A Hotchpotch of news!!

Thursday 6.50pm and here we go. Good to know we are in the next round, but ironic that it should help our future matches if we lose tonight.

A few things to tell you, both from when we were on holiday, and since our return.

Aspirants for the 200 club are finding it difficult to increase their year count, with Amanda on c182, and me (subject to below) on 171.

But Christine with husband John had a Heatherlee birding holiday in the Western Isles and had a fabulous time with 15 birds added to her 2018-year list. White Tailed Eagle, Golden Eagle, Corncrake were just 3 of the good birds, and she is currently poised on 199.  Poised that is, because a Bittern or even a Kingfisher will get her the 200.

I was away for the Markeaton Bird Walk, so 3 regular birders were escorted by Dawn for the morning. 5 Juvenile Goosanders were seen, which seems to confirm the good news that annual breeding is still taking place on the big island. They also saw 4 Mandarin Ducks, one being a juvenile, so they are breeding somewhere. Mandarins are strange birds, for ducks, as they breed low down in trees, and I recall on one occasion that Mandarins were reported as nesting in Padley Gorge.

Our new fountain seems to be attracting the birds, and Mary picked up the vivid green and yellow of a couple of Greenfinches who I assume had smelt the water.

Someone left a message on the Friends of Markeaton Park web site (which also has reports of what my BwB walks have seen), reporting 3 Ring Necked Parakeets flying over the A38 near the park. I think the reporter were a little startled by the sighting.

I did a talk on Tuesday morning to the Church Wilne Probus Club, about the Carsington Water Osprey Project, and came away with a generous donation for the Volunteer Rangers Osprey nest maintenance fund. I also came away with a booking for Dave Drury, a full time Severn Trent Ranger, to talk to them about Carsington Water itself, from the inception, building and operation, and how the water management fits in with the wider Severn Trent water networks.

Incidentally, if you don’t know of the Probus Club, it stands for Professional and Business men, and is for retired people who enjoy meetings and talks together.

Tuesday June 26^th and after a longish break from birding together, Chris and I spent the morning at Attenborough Gravel Pits.   Turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far, so as we were toting scopes, pods and bins, we limited our birding to the 2 hides. At least we were out of the direct sun. Many young birds around, no raptors, but we did tick a Black Swan, heard but could not find a Lesser Whitethroat (we both want that one for our year list!!!).  I was pleased to see a pair of Ruddy Shelduck, moving me on to 172.

Liquid input was important, so we started with a coffee, and then returned for lunch. Ok until Chris started on my mushroom soup instead of waiting for the Panini she had ordered.   HER senior moment this time, not mine.

We had a planning session for the rest of June, so Tuesday week is Old Moor, me hopefully for 

Yellowhammer and Green Pecker, and Chris for Kingfisher or Bittern. One of those would be a nice memorable number 200 for Chris.

I’ll let you know next week why you have had 3 posts this week!!!

In the meantime, happy birding, oh and enjoy your walk on Sunday with Keith and Gary!!!!

Was the football result predictable?  No…. but useful!!

Majorca 2018 - The Sequel

Only me!!!

And this is a picture of???????????

  

Checking on my mobile phone whilst we were away, I was pleased to see that Anonymous from Portugal had added an interesting comment/report on his Portugal sightings, to my blog of 27^th May. If you get my column by direct mail, you may like to log back into my web site and have a look at the 2 comments on May 27, including the regular contribution from Slim Bridge.

As you will have realised from my previous blog entry, we love the Picafort Park, and it is clearly popular with guests who return year after year. We heard of one couple who had visited 40 times, and another couple we know (The Hoff and Betty Boo) had just enjoyed their 21^st holiday. We are on a lowly 6^th.

Sobriquets such as the ones above are usually given by the Entertainment team, who provide names THEY can remember. Amongst friends that we meet, there have been John Wayne, Scary Mary, The Hat or The Colonel (2 titles I have used) Mary has been Merry Xmas, and there is also Matt Munro, Will I am, G-F. This year we had a Dangerous Dave, Rob Roy & Jenny Wren.

Back to the birds and, following my report of what I see as my private(!!) hotel nature reserve, the other place to visit is of course Albufera, which I managed to visit 3 times this month. Towards the end of the holiday, the weather really hotted up, so the first visit, on foot at 8.45am turned out to be the best time to enjoy good light without excessive heat.

On my first visit, as usual Cattle & Little Egrets and Night Herons were squabbling in their usual breeding area, and 3 Nightingales were heard AND seen along the path to the visitor centre.  I can just stand and listen for ages to their huge range of wonderful musical phrases.

And my early start was rewarded with an Osprey drifting across the reeds to find some open water areas.

