Nice Mix

Another good day on The Point. A weird feature of this spring so far has been a regular supply of Fieldfares, with 2-3 seen most mornings, giving a very autumnal feel to the place.

This is a much more typical spring view at suaeda level!

This Hobby gave a brief flypast before streaking off over the harbour

Walking down Yankee Ridge we were somewhat surprised when this adult Spoonbill stepped out of a nearby saltmarsh creek, added itself to our 'shitlists' (out of shot), looked very worried for a minute (which presumably explains the previously described behaviour), and then flew a short distance to a more isolated creek. Gotta love these birds, it'll be great if they can really establish themselves as a breeding bird over the next few years.

While patrolling the dunes this afternoon I spotted this Marsh Harrier hunting along the same ridge as I was on. Ducking down into the grass, I managed to stay hidden enough to receive a nice close flyby. Think this is a 3cy Male, confirmation/disagreement of this is most welcome.

At the sharp end!!

I think I may be starting to run out of 'Point' based blog titles, some would say that I did a long time ago....

Today was a fantastic day for birding on Blakeney Point, a spring 'classic'. Starting this morning at Cley Beach the walk up was enlivened by plenty of Wheatears on the deck and a few Yellow Wagtails passing low overhead. Only one of these actually pitched on the deck and it was this fine male flava. 

This ringtail Hen Harrier caused havoc on the saltmarsh as it flew east over the harbour, gulls and waders everwhere!!!

The bushes held a scattering of the usual spring migrants, Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff, Lesser Whitethroat, Redstart etc. In the afternoon we were casually admiring a male Whinchat on the plantation fence when this cracking male Red-breasted Flycatcher appeared next to it.

It shared the fenceline with a pair of Whinchat, a male Redstart, 2 Blackcaps and a Lesser Whitethroat, all of which were new in since the morning, presumably due to the wind veering more to the east throughout the day. The whole place just had that feel that new things were arriving all the time.

This Robin also showed nicely

The rather restricted throat patch had us even more excited for a while but closer examination showed some reddy-orange bleeding through into the breast ,and looking around on the internet seems to show this as fairly typical plumage for this time of year. Interestingly, according to The Birds of Norfolk, this is the earlist record for the county, a whole 5 days before one on at Brancaster in 1972.

Throughout the rest of the evening new birds were still coming in including a smart male 'Pied type' flycatcher, which fortunately was only seen in flight so didn't even give an opportunity to try and turn it into something else. 

Disheveled

I'm recently back from my third trip to Malta for the bird protection camps run by Birdlife Malta. Yet again I had a superbly fulfilling time out in the field reording bird migration, deterring illegal shooting of protected birds, monitoring the 'legal' hunting season on Turtle Dove and Quail (both in decline in Europe) alongisde some great people. I was only on the island for a week and migration during that time was slow so I didn't see a whole lot of migrants, particularly raptors, and consequently saw no serious incindents. Here's a few photos from the week, taken before my lens suffered some significant, but hopefully repairable damage as I vaulted a wall after my lifer male Collared Flycatcher!

Doing what it says on the tin

Malta tick!! Cattle Egret at Salini

Stunning dark Eleonora's Falcon

Gull-billed Tern, also in Salini, as was the Collared Flycatcher. Strange that all 3 species that were new for my Malta list were all in a 'strictly no-hunting' zone.

Hobby

Black-winged Stilt. These birds bred in Malta for the first time last year at the wonderful Ghadira Nature Reserve.

I accompanied a Times of Malta journalist on one of our morning shifts, his article is worth a read here.

Definitely worth a watch is this fantastic video by Amanda Rogers, filmed partly during last years Raptor Camp, and gives a great overall view of the situation, and is beautifully filmed and edited too.

What a week!

I've been lucky enough to see some great birds this last week:

Okay, maybe putting that last one has aroused some suspicions, I've actually been nowhere more exciting than Gloucestershire. Not to knock it though, I had a great uni fieldtrip up to Slimbridge WWT (School of Applied Sciences paid our entry ticket, Get In!!) last Friday and had a good look around the place, having not visited since my early birding years way back.

I must admit that I actually really enjoyed looking at the captive stuff, seeing some stunning birds, some I've seen in the wild. some I've dipped, and some that I hope to see in the future. The Eider flock were particularly popular with our group, and the coach journey home was punctuated with impressions of the male's display call, some significantly more realistic than others.

I did of course take some time to look through the wild birds too, and was happy to see this thing, the first i've seen in the UK since 2 on Tresco in 1999, I seem to remember the boat from St. Marys for these detouring to twitch a newly discovered Surf Scoter between Tresco and St. Martins (eurgh, reminicising about Scilly more than a decade ago, i'm starting to turn into one you old farts, i'll be wearing Country Innovation and listening to P.I.L next!):

Bewick's Swans are always a delight

Male Pintail - Surely one of the best birds we get in the UK

White-fronts

Even the wild stuff comes close here, too close to focus sometimes.

