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Showing posts from February, 2015

White Fronted Geese - Ingrebourne Valley

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After hearing of the White Fronts and over the last couple of days getting texts from Dave & Les, i finally had 15 minutes to stop on the way to the office when Les found them again in the crop field next the gate to Berwick Ponds.

Laughing Gull - New Brighton, Cheshire

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Life Tick no.4 for 2015: after a pick for 5am me and Monkey were in New Brighton; a rather sunny and bright New Brighton as well. As Martin reminisced about Dipped Swifts  we parked the car next to the boating lake. Immediately upon getting out we were on it. It was in flight and heading away from us. We lost it from view. As we made our way over to the cafe's and speaking with others it was clear we wouldn't have to wait long for its return. We'll keep the rest of the day quiet - bloody ducks

Barges - High Tide

I've been wanting to sit at the barges and sift through the gulls for some time; yesterday afternoon gave me the opportunity. It was high tide so they were coming off the tip and sprucing up, smaller gulls quite close in with the larger ones further out The barges had 58 Black Tailed Godwit  and 18 Redshank  roosting, Meadow Pipit  flitted about everywhere and a large group of Skylark were moving about the grass area on the tip. A group of gulls also rested here being harassed and harassing two Ravens. Bah, a life tick last week, now im seeing them everywhere, well not everywhere but you get the idea. I was looking for Caspian or Med Gulls but instead found an Iceland Gull (3W). I was rather surprised to be honest as i didn't know any were knocking about in the area, it was only later i found out that one had been seen by Dominic mid to late Jan. Anyway, it was out of reach of the camera and when i finally thought about getting a photo via digiscoping, a mass of

Serin's at Shoeburyness, Gunners Park

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I managed to get over Gunners Park for the Serins, giving my 3rd lifer of the year. Wonderful little things.

Slimbridge WWT

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I took my first visit to WWT Slimbridge on Sunday, not my first WWT but my favourite so far over Barnes & Arundel. Accompanied by Mr Darrell-Lambert we had timed our visit (not intentionally) with the Festival of Birds, so as we arrived for opening at 9.30am there were already quite a few cars and as we left there were three car parks in use however it never felt busy in the slightest. We took a wander around the collections looking at some birds i will hopefully be twitching in the future but for now they all remained tickless. My day list for wild birds was 64.  Ravens, Little Stints, Water Rail, Peregrine, Bewicks, Dunlin plus a few un-tickable released Cranes I really liked the place and would definitely go back.