So having dipped the Western Swamphen the day it left Minsmere I’ve been watching it during it’s stay at Alkborough Flats in Lincolnshire. As I’ve stated before I have this soft self imposed two hour twitch rule and with Swampy now 200 miles from home I’d need to break that rule if I wanted to […]
Tag: Spoonbill
Pennington Marsh – 30th April and 2nd May
May Bank Holiday weekend and not much planned, apart from a family event on Sunday so Saturday and Monday were free, fantastic! Sarah needed some home time so I used the mornings of Saturday and Monday for some birding although I was aware that I needed to not push my luck and stay out too […]
Beaulieu Road Station and Pennington Marsh
I had worked a long week despite the Bank Holiday and so on Friday 1st April I finished at 14:00 and headed to Beaulieu Road Station for a walk. I parked at Shatterford and walked south, along Bishop’s Dyke and back via Denny Wood. Stonechat numbers seemed to be up, with 12 birds seen, returning […]
Spain’s wetlands wonder is under threat for a second time in 16 years
The view from the visitors’ centre at the southern edge of Doñana national park is striking, to say the least. From its plate-glass windows, you gaze – over a small lake ringed with bulrushes – at a group of tamarisk bushes covered with squawking, screeching birdlife. Cattle egrets, night herons, purple herons and glossy ibis […]
Birding the Gambia
For birders on a budget, or perhaps nervous first-timers to Africa, the Gambia offers some of the best of the continent’s bird life without the expense of a safari. This tiny West African country is not only the closest Sub-Saharan African destination to the UK but is also served by numerous package companies offering budget […]
The heron family near Jizan
During the trip to the Jizan area, much of the heron family activity was at Lake Maliki. This is the largest fresh water mass in the kingdom by a big margin. The two commonest heron family members were glossy ibis and squacco heron. I looked carefully through the glossy bis for juvenile northern bald ibis. […]