16 Thursday May 2019
Little, Great white and Cattle egrets all made it on to our birding lists during our Kent adventure. We had just one Great white, at RSPB Dungeness, and four Cattle egrets, also at Dungeness.
The Little egrets were much more common and widespread, with birds being seen at Oare Marshes, Restharrow Scrape near Sandwich, Rye Harbour in East Sussex, Pegwell Bay and Cliffe Pools.
14 Tuesday May 2019
It’s not every day that you get to photograph a Bittern. We’d heard one booming at Stodmarsh National Nature Reserve but then, the next day, while we were focused on looking for (but failed to see) Tree sparrows at RSPB Dungeness, a Bittern just happened to fly over from a pool on one side of the main road to a pool on the other. Luckily, I had my camera handy, though it’s not the sharpest of photos.
13 Monday May 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, insects, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, birding, birdwatching, British birds, British butterflies, Brown argus, butterflies, Corn bunting, Great bustard, Marsh fritillary, Salisbury Plain, Small blue butterfly, White Horse
Yesterday’s Glamorgan Bird Club trip to Salisbury Plain, RSPB Winterbourne Downs and Martin Down National Nature Reserve was amazing. The weather was stunning, the bird sightings were brilliant, as were the butterflies, and, as always, the company was wonderful.
The views from high on Salisbury Plain were lovely – we even had a distant view of the White Horse, though it was a little disconcerting being so close to the military impact area and to have the serenading of the plentiful skylarks occasionally shattered by the booms of exploding shells. The joy-riding trailbikers and off-roaders weren’t exactly peaceful either.
Still, we saw some amazing birds – I managed to spot the only Great bustard of the day (you’ll just have to believe me when I say that the head in the centre of the dip in the vegetation in the photo above is definitely a Great bustard!) and we had splendid ’scope sightings of Stone curlews and chicks at Winterbourne – both bird sightings were lifers for me. My best bird photo of the day was the Corn bunting shown below – captured out of the car window as we drove by.
We also enjoyed some superb butterfly sightings – my first Small blues and Brown Argus for the year, and, finishing on a high, my first ever (two) Marsh fritillaries at Martin Down.
12 Sunday May 2019
I hadn’t seen any tern species in 2019 until my birding trip to Kent, yet during those five days we saw four species, Common, Little, Sandwich and, incredibly, about 40 Black terns during a detour to the Farmoor Reservoir in Oxfordshire on our way home to Wales.
All but the Commons were rather distant so here are some photos of Common terns I managed to grab (the photos, not the terns!).
11 Saturday May 2019
Hearing Nightingales sing was a first for me on our birding trip to Kent and we heard quite a few birds in a couple of different locations. But, despite ten people standing and staring at the source of their beautiful songs, we struggled to see the actual birds. Sometimes I could see an indistinct object moving behind the foliage; once I caught a good sighting through my binoculars of a head and moving beak through a break in a bush. The only relatively clear sighting I managed to get was at Cliffe Pools, where a bird poked its front end out of a bush for a very short time, before hopping back in to the shadows. Here, then, are a photo of the blurry front of a Nightingale, the bush containing the bird – can you see it?, and a shot of its tail.
10 Friday May 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Lesser black-backed gull, nesting gull, urban gull nest
While I’ve been away in Kent, the Lesser black-backed gulls that are nesting on a rooftop behind my flat have been busy and one of them is now sitting continuously on the nest, which I assume means they have eggs.
I’ve just been reading that their average clutch is 3-4 eggs, and both female and male take turns at sitting on the nest. The incubation period takes around 30 days so, if the eggs are viable and they continue with their parental duties, we should expect to sit some chicks poking their heads up in early June. Fingers crossed!
It’s a bit hard to see the sitting bird so I cropped in on this shot to make it clearer
09 Thursday May 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature
I’ve been away on an amazing, intensive, 5-day birding trip with some of my Glamorgan birding friends, mostly in the English county of Kent, though we did also stop off in other places on the way there and back. So, during the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing snippets (not all birds) of that adventure.
One of the most amazing birds we saw was the Turtle dove, a bird now suffering severe population decline, partly due to habitat loss, partly because so many are shot in Europe as they migrate (amongst other issues).
I’d never seen a Turtle dove before, only heard one uttering its characteristic purring sound, last year at Sussex Wildlife Trust’s Woods Mill reserve. This time, thanks to one of our group making contact with Operation Turtledove, we were able to visit a private site which, once all their birds arrive back from spending the winter in Africa, has the highest concentration of Turtle doves in Britain.
Our party split into two groups of five to spend time in the hide – my lot saw two Turtle doves, the other group saw one (not all the birds are back yet). And what stunning birds they are, smaller than I expected (see the comparison with House sparrow and Woodpigeon in the photo above), with wonderfully delicate colours and wing markings. This visit was a real highlight of our trip and it was a huge privilege to have such close sightings of these beautiful birds.
07 Tuesday May 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature, trees
Tags
#365DaysWild, birding, birding out the window, birdwatching, British birds, Cherry tree, Collared dove
You all know how flash photography can sometimes make people look like they have red eyes – the effect can look quite devilish, almost evil. Well, in the case of this beautiful Collared dove, the red eyes are real and not at all devilish. I was working on my laptop when I heard the ‘coo-coo-coo’ and looked up to see the bird in the tree outside my living room window. I quickly grabbed the camera and moved slowly across the room to get a clearer shot, which is why the bird is looking at the camera, because it noticed my movement. It flew up on to the roof almost immediately but returned after a few minutes to shuffle its way around the tree looking for food.
06 Monday May 2019
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
~ from the poem ‘The Lark Ascending’ by English poet George Meredith, 1881
04 Saturday May 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature
Did you know the Song thrush was once known as the Throstle?
It appeared as such in Thomas Berwick’s landmark birding guide book Land Birds back in 1797, the name was later standardised to Song thrush – makes sense when you listen to the great tunes it belts out – but, as recently as 1951, when he published his Collins New Naturalist volume Birds and Men, Max Nicholson was still arguing for the name to change back to Throstle. Song thrush or Throstle – which do you prefer?
Regurgitating interesting titbits from Stephen Moss’s delectable Mrs Moreau’s Warbler: How birds got their names, Guardian Faber, London, 2018.
earthstar 
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