A good bird for Mike

This evening I had a call from a very chuffed Mike. He has seen a Barn Owl at Middle Spernal Pools. His first record for the locality.

Great stuff.

Sunday June 8

Warm and sunny. Dave rang to say he would not be joining me, so I had the place to myself. Although today would be dominated by insects, I began and ended with some significant birds.

At the little reedbed I finally managed to get a shot of one of the two singing Reed Warblers.

83. Reed Warbler

Not a great shot by proper photographer standards, but a photo year-tick. Further up the road a juvenile Pied Wagtail was just begging to have his picture taken.

juvenile Pied Wagtail

I then walked through the village and along the bottom of Bannam's Wood recording singing birds before turning to walk down the hedge towards the pool. The hedge produced two nice dragonflies and my first Speckled Wood of the year.

Broad-bodied Chaser

Four-spotted Chaser

Speckled Wood

At least one Little Grebe was still present at the pool, while at the flashes the long grass is now denying me the chance to look at the furthest flash, the near one producing four Grey Herons and a Redshank.

Returning my attention to the insects I saw my first Large Skippers of the year were now on the wing.

Large Skipper

The Large Skipper is actually a very small butterfly, its just bigger then the other Skippers. I also saw a female Common Blue butterfly, and got a chance to photograph an obliging Banded Demoiselle damselfly.

Banded Demoiselle

Approaching the end of my circuit another new dragonfly for the year appeared, a female Black-tailed Skimmer.

female Black-tailed Skimmer

They look quite different from the males, and I hope to see and photograph one of those on a later visit.

Back at the dragonfly pools I was a bit disappointed that there were no Emperor Dragonflies on the wing, and I also saw but failed to photograph any of the handful of Common Blue Damselflies which were mixed in with the Azure Damselflies. I did get a shot of a male Large Red Damselfly though.

Large Red Damselfly

Finally, I mentioned there would be another significant bird. There was indeed. As I was driving away I picked up a Red Kite flying over Bannams Wood. I stopped and tried to record it for posterity, but kept missing it, and it soon got away.

A good end to a mid-summer insect extravaganza.

Flaming June

June is upon us, and today was exactly what you would expect. Hot and sunny with no birds.

To be fair, there were plenty of birds of course, just no migrants. The Little Grebes have settled in and are now nest-building. Dave and I also saw two family parties of Blackcaps, a family of Long-tailed Tits, a definite female Cuckoo (it did the bubbling call), a pair of Ravens, and a newly arrived pair of Mute Swans.

A photo-tick became available when I found that the House Martins were collecting mud.

82. House Martin

Meanwhile, although there were no waders etc on the flash, the Coots were engaged in a territorial Mexican stand-off.

The summer's saving grace is the the insects. Although we didn't see too many butterflies, we did better with the odonata. Several Beautiful Demoiselles and one Banded Demoiselle flew by, and at least one Four-spotted Chaser was also present. None of these was available for a photograph, but the Broad-bodied Chasers were more co-operative.

A female Broad-bodied Chaser

A male Broad-bodied Chaser

I spent a frustrating half hour trying to get shots, conscious that I was irritating a pair of Sedge Warblers which had a nest somewhere on the other side of the pool, and also Dave, who decided he might as well head home.

Sunday May 25

A cloudy and rather damp morning. The rain overnight and yesterday had created plenty of puddles and raised the water levels in all the water courses.

I started at Netherstead, and soon confirmed that the two Reed Warblers were still singing and remaining hidden from view. Some crow alarm calls caused me to look up in time the see a Raven out-distancing its pursuers. An opportunity to get a flight shot.

Raven

It was too cool for insects to be on the wing so today was always going to be devoted to birds. As I reached the main pool I found that my first Little Grebes of the year were in residence. As is generally the case they weren't keen to be photographed, diving and eventually re-emerging in the pool-side vegetation whenever I got too close. But I managed some record shots.

80. Little Grebe (two)

The field behind the pool contained several singing Skylarks, and I finally got a shot of one of them on the ground.

I reached the flash, and found that the wet weather had not produced any waders. However, within a few minutes two Redshanks did turn up.

One of the Redshanks

The remainder of the visit produced a silent Cuckoo (perhaps a female) with a male still singing in the distance, and a series of other common birds which I couldn't resist snapping.

Yellowhammer

Reed Bunting

Lesser Whitethroat and Reed Bunting

Greenfinch

Kestrel

And a dot shot for the photo-year list

81. Swift

I had a frustrating near miss on the way home when I found a Jay hopping around in the road, while my camera was in the boot. I managed to retrieve the camera while the bird remained, only to have it flushed by a passing car.

