Birding Braunie

Today was more about the wide shots; the atmospheric vistas deserving a bit of Hans Zimmer music if I’m perfectly honest. Okay so most of the birds were too far away to really a) appreciate and b) get a decent pic of. We started out exploring the south of Skye – the Sleat Peninsula and Ord Loop. Around the Kilbeg area we made a brief stop in an area of scrub and woodland. We heard now of course the willow warbler and some of the group caught the song of a chiffchaff as we slowly drove along a track/road. Chris our guide then caught the reeling song of a grasshopper warbler so we all disembarked the vehicles (some quicker than others). Eventually, we all got to hear the reeling although Phil could not due to his hearing impairment. However, it was Phil who was the first to see this secretive warbler and helped other get onto it which wasn’t easy. We also had a distant white-tailed eagle and a cuckoo fly past as well as views of a tree pipit but it didn’t hang around. Once every...

It’s all a bit slow really. Any decent birder would look at my totals and think I was a bit of a slacker. I wouldn’t argue with this view really as there have been moments or opportunities I suppose where if I had just pushed myself a little bit, I might have a few more to that meagre total. Such fellows as Pied Flycatcher, Tree Pipit, Common Redstart could all have been picked up 5 minutes down the road but I just wasn’t in the mood you know. This Thursday just gone, I along with all the other volunteers in the Lee Valley Park were invited to an annual awards party with volunteers recognised for their sterling efforts over the past year and an unveiling of the photography that had been selected for the Park’s calendar. The whole shebang kicked off at 6pm so I decided the best thing to do would be to take the day off work to ensure I made it in good time. So all I had to do was find a suitable location to enjoy a few hours birding. So it rains. Well it rains in the fog to be precis...