Birding Braunie

With everything that has happened over the last couple of years, it’s quite something to be able to write about this week long trip up into the Highlands of Scotland. A lot of planning had been put into this by Phil who has plotted practically ever step of the trip we are taking. There are five of us going up for the Heatherlea tour of the Highlands and Skye with three of us, Phil, Brenda and myself starting off from Essex and winding our way slowly but purposely stopping at some strategic sites along the way. We will meet our other cohorts, Kev and Viv at the Mountview Hotel in Nethy Bridge on Saturday evening. Our first port of call was Fairburn Ings. This is a 1,000-acre RSPB nature reserve developed from  the area being flooded regularly by th e River Aire . and  includes a large lake and a number of smaller lakes, ponds and dikes. The area has been the scene of industrial and mining operations for circa 150 years,  and, although the valley floods naturally, the ...

Another anxious and nail-biting week where working for a living became quite annoying as various birds of interest kept popping up on the various bird news sites I view, hourly. Eventually however, Saturday arrived like it always does and the warm sunny weather of the working work dissipated into a largely cold south-westerly wind, nasty black clouds and some whiplash-like rain showers. How nice. My plan had been to go to Rainham Marshes, specifically to the Cordite store area to experiment with the macro lens I have use of at the moment on a plethora of bum-biters and butterflies but the cold wind and the rain put paid to that. Of course the plan had also been to see if either the Spoonbill and Garganey pair were still there as well as building on the Wildgoose Chasers meagre year list. And with spring sort of here, I first went looking for migrants along the Thames path. There were no signs of any Wheatears or even Ring Ouzels but I could hear a Sedge Warbler and there were a lot...

With my year list languishing down in the near pathetic, I bit the financial bullet and fuelled the car up for a trip to Cley in Norfolk. On paper, the plan was sensible as Cley Marshes usually produces a good number of birds to fatten any weedy year list. With a blustery north-ish wind, my hopes of a bag full of seabirds was high, as well as a previous day list of sightings including red-backed shrike, wryneck and Balearic shearwater to whet the appetite. My routine is always the same at Cley. Park at the East Bank and do an anti-clockwise sweep around the reserve. The strong winds prevented any bearded tits showing but their presence was noted by the ting-ting calls coming somewhere deep in the vast reedbeds that swayed heavily in the gusts. Spoonbill flock Spoonbills In the pools, east of the East Bank, around 20 spoonbills were feeding. Cley regularly attracts these amazing waders with a small colony recently becoming established a few miles up the coast. At the...