Wednesday May 21

A still sunny evening. I arrived later than usual with a cunning plan up my sleeve. Initially it was all pleasant enough. A Reed Warbler was singing invisibly from the hedge bordering eastern edge of the pool field, rather odd. A party of Canada Geese and two Redshanks on the Flash.

Behind me a Lapwing was calling anxiously from the tilled field. I think she may have chicks.

A Sedge Warbler was singing from the straggly hedge-line at the west side of the pool. I couldn't see it, but as I looked up the hill towards Bannams Wood I realised the cunning plan had paid off. A Barn Owl was hunting over the field in front of the wood.

I would obviously like to show you some marvelous shots at this stage, and goodness knows I tried. But the light was too poor, and my camera was not up to the job (neither was its operator), so after discarding loads of fuzzy white blobs, this is the best I could come up with.

79. Barn Owl

At least you can tell it is one. The bird itself performed wonderfully off and on for about 30 minutes from 21.00. I also heard the Grey Partridge again while I was watching the Owl.

Scarce raptors

Another beautiful sunny day, with just a light southerly breeze. A call from Dave as I was on my way alerted me to his car having been discovered to have a puncture. He would be late. I had in any case planned to survey the breeding birds around Netherstead Farm, so his delay simply gained me some extra time

I spent an hour or so mooching about, counting the local House Sparrows etc, noting a couple of Starlings (not seen here since early April), and hearing a Cuckoo. I also had an interesting chat with Yad (Jad?) originally from Sweden, who told me about various impending comings and goings (mostly goings unfortunately) of certain residents of the hamlet.

Dave arrived and we started birding. Almost immediately he spotted a raptor heading from the south. A Kite. We dashed to a place where we could get a better view as the bird, a Red Kite, which slowly approached and eventually circled away to the east.

78. Red Kite (approaching)

The fly past

Heading away

I managed to get a series of shots of it (plus a lot of shots of blue sky) before it was lost from view. The second here this year, and a nice pull back after I was not around to see the one in March. It didn't appear to be wing tagged, but I imagine that is not as significant as it used to be.

Feeling pretty chuffed we headed towards the pool. On reaching the half-way pond Dave pulled another one out of the bag, as he spotted a pair of Hobbies circling. They came closer and eventually flew over, but they were too high and quick for me to get a shot of them.

Being a sunny day, we were always on the look out for interesting insects. Thus I was pleased when we found several Small Heath butterflies.

Small Heath

These diddy little creatures always settle with their wings up. In flight the upper surface appears all orangy brown, but unless you are looking at a dead specimen, you will never see that properly.

At the pool I was pleased to see that the Canada Geese have bred successfully, and five goslings were counted.

The flashes by contrast were pretty poor. The near flash is about 50% dry, and contained only a few Mallards, Lapwings, and a Pied Wagtail. On the way back we found another new butterfly for the year.

Small Copper

The Small Copper is about the same size as the Small Heath, but is generally commoner, and certainly prettier.

Finally we reached the dragonfly pools where, at long last, I saw some dragonflies (well actually damselflies).

Azure Damselfly

Large Red Damselfly

Blue-tailed Damselfly

The feel good factor is definitely back.

Wednesday May 14

After a fine sunny day, my evening's birding was not without incident. To begin with Jon was contacting me pretty regularly to let me know how well he was doing at Haselor scrape, where he tells me he is going every night. Tonight's offerings were two Oystercatchers and a close Yellow Wagtail.

Morton Bagot, by contrast, has been going through a "quiet period" for about a month!  But maybe there were some encouraging signs tonight. To begin with there was a wader on the flash. OK it was just a Little Ringed Plover, but its been a couple of weeks.

With news of the stuff at Haselor, I felt determined to get something. And suddenly something turned up. Another wader, this time a Redshank. I'm almost embarrassed to admit this was only the second this year.

Not too bad. I strolled back past a singing Sedge Warbler and several pairs of Tufted Ducks. A male of the latter was caught in the act of doing its head nodding display.

Onwards and upwards. Near Bannams Wood I paused to take in a quite impressive sunset.

Just then a slightly familiar call, "krriak" stopped me in my tracks. It was coming from the other side of the hedge. It called again. A Grey Partridge. This species has the extraordinary ability to remain invisible for most of the year, but must surely be resident. I got through the hedge, and hung around. The habitat it was in consisted of long grass blanketing a field with Felix's saplings in it. There was no chance of a view of the bird, and it also stopped calling.

Perhaps, at least in the short term, the lack of agricultural chemicals on Felix's land will prove beneficial for this species.