Aside Post
While chopping logs in the garden, had a female sparrow hawk visit, without prey, and an hour later the first for this garden a tree creeper, on the peanut feeder, then to the Sorbus trees, as I was pointing a camera at it, then of course it flew. One of the most difficult birds to photograph in my opinion.
Dec 27th by neilgd under Bird Watching, Travels, my Friends travels
PART 2
I had not intended to wait a year as per Ian’s comment for Part 2, but somehow here we are a year on!!
We stayed for four days at Bird safari Camp in our en-suite tent along with a number of other travellers wanting to escape the Christmas hype and do some birding instead. The camp was everything that we had hoped for with wonderful friendly staff, fantastic food all overseen by the boss lady Binta.
Mornings were spent on early walks at 7am with our guide Lamin who was expertly knowledgeable on all of the birds by …
Dec 17th by neilgd under Bird Watching, Travels, my Friends travels
I have just returned from an eleven day birding trip in Ghana with Ashanti African Tours (www.ashantiafricantours.com). The eleven days were fully packed with birding and travelling the significant distances between the main birding sites. On arrival on Saturday night at Kotoka International Airport in Accra I was met by my two guides for the 11 days and transferred to our hotel at around 11pm. After checking in, the guides informed me that breakfast the next day was at 4.30am, leaving the hotel at 5am; this was the case for the remainder of the trip except for a …
Nov 10th by Ian under Bird Watching, Miscellaneous
On leave from the Shetlands, the mist at home lifted, the sun came out and I wheezed up Kinnoul hill in Perth. Heard long tailed tits with blues and greats, a pair of jays and a buzzard. Saw ravens, longtailed tits, jackdaws and a peregrine that obligingly went into a stoop over Barnshill and disappeared from my view. Meanwhile I was snapping with my panasonic DMC FZ7 and my Canon EOS 550 D, you can see the comparison above, the canon shots are on top and the brighter less real shots are the panasonics below. The canon camera to my …
Nov 5th by Ian under Bird Watching, Travels, my Friends travels
Tags: sullom voe, wintering merlins
I will post about the Shetlands project separately, I want to give you a flavour of the island from a brief respite of time off. On a Sunday I dropped the guys off and took the pool car for a drive in the reduced daylight we get up here. First I was obliged to watch a boring GP from India, kinda glad its going to Sky sports next year as I don’t subscribe, therefore the link of “must watch” will be broken.
Going from Sella Ness (home) I stopped at a community woodland walk by an old quarry before you …
Sep 6th by Ian under Bird Watching, Travels, my Friends travels
I am retyping this from the original which is a paper I helped compile for a years worth of birdwatching on Dubai’s creek. I was not alone and the observations are from a small but determined party of enthusiasts who got up early on a Friday (holy day) and often took to the mud to cover the whole creek. The period was 1981 to 1982 and I believe shortly after I left the area it was declared a national park, good vision from the Maktoums. I am doing this in response to a search of my site for Dubai birds, …
Adults Ospreys may have gone, did see two juvs on the eyrie, and later one on the eyrie branch, it was making begging calls, but eventually flew off. On scanning the reedbeds I did pick up an Osprey on the other side of the river, one from “my” nest ? who knows. It’s time we had bird rings that emitted bar codes that smart phones could pick up, now that would advance bird movement study.
No juv or adult harriers in evidence so could also be gone.
End of another nesting season, comes round so quickly! however the weather was …
Aug 7th by neilgd under Bird Watching
Tags: Fulmar, Herring Gull, Kittiwake, RSPB Fowlsheugh, Stonehaven
Last weekend I decided that I would pay a visit to the RSPB Fowlsheugh reserve on the east coast of Scotland near Stonehaven.  My aim was to see some auks and in particular some Puffins – it was late in the season and as such possibly too late.  Indeed it was too late and no auks were in evidence, however some great views of  Herring Gull, Fulmar and Kittiwake were had, including juveniles of all three species.  A great view of a Sedge Warbler was also had on the walk back to the carpark.…
Jul 31st by Ian under Bird Watching, Travels, my Friends travels
For a bloke who gets sea sick standing on a pier the thought of a ferry trip to Shetland where the seats in the bar have a wire harness to the floor, was worrying. However the weather was high pressure and i needed to take my car to move the bulky PPE and other items I need. So with confidence having used the ferry port to turn around on after leaving Petrofacs office i set off, and duly turned into the right place to turn but the wrong quay, dope!!
Found the right quay, after instructions, boarded on time, and …
All three chicks are on the wing and as rumoured they have been ringed, the osprey pic is the female on the left and a juv on the right, you can make out the ring on the juvs left leg. I think they have a ring on both legs. All three chicks were on the eyrie when i got there about 9.45, the female was there, then the male arrived and when I was watching the fox in the pics for a good 45 mins only a juv remained on the eyrie, the other four had gone fishing or were …
As you can see from the pics the Ospreys have three well grown juveniles, on Sunday I was out at 7.30 am the rain had finished from yesterday and the wind and sun were not spoiling telescoping, so i was able to get some reasonable pics. As I’ve said before a photographer would not offer these pics on the internet, but I’m not trying to win a prize just show three well grown juvs. Like some tabloids some people might consider I’m making it up hacking into smart phone pictures or the like. My farmer friends suggested the famous wildlife …
Jul 4th by Ian under Bird Watching
Not up too early, lay in bed listening to out of doors on radio Scotland, it was 9.30 when I scoped the Ospreys, but just before I did I saw a fox on the path some 50m away head down sniffing , I froze but was very exposed and the fox ran off after looking up, into the barley field. I thought that would have been that but within 15 mins a pair of foxes were on the path and I was an obvious intrusion, I thought the pair a male and female as there was no “cubbish behaviour” The …
Jun 19th by Ian under Bird Watching
As I entered the wood it was absolutely silent, it was very strange, usually there are feeding parties of tits constantly contact calling, a great spotted woodpecker usually cheeps, a wren explodes his call, nothing, silent. had a sparrow hawk just shot through the wood? don’t know. As I left the wood a wood pigeon slapped it’s wings on take off and another started cooing. The spell was broken. It wasn’t early but there was no wind, or rain, or sunshine, that meant I could take a reasonable picture of the chicks if they were not being brooded. Photographers will …
Jun 14th by Ian under Bird Watching
After the big garden tidy up, as I had tramped over a metre wide path behind the now repaired fence meant it was 2.00pm before I approached the osprey location. It was warm and I thought she will be off the nest, not brooding , and I will see the two chicks I was now confident she had. She was on the eyrie edge and the chicks were wing stretching and panting a little, as wing parts can become visible when they do this and the other chicks pop up at times you can imagine many chicks being present as …
After some rescue gardening after my fence blew down two weeks ago, it was 10.00am before I got to the Osprey site. After Friday’s weather, sat and sun were remarkably dull and on this Sunday I was cold in just a Paramo and thin polo shirt. However I did remain still for 1.5 hours observing, mainly because the male arrived shortly after my start of observation and with a decapitated largish trout. He obviously had eaten the head elsewhere and brought the rest to the family, who are two not one chick as I wrongly predicted, he continued to eat …