A Few Gulls

An afternoon visit to Little Marlow GP to try out a new Huawei P20 Pro mobile phone for digiscoping.  Reasonable results but no doubt I can improve my technique/setup.

Great Black-backed Gull - A distant bird slightly closer than the main island from the west point.

Grey Heron - On the far side of the sand spit.

Lesser Black-backed Gull - On the closer sand spit.

Common Gull - In with several hundred others and many Black-headed Gulls

Caspian Gull - A species I seem to overlook fairly often but this adult had been present the previous evening.   A Herring Gull on the RHS.

Otmoor

A trip to Otmoor with Bourne End U3A group was most enjoyable with some memorable views of a Peregrine eating it's prey, Marsh Harriers causing mayhem in the gathering of dabbling ducks and the impressive clouds of Lapwings and Golden Plover that milled around the sky.  Also seen were three Stonechats and some Pintail that were in with the Shoveler, Teal and Wigeon.

View from the first screen.

High water levels everywhere!

Big Otmoor - This is where the vast majority of the wildfowl, Lapwing and Golden Plover were.  Look carefully and you will see a large number in the sky.

Bullfinches were one of the feature of the visit.  They seemed to be everywhere with over ten seen together.

Reed Bunting - Female

Reed Bunting - Male

One of the most memorable events on the day were the hordes of Lapwing and Golden Plover that were milling around the sky.  Just a small portion of mainly Lapwing shown here.

A Marsh Harrier hassling the dabbling ducks.

A Peregrine getting stuck into what is presumably a duck.

Desert Wheatear Twitch

I joined Graham Smith and Ashley Stow for a trip to Eccles on Sea in Norfolk to see the Desert Wheatear that had been present since 1st January.

We arrived and soon found the bird on the beach being watched by a handful of birders.  The bird soon moved onto the seawall and continued to feed along its length for the next hour.  Poor light made photography difficult but I did manage a few reasonable photos.

The bird gradually made it's way abut 200 metres along the sea wall. 

This would have been my best photo but spoilt by the grass stems. 

There seemed to be plenty of insects for the bird to feed on.

Turnstone - This bird decided to walk between the birders and the sea wall, so was fairly close.

Not too many birds on the sea but about 15 Red-throated Divers flying past, including seven in one group livened things up. 

Hesketh Outmarsh - Christmas Birding

A visit to my daughters in Lancashire for Christmas allowed a visit to Hesketh Outmarsh RSPB Reserve.  This reserve is on the Ribble estuary and is a winter haven for thousands of wildfowl, most notably Pink-footed Geese and dabbling ducks such as Wigeon, Teal, etc.  The reserve has improved dramatically over recent years due to work by the RSPB.

I only had a couple of hours there but could have stayed all day and not seen it all.  Some of the highlights are shown below.

The noticeboard shows how the site looked before habitat improvement by the RSPB

A few of the many thousands of Pink-footed Geese in the area.

Whooper Swans and Canada Geese  - A large pile of rotting potatoes at the back of this field may have attracted this flock.

Whooper Swans

Whooper Swans and Canada Geese

Many other birds were seen but not photographed partly because of the poor light.  These included huge numbers of Wigeon, Teal, Pintail, Shelduck, Curlew, Redshank, Marsh Harrier, Buzzard, etc.