Bird Fair, Risley Moss and Dee Estuary Burton Mere

Little Egret

I had a great time at my first Birdfair on Saturday. It took around 3 hours to get over to Rutland Water from Warrington but it was worth it. I had read about the Birdfair in "The Biggest Twitch" http://www.thebiggesttwitch.com/ and since this book was my main inspiration to get properly into birding, I was quite excited to see that Ruth and Alan were giving a presentation at Birdfair, which was why I decided to go. I watched three talks in total. The first on birding in Gujarat, India which wasn't great, then Ruth and Alan's talk which was fun as expected. Later in the day when our legs were tired we sat in the Extremadura talk and that was also very inspirational and somewhere that is now definitely on my list to go!.


Swallow

All in all Birdfair was great and I hope to attend again next year. I saw demos on ringing birds (felt sorry for the poor little blue tit though), grabbed loads of freebees and generally learned a lot. The only problem was that apart from a sneaky use of some scopes I had no intention of buying to see what was going on, on one of the lakes (a Little Eegret, Lapwings, Canada Geese, Mallards) I didn't see any birds!

To rectify that the next day we went to Woolston Eyes where we again circumnavigated the area with the hides and came to the conclusion I better just pay to get a key. I did see my first Pochard there though so it wasn't all bad.


Bullfinch sitting in the Risley Moss Carpark

The day after we went to Risley Moss where we watched a Hobby, Kestrel and colourful male Bullfinch (none were new for any of my lists but still fun).

After lunch we went to Dee Estuary Burton Mere for the first time, this was a treasure trove. Great trails, different habitats and a wealth of birds even in August. I definitely want to go back in Autumn as it was wader-licious! My year total now stands at 88 (rank 283 on bubo listing website), 12 away from target after only two months.

Bar-tailed and Black-Tailed Godwits (and a Moorhen)

We had trouble identifying this one but in the end settled on plain old common Buzzard, still great views though!



Another tricky identification for us, the new bird book I purchased from Bird Fair pointed towards Common Sandpiper however.

Gadwall, we also saw female Teals which was new for the list too.



Yellow Wagtail

Brockholes, Lancashire - 80 species on the year list

We went to Brockholes not expecting much since it is summer holidays so there are kids running around everywhere and we knew the reserve was right next to the motorway from passing it on many other trips. However I was very pleasantly surprised to get several new species for my year list and life list.

We wasted most of the first hour there going to the (not very good) café and then due to the lack of signage we ended up walking up a ridge, away from the lake and having to go back on ourselves. All wasn't lost though as in a very small section of woodland signed as "The Deep Dark Woods" which was there so kids could build dens, we came across a mixed flock of tits with the first new bird of the day mixed in. Two treecreepers skulked up and down the trees, darting from one to the other. It was quite tricky for René to get any kind of photo at all but he just about managed in the end.

Treecreeper

Common Blue Damselfly

 Luckily after some backtracking over the car park and past the children's park area we got back near the lake.

Cormorants - also new for the 2014 list

3x female Tufted Duck were an ID challenge so I was glad we had a photo since these were lifers in addition to being new for 2014.

 

Common Darter Dragonfly

Grey Heron - already on my lists but still always nice to watch

Great Crested Grebe Juvenile - not new for the list but pretty cool to see the grebe on the right side resting it's legs behind it!

 

Female Whitethroat - new for 2014 and the life list :)

 

Sparrowhawk - also new for both lists.

 

 In addition to these new birds, we also saw Sand Martins skimming over the no. 1 pool They darted by so fast that the photos of them were very poor or mostly missing any Sand Martins at all but these little missiles brought my grand total for the year (which I started in June) up to 80.

Brockholes certainly has potential so we will be going back in the autumn when hopefully there should be even more new birds after the migration has started. Next time however we will give the café a miss and walk straight to the path around the lake (past the children's play area). All in all though the bird-to-time ratio was very good and parking was only around a fiver for the three hours or so we were there (£7 max. charge) with no entry fee.

As we finished the walk and headed back to the car park there was an ice-cream van where we asked for two "99s". What we got each was one scoop of blue coloured ice-cream with a squirt of sauce and a flake shoved in for £1.40 each. A stoat ran in front of us into the undergrowth and my ice cream sadly followed it a few licks later, my advice is take your own food/treats but aside from that Brockholes was a great destination and since it wasn't the food we had gone for anyway, we were both happy.

Dyfi Osprey Project, Bwlch Nant yr Arian Red Kites and Siskin

 As I was camping in Mid Wales last weekend I visited the nearby Dyfi Osprey Project which has a wonderful purpose built hide amongst the tree canopy. On the walkway to the hide we saw a common lizard basking in the sun on the heat reflective black strip at the side of the walkway:

 

 

We also went to the Ynys Hir RSPB reserve where we saw a Little Egret and several other waders in the distance. We only had an hour there so couldn't really do it justice but it looked a nice reserve. Then the Grand Finale was the Red Kite feeding station at Bwlch Nant yr Arian Forestry Commission site - around 200 wild Red Kites - wow!

 

4lb lost and 2 birds gained! Snowdonia+ Llandegla Forest

Last week I had teambuilding with work in Snowdonia. During a treasure hunt by foot in the local area I saw goldfinch, robins, an unidentified bird of prey (I thought maybe a peregrine falcon but I am not sure enough to put it on my list) and a Spotted Flycatcher which was brilliant to see catching a big fly with precision and flying back to the tree it had been sitting on.

On the way home two of my colleagues were going mountain biking at Llandegla Forest so I managed to bum a lift with them, since I had read that 50% of the welsh population of Black Grouse were within a mile of the area.

I had 2 hours before my lift departed and it took me about 50 minutes to get to the RSPB hide. It started raining just as I arrived and sadly I didn't see any Black Grouse along the heather carpeted moors but I did see a new bird I didn't recognise. There were a group of sparrow sized birds with pinky/reddish chests, white wing stripes and black heads. I managed to take a very crap photo of one as they darted from bush to bush. When I got home I had a look through and identified the birds as Stonechat which was new for my list too.

After 15 minutes at the hide (which was locked up) I had to hotfoot it back to the carpark in the pouring rain. On the way back several times I saw something out of the corner of my eye in the bushes but I didn't think I had time to stop, since I didn't want to miss my lift. I did see plenty of Great Tits at one point though in a bigger group than I have seen before (maybe 20 birds).

Back in the carpark with 15 minutes to spare I ate some cake whilst surrounded by Chaffinches and then got my ride home. I am now number 287 on the 2014 Britain Bubo rankings with 71 species. http://www.bubo.org/Listing/view-all-lists.html?showlists=1,BOU,1,2014,0

I weighed myself when I got home and since I started bird watching I have lost 4lb - not bad! My body fat % was 46.5% in a recent medical a couple of months ago and that is at least now going in the right direction too at 45.5%. Birdwatching is good for your health!