Early Marsh Harrier(s) and More Meds

A few snippets of interest to report from the patch today...

Earlier today local wildlife watcher Fran Sinclair was lucky enough to see two Marsh Harriers hunting over Colyford Marsh. At least one was still present late this afternoon, it was nice to see but I blame it entirely for flushing a large gull that deserved a closer look. Only locked on to it ten seconds before it upped and flew off south.  Drat.

I spent the rest of the evening on Beer Beach, hoping to see a raft of white-winged gulls roosting offshore. Well there were six Med Gulls, which is quite an increase on recent counts, suggesting the first signs of spring passage maybe? All but one were well on their way to showing full hoods.  But no big white-winged gulls sadly. Still.

Earlier in the day, but off-patch, it was nice to have some wonderful views of this lovely Fox. It could have been closer, but was an awesome looking specimen...

And come on, you didn't really think a super blue Moon would pass without a Moon pic appearing on this blog...

Going, Going, Gone...

Having been out birding every morning this week, it's hard not to feel a little sad when you realise many of our UK breeding birds have left us...

Obviously Swifts and Cuckoos are long gone, but now all those lovely Redstarts, Pied Flies and Wood Warblers that brighten up our wooded valleys have departed our shores, and won't be back for another seven months.  Most of the Yellow Wags, Whinchats, Lesser Whitethroats, Willow Warblers, Garden Warblers, Grasshopper Warblers, Reed Warblers, Sedge Warblers and Tree Pipits have gone too, and we will probably only see dribs and drabs of these, if any at all, from now on.  Come on, how can this not make you feel a little sad?

So now, for a good birding autumn, we are highly dependent on birds born and bred outside of the UK.  And down here on the south west coast, you can usually judge whether it's going to be a good one by how much arrives in the north and east of the country. Once good numbers of birds are in the UK, they then naturally filter down through the country or along the coast. So far things are looking good...

Taken from www.birdguides.com

Although this is a darn good count of Yellow-browed Warblers, every year more and more are arriving into the UK, usually within the last few weeks of September so they are bang on cue.  Last year was our best ever autumn for them here with five different individuals noted, let's see if we can beat that.  My earliest ever here was on 2nd Oct (two in fact, at Lower Brucklands in 2013) so let's see if we can beat that too... I tell you one thing, I certainly wouldn't mind another one from my front garden! :-)

It's looking promising for Lapland Buntings too, a quick look at http://northronbirdobs.blogspot.co.uk/ reveals they had a day last week with 110 on the island which is pretty impressive. 

And why all this waffle? Well I've not seen much that's why. I guess the best of the batch was a Lesser Whitethroat on Stafford Marsh yesterday morning, and an invisible Golden Plover over Beer Head an hour or so later.  Axe Cliff this morning and Beer Head yesterday were pretty much the same, quite a few Meadow Pipits along with less than a handful of Wheatear and Chiffchaff and a couple each of Yellow Wag, Grey Wag and Stonechat.  

No bird photos, so here's the moon again. It looked stunning and so red on the evening of Tuesday 20th...

A Frustrating Few Days

This could easily be a down-beat blog post, but I'm going to try my hardest to not let it go that way...

Let's start with a nice Wheatear photo, one of four that I saw yesterday...

Positive positive positive...

The Little Stint from the Tower Hide was nice yesterday too, as was meeting Mike Hill (an ex Channel Island ringer).  But that was about it.

A good look round the Estuary and marshes this morning revealed the following;

45 Wigeon
190 Teal
2 Shoveler
4 Water Rail
14 Lapwing
2 Ringed Plover
9 Dunlin
1 Little Stint
75 Redshank
19 Black-tailed Godwit
16 Bar-tailed Godwit
6 Chiffchaff
3 Yellow Wagtail

No White Wags this morning, but had a couple on Black Hole Marsh over the weekend. I wasted far too much of this morning grilling this (I thought) interesting looking first-winter male Wigeon...

Sadly its underwings proved it was just an Eurasian Wigeon, but there you go, you've got to be in it to win it.  Thanks to Bun for the second pair of eyes from a different angle.  Not only did it waste my time, but it reminded me of the 'fun' we had over the winter of 2011/12 when a pale female Wigeon was knocking around...

http://stevesbirdingblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/more-wigeon-fun.html

Right that's me done, I'll sign off with a few random photos...

Juv Little Egret Seaton Marshes

An atmospheric shot of Jess at Seaton Marshes

The moon, taken on the night of 16th Sept with my Nikon P900

Back In Business

Finally!

A few rather major events have happened since my laptop died at the end of August. The most recent is the thing I'm writing this blog post on - a brand new laptop!  Thanks to my wife for this.  She wouldn't usually get me a new laptop, but I have just had a 30th birthday so the time was right.  Yes, I am now 30, and I quite simply can't believe it. It doesn't bother me, but I just cannot understand how it has happened, it was only yesterday I was 25... or so it feels anyway...

The other rather notable event since my last blog post was this...

Blood moon

It's not a great photo, but it does show the colour well. It was well worth getting up for early this morning, I always find anything space related extremely fascinating. And I've just heard they've found running water on Mars - mind boggling!

Anyway, back to the moon, and here's a few other pics showing the build up to the eclipse.  It was a cracking full moon to begin with...

 And later on the action began...

I have got so so sooooo much to write about, but instead of crafting one massive blog post I will divide it up into three; Birds, Bird Ringing and Moths. Next will probably be the moths, but in the meantime I've got a months worth of laptop work to be getting on with...

Oh nearly forgot, back to my birthday, if you've never tried hummingbird cake you simply must. Best cake I've ever eaten, and I have eaten a lot of cake...

Cool Clouds, Shy Sun and Mega Moon

Beer Head this morning didn't show any summer migrants, but the sky looked pretty smart to the east with low cloud perfectly mirroring the coast below. My photo doesn't do it justice as it looked spectacular, but Assistant Warden Glen at Portland Bird Obs did a much better job of capturing it over Portland (see here).

Cloud from Beer Head

I've been doing a lot of looking up lately, namely to see the stunning partial eclipse last Friday.  Cloud threatened and it wasn't looking good on the morning - but in fact the cloud actually helped!  It acted as a natural filter and made the event far easier to see and photograph...

8:52

9:07

9:12

9:28

9:41

9:47

10:17

The moons been looking stunning most evenings recently too, with a waxing crescent moon showing low to the west at dusk with Venus just above...

Bird wise it seems as though spring has halted somewhat, and the cold weather that's coming doesn't bode well for the rest of the week.  Best bird today has to be the lovely male Ruff that I've seen a few times at various locations in the river valley.  Sadly never anywhere close though...

Spot the Ruff!

Moony

Two weeks ago, this is how the moon looked...

I am yet to find the right camera settings to show the part of the moon in shadow but keep the side in light sharp

Last night it looked like this...

Had to severely dull this down as it was so so bright!

Absolutely cracking!  If you saw it last night I'm sure you also noticed the bright 'star' just to the left of it...

Well that's Jupiter. Dead easy to spot at the moment.

And although my photo of it is poor, the moonrise yesterday evening was absolutely spectacular.  It looked more like a sun rise as it was so massive, bright and orange...

Not that it looks like much in this picture!