*Scan weekend - {23rd/24th} October*

After yet another successfull twitch to Inner Marsh Farm for a Juvenile White-Winged Black Tern, I was able to have 4 days rest which did me the world of good! Early on Saturday 22nd October, I met up with Steve, Rachel and the team for another weekend of cannon-netting along the North Wales coast..

A single adult Greenshank was caught, ringed by Andrew Moss.

Several Juvenile Dunlin.

An unexpected colour-ringed Redshank. I will update once I have recieved the details on this bird.

The beach at Llanfairfechan where we managed a catch of 100+ Oystercatcher.

Overall, a great weekend was had by all, with a total of 200 or so birds being ringed. Many thanks to Steve Dodd and to the rest of the team for another successfull weekend's ringing.

*Help needed for unidentified moth*

Photographed this moth the other morning whilst doing the weekly washing and haven't really got an idea what it may be?

Any ideas anyone? Comments more than welcome..

Mad dash for a White Winged Black Tern

Birding from Dawn until Dusk at Spurn Point on {16th/17th October} with our RSPB Southport group field trip, the following morning up at 5am to travel back to Bangor, several lectures and the whole of the afternoon off, thankfully. I started to wonder whether I could have the afternoon off to myself for once and maybe take a rest? As with my damn busy university life, this just wasn't to be..

News that the Juvenile White-Winged Black Tern at Inner Marsh Farm RSPB was still present, was enough to make me pack up the gear and head down to Bangor station. An awful 2 hour train jounrey and I eventually arrived at Neston train station after a quick change at Shotton. This station is particularly one that I never ever want to visit ever again due to the sole fact that it is absolutely s***!

Grabbed a taxi to the reserve and hurtled down the path towards the hide. On arrival, the Juvenile White-Winged Black Tern was flying round like a typical marsh tern would, over on the far side of the reserve on the pool viewed to the right of the hide! Result and yet another yeartick!

Despite my best efforts to get photos for my personal records, the best shot I could obtain was this, pictured below. I have to admit, this isn't a really convincing shot of the tern but that's the best I could do! Photographed at 4:10pm and it was almost dusk by that time. Cast your eyes above the sheep to the left slightly and you will be able to se a white shape and that, believe it or not is the tern...

Also seen were:-
2 Curlew Sandpipers
1 Little stint

Managed to get back into Bangor at 8pm, absolutely knackered and freezing cold.. This has to be one of the worst train twitches ever!

Rough-Legged Buzzard footage from Spurn Point...

Many thanks to Ronald Moyes for obtaining this footage, of one of the 3 Rough-Legged Buzzards encountered during the weekend at Spurn Point, using his camcorder.

The footage is not the clearest due to blogger, but you can pick out the white underbelly and black carpal patches on the underwing aswell as the broad white tail band. Nice one Ron!

*Spurn Point {East Yorkshire - 16/17th October 2010*

If seeing Dusky warbler and Red-Breasted flycatcher wasn't enough to keep me happy. Another weekend trip to Spurn point with our Southport RSPB group certainly did the job! Arriving in Bangor late evening, on the 14th October; the next morning I was duly up early and back on the train, travelling back to Ormskirk, for what I was hoping to be, yet another mega weekend's birding at Spurn Point Nature Reserve over on the East Coast alongside the River Humber.

Early morning on Saturday 17th, we set off from the north-west and in a few hours, arrived on the East Coast. Seeing as though there is so much to mention about this weekend, I shall just keep it short and tell you what birds we encountered during the weekend and any other intersting sightings along the way. {Yearticks are included in italics}

Highlights included:-

1 Sooty Shearwater

3 Rough-Legged Buzzard

2 Great skua

3 Arctic Skua

1 Pomarine Skua

1 Little Auk

1 Waxwing

1 Ring Ouzel

1 Red-Breasted Flycatcher

1 Juvenile Rose-Coloured Starling

2 Mealy Redpoll

4 Snow bunting

1 Lapland bunting

There were also several of the 'Northern Bullfinch' race, dotted around at various sites within the Spurn area. This race is substantially bigger than our British race and is a lot brighter..

