Showing posts with label Migrants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Migrants. Show all posts

Tuesday, 1 December 2015

Late Sandwich Tern

I was surprised to find a Tern on the patch today.  Here is a photo of that Tern.  It is a Sandwich Tern.



I can, without going through my vast and highly detailed library of bird records, state that I have never seen a Sandwich Tern in December.  Amazingly I had the 2014 Norfolk Bird Report to hand this evening so I checked the latest date for a Sandwich Tern last year which was December 2nd.  So the bird is potentially significant but not massively.  However, I did skim randomly through some of the old reports and although  there was a record for mid-December in 2008 that year and one on the 3rd in 1982, it is nonetheless unusual for a Sandwich Tern to be flying around East Norfolk in December.

However, what I can almost guarantee is that if I have seen a bird that has potential ornithological signficance it will be part of a major influx rather than an isolated bird.

Back to taking photos of the resident Crows tomorrow then.


Monday, 8 September 2014

Migrants, patch tick and not technically twitching gulls... Weekly Highlights 07/09/2014

Yes, a weekly highlights page that posted no weekly highlights for two weeks.  The reasons behind this are manifest and for you dear reader I expect that they are not particularly interesting when you want to see pictures of birds.  So let's do birds then.  

Lots of them.  

Like this one.




Not a particularly good week for photos, but a good one for birds.  Birds everywhere on the patch this week and some nice ones too.  Wheatears, Whinchats, Redstarts, Black Redstarts, an absolutely stonking adult Hobby at point blank range, and rounded off at the weekend with a Pied Flycatcher in the gloom.  I had seen reports of Pied Flycatchers that were doable in my lunch hour and I was sorely tempted.  But I thought, no, if I go chasing up there I won't know what was on the patch, and I was thankfully vindicated with a lovely patch tick.



Pied Flycatcher doing lovely patch tick
 And so to the weekend.  I'd seen some chatter on the interweb about Caspian Gulls at Cromer and thought that I'd go and have a look.  This doesn't count as twitching as I was only going for a speculative look, and there were no other birders there.

Unfortunately it was in fading light, and as I was looking for a 1st winter bird I almost overlooked the adult.  Oops!  Now, my previous experience of Caspian Gulls has been stringing funny looking Herring Gulls and reading about them in a very big book, but because of this I have had a fair handle on what to look for (I believe that these are called diagnostic features, and one absolutely must know what a gonys angle is).  Having seen some of the pictures on social media of what people are saying are Caspian Gulls, I'm not so sure myself.  However, there was a nice Yellow-legged Gull kicking about too.


Adult Caspian Gull, Cromer

Yellow-legged Gull, Cromer

Ended the week with a field full of Wheatears, and a late-ish accompaniment of Sand Martin and House Martin which was very pleasant indeed.






Sunday, 25 August 2013

Wryneck, Gramborough Hill, Salthouse

I first dipped on a Wryneck in 1989, and have waited until today to get that monkey off my back.  Needless to say I (we) had a great afternoon at Salthouse today, migrants putting on a great show.  Wryneck a bit distant for a decent shot, but the Lesser Whitethroat below was very nice...




The man behind me had a camera malfunction just as this bird appeared.  He wasn't pleased...

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