Got back last night from a week-long family trip to Sweden. Sweden is a wonderful country. We landed at Västerås and drove from there up north. First night we stayed near Sandvik, second near Bispgården and then we reached our destination – Luleå in the far north of Sweden. Lots of driving…From a family point […]
Tag: Whimbrel
Pennington Marsh and Denny Wood – 8th June
After dropping Tobias at school I spent a short amount of time at Pennington Marsh and Denny Wood. At Pennington it was fairly quiet with most birds settled down to breed. I recorded eight Reed Warbler and six Whitethroat on territory around the loop that extends from Lower Pennington Lane car park to the Jetty […]
Martin Down and Pennington Marsh
The last couple of weeks have been manic at work with some very early starts for breeding bird surveys, late nights reviewing documents and getting the company ready for the new and extremely tedious General Data Protection Regulations which come into force later in May. However, I have managed to get out a little to […]
South-East China – 24th April (Day 3)
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 […]
Andaman Islands – 29th November (Day 5)
Today we were up at 03:45 for a 04:15 departure from our hotel in Port Blair with a limited number of endemic birds to see. We headed back to the Government Secondary School in Port Blair to try for Barn Owl of the endemic subspecies deroepstorffi. Arriving just as the sun was rising we waited […]
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 […]
Curlews in crisis?
To the layman, the curlews are a shy, unassuming family of birds. Their mottled-brown plumage makes for effective camouflage against their marshland and mudflat feeding grounds, meaning they can go about their business unnoticed, prying out invertebrates such as ragworms with their purpose-built curved bills. But if, like the curlews, you take time to dig […]
Alaska – 8th June (Day 12)
Today was a key day in the Nome section of the trip with one of the star birds to see. We were up early and headed up the Kougarok Road to Mile Post 72 we arrived at around 06:00. This site is known as the Coffee Dome, the summit of this relatively small hill is […]