Despite the obvious lack of any recent rain, the dry mud revealed some very juvenile Avocets, Black Winged Stilts and Kentish Plovers. Surprisingly, and for the first time for 7 years, 7 Flamingos were at Singleton hide. Also, there was a bedraggled Spanish Sparrow, only bedraggled because he had enjoyed a good wash! Final goodie before I headed back to the hotel for the pre-lunch libation, was a Squacco Heron in the reeds.

The Second trip was with Chrissie and 14 other guests. A very thin Purple Heron took off from the canal giving good views, but as we started our walk that was eclipsed by 3 sightings of Glossy Ibis. One of the birds seemed to circle round us, so that even without bins the large curved beak was very visible. 

We clearly saw Cattle Egrets conveniently on the back of cattle, and a Purple Galinule feeding 2 young!  Finally, a couple of turtles added to the wildlife sightings.

For my 3^rd outing I wanted to try and get to an observation platform a bit off the main area, so I decided to hire a bicycle from the hotel for the morning. Good decision, and having navigated the route with the least hills, I was soon enjoying views of up to 7 Bee Eaters on the power lines, and watching their forays into the air, to take out bees. Just what I wanted to see!

Strangely, the platform overlooked some pink effluent settling ponds, and when a Common Tern flew low over the water, the strong light reflection made the feathers look pink! Oh for a camera.. that would have confused the experts. 

The only other sighting of note during the holiday was at the old town of Alcudia, a town with many very old stone-built buildings, affording excellent nesting facilities for Swifts. On Sunday the market day, the birds could be seen wheeling amongst the buildings and screaming constantly. Coupled with my knowledge of their life style, it’s not surprising that Swift rates as my Number 1 species.

We have Cyprus and Belgium yet to look forward to, but I know that neither will give me the birding adrenalin that Majorca does, so we will return to Majorca. 40 species for a casual holiday bird-wise added 14 to my 2018 world list, now on 185.

Did you guess what the picture was?   It was in fact a very nice Fathers’ Day gift from my daughter and son-in law, and the nest house is now on my garden fence. It is in the hands of Frank Innes my property letting agent – newlywed Blue Tits get a special deal!

Happy birding.

Tui, Majorca and a private nature reserve!!

Hi there……………… I’m home!!

Just back from 14 days at our favourite hotel in Majorca, the Picafort Park at C’an Picafort. You will know from reports in my blog in May and September 2017, that this hotel is a firm favourite for us, so we decided to give it yet another visit, this the 6^th time we have stayed.

The welcome by the staff was as warm as before, and we were soon back in our requested room D201, with a good view across the pool, to the not-too-distant bar!

Thomson or Tui as it is now known have 7 staff/employees at the hotel, 2 for music, 2 for guest entertainment, 2 for information, and Chrissie a Majorcan resident who looks after local interests, with walks and talks. As I will have told you in the past, Chrissie leads a local trip once a week to the huge reed bed and nature reserve, Albufeira.

Chrissie usually gets 10 – 15 people for the nature reserve walk, and I was able to take her 3 pairs of 

vintage binoculars, to give guests some chance of getting better views of the birds

More about this later, but what I want to write about first is the wildlife around the hotel, much of which is completely invisible to the majority of the c450 guests.

House Sparrows are not in short supply at the hotel, and there was much evidence of feeding of young. Woodpigeons made the sitting under trees not a good decision, only relieved by the hotel willing to provide replacement beach towels when required!!

I suppose most guests staying in the hotel for the day spend their time lying on sunbeds, so when they see a hatted guest (i.e. Me!) standing still and peering intensely towards the bushes etc, they either realise, or ask what I have seen. And between Blocks A and B, a Hoopoe was a very regular sighting - like this one just 6ft away..... 

Several guests asked what the bird was, some told me!!, and a couple told me that infrequently, they had seen 2 Hoopoes. I think we all concluded that this was probably one on a nest and one collecting food. My experiences were that the bird invariably flew off in the same direction.

The most unobtrusive bird at the hotel was the Mediterranean Flycatcher which is recognised by The International Ornithologists’ Union as a separate species from the UK’s Spotted Flycatcher.

To all intents and purposes the Med Flycatcher looks the same, and has exactly the same jizz of perching, catching flies, and returning to a vantage point. The vantage points can be identified from the white drops (bit like a Dipper!!). They could be seen regularly from our balcony, and on the day we left at 7.15am, two birds were food hunting by the hotel entrance.

Anything else? Audouin’s Gulls are common in Majorca, but the adult bird that got trapped and quite stressed behind the glass frontage of a bedroom balcony, required maintenance to arrive with a broom. With a 48in wingspan a weapon was essential!

A tree in front of our balcony, leaning at 30 degrees was where Mary spotted a baby blackbird acting like a Tree Creeper, repeatedly jumping upwards to get back to its nest.

It always pleases me to be able to tell people about the hotel avians, but a Hummingbird hawk-moth feeding over a flower bed led to 15-20  successive guests trying (abortively!) to take a photo.

