Patchwork Challenge - Longham Lakes Visit 15 and 16 23 October and 6 November 2016

23 October 2016
My trips are getting more and more infrequent, meaning I'm not getting the luck Martin has been getting.

Speaking of Martin, I finally met him for the first time since the challenge began. He's a lovely chap and it was nice to finally meet him and his son after reading his blog entries for the past 10 months. He mentioned a Snipe that had been spotted on the island, so I said my goodbyes and headed off with my friend Chris.

No luck on the island, so we continued with our walk, seeing the usual coots, grebes and tufted ducks. It wasn't until we reached the back of the second lake that my luck began to hold out. We saw plenty of Autumn ducks, including Shoveler, Teal and Wigeon, which were the first since January for me. As we continued around we flushed a small flock of Meadow Pipits, my first new birds for a while. We scoured the small island for the Kingfisher that Chris had seen several times, but has continued to elude me, and I lucked out again. We did spot a male Stonechat though, my first for the year here.

As we headed for the car pack we tried the island to see the Snipe, but again, nothing was there. As we were leaving it flew past us, easy to tell due to its flight. A few moments later a female Sparrowhawk flew fast and low through the car park.

06 November 2016

Headed out today as Martin had used his new scope and spotted two Egyptian Geese on the big island the previous day. Annoyingly, I didn't see them. In fact I didn't see much of anything except for about 150 coot, 50 herring gulls and lots of winter ducks. I was with my wife and daughter who were complaining of the wind and the cold, so I wasn't able to do a thorough scan like I wanted to.
Oh well, there's always next week.

A very distant Little Grebe.

Lazy Cormorants.

Mute Swan

I'm now at 66 species for the year, which is pretty terrible if I'm honest. I was hoping to hit a 100 birds, but year's end, but at this rate I'd be happy with 70 :P

I do wonder if I lose out by not having access to a scope like Martin, but he's a lot more regular than I am, which means he has more chance of seeing stuff :)

Patchwork Challenge - Visit 2 (09-01-2016)

I didn't have a lot of time today, but did manage to add a few new birds to my patch list for the Patchwork Challenge. I hurried around the North lake only as the weather was looking poor and I was concerned about getting my big lens wet. It wasn't too bad a day, although frustratingly I left my binoculars at home, meaning I couldn't identify a lot of birds.

It was pretty much business as usual on the lakes, with Tufted Ducks, Pochards, Mallards, Gadwell, Little Grebe, Crested Grebe and Coot all making an appearance. Interestingly, I've seen no Moorhens yet, which seems odd, but I'll keep looking for them. I did spot a few additional ducks this time around, finding a small group of Shoveler on the South Lake Island and Teal dabbling about in the Hampreston Fields.

Female Shoveler to the left and a male Gadwell to the right.

Speaking of Hampreston Fields there was still a lot of action there. The Mute Swans and Canada Geese were still present, but I was also able to add Greylag Geese to my list, which was nice. Unfortunately, I'd left my camera on -2 exposure so the following shot isn't the best.

This was very distant, but doesn't look too bad.

There was a large number of Canada geese present.

I continued to scan the fields and added quite a few Corvids to the list, including Carrion Crows, Jackdaws and about 6 magpies. There was a large flock of around 30 Rooks too, adding another new bird to the patch list. Starlings were also busy, looking for food with the Rooks, so that was another tick to the patch too.

In addition to scanning the waterlogged fields for rare geese (you never know right?) I was also looking for gulls, particularly Common Gulls which are quite common here. I did see plenty of Black-Headed Gulls and a few Herring Gulls but no Common Gulls. Apparently, one of the Herring Gulls was a Northern Scandinavian one, but as far as I know it's not worth extra points. Plenty of gulls have been sighted at the lakes, so I still have time to find some rare ones.

Herring Gulls, the one of the left is the Northern Scandinavian one.

One thing I am lucking out on is passerines. Things got off to a great start with a small group of Great Tits in the car park, but I was less lucky walking around the lakes. I heard plenty of birds, but I'd not trust my ID too identify them by sound alone. I saw plenty of Blackbirds, a few Blue Tits and quite a few Goldfinch, but there were no birds in large numbers. I saw a few more Long Tailed Tits, but the Redwings were nowhere to be seen this time around. Still, I did manage to find a small group of Greenfinch and a lone Pied Wagtail, which gave me two new birds.

