House Finch at Dunwich

Hearing of a tweet about a possible Scarlet Rosefinch, subsequently reidentified as the similar House Finch. On Saturday 3rd July, Jenny & I drove to Dunwich paid the £6 car parking fee (same organisation National Trust but at Marloes they have a separate 3 hour £3 charge, why can't they do that at Dunwich too?) We parked up and by the Coastguards Cottages in the corner there were bushes, a large Pine and bird feeders. There were a few people assembled and I spoke briefly to the lady who had found the bird singing in a bush nearby the previous evening, after congratulating her. I set the gear up, people said it had been in the tree. After a short while I spotted it in the tree heavily obscured by branches and foliage but it moved to an area between 2 branches of trees waiting for the coast to clear and it flew onto the feeders for a split second before something spooked it and it flew back into the tree. Just minutes later it was back on the feeders round the back before hopping to the side and then flying back into the Pine. After 20 minutes it flew to the front of the feeders briefly before flying back again into the Pine Tree. Checking the photos later it sported a green metal ring on its right leg and the white lettering read 80 vertically (ie. the 8 above the 0 then reading MF 47 vertically). Several birds came to the feders including Blue, Great Tits, Goldfinches and a young male Great- spotted Woodpecker.

More Puffins & Charlie the Herring gull again & yours truly!

Here are some more Puffin pics this time from The Wick at Skomer, where you can get pretty close to them, whilst staying on the path, of course we have to be midful of getting out of the way if any want to cross the path especially if they have Sand Eels that they want to take straight down the burrow to feed their chick. I met some great people on the boat/ trip over and on Skomer itself & at the Wick and they kindly took pictures of me (many thanks to Sally H) and the Herring gull and sent these onto me which I was very grateful for their thoughtfulness. Photo gear used included my Canon 100-400mm zoom lens here which gave me some flexibility in the shots. But there was less than favourable weather conditions at the Wick with mostly overcast sky and the sun struggling to get out, (so no flight shots obtained this time) also gusty at times (I moved away from the more sandy area, where sand was being blown over the path (definitely not good for either optics or cameras)!

A trip to Wales

On Wednesday 30th June, a walk along Cymisfael stream revealed a Dipper flying right down the stream from one of the bridges. A female Blackcap also seen. On Thursday 1st July, a walk up to the high point of Marloes peninsula revealed 2 fine Chough calling from the fields over to the left but they flew over to the cliffs and out of sight. On the journey over to Skomer on the Dale Princess, Jim, the boatman used some food to entice an adult Herring Gull onto the stern of the boat, it then flew up towards me and Jim said put your arm out and incredibly it settled on my arm! My thanks to Nathalie M for sending me this pic (who was sitting beside on the boat!) It was also really heartening to hear from Jim and the wardens on the islands that the islands were hosting a record total of 35,000+ Puffins the most numbers in living memory and well up on the 27,000+ on their in 2017. On the island proper, we climbed up the 86 steps seeing 4 Razorbills and 2 chocolate brown Guillemots seen. After the talk by the Visitor's Officer I was allowed to go down half the steps and photo the Razorbills albeit in poor cloudy light. It was instantly apparent that it was a record breaking sason for Puffins with 35,000 estimated on the island and they were everywhere in suitable cliff habitat, I took a stroll to the Wick, on the way just before the farm I saw a singing Meadow Pipit, but with my "eye on the prize" I carried on, approaching The Wick, 2 dead manx Shearwaters seen just by the side of the path, and then "Keeyah" 6 acrobatic Chough were wheeling about in the sky. At the Wick itself there were a lot of Puffins sitting around and many flying in with sand eels jammed into their colourful bills, we were mindful of getting out of the way so they could run across and go into their hole to feed the youngster. The wind was blowing sand about so I moved a little. Scanning the cliff, I saw a crack where I saw up to 7 Fulmars nesting. Some of the Puffins with sand eels flew around and then landed directly by their nesting hole. Walking around, I saw a Mistle Thrush on a hill. Looked at the marshy area for SEOs briefly, but the finally came out and I raced back to the Puffin colony near where we had to catch the boat back and fortunately several Puffins came in with Sand Eels crammed into tehir beaks and using the 500mm lens was able to get a few decent shots. I was the last one back on the boat and we had an uneventful trip back.

Journey to Wales

On the journey over, a stopover in deepest Suffolk revealed the fine Lizard Orchid (my first in Suffolk away from the extreme west of the county). A typically fine plant at its best on the grassy surround roadside. My thanks to Paul & Jane F for directions. It was quite cloudy and windy, tricky conditions for photography in a lone 2 foot tall plant! A Red Kite was seen on the M25, near the top.

IT stymied me yet again!

Google's Blogspot has now changed the Gadget widget for the headers on their blogs (making it impossible to have a nice headers as before why does IT development alaways make things worse???) and I am particularly disappointed that despite 'googling a work around', I was faced with a lot of computer programming code (admittedly not my strongest area of expertise!) and I changed it exactly as specified and I got error code "400" so no picture headers sadly for now. Also my so called "smart phone can now no longer pick up 4G so i have to wait until I get back to home wifi before I get any news (What's app messages or Twitter). I googled this and it mentioned changing your mobile network to roaming but surely that could encur big charges? Any help or comments welcome on either problem.

Star birds do a bunk & saturation point at Minsmere?