And yet more wildfowl, this time the subject of my dissertation, nearly all of my 'birding' time this year has been spent watching Brents down in Poole Harbour. and time well spent it's been too, they're really quite endearing birds when you stop to watch them for a while.

And i'm back on Blakeney Point in 5 weeks, YEEEEHAAAAA!

Getting back to The Point....

After 2 and a half years or so my time at Bournemouth Uni is nearly up, and it's time to get back into the real world and start behaving like a respectable birding being again. Last week was mostly spent up in Norfolk where I had an interview for a return to Blakeney Point, where I spent the summer of 2010 as a seasonal warden. Having been a bit lacking in 'field-time' lately I decided to stay up there for a few days after and managed to catch up with some of the winter specialities; Smew, Rough-legged Buzzard, Snow Bunting and Shorelark being the highlights. The weather was pretty grim, so not great for photography and it was the usual half-arsed effort on that front, but I did like these:

A few days ago I was offered the job so will be returning to 'The Spit of Dreams' in April, this time with the grand new title of Ranger. I haven't looked through the full contract yet, but i'm assuming a white horse is provided

Movember!!!

As the autumn birding season dies away, thoughts turn to other, more important matters, like checking your balls. To be honest, i've probably spent more time checking my balls than I have birding over the last month anyway, thanks to uni work, being drunk, being hungover and being a lazy git, but that's not the point. The point is that one man dies of prostate cancer EVERY HOUR in the UK, and heaps more from testicular cancer ( I couldn't find a figure). A big reason for this, is that us blokes generally don't like to think about health stuff, cos it sounds horrible, and we don't want some doctor poking around our tackle, so we do our very best to ignore some very serious issues. 

So, over recent years, a campaign called Movember has sprung up to raise awareness of male cancers, and to collect fundage to go towards the fight against the 'orrible things. Basically it involves growing a moustache for the month of November. This provides the perfect reason for blokes to get chatting about why they do it, and hopefully educate the un-informed about the dangers. And of course, the main reason i'm posting this on here: to gather sponsorship money. The Movember website has a far more comprehensive breakdown of where donations go to than I can manage to put on here, so go have a look. There's also a Mens Health section telling you what you should know about keeping your essential parts healthy, so even if you can't throw us some cash, take a look at that for your own sakes.

Obviously, we're trying to make a bit of fun out of a fairly serious situation, otherwise it would be a bit depressing, so there's a bit of friendly competition going, between Mo-bro's (I know, it's an awful term) and between teams so if you can donate I would much appreciate it if you donated to my effort. We've only just set the team page up so its currently looking as sparse as my chin but hopefully we should get plenty of pictures up soon once the group of lads i'm doing this with (all studying Ecology and Wildlife Conservation here at Bournemouth Uni) get themselves signed up.

So, click here for my team page. and please be generous!!

And as a thank you for your generosity, here's a photo of me looking like an absolute tool after 1 weeks effort.

Malta Photos

A tad belated I know, but here's a few pictures from Birdlife Malta Raptor Camp 2011. Since returning from the camp i've been meaning to write a piece detailing my experiences, but to be honest, it's been a bit of a struggle coming to terms with the contrasting emotions over the fortnight. I'm not the most fluid of writers at the best of times and writing a report of that crazy two weeks has been a series of aborted attempts.

For those of you not familiar with Talking Naturally, you really need to take a listen to this podcast with Ceri Levy, which goes a long way to explaining the situation out there. The quote that sums it up best for me is 'Malta messes with yer head'!

Little Egret, shot down in front of us on the first day of camp

Purple Heron

Mixed heron flock

Dotterel in a cage for use as decoy bird. We called the police but the trapper legged it

HB's

Osprey over Buskett

Bee-eater, during the first few days we saw many hundreds of these cracking birds, often hawking just metres from us. These birds are often shot at.

More Honey Buzzards

This juv Honey Buzzard arrived low over us at Buskett one afternoon. The damaged primary is very typical of shotgun damage, and the wet breast feathers suggest that it may have been shot into the sea recently

To our horror it was then shot down again, it fell into a wooded area before rising flying weakly off. We didn't fancy its chances of survival after such an ordeal but wow, what an effort!

Black Kite

Early one morning, this Eleonora's Falcon gave us fantastic views at Girgenti, only the second one the species i've ever seen following a brief flyover 2 days previous

4 days later, a local birder witnessed the same bird being shot out of a tree by a local birder, and he managed to recover the body of the dead bird. Words just can't explain the feeling when something like that happens.