The only other new bird this week were two buzzards, which I saw separately, both flying in the same direction. I didn't see any other raptors, although I vainly (and probably, foolishly) scanned the famer's field for barn owls and short-eared owls.

That now brings my patch total to 33 birds, which is way short of what I'd like, but not too bad considering my lack of obvious species like Robin, Dunnock, House Sparrow and several other birds I should have seen by now.

What follows will be a list of every different bird I saw that day, but we'll finish with a shot of a Cormorant :)

Black-Headed Gull

Blackbird

Buzzard

Carrion Crow

Canada Goose

Coot

Cormorant

Gadwell

Goldfinch

Great Crested Grebe

Greylag Goose

Green Finch

Great Tit

Jackdaw

Little Grebe

Long-Tailed Tit

Magpie

Mallard

Pied Wagtail

Pochard

Rook

Shoveler

Starling

Teal

Tufted Duck

Wood Pigeon

Patchwork Challenge - Entry 1

So here it is, my first entry for this year's Patchwork Challenge.
The aim is to choose a spot no more than 3kms in size and spot as many different birds as you can in the course of a year. There's a point system too, although I doubt I'll use it as it seems a little complicated. I just thought this was a good opportunity to start over as it's hard finding new birds for the Great British Bird Hunt.

My first trip to Longham Lakes was interesting as all the back fields have flooded. As a result all the geese and swans were very active and a lot nearer than they usually are. I saw a few ducks, but not as many different species as I'd expect to see and Mallards were very thin on the ground. While I heard plenty of passerines, I didn't include them as my ids aren't too hot. I also saw a few gulls which I didn't recognise, and therefore didn't include.

It wasn't a bad start though and I saw a total of 24 different species
Mute Swan
Canada Goose
Gadwall
Mallard
Pochard
Tufted Duck
Cormorant
Little Grebe
Great Crested Grebe
Kestrel
Coot
Lapwing
Black-Headed Gull
Herring Gull
Woodpigeon
Magpie
Jackdaw
Carrion Crow
Blue Tit
Long Tailed Tit
Blackbird
Redwing
Mistle Thrush
Goldfinch

The Redwing was particularly interesting as I only saw my first a day previously, and here was another small flock of around 5 birds.

I'm including a few pictures but they're taken with my bridge camera. The weather was so poor I didn't want to risk my big lens.

Cormorants

A closer crop.

Great Crested Grebe which was very close to the bank.

And another shot of it.

The fields were heavily waterlogged.

A distant Long-Tailed Tit.

Male Little Grebe.

A hidden Redwing.

Week 28 26-10-2014 Birds Spotted: 1

Sorry for no update last week but I'm being hit by the harsh reality of the British weather.

One thing I've noticed about creating a blog around bird photography is that you need half decent light in order to stand any chance of getting a half-decent shot. With the weather being largely terrible for the past couple of weeks, I've had less and less opportunities to get out. And once' I'm out the light has generally been so poor I've been forced to use higher iso levels that I'd typically be happy with.

Still I did manage to get one new bird in the past two weeks of general pain and suffering, so let's take a look at it.

Dartford Warbler

I've had so many near misses with this elusive little bird. Every time I've been to Arne, I've heard them, but never been quick enough to get a photo of them. A quick tail flash is all I've normally seen, and I was giving up hope of getting a half decent shot as the weather turn.

Still a visit to Arne on Saturday saw my luck was in and the distinctive churring alerted me to the nearby warbler. I was able to get a good 20 feet towards him (or her) and it showed no signs of being scared. In fact it hung around for a good 3 minutes and only flew off when a young family came close.

This gorgeous bird is only found in a few locations in the UK and Dorset is one of its hotspots. Noted for its long tail, buff breast and red eye markings, it's a very distinctive warbler that has a distinctive churring call. It's very rare due to its limited habitat and there's thought to be just over 3,000 breeding pairs.

This is the closest I could get, around 20 feet away, which shows just how small it is!

And here's a crop of the little fellow.

So that's it for birds this week. I'm now up to 120 photographed birds with another 152 left to find.

Spotted what I suspect is a Meadow Pipit.

A fuzzy Long-Tailed Tit in flight.

A Mistle Thrush. As noted earlier, the day was overcast for the most part :(

A selection of geese and waders at Middlebere.

I also went to Stanpit late Sunday afternoon, but the light was even worse, which made for some pretty disappointing shots.

A group of Brent Geese.

Another that refused to pose for me :)

A group of Lapwings.

Lapwings in flight.

The back of a Redshank.

And a Cormorant.