On 21st March news filtered through of a Great Spotted Cuckoo at Wheeler’s Bay, Ventnor, Isle of Wight. Initially details were fairly sketchy but the following day news broke of its continued presence and pictures eventually emerged on Twitter and Facebook, as is the way of todays birding world. This was the second record for […]
Tag: herring gull
A Cold Connecticut Birding Day
On a cold day, make that a very cold day with winds causing discomfort for a former Floridian, I made efforts to observe a reported Barrow’s Goldeneye near Tuxis Island in Connecticut to close my 2016 wildlife observations. I heard from wildlife blogger Hemant Kishan who told me that he has seen Barrow’s Goldeneye on […]
Birding By The Sea
Well, this is not actually a post about birding by the sea, but birding by the Long Island Sound at Hammonasset Beach State Park. Images in this post are from a trip to Hammonasset in mid-January when I met world eBirders Julie Hart and Daniel Schlaepfer with four additional visits in February. Julie was kind […]
Two Winter Specialties At Stratford Point
Stratford Point just off I-95 above the Long Island Sound became host to a Short-eared Owl on 2 January according to eBird data. I closely followed reports of the Short-eared Owl on eBird as I had not observed the species in the wild before. As the owl was seen with regularity I began to study […]
Snowy Owl At Long Beach Connecticut
Slightly east of Bridgeport and south of Stratford lies a magnificent wildlife venue called Long Beach. The Snowy Owl above (image 1) was photographed at Long Beach in December 2017. With adjacent Pleasure Beach it is noted that they comprise more than 25% of Connecticut’s remaining undeveloped beachfront property. The Dunlin with Sanderling above (image […]
Feature: Stratford Point, Connecticut
This land offers a stunning coastal grassland area near the mouth of the Housatonic River which has of this writing 282 species of bird observed according to eBird data. It was my hope to visit Stratford Point and observe the LeConte’s and Clay-colored Sparrows seen a day earlier at the venue. The Common Loon above […]
Brilliant Bempton
It had been six years since I had last visited RSPB Bempton Cliffs on the East Coast of Yorkshire. I therefore decided a visit was long overdue. Mike and I arrived around midday after a three hour drive from Preston. It was to be a fine sunny day ideal for photographing the thousands of seabirds […]
Foreign visitors to the Algarve
Yesterday we took our day off and replaced the steppes of Alentejo with the saltmarshes, beaches and lagoons of the Algarve. It was a long and brilliant day, packed with quality stuff. We left very early to arrive at our first site, Salinas do Forte do Rato in Tavira in good time. It was pretty […]