Peterborough Bird Club
Dedicated to helping people learn more about wild birds, habitats and conservation
Archive for March, 2011
|Fen Drayton 13th March
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
TRIP REPORT SUNDAY 13th MARCH
It poured down while I was on the A1 heading south & I thought I could be birding all on my little ownsome but thankfully the usual dozen or so stalwarts were there. We were greeted warmly by Neil, a good & true volunteer RSPB warden who gave us the gen & told us what we might not see unless we were particularly skillful. Needless to say our intrepid leader found them all for us & bullfinches by special request! Our list of species was not long but we thought the reserve was very user-friendly & full of promise at any season. There are no facilities on-site but Fen Drayton has an excellent pub!
Roger’s latest twitching trips
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
BIRDING TALES
Times are looking pretty hard in my twitching world and in desperation I’ve been driven to change the title! I just get the feeling you’ll have nothing to read this year if I report twitching UK lifers only and I really wouldn’t like to ruin your year at this early stage! Oh, the problems of having 400+!!
Ah, My Lady Amherst’s pheasant! I braved the elements and got to Houghton Hall on that early January morning and was rightfully rewarded with gob-smacking (yuk! But traditional adjective!) views in no time flat – just how it should be. Somebody had fed him mince pies and turkey sarnies as there he was in all his wondrous pantomime clothes, reminiscent of Aladdin and just in the bushes by the roadside. Obviously a wild bird as, not knowing about the human species, he wasn’t at all worried by big lenses in close proximity to some of his more private parts. Flushed with success (which he wasn’t) I then walked umpteen miles round central Norfolk but of course got to the pub in ample time to celebrate, only to be ripped-off for half a sausage sandwich. What was worse, I was paying for 4! I must try not to get so carried away with my trivial achievements!
While on the subject of pheasants, I must just mention the Golden variety I scored on the way to the Hunstanton cliff rendevous for the first outdoor meeting of the year. My driver mumbled about going round the Wolferton triangle, all his passengers mumbled ‘What a waste of time’, etc and there before our very eyes was a stonking male also in pantomime kit! That’s 3 in about 15 attempts and just on the grass verge! If you didn’t make it to that PBC outing you certainly missed something. Yes, it was a bit breezy on the cliff and fairly fresh at Twitchwell but approx 115 species were recorded – wow, beat that! So if you weren’t there this is a taste of what you missed. Red-breasted Merganser, Fulmar, Slavonian Grebe, Red-necked Grebe, Great Northern Diver, Red-throated Diver, Velvet Scoter, Twite, Snow Bunting, Shore Lark, Spotted Redshank, Water Rail, Brambling, Ross’s Goose, Northern Harrier, Rough-legged Buzzard. Best not miss any more fabulous PBC outdoor meetings then!
Time has now passed & it’s the middle of Feb & still no twitching being done! Woe is me & thrice woe – I’ve not gone for Slaty-backed Gull at Rainham Marshes on 3 occasions. Well, would you, dear birder, when the challenger is somewhere on the vast Thames estuary in amongst some 10,000 other gulls & generally seen for all of 2 mins before it disappears? Which kind of proves that I still retain a degree of sanity, whatever you may have thought from time to time! But he’s still niggling me. A first-ever in the UK usually found in the Bering Sea – cor, would I like him! Quite how I’d distinguish him from some thousands of his gull friends, I’m not too sure, but I haven’t had to face that very trivial problem yet!
Now, some week later I’ve switched my attention to the Eurasian (Rufous) Turtle Dove, that famous star of all the nation’s newspapers – did you see me about 250th in the queue in Chipping Norton? Unfortunately the bird had flown just before we arrived & was not relocated that day. The misery! Especially as you know it’s just round the corner within some 200 yards – but where? However, it didn’t cost me £5 for 5 mins in the kitchen- rather steep even if it was for a charitable cause – & my optics wouldn’t have stopped misting-up in that short time! How did I pick the one day when it didn’t play the game? Well, it kept on being seen & I thought there was a real danger of me being the only twitcher not to score, so back I went 3 days later & thankfully amends were made. The sort-of 6th ever in UK when it should have been between Russia & Pakistan! A dank & dreary Cotswold town in Feb wasn’t the best place to choose! Poor view of target bird meant no photo of my own but I’ve scrounged one from the mighty web. The very moment we’d got that one in the bag, through came a message that the S-b G was back at Rainham & it was only 1030 am. Well, we had to, we just had to give it a go! Wow! 2 ticks in 1 day! So off down the M40, around the M25 & why haven’t we heard any updates? Having a comfort stop & a think at South Mimms when news comes through that we’d all received duff gen! We weren’t very amused but it could have been worse. Back up the A1 when there’s breaking news of Rustic Bunting at Biggleswade (15 miles behind us). My passengers remained cool, calm & collected but I NEED him! I’m sort of ashamed to have to admit that I delivered them & then went back down south. Utter waste of time! I guesstimate 500 Corn Bunting, 300 Yellowhammer, shed-loads of Linnet, a few Goldfinch & some Reed Bunting to really put a spanner in the works! A fine sight they all were, but you find the Rustic Bunting in that lot!
OK! So here we are at the end of Feb (phew! What a long winter!) with the S-b Gull as the only object of my desire (birdwise). It comes & torments, it goes & I’m relieved & now I’ve finally decided to stop dreaming about it & move on (yuk again!)
Sincerely hoping that twitching returns to its previous exciting best once the old current bun really warms us up, but in the meantime I’m off to Eilat for a frantic week of Western Palearctic birding, to see if I’ve still got a shadow & to start on my 2011 suntan!
Thursday 3rd March 2011
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
OLD SULEHAY WOOD
Midweek walk
3 degrees Celsius & a light NE wind do not provide the best conditions for birds or their watchers! Nevertheless 13 intrepids went looking for Lesser Spotted Woodpecker – they dipped! Substitute Green Woodpeckers were heard & the leader claimed to have seen one but it turned out to be a thistle. On a more positive note, were excellent views of Great Spotted Woodpecker, Treecreeper, Mistle Thrush, Tits of most sorts, Red Kite, Buzzard with disapproving Sparrowhawk. It was dry underfoot & it didn’t rain. We know the old current bun is there somewhere & we hope to see him on future outings.
