Not a great deal of birding has been done since last I drabbled. This is less due to work or even that Great Dread of apathy, than to the
Yes, fighting to have large quantities of money extracted while being driven slowly but surely mad by the Brain Melting Horror of 'festive' muzak................
Ahem.
Right, start again;
Due to Pressing Duties, I've not been off chasing tweety birds around since last I posted. Well not off-Patch anyway.
Having said that, I did manage a very quick look at the reserve bit of Dart's Farm on Friday, which resulted in 5 Mistle Thrushes and SFA else. A few finches, but not a sniff of Brambling, let alone anything else, like interesting geese or duckth.. Oh well.
Today I lugged the Big Scope down to the IMD overlook. I chose this over Thatcher Point as I judged height and some shelter from the wind would do better than being slightly closer.
Yup, more sodding blobs are coming...
One view
Another view
[observe the yellow buoy's relative position]
Common Scoter and more than 80% female/1w. How many? When I first arrived they were resting in a broad line and I got 235 [twice].
Those were taken a little later, as I was distracted by interrogating these 6 characters;
What do you mean "Six..?!?"
Velvets!
There are as close as I could get to all 6 in that one; there's a semi-hidden on the left and the top of a head in between it and the obvious 4. Yeah, still blobs, but they were cracking through my scope!
There were 3 adult males - teardrops and yellow bits and all - and 3 female/1w, and all had nice clear white bars showing as they bobbed around. Never mind that, I could see they were VS by the face profile [which for some reason I decided to look at carefully..??]. Likewise I went through the CS - being slightly disappointed that they were all CS, though interested by the very high f/j:m ratio. No Eiders, no LTDs*, no divers or grebes, either! There were a few auks; 5+ Razorbill and 2+ Guillemot.
The unmagnified view.
I moved around to Meadfoot to get a lower viewpoint and scan for birds flying out from parts further off and was rewarded; a very nice w/pl RTD and later a Slav both flew out from around Broadsands to mid-Bay - presumably to roost?? - and a couple of Common Gulls and an adult Med were messing around over the Bay, as were 7+ Gannet.
More scenery;
One day I will get tired of shooting this here rock.
Maybe.
Closer to home, I have some feeder shots for you...
First up;
Gotcha!
Please excuse the half-wiped condescension, I became a little distracted..
Secondly, it seems that it's not only Robins that like pink suet;
How did he get that?
Like this!
Just look at that first picture, is there a prettier corvid on Earth? You can keep your Azure-wings [Ok, maybe fly one over here first?? ;) ] and your Chuffs [er.. ditto]..
It has also occurred that that second picture might shed some light on how my RSPB feeder was slain... Hmm.
Speaking of, I've acquired one of the old RSPB metal jobs [as the new ones have large perches designed for pigeons to hang on to, for some reason....] and put the one you see up there back into retirement [[yes, that is rust you see..]]
In other news, the cold snap - which never got below zero but did give some lovely freezing fog on Thursday morning's trip home - seems to be done, we now have the 'blasting easterly' snap again..
If only it would bring something nice here. Preferably something that feels photogenic....
Be Seeing You..
[[*I've never seen an LTD on the sea north of Hollicombe - they seem to like it shallow and sandy]]
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