So I have finally crossed the line and made the personal milestone of 400 birds seen in Britain and this has got me thinking back on a few of them and which ones I enjoyed most. Now you’d think it would be easy just by picking the rarest but it’s not that simple. One may […]
Tag: Hoopoe
Balearics at Dungeness and a Bonaparte’s at Oare
Birding has been very limited of late save a quick trip to Fairlop in the the week to catch the local Hoopoe so today we decided on a trip to Dunge for a spot of early morning sea watching. Arriving at 6.30am we were rewarded for a two hour stint with several Arctic Skua, three […]
Baby Coots at Dungeness
After a two hour search of Rye Harbour for the Terek Sandpiper we gave up and headed over to Dunge. Our reward for this 10 mile diversion was to connect with a smart little Kentish Plover from Dennis’s hide as it walked about on the shingle scrape in the company of Sanderling and Dunlin. I […]
Andaman Islands and Western Ghats
30th November – Today we had a lie-in and were up at 05:45, packed our bags and headed to Port Blair Airport for our flight to Chenai landing at 10:45. We then had a 2.5 hour stop-over in Chennai before our 13:30 flight to Coimbatore. We landed in Coimbatore, tamil Nadu at 14:45 gathered our […]
Mongolia – 14th May (Day 7) – Dalanzadgad to Khongor Sand Dunes
We were up 05:45 and birded the habitat around the guest house. There had evidently been a small fall of migrants and we recorded six Eye-browed Thrush, three Pallas’s Bunting, 12 Red-throated Thrush, Dusky Warbler, Reed Warbler and, best of all, two Siberian Rubythroat which showed well in a newly planted line of scrub opposite […]
Desert birds and migrants – Haradh
Whilst birding the NADAC Farm area of Haradh 14 October I saw some good desert birds and migrants. One of the first birds seen was an Eastern Morning Wheatear, which was good as birds have only just started returning for the winter and I have not seen one at this location before. Other migrants included […]
Dowkah in early spring
Either side of midday I birded Dowkah farm on Friday. The bad news was that there were no passage passerines in the shaded wooded area. The other news is more interesting. In particular the larger birds in the field were a mix of strangely off course herons and storks. An Abdim’s stork was a most […]
Hoopoe ‘thinks Innerleithen is the south of France’
An exotic-looking bird is thought to have overshot its migration to southern Europe and ended up in the Borders. The hoopoe arrived in Innerleithen on Sunday and was spotted outside a bed and breakfast in the town. Lesley Foster, the guest house owner, was only able to identify it thanks to bird-watchers staying with her. […]