One of several Mealy Redpoll's. This individual was self-found.

1st-winter Red-Breasted Flycatcher in Kilnsea Car-Park

Rather bizarre and scruffy looking Juvenile Rose-Coloured Starling

Just a brief note about the accommodation:- Staying in Withernsea was a great idea, being based 5 mintues from the coast for an early morning seawatch and within easy reach of an evening meal. However, we had, what I can only say as a rather eventful night and that's all I am going to say on the matter.

Arriving back in Ormskirk late on Sunday night {17th], it was time to unpack and re-pack my bags as I would be travelling back to Bangor the following morning, it would have been nice to of had a rest, but rest doesn't seem to relate to me!

Scarborough skulker

I still can't believe that for the first time in the last month or so, I have found some time to update you on my most recent whereabouts..

To begin with, casting your minds back to my latest post, where I had an incredible days birding at Spurn Point with Mike, June and Pete, seeing Palla's warbler and many other common autumn migrants..no sooner had I returned back to the glorious north that evening, I was once again, off on my travels! Arriving back in Ormskirk on {Oct 10th}, it was an all too brief visit and as usual it was an early train journey back to Bangor the following morning..

The week beginning - Mon 11th Oct, I had 3 days worth of constant lectures, with the Thursday and Friday off. So on Thursday 14th October, myself and Zac were up early that morning and headed for our days destination-Scarborough and the East Coast in search of 2 targets. Dusky warbler and Red-Breasted Flycatcher. This was to be yet another successfull days train twitching to add to our long list...

A couple of changes at Llandudno Junction, Manchester Oxford Road, Seamer and we reached Scarborough late morning around 11am. A brisk walk through the town centre and up onto the south side of Castle hill near a Children's play area, was shortly followed by an all too brief veiw of the Dusky warbler.

A few hours spent here, produced great views of this skulky little warbler, but it soon vanished and wasn't seen again that day. Moving off from here, we paid a pretty cheap train fare of £2:10 to Filey, where we managed to grab a brief view of the Red-Breasted Flycatcher that had been residing here for the last few days. A brief call led us to it's location which was rather handy due to the strong winds..

A more than worthwhile day and with another 2 yearticks in the bag, things were looking interesting for the rest of the year..

Red-Breasted Flycatcher site

Dusky Warbler site

Belated blogging

Just a quick post tonight folks as I have got a lot of university work that needs completing, before my next birding trip this weekend. I must apologise for the recent lack of updates to the blog, basically because I have been so busy lately in Bangor with work, amongst other things aswell.. Finding time for blogging in the evenings just hasn't been possible lately.

Unfortunately the next blog update is going to be the week beginning Monday 8th November once everything has calmed down and a full update will be available for the past 3 weeks or so!

I thought I would include a brief summary of what I have been upto over the last month:- Lots of birding trip reports and several twitches to add onto the blog, many yearticks have been achieved, several ringing sessions to update you on and quite a few other things too.. These will all have to wait for another week or so..

Bye for now..

Jack Snipe footage from Spurn..

A quick post tonight just to show you what I was on about with the Jack Snipe's 'Bobbing up and down feeding habit'. Enjoy!

Millions of Migrants!!

Arriving back from mist-netting from Kane's on Saturday afternoon, I was somewhat frustrated to not be able to get a lift over to the east coast for the Sunday.. Looking at RBA when I had calmed down, it was clear that there were already some good birds at Spurn, but looking at the winds and conditions, I knew that there was going to be collossal fall of migrants overnight and I was not wrong!

When Mike Stocker sent me a text that evening saying that he was going over and if I wanted a lift, you can imagine the rest! Packed my gear and hit the sack for an early start on the Sunday morning. Picked up at 4am and on the east coast for 7am at first light!!!