Arriving at Minsmere on Sunday 27th June, later than scheduled at 10.30am. I walked over to the west side of the scrape & seeing Nick & his wife first he advised me to walk further than the south hide to look for the Roseates, I keep missing them at Minsmere over the last 10 years, (last one seen Minsmere 2011, last one seen Lowestoft North beach 2012, courtesy of Andrew) they've usually either not there or just flown out to sea. Would today be any different? Probably not! I walked around the west part of the scrape first seeing a fine Green Sandpiper from the West hide, walking along the side of channel ridge of a pool although a child running around the hide didn't lead to a mindfulness moment. Lots of Black- tailed Godwits seen too. I walked over to south hide, saw 2 Little Terns on the island in front and more Common Terns but no sign of any Roseates and I then walked slightly further south as Nick directed and just past a little bridge I had to wait for a non birding couple to vacate the spot I wanted to look out over the southern section of the scrape. I scanned for 45 minutes, there were lots of Common Terns, along the southern section around 100 Sandwich Terns seen too and around 30 adult Kittiwakes on an island. On a small island in front were a Little Tern and 2 winter plumaged grey Knot. Ringed Plover seen too. No sign of the Roseate. I also looked from the public hide and I could see a lone fine dusky Spotted Redshank just right of the post no.6 on the edge of an island and over the northern side of the East Scrape a wonderful tally of 14 dusky fully summer plumaged Spotted Redshanks, (with the extra singleton, 15 in total, a sight to behold, I was hoping they'd stay there when I arrived at the East Scrape hide but they had dispersed and around 5 seen dotted around the northern fringes of the Scrape here. On the bench step, 2 close Sandwich Terns and 3 adult Kittiwakes perched but flew before I could set the camera up. It was too windy for any Dartford's on the dunes (still need to see one for 2021) but I was delighted to pick up a fine tiny Green Tiger Beetle by the base of the Sand Martin cliffs just over the line of the electric fence, it favoured a white peeble. An interested couple came over and I showed then the beetle. Tiny and green with white spots on each wing and buffy near the thorax sadly I didn't have my macro lens camera as it was pretty close and would have made a good pic. Overall, there was a lot of people at Minsmere, mostly young families, it is good to get children into nature to carry on the "torch" but a young family were having a picnic where I had seen Adders in previous years and surely the sheer numbers of people is causing dune erosion and disturbance to sensitive species. It was good too to see reserve staff showing a young family a Bee Wolf colony and explaining their life style to their enthralled audience. I even saw someone walking their dog on the reserve it was on a lead but I thought dogs were banned from the reserve??? Although a large part of the beach was roped off and I am pleased to say a considerable part of the bushes between the hides was roped off too. Particularly galling to hear the Roseate was back on the south scrape this afternoon. It wasn't on there this morning.

Roller at Icklingham, Ibis and suncream at Lackford!!!

On Saturday 26th June after waiting since Wednesday to go for the gorgeous Roller that had turned up near Lackford and extreme west Suffolk. I did have the chance to go on Wednesday (my afternoon off) but I was unsure of exactly where to go and where to park until 6pm that day which would have left me with viewing of just 1 hour- 1 hour 30 mins). So on saturday I rose about 6pm and was already to go when news was updated on Bird Guides which I had to keep logging in and see Roller- Suffolk. Just under 2 hours time I pulled into the already 3/4 full Rampart's Field picnic site car (now practically full up with birders cars) and an easy half mile walk (hope my foot is finally getting better?) along the very busy and treacherous A road. I arrived safely along the southern edge of a vast field. The fantastic Roller was spotted immediately as soon I put my bins up and I could see it perched on the far field posts, very distant and definitely a scope job. Like a bloated "Jay" in shape, it had a wonderful blue turqouise body colour with warm russet brown in the wings and was a riot of coloutr when it flew. Again making short flights in to the air to catch insects and return to its fence piost at the back and promptly gulp down the unfortunate prey. This colourful southern Mediterranean visitor (my 10th this week, counting the 9 Bee-eaters at Great Yarmouth), eventually flew much closer to overhead power lines making it within range of the camera foa few shots. Craig S just appeared before it come closer (perfect timing Craig) and the Fergusons arrived and indeed the Roller was giving almost Ferguson views for us all. Really great to catch up with Craig S (we miss his company locally around Corton/ Lowestoft) and of Paul & Jane. The fine Roller had several sorties from the power lines often returning with prey (dragonflies, butterflies, bees) and devouring them promptly. It even landed on the ground several times often this was brief but one time it settled on the ground for several minutes although a little too far away for mu set up sadly. After about 2 hours at marvelling at this beauty, Paul & Jane F kindly allowed me to accompany them to Lackford Lakes SWT reserve, where at one hide, an erroneous sighting was made by someone in the hide where we saw a dark shape disappear behind a clump of flowering Yellow Flag iris. We all agreed we thought it was the Carrion Crow that was wandering around this area. Paul's hide we saw the fine but drab looking Glossy Ibis walking around the edge of the pool along a grassy spit where we eventually lost it behind a sprig of non- flowering Yellow Flag iris. We also saw a Common Tern flying around, Oystercatcher and 2 Grey Herons and heard several Cuckoos too. I had brought a container full of suncream with me but Jane spotted a great dollop of white stuff on the floor of the hide, thinking it was spilt ice cream looking at the contents of my left coat pocket revealed the true culprit, a burst suncream container which also messed up my lower left trouser leg and left walking boot. We all had a good laugh about this and we quickly left the hide. Apologies to the Lackford SWT staff who would have to clean that dollop up, I had literally had nothing with me to clear this up myself. At least I am fully paid up member of the SWT. On the walk back near reception, 2 single sightings of buzzing Hornets wheezed right past our faces, just in front of us.