pick berries and go about their annoying ways and soon found some nearby grebes again.

I started walking along the back of the second lake but the midges were swarming like anything, getting in my mouth and generally being bothersome, so I gave up and instead made my way to the small pathway that separates the two lakes.

Coots are always plentiful at Longham.

As I reached the final corner of lake two I was attracted by a rustling in the reeds by me. Before long, a small brown bird flew off and hung around some reeds about 20 feet from me. I tried phishing and eventually it came forward, enough for me to see it was a Sedge Warbler, my first for the year at Longham. Not a rare bird, but a lovely looking one all the same.

Not the best shot as he was in reeds and it's handheld at 600mm, but not bad either.

I wasn't on patch long, roughly an hour and there wasn't much else of note, but I did enjoy myself. I'm still a long way behind Martin, but with migration period upon us, there's a chance I might be able to close the gap between us.

Kingfisher Blow Out

I headed down to Blashford Lakes this morning as I wanted to test my new lens and was hoping to get views of a kingfisher. Lots of people had the same idea as the hide was completely packed with just enough room for me to sit down. Once I got there I realised I'd forgotten my tripod, meaning I struggled to get super sharp shots. A couple of Kingfishers did turn up and despite the noise from many of the other lenses, they happily fished for a good couple of hours.

Initially it turned up at the far end of the hide.. I was glad for my 1.4 teleconverter.

This is probably one of the best shots I took and it's barely cropped too. I love the reach of this lens.

I'm a little too high for this shot so he looks dumpier than usual.

This shot was just after he did a little poo. It's probably a little too soft if I'm honest.

This is the first time I've ever been too close to a Kingfisher. It was right at the low end of my lens. Moving back I ended up getting some of the hide in the bottom of the shot :(

Look at the size of this fish! Annoyingly, the focus seems to be on it :P

He  spent a good couple of minutes beating it to death and the other photographers were going crazy with shot.. I still managed this with just a couple of shots at a time.

You'd think that after this he wouldn't be hungry, but he was back about ten minutes later. Greedy bird.

While some of the shots are good I'm still in need of a lot of practice with this lens. I think I need to keep practising and choose an acceptable shutterspeed too. 

My focus was pretty much on Kingfishers all morning, but I did head to Longham in the afternoon. Sadly, many of the birds were far too far away, being 60-70 feet out. No new birds this week, but hopefully that will change for the weekend.

This Reed Warbler was hiding in the reeds.

I quite like this Mute Swan shot, but it might be a little overexposed.

A Black-Headed Gull. I wouldn't want to say how old though.

Lots of juvenile Coots were active.

Adults were rarely far away.

Tracking gulls in flight isn't easy.

A group of distant Tufted Duck.

Lazy Cormorants on one of the floating rests.

Very distant Great Crested Grebes. I must have saw around 15.

I find exposure on Swans really tricky.

A pair of Black-Headed Gulls.

Week 49 29-03-2015 Birds Spotted 0

I'm pretty sure I'm approaching the end of the first year of my blog and somewhere along the line I've messed up the week. Still, we'll worry about that shortly.

This weekend has been more miserable weather, so I'll be posting up images from last week's trip to Moors Valley Country Park. I didn't see any new birds, but I did manage to take some nice photos, so I'll be sharing those with you for the time being. Enjoy.

One of the first things I spotted was this Magpie, busily eating some food
 it had stolen from somewhere.

There were plenty of gulls around, but nothing out of the ordinary. 

Here's the first of many Black-Headed Gulls.

I thought this was a Little Gull as it was quite graceful in flight, but it's another BBG :)

Due to plenty of people feeding the birds there were plenty of fights on the pond.

This young Herring Gull was happily chasing the smaller gulls for food.

There were a few Lesser Black-Backed Gulls around as well.

Mallards were plentiful. In fact they were pretty much the only ducks there.

There were a single pair of Wigeon, but they stayed far out for the entire duration.

I also saw a distant Great-Crested Grebe

A hunting Buzzard.

While a singing Robin finished off the day.