The first thing that I have got to make clear at this point, is that this day has to be the best visible migration experience I have ever had and that is saying something.. The amount of times I have been to Spurn over the years {probably over 100 visits} I have never had a 'fall'.. Until Sunday morning..

With Mike's idea to head straight for Sammy's Point near Spurn, we were knackered by the time we got to the car-park. The road down to Sammy's point, takes about 5 minutes to drive from entrance to car-park, however there were so many birds in every available habitat that it took is half an hour to get to the shore..

I shall now give a summary of the birds we encountered at each site around Spurn

*Sammy's Point*

2 White-Fronted Geese {in off the sea}

Sparrowhawk {in off thesea}

30 Skylark

15 Swallow

5 Rock pipit

100+ Meadow pipit

10+ Pied wagtail

30+ Robin

15+ Dunnock

5+ Redstart

3 Wheatear

100+ Song thrush

700+ Redwing

50+ Fieldfare

20+ Blackbird

10 Blackcap

1 PALLA'S WARBLER

90+ Goldcrest

30+ Tree Sparrow

40+ Chaffinch

100+ Brambling

50+ Siskin

5 Lesser Redpoll

30+ Linnet

The next best thing was a call from June, to say that a guy had found a Palla's warbler further down from where we were standing.. We shot down there to find that the bird had been lost to view and hadn't been seen for the last 10 minutes. Well I wasn't having that and knowing that there was a yeartick some 100 metres from me.. Folk split up to find it and more people arrived through the news being put out. 30 minutes later, I was stood next to Mike and 2 other guys, a bird called and straight away we all knew, that that was the palla's.. Next minute it called again and flew straight towards me and for the next 20 minutes, we all enjoyed fantastic views of this gorgeous eastern warbler. Definetly a bird that I wasn't expecting to see this year.. Messing about with my Nikon Coolpix P5100 camera, {not designed for hand-held pictures} I snapped off 12 shots with the hope that the bird would be in the shot..

1st shot..

2nd shot..

3rd shot

This selecton of shots is just from 1 photo and realising that the bird was in view.. I was extremely chuffed with that and we moved off elsewhere.. What a stonker!!!

A quick stop to look for a Little Bunting just outside Kilnsea proved difficult and there was no sign of the bird since early morning..

*Kilnsea/Beacon Lane and ponds/Canal Scrape*

1 Great-Grey Shrike

1 Lapland Bunting

2 Jack snipe

5 Ring ouzel

100+ Goldcrest

300+ Redwing

100+ Fieldfare

100+ Song thrush

30+ Blackbird

2 Jack snipe showed extremely well infront of the canal scrape hide.. I witnessed their characteristic 'bobbing up and down feeding action' for the first time.

Getting on for early afternoon now so we headed for Spurn point seeing as though their hadn't been anything mildly interesting there all day, which was strange considering the amount of birds that were around..

*Spurn point*

1 Male Hen Harrier

1 Short-eared Owl

500+ Meadow pipit

15+ Brambling

50+ Goldcrest

50+ Robin

Overall, that day we must have seen in excess of 2,000 birds of a wide variety of species. I mean, seeing Chiffchaffs, Redstarts, Siskins in large numbers creeping around on rocks right next to the sea, hundreds maybe thousands of Redwings in every available hawthorn bush feeding on the berries, Fieldfares, Continental Blackbirds, Ring ouzels mixed in with them too.. Several decent birds like Lapland bunting, Great Grey shrike, Palla's warbler, Hen harrier, Short-eared owl; knowing they were migrants and had literally, come in off the sea from some far off place.. Goldcrests, Robins, Dunnocks and Meadow pipits in massive numbers - the greatest I have ever seen!

All I have to say is that I want to keep on writing abut this exceptional fall of migrants but this is a long enough blog post as it is! A huge thankyou is in order to Mike, June and Pete..

