Even more distant birds

27 Wednesday Nov 2024

Tags

birding, birdwatching, British birds, Common scoter, Melanitta fusca, Melanitta nigra, Velvet scoter

The day was bitterly cold, a strong wind from the north cutting right through the many layers I was wearing, as I watched snow showers shedding their flakes above the hills of Exmoor on the opposite side of the Bristol Channel. Why was I standing on a beach in sub-zero temperatures? Birds, of course.

241127 scoters (1)

As I mentioned yesterday, cold stormy weather can bring in rarities, and it had, again, in the form of three scoters, two Common scoters (Melanitta nigra) and a Velvet scoter (Melanitta fusca). For me, using only binoculars, no telescope, these were even more distant than yesterday’s Red-breasted merganser, just three little black sea ducks bobbing along in the choppy waters off shore. We’d had Common scoters in Cardiff Bay earlier in the year (Distant birds, 25 April 2024) but I’d only ever seen a Velvet scoter once before, off Musselburgh beach, in Scotland, on a short birding trip with friends back in May 2018. So, it was definitely worth risking frostbite for even a distant glimpse of this one.

241127 scoters (2)
– one of the Common scoters is on the left; the larger duck on the right is the Velvet scoter

Distant birds

25 Thursday Apr 2024

Posted by sconzani in birds, spring

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Tags

birding, birdwatching, British birds, Common scoter, spring migration, Whimbrel

No doubt you will have realised how much I love birds, love looking for them, love finding them, love watching them and learning their ways, love getting good photographs of them. The latter, though, is not always easy, and for two days in a row I’ve seen some wonderful birds I don’t often see but both times they’ve been too distant to photograph well.

240425 whimbrel

Yesterday, at Sully Beach, it was Whimbrels, at least four of them, poking about in the piles of seaweed for crabs and other small morsels of food. But I hadn’t timed my visit very well – the tide was ebbing and already well out so the birds were distant. (I’m planning another visit or two in the coming days when the tides are higher so fingers crossed for better images.)

240425 common scoter

And today, in Cardiff Bay, two Common scoters popped in for a visit. These are birds I’ve only ever seen three times before and that was back in 2019, so seeing them was a real treat. Sadly, they were always distant and the weather was dreich: big dark clouds blowing a cool wind across the water, with frequent squalls.