The Standlake Birder -

  Last week I decided to undertake a day trip to Bempton Cliffs RSPB in Yorkshire to see and photograph the hordes of sea birds that gather in the spring and summer to breed on the cliffs.   A long but fairly relaxed drive had me on site at 09:00. My main target for the day was to see and photograph Gannet courtship behaviour. Before heading to the cliffs I spent some time with Bemptons thriving Tree Sparrow population.   As a young boy growing up in the small Wiltshire village of Hindon Tree Sparrows were a very common site in the countryside hedges. Sadly, our wonton disregard for our environment and the other creatures that inhabit it has hit the Tree Sparrow very hard such that they are now a comparatively scarce bird in the UK with a scattered population at a number of hotspots. Stirling work by the RSPB at Bempton, however, has helped the Tree Sparrows thrive there, so much so that  a volunteer told me that they had now ringed more than 400  youn...

  A few days ago I was bemoaning the lack of good rare birds this spring to my good birding mate Nick . Notwithstanding the Cornish Lesser Kestrel at the start of May, nothing has troubled my UK list or made me jump out of the window and into my car.   Well, of course, if you are a UK birder you will certainly know what happened mid-morning on Saturday. A Western Reef Heron, sometimes called a Western Reef Egret, was found at a place called Foryd Bay on the Welsh coast. Just to add to the excitement it was, arguably, the more attractive dark morph.    This was going to be a major twitch for what was immediately a very strong candidate for UK bird of the year.   The Western Reef-Heron is common across coastal Africa and parts of southwest Asia and is an increasing vagrant to southern Europe. It has hence been “on the cards” as a potential UK vagrant for some time.   All other plans for Saturday were immediately banished.  My poor long suffering wif...

     Wood Warblers seem to be comparatively few and far between this year. There have been none at the “usual” hotspots in the forest and my birder friends have reported difficulty finding them elsewhere. The Wood Warbler is my favourite spring migrant and I always look forward to seeing these charismatic little warblers flitting around in the foliage while singing their very unique and characteristic “spinning coin” song. How sad would it be if they are no more a feature of my spring forest walks!   I tend not to go to the forest much after late May when the trees are in full leaf and most birds are heard only but last Thursday I decided to make one final attempt to find a Wood Warbler. One had been reported in the western part of the forest at a place called Brands Wood. This is a large expanse of mainly old oak woodland and the location details were very vague. It is also part of the forest I have not visited before.   I could not work out where to park close...

Bittern Wars!!! ·     Hobby, a regular, recurring activity done for pleasure, relaxation, or personal enrichment during one's leisure time   ·        Hobby, a fairly small, very swift falcon with long, narrow wings   ·        Obsession, a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling On Thursday this week, following some excellent intel from my birding friend Ian Bollen, I visited the RSPB reserve at Langford Lowfields. I planned to spend the morning hopefully photographing Hobbies and then relocate to Frampton RSPB in the afternoon.   As the Hobbies don’t really get going until midmorning when its warmed up a bit and their insect prey is a bit more active a silly o’ clock start was not required. So after a fairly relaxed 2 hour drive with a coffee break I arrived in the car park around 9 am and made my way to a raised area called Corf Castle as recommended by Ian. ...

       A Lesser Kestrel was found in Cornwall at a place called Croft Pascoe Woods late afternoon last Friday.  This is another bird that I have a little history with having dipped one in Yorkshire a few years back. It’s the best part of a four hour drive from home so twitching it on Friday was simply not practical. We again had family with us over the weekend so I had to beg forgiveness from my long suffering wife for a Saturday twitch.   Now this was going to be a long drive with considerable jeopardy attached. Unlike, say, a rare leaf warbler, where if your prepared to stare at a hedge for hours on end until you start to hallucinate, there’s a good chance you will see it,  falcons are  by definition very mobile and so can very easily move on. Some comfort could be taken from the fact that it had been observed going to roost into pines late on Friday night at the reported location.    Given the above, I decided to not ri...

            Red-spotted Blue Throat T here has been a Bluethroat at a place called Swineham on the Dorset coast for over a month. It has become increasingly confiding as, rightly or wrongly, people have been putting out food for it. This is a scarce vagrant from mainland Europe that I get to see somewhere in the UK most years. Many of my     birding friends have visited and had fantastic views and Facebook has had many superb photos posted of this most attractive male specimen.    I’ve done quite well in avoiding the temptation, it is after a three hour drive from home, and have stuck with local birding for the past month. I supposed that it was always going to happen if the bird stayed long enough and on Monday this week, with another glorious sunny warm spring day in the offing, I finally gave into temptation and left home southbound at 6am.    The early Monday morning traffic was pretty bad leaving me to rue not getting up a...