What an absolutely fantastic days birding and one that I shall never forget! Just 1 yeartick - Palla's warbler bringing me to 252 for the year..

Cheers for now...

A net full of tits

Before I go any further with this post, the idea of trying to make a catchy title with the word 'tits' combined within, proved rather tricky, so... a plain and simple title for this post..

If I wasn't already knackered from the cornish Green heron twitch a few days ago, arriving back into Bangor at 2am last Friday; at least gave me the chance to have a lie in, or did it? Amazingly, a brief lie-in was acheived but yet again, it didn't take long for me to be on the move again.

An invite from Kane to do some ringing on Saturday morning at one of his feeding stations was more than enough to tempt me out of my pit. Yet again, it involved catching 3 more trains and soon I was back home in Ormskirk. Friday afternoon, just 1 more train to Atherton and all was over and done with and the thought of catching another train soon, made me feel somewhat sick.. Kipping overnight at Kane's on Friday night and up early for a few hours mist-netting in the morning - a shorter lie-in this time, but well worth getting up for..

Arriving on site, a slight breeze drifted through the woodland edge and with the sounds of birds at the feeders, the net was set quickly and effieciently to increase our catch rate that morning.

A total of 35+ tits were caught that morning including Blue, Great and Coal, aswell as 2 Chaffinches and 2 Nuthatch..

Several net-rounds were done and at times, the catch was rather impressive..

Myself with a lovely catch of mixed tit species and a Great tit ready to be ringed and processed..

Late morning we went off to Crompton lodges to catch some Canada geese, resulting in 5 new birds being caught..

Many thanks to Kane for inviting me along, for a pretty productive morning's session..

A quick note:-

Just 2 more trains were needed to get me back home on Saturday afternoon. The thought of the hundreds of autumn migrants over on the east coast, any guesses as to what happened on Sunday 10th October?!

***Green Heron in the Lost Valley***

Since my last post concerning my 250th yeartick for this year, each day since then, has been what I can only say as being extremely busy! I haven't been able to find time for a blog update, so here 'they' are.. Apologies to anyone who has been awaiting for this particular trip's post..

The 4th October saw myself and Zac watching the Yellow-Browed warbler up at Soldier's point on Anglesey, but little did we know what we were going to embark upon on the Wednesday night that week. Lectures from 9am-5am for the first 3 days of the week and Thursday and Friday off..

A long-staying Juvenile Woodchat Shrike up at Hartlepool Headland in Cleveland was supposed to be our destination for early on Thursday morning. However, on Wednesday night when we called a meeting at my flat to discuss tomorrow's itinerary, logging onto RBA {Rare Bird Alert}, it was soon apparent that there was a Green Heron down in Cornwall.. The last time this american heron turned up, I was unaware of it's presence due to the lack of rarity news at the time and the fact that I wasn't twitching then didn't help matters.. When the next one turned up I was determined that I would twitch it! So I did but with some company this time!

On the Wednesday night it took us 20 mintues if that, to turn our attentions to Cornwall instead of Hartlepool and rather sharply shall we say, checked train times down to St Austell etc.. I have to admit when asking Zac if he wanted to twitch it, his words were:- ''I'm up for it''. That was that and we were off!

Running round like a headless chicken sorting my gear out, we met 5 mintues later outside my flat and sprinted down to Bangor station in order to catch the 9:07 train to Crewe that evening.
On arrival in Crewe at 11pm that night, we settled down in a warm waiting room with some comfy seats, as we were going to sleep overnight and catch the 5am train down to St Austell in the morning. A change at Birmingham and Exeter was all it took. Although our night at Crewe station was rather eventful. It was spent lying awake listening to folk snoring like hogs, a drunk guy kicking chairs about in an attempt to make a bed for himself for the night and at 3am on thursday morning a rather 'mad' bloke mopping the floor and cleaning the tables!! Come one were trying to sleep here people! End result was no sleep, but we managed an hour or so on the journey down south..