How about that for a nice selection of bird activity, at our hotel, only preceded by sightings of Black Kites on the day we arrived on the island, whilst driving North West up the Ma13, in fact a Lifer on Day 1 of the holiday.

You will have to wait until my next posting to find out what Albufeira had to offer, and to make up for your having to wait 18 days from the last post, it will hopefully be sooner rather than later!

Frampton Marsh - always worth a return visit

I thought that last week was a good birding week for me, what with Bittern Cuckoo and Nightjar, and then the Glossy Ibis, but with hindsight my account of our Frampton trip was somewhat abridged! To redress the situation…

I had previously canvassed any interest from the Carsington BwB birders for a day-away and when I found a suitable date, Peter, Pam, Graham, Janet, Rob and Reg decided to come with me for the day. It was my intention to go there anyway, but it was nice having a small group, with the advantage of more pairs of eyes looking for birds.

We planned to arrive at 10.00am, and Grahams’ enthusiasm was reflected in his coming the night before!! He was en route from Sussex to Staffs, so an overnight kip in his van was no stress, and he was rewarded with a Barn Owl at 6.00am as he enjoyed his (hot-) morning porridge and a cup of Tetley’s. In fact, when we left him at 5pm it was his intention to catch the 5.35pm hi-tide, another sleep over, and goodness knows what goodies on Monday before driving home. (We all dread hearing what we missed…. In fact, we should know in time for the end of this blog.) (Sun Jun 3^rd… Grahams success?   Zilch!!!   It rained!!)

Previous sightings info on the RSPB and Birdguide web sites are OK as long as you know the locations that are reported, and I had struggled with the location of Marsh Farm Reservoir at Frampton. But the RSPB volunteers pointed us in the right direction, and we found the Glossy Ibis bang in the right spot, notwithstanding the efforts of a photographer who had gone way off track to try and get a close-up portrait of the Ibis. It gave us a lot of pleasure to see the Ibis get the hump and fly further away!

12,000 paces took us round a large circuit of the wetland area, a route I had not taken before, but also gave us a pair of very Yellow Wagtails together with Linnets. Because 180 degrees of the vision from the 360 hide is now dry earth, I suspect the high number of birds in the present wetland are birds who have relocated from the dry area.

The 12k paces got us back to the visitor centre for a picnic lunch, followed by a hide afternoon. The East hide now turned out to be the most interesting with a superb breeding plumage Grey Plover, Reed Bunting and Black Tailed Godwits.

4pm we were back to the RSPB coffee machine, debriefing and future planning***, followed by an orderly departure home and waving night-night to Graham!

Interestingly a comparison of 3 of our pace counters at the end showed that Peter had walked the furthest!!, but we were all c17k for the day.

The down-side? Turtle Dove had not been reported, and we did not find the Ruff Lek or the Garganey, but c50 species for our combined sightings was a good day with some new lifers for some.

This is a photograph from Rob of our little group of 7 + the 2 late arrivals, but which of the group took the photo???!!!

*** At the Carsington BwB today ((3^rd June) I floated the idea of another birdaway day and the consensus of opinion was that we would have another bird day in 2018.  Sunday the 14^th October was the popular day, and we would spend the day at Old Moor, an RSPB reserve North of Sheffield and South of Barnsley. If you are interested, put it in your diary, and we will dot the i’s on the itinerary nearer the time. Apart from the main reserve, there are 4 other very close locations we can visit so there will be plenty of areas to visit.

4.30pm Tuesday May 29^th, and I am watching from my study window what can best be described as a whisper of Starlings on a neighbour’s lawn. Not a common sight by any means but trying to count birds running around the lawn and coming and going to roof tops is proving difficult, and my best estimate is 50-60. Let’s see what happens on Wednesday!   (Wed 30^th… No encore!!.)

Emails have been toing and froing from Chris birding for 7 days on the Western Isles, and now on Benbecula.

With 24 hours still to go, and Sea Eagle the hoped for addition today, Chris is on 195.   Subject to what Amanda has to tell me on Sunday, I sort of think Chris is going to do the 200, in 6 months. I couldn’t even guess what she is likely to get for the whole year, but I’ll keep you up to date on this brilliant achievement. Probably means another significant recognition token from John.

I spoke to 6 birders on Sunday to establish how they were progressing towards their 200 targets after 5 months.

The current scores “in no particular order!!” are… 178, 101, 128, 154, 171 and 130. What was satisfying was that most of them considered that they are further ahead than they were at the same date in 2017, a recognition I would suggest of improved knowledge. (Ed;…and getting out more!!)

Oh by the way the walk for the 22 people on the BwB walkwas quiet, except for some good  Warblers, a very vocal Wren, and for the first time this year 3 Barnacle Geese put in an appearance     

Right, time for a short break.

Happy Birding.