Mission Accomplished

It's a pity the weather in the middle weeks of October was so rubbish as one of my junior buddleia bushes actually produced a couple of decent sprigs during that period that could potentially have attracted a late butterfly or two.

Buddleia - the last blooms

Anyway persistent rain meant it wasn't to be.  The last butterfly I saw passed over the car park at Washington Sports Centre on 20th October.  It was brown so presumably a small tortoiseshell or comma, I couldn't tell.

One nice surprise was however a visit from a tree sparrow to the reduced offerings in the feeders.  Not a rare but nevertheless an infrequent occurrence.

Tree Sparrow

As you can maybe tell, it proved to be a bit of a poser.

After various postponements, we decided that the monsoon season was finally over at the weekend and I drove over to Alex and Vicki's for a visit to the massive reed bed on the River Tay between Port Allen and Errol.  The key target, the bearded tit, is supposed to inhabit the area but we didn't really rate the chances of success.  In particular I reckoned bearded tits might not fancy the extreme cold that can be experienced north of the Firth of Forth.  In fact it turned out to be a lovely day.  The trees were at their most colourful and bathed in sunshine.

After a fleeting encounter with a red squirrel, Vicki thought she heard some bearded tits. Then, on a pathway out through the reeds, we hit gold.  I saw one straight away but wasn't totally sure.  A twitcher turned up, himself sporting a magnificent russet beard, and soon they - the tits - were all over the place, at least a good few dozen of them.

We were snapping away busily as they mostly didn't stay in the same place for long.  And I was quite pleased that I even managed a couple of videos with my fancy new camera.

Bearded Tits

I realise there may have been some unconscious gender bias going on there as I seem to have zoomed in on the males, so here in the interests of balance are a couple of shots of the females.

Female Bearded Tit

Female Bearded Tit?

As you can see and maybe would have expected, they are clean shaven.  We did wonder though whether the second one might be a juvenile.  It was the first time I have seen bearded tits since I visited Minsmere 12 years ago.

After a most pleasant session and no sign of a marsh harrier, we gave ourselves the 'job done' sticker,  and spurning the chance to pursue a mandarin duck at Scone, we headed south for Loch Leven.

This was actually a good deal less rewarding as there wasn't too much going on in the first hide we visited and by the time we got to the second hide, the light was getting tricky so that I, at least found it tricky to see the colouration of the ducks.

In fact the best shots I got weren't of ducks at all:

Stonechat

Little Egret

The others we observed were a lot of coots, some teal, wigeon and a few goldeneye.  

I was a bit disappointed not to see any pink footed geese as there had been plenty around but days earlier and, on trying to perform alchemy on some distant greylags with the camera, I can now see that I actually captured a few whooper swans even further away.  The shot is unfortunately too blurry to publish - even on here!

Otherwise I did dryly remark that there was more wildlife on the steps going down to the trails - which you actually can't see on descending them.

The wildlife steps

Another visual did however catch my interest though.  It was a sign on the butterflies and moths present, which included a picture of a small blue.  Clearly a strong case for a revisit one summer...

There's an interesting sequel to our trip of a non-nature variety.  As we got ready to go home from Loch Leven, I wanted to check a couple of sightings on my mobile phone and discovered to my horror that I no longer had it. Vicki and Alex phoned it several times and got a ringing tone and I realised I had probably lost it somewhere on the woodland trail by the Tay earlier.

As we drove back there frantically to beat the dusk, Vicki got a call from Mr Huang, a (we think) Chinese tourist who'd picked it up and were able to meet him as he reached his airbnb in Errol.  Apparently he'd heard the alarm going off that I had set to remind me to text a friend.  

Bearded tits AND getting a phone back you lost on a woodland trail!  How much luckier can I get?

Sunday 28th December

I have often said that Boxing Day and New Year's Day are good opportunities to get out and about.
So on Wednesday it was good to revisit Carsington Water in Derbyshure while staying over briefly with my daughter and her fiance.

Lapwings and others

Apart from gulls it looked quiet at first with a lot of walkers about but tufted duck, coot and great crested grebe were also soon apparent.  When we got round to the main viewing point, there were a good head of lapwing on the edge of the lake, which was considerably lower than normal for the time of the year following the summer drought.  There were also a number of tree sparrows on the feeders next to the large observation hut.

As the sun started to fade we made our way back to a key feeder, spotting a little grebe on the way.  On the way out there had been nothing but a few great tits, so we were pleased to see a couple of marsh tits and Joe managed to get a good shot of one of them in a nearby tree.

Marsh tit

Later we had the obligatory marsh tit versus willow tit discussion but we reckoned the evidence over several photos was conclusive.

Joe was also responsible for spotting an example of the Robin's Pincushion gall on a piece of dog rose.  Apparently it is caused by the larvae of the gall wasp. Probably not a lot of people know about this so you may wish to consult the relevant wikipedia article for more detail.

Robin's Pincushion

After the event Joe also mentioned that he thought he might have seen a merlin one evening.  Strangely, I'm pretty sure I saw one today one my way back from the supermarket.  It flew across the road by the old Hookergate School at some speed but right in front of my windscreen so I got a pretty good view of it.

Holiday am Bodensee (continued)

On the second day it was a bit of a relief to make a short trip to Stein am Rhein and its beautiful mediaeval buildings.

There wasn't that much to see on the nature front.  A couple of jays turned up as did a couple of black redstarts and both birds turned into regular sightings throughout the rest of the tour.  I've seen black redstarts in Germany several times before and notice they often turn up where there is some sort of intensive agricultural activity, in this area notably maize production.  There was also another very

Small-flowered cranesbill

dark squirrel and a lot of house martins over the Rhein near Diessenhofen, plus a few unremarkable dragonflies.

However I did come across a nice example of this small-flowered cranesbill, which the bike conveniently fell over, framing it nicely.

On the next day I moved on quite quickly, deciding to spend some time looking at the nature reserve at Mettnau.  Unfortunately, part of the path was still flooded from yesterday and all I saw was things I'd already spotted (several coots) but it did have the highest bird hide I have ever been on and produced one flower I couldn't identify.  There are supposed to be one or two rarities in the area so I'd like to know what it was.

High hide

Unidentified flower

This area is supposed to be a home for the camberwell beauty and goldon oriole, but as they are both summer visitors I was more disappointed not to see any birds of prey from the hide.  A massive area of the lake and the wetland was visible.  You'd have thought that something would be on the move.

Friday 20th March

Visited Geltdale RSPB with my sister on the day of the partial eclipse, which I managed to view nicely through a thin veil of cloud (and my sunglasses!) shortly before setting off.  On the way the birdlife was quite active during the rest of the eclipse, if not unduly disturbed.

On parking up at Geltsdale, soon heard skylark and saw kestrel and curlew.  There were plenty more curlew as we followed the path over the moor and a number of canada geese and lapwing nearer the cottage, plus a couple of oystercatchers.  The lapwing were displaying occasionally without producing spectacular acrobatics.  And at this point I did see a skylark, though only because my sister pointed it out!

The Woodland Walk

On the lake were a number of teal, coots and tufted ducks plus swans and gulls and a couple of kestrels and more lapwing above.

Once again followed the sparsely treed "Woodland Walk" and, as before wondered why as there was nothing much up there apart from a single distant buzzard, but on the way back along the tarn I glimpsed another field vole and it proved there was a whole series of holes through the long grass where they were obviously burrowing.

So a good day of activity although nothing very remarkable appeared. Meadow pipit was notable by its absence and I have still to see the first butterfly of the year.  Otherwise four eyes is definitely better than two for birdwatching!