Several hours later at 11am with a short change at Exeter St.Davids station, we pulled up to St Austell train station in Cornwall! A quick taxi journey to 'The Lost Gardens of Heligan', a £10 entrance fee, 1 mile walk and we were greeted by a large group of fellow twitchers! Soon after, the heron showed and we couldn't believe what we had accomplished until we caught sight of...our..first.. Green Heron!!!

This little pond was the site where the Green heron was showing. 'A rather herony site if ever I saw one'.

The bird wasn't showing well at all when we first got there but at least we could see that it was a Green heron and the views were now tickable!

During the afternoon, the bird dissapeared several times; half an hour being the longest, but when we were about to leave, the bird showed extremely well on the far side of the lake for about 20 minutes! Most stunningly, it was in the open at this point and seeing as though I hadn't managed to digiscope this bird at all and was photographless, it walked onto a log in proper american heron fashion, enabling me to snap off a few shots, these ones being the best! The bird being in heavy wing moult too!

This bird has to be the best twitched bird of 2010 and was an absolute stonker! Thinking about it now, this particular journey has to be my longest train twitch yet.

The afternoon passed quickly and soon it was 3pm and it was time to leave. A short bus journey from the gardens back to the station and then back on the train, arriving back into Bangor at exactly 2am on the Friday morning! Thankfully I had the day off to recover...

Overall, a rather expensive twitch but one that will stay with me forever. A fantastic bird and 251 for the year. What's next I wonder?!

To see Zac's account of this eventful and hugely successfull twitch, plus slightly better images of the Green Heron, visit http://zacswildlifeblog.blogspot.com/

Yellow Browed Warbler makes 250 milestone!

On January 1st 2010, my day was spent birding from dawn til dusk to get a good start on my yearlist for this year. Now, 10 months later on, on the 4th October, my 250th bird turned up at Soldier's point on Anglesey, circa 1 mile north of Holyhead..

Rather unexpected was a text in the middle of a lecture from Zac, the text read:- ''Anglesey Yellow-Browed Warbler near Holyhead at Solider's Point by metal gate at entrance to breakwater''
After finishing the lecture, I knew that this bird would still be there, so met Zac 20 minutes later at Bangor station, paid a respectable £4:80 and headed for Holyhead. Was I really going to see my 250th bird for my 2010 yearlist, today? On arrival, not a single birder in sight, so a bit of relocation was in order and after an hour or so, there was no sign of the bird. However, just as we were about to head for home, a bird flitted from a bush and luckily Zac caught a glimpse and shouted - ''There it is''! To my relief, there was a Yellow-Browed Warbler and my 250th bird for this year!!! I can tell you now, it was such a relief to see this bird as it was only my 4th record for Britain, surprisingly! Thanks Zachary!

Thinking that I was going to blog out this later on when I got back to Bangor, I needed some pictures so set about digiscoping whilst Zac used his larger camera... So better pictures were obtained by Zac.. After 5 mintues and some of the most stressfull digiscoping I have ever had to accomplish, I came up with several record shots but at least you can make out what it is!

Included this shot to emphasise the eyestripe and the diagnostic wing-bars, present in all the scandinavian phylloscopus warblers..

Another shot that would have been an absolute stonker, but as usual the bird didn't turn round and on the second shot it flew to another tree..

A fantastic bird and one that I was confident in seeing this year! If anyone is thinking of going to have a look, the bird is at the large entrance gates to Soldier's point on Anglesey, literally at the end of the road before you turn off for South stack. On the wall in Ivy and Sycamore bushes by lamp post 2A.. If anyone needs any more info, please feel free to leave a comment and I will get back to as soon as possible.

See Zac's blog for slightly better pictures and his account of today @ http://zacswildlifeblog.blogspot.com/