Our first full birding day and we were raring to go, we were up at 05:00 and into the bus by 05:30 we were on site at the Dongtai seawall by 05:45 where we had breakfast of banana, Snicker’s bars and various bread with hot sweet coffee on the seawall. Scanning during our breakfast produced […]
Tag: Bar-tailed Godwit
Pennington Marsh – 23rd March
With a couple of hours to spare after dropping Tobias at school I had a wander around Pennington Marsh taking in Jetty, Butts, Fishtail and Keyhaven Lagoons. It was a bright spring like day but with a strong NW wind it was deceptively cold. Numbers of wader and wildfowl had shown a noticeable and decrease […]
The radical otherness of birds: Jonathan Franzen on why they matter
For most of my life, I didn’t pay attention to birds. Only in my 40s did I become a person whose heart lifts whenever he hears a grosbeak singing or a towhee calling, and who hurries out to see a golden plover that’s been reported in the neighbourhood, just because it’s a beautiful bird, with […]
Pennington Marsh – 5th and 9th March
I visited Pennington Marsh on 5th and 9th March and on both days saw much the same. Its a pretty static time of year with winter birds steadily but barely noticeably declining and very few migrants appearing. The Lapwing are now in regular display and are busy making nesting scrapes on the marsh while Black-tailed […]
Bar-tailed Godwits
We had fantastic weather on Værøy, or at least weather that the 99.9% of the population who are not birders would describe as fantastic. For us it was far too sunny though and we would have preferred a bit more cloud cover and early morning rain. On my last day on the island though I […]
Help required with ID of Bar-tailed and Black-tailed Godwits
Two birds that can be a cause confusion when visiting the local coastal marshes in Norfolk are the Bar and Black-tailed Godwit’s. At RSPB Titchwell both species are regularly seen in winter. However when feeding they can be quite tricky to identify. Both are extremely attractive birds when seen in their summer plumage, but more […]
Mongolia – 18th May (Day 11) – Barig Mountain to Sangiin Dalai Lake
We were up at 05:15 to the sound of screaming Saker Falcon, packed our bags and after a quick coffee headed back up Barig Mountain at 06:00 for a last try for Hodgson’s Bush-chat. After climbing the steep grassy and rock strewn slopes of the mountains in the vehicles we parked at the summit and […]
Turtle Dove at Titchwell
The venue for todays trip was Titchwell RSPB. In the car park we watched a single Turtle Dove as it called and spent some time picking grit from the car park gravel. These birds are becoming scarce as they run the gauntlet of the gun on the way back from Africa and then have to […]
Mongolia – 16th May (Day 9) – Ikht Bogd Uul and to Kholboolj Lakes near to Jinst
After a good nights sleep in our tents beside Orog Lake we had an earlier breakfast at 06:30 overlooking the lake with its breeding colony of Spoonbill and Grey Heron and to the sound of booming Bittern and singing Asian Short-toed Lark. After loading the car we headed up the valley behind the campsite and […]
Pallid Harrier at New Holkham
The weather forecast was predicting rain for most of the day but with yesterdays reports of Pallid Harrier in New Holkham I was compelled to take the old fella up the A11 in search of his first Pallid Harrier and the bird he had made his main target for 2017. We arrived at first light […]
