Hampshire Birding!

When anybody even thinks of birding in Hampshire, it is invariably either the coastline, or the 'New Forest dog walker and screaming children park' that comes to mind. As a result the rest of Hampshire is somewhat neglected, leaving many to believe there simply isn't the same amount of wildlife here as in other parts. Needless to say this couldn't be further from the truth!

With my AS Exams approaching in the coming months, I am going to have to spend more and more time around the north east of the county, closer to home. At first I considered this to be something of a disaster, but over the last couple of weeks I have been treated to some spectacular wildlife, much of it within a 30 minute drive of the front door!

Towards the end of February a Great Grey Shrike was found on the chalk downland slopes at Kingsclere. This bird had almost certainly been present all winter, though due to the complete lack of coverage these parts receive, had only been discovered a few days before this photo was taken.

Great Grey Shrike

This brings me on to today, and what a day it was! I decided to visit a whole range of locations to see what I could find and certainly was not disappointed.
I began the day at a site that will have to remain undisclosed unfortunately, in the hope of finding Otters. Although they are normally nocturnal and extremely secretive, at this site they seem to have adopted a more photographer friendly lifestyle, and occasionally hunt during the day. I arrived fairly early and almost immediately struck gold with the female Otter. She stayed in the middle of the lake unfortunately and after catching her fish, decided she would head back to the river, where she sadly remained out of sight for the remaining time I was there.

Otter

Whilst waiting for her to reappear I noticed a Wren making the most of the spring day and proclaiming his territory. I sat down and waited for him to come closer and was amazed when he popped up right in front of me!

Wren

With the otter showing no signs of returning I headed off to a small area of woodland. Despite appearing somewhat unimpressive, this is the last 'stronghold' for the increasingly rare Willow Tit in Hampshire.

(C) Google Maps

After a short while I soon located at least 2 pairs of birds, though they were difficult to photograph, often feeding high in the trees.

Willow Tit

By now the afternoon was approaching and we decided to start driving back towards home. Whilst heading through some woodland a large bird of prey had us pull-in. I could immediately see it was not a Buzzard or Peregrine; my first thoughts being Sparrowhawk I decided to rattle off some shots. The bird seemed unusually large for a Sparrowhawk and it quickly became clear it was probably a Goshawk (later confirmed by others). This species is extremely unusual in Hampshire outside of the New Forest, where they usually only show distantly.

Goshawk

After all the excitement I was a little worried the final stop of the day would not live up to expectations! I decided to take a trip to some local heathland in search of the Dartford Warbler; always a tricky subject! I arrived mid afternoon which was not ideal, but was treated almost immediately to the soft wheezing noise made by the birds. Over the next two hours, I located at least 6 pairs in a rather small area so it seems as if this mild winter has really benefited this species. As always they were highly elusive, often appearing for a split second before disappearing into the heather. This bird popped out onto a dead piece of gorse, saw me, and rather unusually stayed put!

That is all for now folks, I will hopefully be photographing Dartford Warblers again next weekend and maybe even some adders!

Norfolk 2014

I know it has been too long between blogposts once again, but it has been quite a busy time for me: and some rather exciting opportunities have arisen which hopefully I will be able to share with you over the coming months.

I normally try and visit Norfolk at least once a year, though this year it was rather last minute, so was only up  there for 3 days. I was with fellow young photographer Josie Hewitt and I think we both came away with some respectable shots! As usual I had a great time and saw some really superb species - what is it about Norfolk that birds love so much above just about everywhere else?!

Anyway below is a quick trip report!

Day 1 ~ Sculthorpe and Burnham

Setting off at the crack of dawn we first payed a visit to West Stow country park in the hope of photographing some crossbills, though unfortunately in the 3 hours we were there, not one showed well enough to photograph.

We decided to head off to Sculthorpe Moor, a small, characterful nature reserve on the edge of Fakenham. We arrived to find a fairly busy car park (nice to see for a reserve that relies heavily on donations) though surprisingly we saw virtually no-one on our walk around! We headed straight for the Whitley hide which has always been the most productive in my past experience and were treated to a superb display by a wide variety of species. There was an almost constant presence of Bullfinch and Brambling (two species I hadn't ever really photographed previously) but the star of the show really was the Water Rail, who had obviously forgot he was meant to be shy and skulking!!

