Birding Braunie

Saturday 26 October 2013 So everything was planned down to the last bacon roll. My yearly (this may change) pilgrimage to the birding hotbed of North Norfolk had arrived. With my good friend Ed riding shotgun, nothing could go wrong, could it? On Friday evening I set up a text account with RBA (Rare bird alert) for a free trial. Brilliant, I get 5 free texts for Friday night only. Totally useless and so they’ve now lost me. At least I have a Birdguides App staring at my on my phone, so we wouldn’t miss a thing so long as the 3G works up there............... With the car loaded with beer, bacon and binoculars, we dashed up the A11 to Thetford. Just north of Thetford lies Lynford Hall, famous for it’s Arboretum.  And here was where a Two-barred Crossbill had been seen rubbing wings with a flock of 20 or so Common Crossbills. We found the spot and a few other birders and began staring up at the top of a few larch trees. The first bird we found was a Hawfinch . wasn’t expecting thi...

This week I have been left questioning my own commitment to getting out and getting the bird. Only a week or so ago, I was up a ladder working on house repairs, hoping to finish in time to do some good birdwatching. I stuck to the task of renovating the home and even managed a Mistle Thrush, a flyby of three Ring-necked Parakeets and a female sparrow hawk, all from the dizzy heights of my ladder. So I had collected enough Brownie Points to go somewhere exotic like Dungeness or Dunwich on the Sunday. Excellent prospect. However, when Sunday came, it was hammering with rain. There was a party of four Parrot Crossbills close to where I worked showing well but I ask you, in the rain??? No thanks. I did keep looking to the sky for improvement but when it came, it was too late to get there for daylight conditions. Always tomorrow I thought. So an early sortie to Gunners Park on Monday morning with clearing skies in the east making me think of biblical references and hoping for that beam ...

Could be a good birding weekend this. Today I was working at the Lee Valley Park and as per usual, I went for a walkabout before the shift. You probably know I have had some camera problems and this morning was a chance to test out my new Nikon Coolpix 6500 with my scope. This is always a bit hit-and-miss so I had to pick an easy target to get going. The Holyfield Weir seemed the perfect place to shoot ducks. They (Mallards) like to hang out along the concrete edge of the weir and I have some cover so as not to freak them out. Mallard Duck Unlike my old Samsung, the Nikon needs some manual zooming to lose the vignetting. I was spoilt with the Samsung as this framed perfectly so now I have to fiddle a bit. Mallard Drake On the whole, I’m liking the results although I still need to sus out a faster shutter speed or the fps setting at least. Coot, nearly a duck Well spotted. Not a duck So, so far so good but sitting ducks are fairly easy. The Bittern watchpoint was f...

No camera. In the old days this wouldn’t have been a big deal when I went birdwatching. However, digiscoping has become a big thing for me. I might not do it properly, i.e. with all the proper attachments but I can get results I like and it means I can populate my blog with the images of the subjects I’m subjecting you all to. So I decided to paint instead. I haven’t picked up my brushes for a few months and as I had the day to myself, I thought about going a bit further afield and combine it with a reccie of a birding site I had only read about. Therfield Heath in Hertfordshire. The Icknield Way is an ancient track that runs south from Royston and was the path I chose to take. I can imagine in winter this is a harsh environment to be in. Apart from the irregular hedgerows, there is little cover or protection for the cold winds that must stab through here. View from the Icknield Way looking East. I found a place to stop with good views across swathes of fields and sketched a wat...

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...

The last day of August is quite a significant date in the birding calendar. It closes that rather slow moving book of summer and opens a thriller of a novel entitled Autumn. The first chapter opens on a scene at Old Hall Marshes in Essex. It’s early and the narrow track that leads to a small car park is travelled by three vehicles, in convoy but not together. I’m at the back of this  caravan and close the big iron gate as the two vehicles in front rumble slowing to park up. There are three of us. We all look to each other, acknowledge our presence and lock and load our various weapons of choice; binoculars, scopes, cameras and thermos flasks. The older man, from under a huge bush hat speaks first. "You both here for the 'Neck?" We both nodded stupidly and he smiled, looked to the sky and muttered something about the wrong wind or something. His mane was Steve and this was his third attempt at the Wryneck. He had good info that the best way to track the bird was to tra...