Birding: Spring catch up!

Quite a while since a birding post so here's a catch up. Been viz-migging on the cliffs a few times and really enjoyed it thanks mostly to the better eyes and especially ears of Andy, Chris and Gary. Species highlight was undoubtedly a serin, the first ever recorded on a viz mig watch at the lighthouse in the god knows how many years Gary and Andy have been recording!

A nice male wheatear was a typical spring migrant at Heacham.

The real spectacle for me though was last week, when to quote Gary an 'unprecedented' sixteen Med Gulls flew south past us one morning, to be followed the next day by another eight or so. Brilliant!

I have only been to Titchwell a couple of times but managed to find a red kite west one morning and my first common sandpiper of the year. No sign or sound of bittern though....oh.... nearly forgot about the seven cranes which later flew across The Wash and have since been seen in Lincolnshire.

Male kestrel seen at Titchwell.

Also done a bit of dipping! Following a phone call from Mark yesterday, a dash to Ringstead did not reveal the hoped for dotterel...the bloody things flying off before I (and anyone else for that matter) got there. Similar story today I am afraid....following a phone call from Paul about a black kite coming west. A repeat of the dash to Ringstead also resulted in (as far as black kites are concerned) the inevitable dip. The home made scones tasted good when I got home though!

This is a spot for the new season......

Sorry for lack of recent updates. A few days ago I had a stroll along a local stream that I am planning to fish once the river season opens again. It's a free stretch of river and reputed to hold roach, bream, dace and even the odd chub.

I was a bit taken aback when looking over a small bridge into the river I found this lot....

How many species and what size can you see here?

They were just part of a much bigger shoal containg maybe three or even four times the number of fish you can see here. Now, as you'll know if you've read my fishing profile, I am not very familiar with river fish but I reckon I could see sizeable roach getting on for the magic 2lb mark, bream in the 3lb range and nice looking chub. A real mixed bag! In addition, I think I saw dace and even (!) rainbow trout....well they had a nice pink flush running all the way down the lateral line area.

A nice bream on red robin pelet

Meanwhile I have fished just the once at my local club stillwater where I managed 5 perch in the1.5lb to 2lb range on legered half inch cubes of Spam, and three nice bream around the 3lb mark on hair-rigged red robin pellets. I also had around twenty perch on the float on maggot.No sign of the hoped for carp.....I've a lot to learn when it comes to carp.

I have still got the pike addiction and am reading up all I can about pike and tactics to try out come September which is also a key birding month .... I might not be seeing much of the house or garden!

Rarer than a blue moon.....

I haven't seen that many black redstarts at Titchwell Marsh, and that got me thinking....

Only my fourth black redstart at Titchwell Marsh

I reckon I have been to the site approx 2800 times over the last twenty odd years and the 'black red' I saw on Saturday was only the 4th I can recall on site. To put it another way that's one every 700 visits or one every five or six years.

Black reds aren't classed as rare on a UK scale being scarce passage migrants (spring and autumn) and a number even spend the winter in the UK. They are however pretty rare as UK breeders with a breeding population of around fifty pairs. This bird is probably a migrant from the continent blown here on the persistent easterlies we have had for the last few weeks. It will probably head north once the winds die down.

My image isn't that good I'm afraid but you can just about see the red tail from which they take their name. