Birthday Birding! - 13th July 2015

It's not every day you get to take your girlfriend birding on HER birthday! Well that's what I did!
Danni had a meeting in the uni first thing, so I wandered around the campus being gripped by the amazing habitats on offer and what a lovely campus it was. I started by yearticking Essex Skipper which was great along with seeing Cetti's Warblers and a nice Cheilosia illustrata. Nice views of Common Terns on the broad too.

We started the 'birding' day at Holt Country Park again and looked for the butterflies again. Also got nice views of three Adder in the car park which is great to see. As I write, it's the 4th anniversary of my bite! Sadly, we weren't able to find any Silver-washed Fritiallaries, but got nice views of a White Admiral, as well as several flying around the woodland.

We moved onto Danni's favourite place in the world after this - Cley. Having a wander between rain showers, we got nice fly over views of Ruff, Black-tailed Godwit, Knot, Turnstone and Sandwich Tern. I was able to test the capabilities of my new camera here and I must say, I'm so impressed! Danni was also understandably captivated by some Lapwing chicks

Heading back home we came across a stunning male Montague's Harrier which quartered distantly. Looking at my photos, we realised it was one of the very recently satellite tagged males, so I am very keen to watch the progress of this magnificent birds. A lovely way to end a really nice day.

Happy Birthday Danni! x

Sunday on the broads - 12th July 2015

 I went to Norfolk for the weekend to celebrate Danni's birthday as she was in Norwich for the week. This was great to spent time with her in the area she's got to know over the last few years, but also to be in a wonderful part of the world with a few invert lifers that were available for me!
My main target was a Willow Emerald, which bafflingly is available (along with Norfolk Hawker) in good numbers on the UEA campus! We started off on Sunday morning at a site near to Norwich looking the first Lizard Orchid in Norfolk in 60 years. It took a while to find, but we eventually found the lone plant which had slightly past its best, but it was extremely impressive in size and very intricate. Great to see!
Next was a small pond nearby looking for Red-veined Darter. The weather was hardly perfect as it was raining, but we managed to find my only lifer of the trip! Willow Emeralds were present here with about 5 seen. We then found out this was actual a site first which was nice!

 On the way up to the coast, we came across a pair of Grey Partridge right next to the road. They allowed amazing views, but due to their reluctance to budge, we assumed there must've been chicks somewhere nearby, so we decided to leave them to it. Beautiful birds.

Next we dipped Spotted Crake at Titchwell, but saw 6 black Spotted Redshanks and a couple of Bearded Tits which was nice. Next onto Holt to look for lepidoptera as Danni still needed White Admiral and Siver-washed Fritillary. I also need Broad-bordered Bee Hawkmoth, but failed to find any in the car park. With occasional heavy rain showers, we were getting a tad worried, but I eventually spotted an orange flash of a feeding Silver-washed Frit and later a White Admiral. We got great views of both (but I left my camera in the car due to the rain and got hideously crippling views of perfectly lit fritillaries!

We ended the day at Strumpshaw with the main targets being Swallowtail and Norfolk Hawker as I'd only ever had terrible views of both. The swallowtails were as near as makes no difference to finished but there had been a couple seen in recent days. We were amazed when we were informed of a caterpillar right next to the path which we were shown and then a second one was discovered. Not exactly what I expected my first Swallowtail photograph to be, but I'll take it! Next target was Norfolk Hawker which I had nice views of a quartering dragon for about 4 minutes. Nice bins views, but a right bugger to photograph! I loved Strumpshaw. I could've easily spent a whole day there with the Hobby, Common Terns, Marsh Harriers and more Willow Emeralds, it was great.

Red-footed Falcon - Staffs - 10th July 2015

On the way back from the East Midlands looking at butterflies, we pulled into north Staffs to try and see the 1st summer male Red-footed Falcon that appeared yesterday evening. We were not disappointed! We joined an assembled group of 30 people and looked through a guy's scope to see the blue and red falcon sat on a concrete post! After a while, it got up and flew around between the floor and the telegraph wires catching mainly worms. It even flew up and hovered for a short while acting extremely like a Kestrel! What a class bird and one I've been trying to see for years! Incredible end to an incredible day!

Butterfly heaven - 10th July 2015

Spent what can only be described as an incredible day in the Midlands with John, Mark and Jim looking for butterflies. 

We started at Fermyn with the main target of the day being Purple Emperor. We were not disappointed with seeing up to 15 on site, as well as 5-10 White Admiral, 5 Silver-washed Fritiallary, 2 Purple Hairstreak and a White-letter Hairstreak. My first visit to the site and boy did it leave an impression! I'll leave the photos to do the talking.

