A Local Catchup

Well it's about time I blogged about what this blog is about - Axe Birding! There's been a few pics sitting on my memory card for a week or so, and today I had an enjoyable couple of hours out and about on patch.

Clearly the star bird locally is (sorry Mr Ibis) the stunning drake Green-winged Teal that's often on Black Hole Marsh. I say often because some days it just isn't there, like yesterday sadly. He was showing exceptionally well this afternoon though in the far north west corner of the marsh, best viewed from the screen at the start of the walk way to the Island Hide.  Obviously my old Lumix can't compare with the big lenses, but still...

Easily the best views I've ever had of this species. Not only does it show well and close, but it's doing a lot of displaying at the moment - what a show off!  Those white stripes aren't simply white, they're like flipping glow sticks!  A flock of Green-winged Teal in the dark could look surprisingly similar to a rave crowd I reckon.

I best mention the Glossy Ibis now, which is spending pretty much all it's time at Seaton Marshes at the moment.  In any other winter this would easily take the title of 'star bird', but it's picked a winter with stiff competition.

The Water Pipits are still wintering with us too.  It usually takes time to see them, but given patience you should be in luck (really helps if you know the call).  Today I saw seven in the same area as usual, I even managed to get one in the view finder...

Looking typically pale

Another bird that was wintering with us this year was a lone Dark-bellied Brent Goose. I say 'was' because I haven't seen him for a week or so...

And now to gulls. Yes lovely gulls.  Well sadly they haven't delivered for me despite there being a good turn over, we are clearly in the middle of some pretty heavy passage.  There were at least 200 Common Gulls on the Estuary today, along with six Lesser Black-backs, but nothing rare.  Best (or worst?) lately was this ugly hybrid from last week...

Third from left, it was smaller than Herring with yellow-pink legs and a Yellow-legged Gull mantle shade, so I guess a HerringxLBBG?

We've also had small numbers of Med Gulls which is to be expected, although I'm surprised I've not seen more with no more than three on any given day...

Adult Med Gull coming in to land

But quite possibly the best birding news I have to give flew over my house at 8am today, a Meadow Pipit. I know it is just a Meadow Pipit, but this is the first Meadow Pipit over my house since the last bird last autumn - Nov 2015. This means passage, SPRING passage. Wheatears and Sand Martins next... 

I've got a bit of time off work this week which is nice, and the weather is looking pretty decent too.  It's a win win!

An American Surprise

In typical Phil Abbott fashion, despite it being what I can only describe as the worst winter on patch in my time here for both birds and weather, he still makes as much effort as ever and was duly rewarded with the patches second ever Green-winged Teal! A smart drake on Bridge Marsh on Saturday 19th Dec.

Unlike the first one (a short staying drake on Colyford Marsh on 29th Jan 2013) this one is lingering, although it is often invisible, I dipped it four times before seeing it this morning.

Not exactly a top quality photo!

Really pleased Ian Mc has seen it, he was off patch on the day of the first bird with no sign of it by the time he was home.

This will probably be my last post before Christmas, so I'd like to take this opportunity to wish ALL my readers a....

VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!

Quiz Results And Patch Year List To Update

I've just been out for a couple of hours and am sad to report it looks as though March has started how February ended. Well not just how February ended, how the entire month was!  

February really was dire, I got three patch year ticks - one resident species (Little Owl) and the other two annual visitors (Ruff and Brambling).  February is one of the months you may expect the least, but I would have hoped for a decent gull or two, and maybe some grey geese. I wonder if this poor month has blown my chances of 200 for the year??  The one good thing about last month was that I didn't miss any year ticks. So as March (spring?) begins I've seen 117 of the 121 species seen on patch in 2013.

In yesterday's post, I'm sure you will have noticed the difference in the Merlin photos. The blades of grass that annoyed  were very cleverly removed by Chris Gladman. If you still can't spot it, look at the birds tail and left wing.

I am also sure you spotted the Green-winged Teal. If not...

There it is, at the end of the big red arrow

Here's a couple of more zoomed in pics...

Not great, but I didn't have my digiscoping camera with me at the time

Very much looking forward to the weekend, because I've got it off work! Woooooooo! It's scary how quickly a week goes by though isn't it? And I cannot believe Sand Martins and Wheatears are only about two weeks away...

A Couple Of Quizzes

You can tell from the post title that it is still pretty crap out there at the moment!  A few hours out today showed the same as the past few times that I've been out on patch. c250 Golden Plover opposite Stedcombe and the two Bar-tailed Godwits...

Bar-tailed Godwits

 A Black-tailed Godwit then nicely came between the two of them...

A nice comparison shot

Now for the quizzes. The first is thanks to Chris Gladman who sent me an out-of-the-blue copy of my Merlin photo.  The quiz is, spot the difference...

Well can you?

I really can't believe what Chris has achieved!  It does make me wonder though, if I submitted the 'new version' as my photo, is that cheating!?? I often do tweak light levels and crop my photos, so is it any different from these 'tweaks'?

And quiz number two comes from me seeing the Torpoint Green-winged Teal again yesterday. Can you spot it...

I would certainly recommend enlarging the photo for this!

Answers on the back of a postcard please, with the £5 entry fee ;-)

A Fitting Way To Go

Well a heck of a lot has happened since my last blog post!  Obviously the Green-winged Teal was fantastic, and winning the Buttons has literally made my hour, but there's been one major change in my life which comes above both of these...

