Over the winter on my patch, I have been keeping tabs on the population of wintering birds, particularly Dippers which I have really enjoyed photographing.  There has been a ringed bird most of winter, and from my photos I managed to read the full ring number.  I managed to get in touch with the ringer, who processed the bird in the nest near Wild Boar Clough in 2019.  

On the 1st Jan 2020, my mum and I went on a day’s birding.  We started off at Attenborough Nature Reserve in Nottinghamshire, with hopes of connecting with a Slavonian Grebe which had been showing incredibly well outside the visitor centre.  As expected, it showed really close and we watched it for about an hour.  It was nice to be able to see a Slav in winter plumage and so close in, as we’d seen them in Scotland in summer but they were much more distant.   Other birds of note at Attenborough were several Egyptian Geese, 2 Stock Dove and a male Red-crested Pochard.     We then made…

I’m trying to get back into the routine of posting more regularly on here, this post is quite belated but I’ll be putting on some more stuff from the past few months too. Soon after Christmas, I arranged to have a meet up with Simon Roddis at Carsington Water.  I met Simon briefly at Hen Harrier Day in August, and I have spoken to him lots on Twitter.  He is at Carsington practically every day, and over the past weeks there had been a couple of Great Northern Divers which I was interested in seeing.  My mum and I met with him at 8:30am from Stones Island, where we quickly…

Bird Camp takes place annually at BTO headquarters in Thetford, Norfolk. It is for 12 to 16 year olds who have a passion for birds and wildlife.  It is sponsored by the Cameron Bespolka Trust and led by Nick Moran who is training manager at BTO.  I arrived at 4.30pm and settled into what turned out to be the noisy tent, containing me, Kabir Kaul, Calum McKellar, Michael Sinclair, Wilum Johnston, Sam Newcombe and Alex Liddle.  After dinner we had a careers talk by Faye Vogely where we learned what steps we might have to take to get a job in conservation.  Faye told us about her experiences and her current…

In the Easter Holidays, we had a trip up to Bempton Cliffs on the Yorkshire Coast. After looking at recent sightings and a recommendation from my ringing trainer Geoff we thought it would be worth a visit having not been to many seabird colonies previously.   Tree Sparrows were nice to see around the visitor centre and cafe and there were lots of Linnet around in the many gorse bushes.  Despite this the definite songbird highlight was a singing male Corn Bunting.  It was singing from one of five posts, the first one having an unidentified chat, the second with the Corn Bunting, third and fourth each with a Meadow…

Yesterday I went to Clumber Park in Nottinghamshire with the hope of seeing the long-staying Great Grey Shrike.  The journey to the site was in no way uneventful as I saw my first Swallow of the year near Ashford-In-The-Water, which was very early. We found the area where the shrike had been seen and it soon appeared.  It was well worth the journey and we had great prolonged views of the bird.  It stayed in the same area for ages flitting from bush to bush, probably looking for mice. It didn’t seem to mind our presence at all!  The species has been seen wintering at the site in a number of previous…

Over the February half-term, I had some very good birding experiences.  On the 18th, me and my mum travelled to Bull Lane in Matlock to see some Waxwings that had been reliably seen over the past week.  They are stunning birds and were very easy to see.  This is the first time I’ve seen them properly, I saw them last year at school but I was in a lesson and the windows were almost impossible to see out of!  We counted a total of 19 individuals. The birds were quite reluctant to come close and were mainly perched chattering in the ash trees, but they did once come down to…

On the 2nd of January, me and my mum travelled to Lancashire.  We started off at WWT Martin Mere near Southport.  In the first hide we went to there were thousands of wildfowl.  The vast majority were made up of ducks including Teal, Wigeon, Pochard, Shelduck and good numbers of Pintail.   We also had close up views of Whooper Swans and a few had colour rings.  There were also many Ruff and Black-tailed Godwit feeding close up.  It was really interesting to see the plumage and size variation on the Ruff as they are not a species we see very often.   We then walked around the reedbed and didn’t see…

This is a summary of my birding and wildlife highlights of 2018 New bird species and my year list total My year list this year has reached a record total of 173 bird species and I have seen 17 (possibly 18) new species: Red-throated Diver (Spurn), Curlew Sandpiper (Spurn), Red-necked Phalarope (Rutland Water), Grey Phalarope (Old Moor RSPB), Green Sandpiper (Willington GP), Spotted Redshank (Old Moor RSPB), Mediterranean Gull (Spurn), Sandwich Tern (Spurn), Arctic Skua (Spurn), Nightjar (Thetford), Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (Renishaw Gardens), Red-backed Shrike (Spurn), Waxwing (Buxton), Garden Warbler (Williamthorpe GP), Yellow Wagtail (Spurn), Hawfinch (Kingsley) and Common Rosefinch (Spurn).  The 18th new species was a possible Black Guillemot on…

On the 7th September, we travelled up to the east coast for Migfest at Spurn Bird Observatory.  Migfest didn’t start until later that day so we managed to fit some birding in.  I went seawatching for the first time and saw Arctic Skua and Red-throated Diver which were both new species for me in Britain.  After the competition, I went and saw the Common Rosefinch.   Saturday was the day of the competition and the six contestants met Nick Moran (organiser of BTO Birdcamp) in the Observatory common room.  The other finalists were Kabir Kaul, Jack Bradbury, Alex Liddle, George Rabin and Angus Jennings.   The younger contestants stayed round…

During August we spent two weeks in Scotland for our yearly holiday.  We spent a week in Aviemore and the second week in Arisaig on the west coast. In Aviemore, we spent some of our time at RSPB Loch Garten in Abernethy Forest.  Unfortunately, the Ospreys failed to nest here this year.  We saw lots of Siskin on the feeders and Crossbills calling high up in the pines.  One morning we were there and unexpectedly opened up the night’s moth trap on our own.  There were lots of species including Pine Carpet, Northern Spinach, Autumnal Rustic, Neglected Rustic, Ear moths, Heath Rustic and White-line Dart (not forgetting two unidentified species…

During the week we spent a day birdwatching at Spurn Point in Yorkshire.  I am one of 6 finalists at the Martin Garner Young Spurn Birder of the Year competition at the MigFest in September so I thought it would be a good idea to go and see what types of bird I might be asked to identify. We walked down onto the mud flats to see the waders.  There were quite a few different species including grey and golden plover, redshank, knot and dunlin. Lots of yellow wagtails flew over and we saw loads during the time we were at the reserve, and they were a new species for me.…

From Friday 25th to Sunday 27th May, I was at BTO Birdcamp down in Thetford.  It was extremely enjoyable but also very tiring as well!  It was really good to meet people with similar interests and knowledge to me. coque iphone 8 On the Friday night, we arrived at 7pm for dinner. coque iphone xr  There were lots of muntjac deer around the Nunnery and they were a new mammal species for me.  We did two activities before going to bed.  One of these included a task where we had to sort different species of birds into two categories, one where the sexes could be distinguished and one where they…

Over the past week we have visited Lightwood twice to see dragonflies. coque iphone 8  We’ve seen amazing numbers of several different species and lots of damselflies as well. coque iphone 2019 pas cher  The most common dragonfly there is the southern hawker, and there were loads of males chasing each other round the ponds.  There were also quite a few common darters. coque iphone 2019  A ruddy darter was sighted there a few days ago but we didn’t see any. coque iphone soldes  The common darters have a yellow stripe on their legs and a ruddy darter has completely black legs. soldes coque iphone  A new species for me…