 Purple Emperor underwing - May well be the best underwing in British lepidoptera!

 Teasing us with that sheen

 White-letter Hairstreak came down to feed/drink which was unexpected

 This one didn't quite work which is a shame as I love the depth of field

 Could've been the perfect underwing shot on foliage, but someone tried to selfie :P

 Green-veined White looking wonderful

 Couldn't help myself....

 Silver-washed Fritillary were really difficult to photograph as they'd almost never land. This is my best attempt

 I spent ages with this female Meadow Brown. Stunning butterfly and one I am always disappointed that more people don't appreciate it.

 They're just SO good!

 After missing two perched, I was over the moon to get three White Admirals on the path when we were leaving the site.

 The money shot! Never got a chance to get an upperwing shot last time I saw them

Next we moved onto Glapthorn Cow Pastures to look in vain for Black Hairstreak - arguably the most difficult butterfly to see in the UK and at a time where they've almost all gone over. Mark and I followed the verbal directions from John and we went completely the wrong way and found completely the wrong area. Anyway, we didn't know this at the time, so we stood next to some brambles and started looking. After two minutes a Hairstreak flew in and landed on a nettle. We fired off some shots straight away as it was a Black/White-letter type hairstreak. Looking at photos, it was quite dull and not exactly striking as I've seen in photos so much, so was wondering if maybe it was a White-letter. We had a quick google as we were both quite rusty on the main differences. There were black spots on the orange streak on the hind wing and quite a lot of orange on the forewing. It was a Black Hairstreak! Fantastic stuff! What a rush to find such an elusive butterfly when we arrived with almost no hope!

 After we'd got our fill, we heading off to a Meadow and saw potentially up to 150 Marbled Whites...stunning butterflies and a species us northerners just don't get to see!

A really amazing day with every single target being seen almost instantly, which I find just remarkable!

New kit to test!

In early August 2013, my Canon 40D got an error 99 message whilst at Blackpool Airshow. I was just about to go to the Scillies on holiday and was a bit gutted as I had to take my previous d-SLR, my 30D. I got on pretty well with it when I was there and decided not to bother getting my 40D fixed (mainly a financial and laziness thing) and kept using my 30D. Up until 2015, I was fairly happy with it, but then using my 100-400 and 30D next to friends of mine who used the same lens and more up to date bodies, I realised how much I was 'slumming' it with the 30D which is 9 years old now! Though I don't need the best of the best as I'm not planning on winning competitions, I do enjoy getting good photos and also need a d-SLR to make sure I can sufficiently document any good birds I see or find.
Having been in my job for over 6 months now and only really spent my money on petrol money, I felt it was time for an upgrade prior to my summer holiday to Scilly (how about that!) focussing on pelagic birding.
I got myself something I can hopefully use for several years to come - Canon EOS 7D MkII. It's a great bit of kit and I took it to Pennington Flash on my way home from work this evening to have a quick test and I must say, I'm very impressed!
I've put up a selection photos to show the detail it captures. Hope you like

Gull-billed Tern - Burton Mere Wetlands, Cheshire - 3rd July 2015

 

Gull-billed Tern in front of Inner Marsh Farm hide.

3x Spotted Redshank in full summer plumage...stunning

1 of 2 Common Lizard

After visiting Exminster Marsh in Marsh twice in a day and missing the Gull-billed Tern twice, it was a sudden rush of adrenaline when I was closing down my laptop at work at saw a Birdguides printscreen of James Shergold saying GO GO GO as a Gull-billed Tern had appeared at Burton Mere Wetlands! Being only 20 minutes away, it would've been mad not to go!

I got there as soon as I could despite a spot of traffic and ran the mile from the car park to the IMF hide (which certainly proved to myself I'm not as fit as I once was!). I bumped into Scott as I got to the hide and he informed me it was asleep, so that was a bit of a relief knowing how impossible they can be to twitch! I got into the hide and it was sat there with jet black crest and bill tucked into the wings which projected well beyond the tail. Eventually it woke up and revealed it really chunky black bill (more impressive in the flesh than in photos!). It briefly flushed thanks to two squabbling Lapwings which allowed me to briefly see the long elegant wings. It looked to have some brown flecking in the wings suggesting a sub-adult, but can't be sure. 

Three Spotted Redshanks on view at the same time made for a rather stunning distraction from the tern whilst it was sleeping. 

On the walk back to the car park, I came across two Common Lizards too.