My 106

I've had this car since I started driving in September 2004.  110,000 miles and eight years later the time has finally come to say bye bye.  This car has been just brilliant for me, yes I have spent money on it, but it's always kept going.  I have had a few near misses, a few bumps and prangs (as you can see!) but it's never let me down.  It was the middle of last year when my garage first advised me to start thinking about getting a new motor, so I started looking around - although I was always reluctant to let the Peugeot go because of how economical its 1.5 diesel engine is. I could drive from Seaton to Spurn (320 miles) and use only 2/3rds of a tank of fuel. And whenever bits did need replacing, they were always at the cheap end of the scale.

It has been getting more unwell within the last few months though, in fact within the last few days it hasn't let me reverse!  I actually think this was the cars way of protesting at me as it knew what was coming. 

Tuesday was my last day driving in it, and on the last 'lap' of the river, and the very last pull in, I found the Green-winged Teal.  This car has so many birding memories for me - good and bad (Pacific Swift...ouch!), so I thought this was a wonderful way of ending our time together.

So, out goes the old.  And in comes the new...

Say hello to Mr Toyota!

I have always wanted and often needed a 4x4, so I have gone with the most economical of them all - a diesel Rav4.  I've just come back from Plymouth in it, and it averaged 50.6 miles per gallon, which has really impressed me.  It's much bigger than what I'm used to, but I'll get used to it! :-)

Ok - enough about cars. Bird talk now...

I just have to start with the bird that won me chocolate yesterday.  I was only out because I'd be told about a Glaucous Gull that was seen heading our way.  Earlier in the day I had been to Colyford Common (dipping Stonechat - yes I still need it for the year!) and noticed lots of gulls on a flooded Colyford Marsh, which is why I went to the 'Farm Gate'.  I was disappointed on the gull front, but that soon turned to jubilation when I panned over to the main scrape and had a look through the Teal.  A long awaited addition to the patch list, and pleasingly one that we have (almost) all seen - hope you get it Ian and Dave!

The Green-winged Teal wasn't the only year tick yesterday, I managed another one during an hour's sea watch from Beer (08:30 - 09:30).  At 09:15 a Great Northern Diver flew close west, this is the first non-Red-throated, Diver that I've seen this year (oh, except a distant larger diver sp. on Jan 2nd), but the larger Divers have been very scarce so far this year.  The full totals of my watch were:

1 Great Northern Diver

7 Red-throated Diver (5w, 1e, 1 on sea)

14 Gannet

24 Kittiwake

6 Dunlin (flew w - unusual in a mid winter sea watch)

I will admit now, as I touched upon it earlier, that I then went to Colyford Common to twitch a Stonechat.  I found out Gav had seen one here a couple of days ago during my sea watch.  I just haven't bumped into Stonechat yet this year, and yes I know I will see one, but I was hoping to get all the easy stuff before I tot my list up at the end of the month. So I went to Colyford Common, I saw a second-winter Med Gull, but no Stonechat. Probably because of this...

Flood!!!  There was in fact a Little Grebe just the left of this picture - very odd for Coly Com!

Well you know what happened next (well after an hour at home and a half hour sea watch anyway!)... Green-winged Teal.  And it's about time I pointed you all to here: http://karenwoolley.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/green-winged-teal-on-colyford-marsh.html  Superb photos too considering the distance and weather!

So that sums up yesterday. To sum up the weekend, I had a brilliant weekend off, and even squeezed in a patch year tick thanks to Phil and Karen.  I've dipped these little critters several times this year, so was very pleased to see them feasting on alders on Sunday afternoon....

They are both in here - I think I did extremely well to ensure both were out of focus!

Monday was a day of lots of patch birding - just no birds! The six Gadwall being as good as it got.

I have very limited birding time for the rest of this week and this weekend - so nothing until next week please birders!!!

A Cornish Surprise

Not many updates on here of late, again - but I haven't seen anything!  I have tried my best to get Waxwing on my patch list, I've gone out whenever I've had the chance. Many hours of searching though haven't produced the goods. Yet... (I hope!).

So why this update - well today I have seen something of note, although it wasn't on patch.

This is my third month of bird surveying and monitoring at a site on the Tamar Estuary (the Cornwall side), and on the way back from my survey site there's a wonderful looking area called St John's Creek, which always screams RARE at me.  There's always Teal here, last month I saw well over a hundred, and I always make an effort to go through them. Today it was quite easy, because there were only about 25 of them. c24 Eurasion Teal. And....

Just what I wanted!!

  

I couldn't believe it!  A bloody Green-winged Teal!  Yes it would have been a lot sweeter had it been on the Axe (hopefully this will happen), but I was still thrilled with this find!  

At first I was slightly concerned about an apparent buffish tinge to the edge of the green head stripe going up from the bill, but when the light got a bit better this disappeared and the difference between the Green-winged's head and the Eurasion's head was actually quite obvious.  

All the photos of it are rubbish (I just had the Lumix super-zoom with me), and none as rubbish as what I am about to post. It does though just about show the difference in head pattern between the yank and two common cousins...

Note the golden line around the green eye flash, or not when it comes to the vertical-striped fella :-)

I got the news out as quick as possible (god love twitter), and hope others get to see it.  The Teal can be bloody elusive here though, as there are lots of deep channels, I reckon on a falling or rising tide would be best.

Hopefully this has fired me up to find something rare on patch...