The light was beginning to fade so we headed off towards our hotel in Old Hunstanton. Along the road at Burnham, we encountered a small group of birders, all with scopes pointing towards the distant dunes. We decided to pull-in and see what all the fuss was about and we were quickly shown a very distant Rough-Legged Buzzard. This was only the second time I had seen this species, the first 2 years previously from the very same lay-by!

Brambling

Water Rail

Bullfinch photos will hopefully follow in the next couple of days!


Day 2 ~ Hunstanton, Titchwell and Holme

Our original plan was to head to Titchwell Marsh RSPB however we decided to start off on the beach in front of the hotel. We picked up a few distant flocks of scoter flying offshore but the highlight was a colony of Fulmar along the nearby cliffs. A species I have seen several times before, but never as close as this; birds were flying just metres above our head!

These delayed our trip to Titchwell rather considerably, it is definitely a site I will be revisiting on my next visit, hopefully in a year's time.
The marshes at Titchwell held little of interest bar a sleeping female Scaup so we headed fairly quickly over to the beach. It was immediately apparent that the recent storm surge on this part of the coastline had had some fairly serious consequences. The dunes had been retreated by a good view metres leaving a very thin defence for the marshes behind. The boardwalk leading to the beach had been completely destroyed but thankfully the RSPB have since constructed a new pathway. Once on the beach, one of the first things we noticed were thin black 'lines' on the sea: scanning with the binoculars it soon became clear that these were in fact several large flocks of Scoter, some of which contained 3000+ individuals! They were very distant offshore but we still managed to pick out a number of Velvet scoter.
 It was also interesting that the majority of scoters offshore (both common and velvet) were either females or 1st winter drakes - if anyone knows why it would be good to find out.
There were nowhere near as many waders as I have seen previously on the beach,though I was still able to photograph Grey Plover for the first time. Although they are not the most spectacular of waders, I think they are subtly rather beautiful!
Final stop of the day was Holme NWT - here we saw our first Pink-Footed Geese of the trip. Interestingly this time last year I saw just 1 Pink-Footed Goose over the course of a week, however this year over 3 days I saw several thousand! Here we also watched 11 Marsh Harriers fly into roost (some continued onto Titchwell) and a distant Barn Owl.

Fulmar

Fulmar

Fulmar

Fulmar

(More photos of the fulmars will be posted on a future blogpost dedicated entirely to this species!)

Lots of Scoter on a wonky horizon! (foreground and background!)

Distant Velvet Scoter

Grey Plover

Grey Plover 

Pink-Footed Geese

Day 3 ~ Edgefield, Holkham and Burnham

After much deliberation we decided to travel quite a way (about 45 mins) over to Edgefield Woods near Holt, in an attempt to see Parrot Crossbills. This is the first time in over 20 years these species have 'erupted' into the UK outside of Scotland, so were definitely worth trying to catch up with. I had heard some rather unfortunate stories of people taking 3-4 visits to see these birds, so I was not all that optimistic!
I needn't have worried however; as soon as we stepped out the car a surprisingly large number of birders had already located the flock of 16 Parrot Crossbill atop a large dead tree. Views were extremely distant and so we decided to try and get a little closer...until the forestry man arrived! He explained to us that they were going to be doing forestry work, and so all birders would have to leave the site. After some expletives had been exchanged we went back to the car and considered our rather limited options. As we dithered, I noticed a man waving frantically in the heather across the road. We walked over to him, and quickly picked up all 16 Parrot Crossbills sat at the top of a bare tree no more than 20m away. Here, we enjoyed fantastic views (including singing!) for nearly 10 minutes in what was unfortunately fairly appalling light, before the birds departed to feed.
After this high it was inevitable the next stop was to be something of a disappointment and so it was hardly surprising that Blakeney yielded pretty much nothing!
We then headed to Holkham where we saw the first White-Fronted Geese of the trip along with a rather confiding Grey Partridge.
Our final stop of the entire trip was to Burnham in an attempt to gain a better view of the Rough Legged Buzzard. We waited, and waited.....and waited some more, until we eventually gave into the reality that it wasn't going to show! It was still worthwhile though as we picked up a distant Short Eared Owl and thousands of Brent and Pink-Footed Geese!

Male Parrot Crossbill

Female Parrot Crossbill

Female Parrot Crossbill

Male Parrot Crossbill

So that's it, trip report over. Hopefully it has been worth the read, I am going to try and do smaller blog posts after every photographic venture from now on, so please keep checking back. You can of course subscribe to my blog my filling in your email address in the tab on the right-hand side so you never miss a blogpost!