A Heart Stopper

Scanning through a large flock of gulls on Seaton Marshes this morning, in very bright sunshine, gave me the fright of my life.

There is one species of gull that is IT, that is the pinnacle of all gulls, and is a bird any keen British birder would sell their house, family and car to have on their British list. It is the near mythical Pallas's Gull (or as I much prefer calling it, Great Black-headed Gull). The last UK record was in 1859, but another is always possible as birds pop up now and then in other parts of the Western Palearctic (mostly in the far south east corner).

I cannot describe how I felt when I clapped eyes on this...

I honestly think my heart momentarily stopped!

Bloody **** ******* ******* Herring Gull.  When it stood up it revealed a large oil patch on its belly, which is presumably what the apparent dark eye spot was all about, but for a few seconds it really had me going.  Anyway, it's a good job it wasn't a Pallas's Gull, because within thirty seconds of spotting it, another of those poxy Red Kites came along and flushed the lot...

Flew in from west, but then turned and went back the way it came

They're not poxy at all, I love 'em, and love the fact that they are becoming a regular spring bird down here.  This was my fourth of the week, with one west over Sidmouth on Monday morning, and two high west over my house early Tuesday afternoon.  Tuesday was a good day for raptors from the garden, as at 09:55 a few calling gulls alerted me to an extremely low flying Osprey heading NW, only just above roof top height. Wow.  Whilst mentioning alarming gulls, the two Kites that flew over later that day were my first patch Kites that didn't cause any gulls to call (this is how I usually find them). I don't think it is because the gulls are getting used to them, as they still alarm call for low flying Buzzards, but probably just because the Kites were so high up.

I'm sure I had more to blog about, but am so tired my brain has turned to mush. Bed time I think - let's see if this promised rain delivers any new birds in the morning...

Garden Birding

This is our garden...

All a bit wooden!

You couldn't really call it a haven for birds, and most days a couple of Wood Pigeons, the odd Collared Dove and the local flock of House Sparrows are all we see in it. For some reason today though it's been a bit mad and since dawn I've seen ten species of birds actually IN the garden! The above three species plus Greenfinch (2), Chaffinch (2), Robin, Blackbird (3), Great Tit (2), Blue Tit and Magpie.

It just shows that if you put food out, and make your garden as bird-friendly as you can, you WILL get birds wherever you are.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow....

On Friday morning I woke up to this....

Lots of snow falling

I then spent Saturday in Taunton, being amazed at how much snow there actually was! Little did I know what was around the corner...

This morning, within two hours (between 06:30-08:30) a colossal amount of snow fell. All the main roads have been impassable, at work we haven't have any deliveries all day, no post, etc...so proper snow!

I've lived here 19 years and I've not seen it like this before....

Proper deep snow!

Today wasn't going to be a birding day, but the action in and over the garden has kept me glued!

Had one garden tick today - a bit of a good one too! At 9am five Woodlark flew north west over the back garden. I was quite surprised by this as there didn't seem to be as many Skylarks on the move as there had been the previous couple of days. A few Snipe and stacks of thrushes were also noted going over.

In the actual garden, well it has been mayhem!!!

Have had five species of the thrush, the highlight being the Mistle Thrush that landed on the front lawn for all of three seconds before flying away - so no pics of him. There's plenty of Redwing pics though...

There were always 10-20 in the garden, but birds were continually flying off and being replaced by 'new' ones

At least six Song Thrushes also seen...

Song Thrush and Redwing

And a few Fieldfare...

These always stayed high in the berry trees though

Other non-thrush bird included up to four Blackcap...

Three of them looking like this one

Four Bullfinch....

Three of them looking like this

Two Pied Wags, a heap of Long-tailed Tits and a female-type Black Redstart.

Just outside the garden, there were bucket loads of thrushes....thousands of them! Most thawed bits of road/verge had a Meadow Pipit or two, and a few houses down a male Black Redstart sat up proud...


And then began feeding on the berry's of some ornamental palm tree like thing...

Check out the ice on his feet!

But, although the birding has been just incredible, I feel sooooo sorry for them all. I just hope this doesn't last long. In the mean time - please keep feeding your garden birds!