Birding Braunie

The last few weeks have been manic at work mainly due to one particular client and getting any 'before work' birding has been near impossible and very frustrating. This morning I did manage to get an hour at one of my favourite work patches, namely South Fambridge. I was hoping to see my first autumn arrivals like Whinchat or maybe a Black Tern along the estuary or something. Things were pretty quiet but I was glad for the peace and tranquility this site brings. A few Reed Warblers were still croaking out splutterings of notes but rather half-heartedly now. The shoreline had a few piping Curlew and Redshank while in the distance three Black-tailed Godwits probed and prodded the mud for breakfast. The skies were overcast but the air was warm and scented with wildflower and nothing really mattered. I walked high along the seawall path and any movement in the sky was largely due to Woodpigeons. A few of these pigeons came down on a recently harvested corn? field. A much larg...

Dotterel, circa 1999 Okay, it doesn’t look anything like Sir Peter Scott but you know what I mean. At my age it’s easy to forget what I did yesterday let alone 13 years ago. This watercolour resides in my mum’s dining room and although she is a keen collector of my masterpieces – like only a mum could be, I always forget about this one. Not sure why I painted a Dotterel. It’s a smart bird with the female bucking the trend and being more striking or at least slightly more striking than the male. Rubbish plumage observation and as for the legs, less said the better.

I can’t believe this is my first blog for over a month. It’s true that the months of June and July can be a little barren when it comes to bird watching especially when you are away from the coasts of the UK but the fact is, I have been birding...and thinking. My first thought was why do I go birding? Clearly I love going out to reserves and digiscoping any species of bird; enjoying the habitats and the people I come across. I have trips and bird images I should have shared but to me, they were uninteresting and routine so didn’t or don’t deserve your valuable time reading them etc... Perhaps I’m being unfair on you. Perhaps I expect you to want to see images of rare or interesting birds with tales of woe or intrigue from me? I don’t know. So then I thought why do I do this? I don’t do it to get home to write a blog and I don’t do it to get brilliant photos – that will rarely happen trust me. I don’t want to be top of the top 200, let alone 400 bird club lister list. So what the fu...

Okay, I’ve just proved to myself that I’m not a bona fide twitcher. If I was, I’d have been bashing elbows with all the other birders of Herts, Essex and London over at Stockers Lake, Herts, for the Little Bittern. Instead, I went to Rye Meads also in Herts for Kingfishers and Kestrels. Okay, the Kingfishers didn’t show so just the Kestrels then and a couple of Green Sandpipers if you will. Rye Meads is nice (nice cool not nice twee). It’s been a few years since I’ve walked the boards there but I like what they’ve done with the place. I really wanted to shoot Kingfishers and Rye Meads is the place to do it. My problem was timing. The Kingfisher pair are on a clutch of eggs so activity is low to say the least. I gave it a couple of hours but no change of place between the male and female happened in that time so I gave up. All was not lost though as five Kestrel young, almost at the stage of flight took turns to either defecate out of their nest box or have a gander at what the outs...

Well I’ve been messing around with a website for a few weeks now and although I know it could do with a bit of spit and polish, it does the job. It’s solely dedicated to bird images I take through digiscoping and that’s it. If you want a laugh, go to www.wildgoosechaser.co.uk

You can’t blame rarities when they’re not where they’re supposed to be. After all, they aren’t supposed to be there anyway. Every now and then, I choose to visit a place a rare bird has been seen. In this case, it was a Greenish Warbler at Northward Hill in Kent. It had turned up only yesterday and I was hopeful that it would be around for a day or two. A few of spent a couple hours searching for the Asian Houdini but to no avail. I did find a Nightingale which gave brief views and green and Great Spotted Warblers kept us entertained. I left hoping it wouldn’t reappear and headed off to Elmley Marshes to get over it. This was probably a mistake as Elmley is a vast tract of land with very little cover. With the sun already beating down at a steady 26ºc I was going to be toast. I nearly ran over a Red-legged Partridge as I drove through the entrance gates so that was a new bird for the year. All along the 2 mile track to the reserve there were Lapwings, Yellow Wagtails, Skylarks an...

Paglesham and the River Crouch I had it on good authority that a couple of Turtle Doves were to be seen around Paglesham Boatyard. I had never been to Paglesham even though it’s only a couple of miles from work but will now check it on a regular basis. Turtle Doves are a big deal. They have dropped in numbers across Europe by 62% and are a serious concern. The main reaseons are, as always, changes in farming and unsolicited shooting in some Mediterranean countries with Cyprus and Malta coming top of the list. Turtle Doves can be difficult to see. The first thing you get is the soft purring sound coming at regular intervals from dense foliage. The first sounds I got were from Whitethroats and Cuckoos. There were a couple of Cuckoos in the area and one quickly showing atop a line of trees close to the boatyard. Cuckoo The boatyard was busy with Swallows relaying back and forth to nest sites inside boat sheds. behind the sharp chattering of the swallows calls, t...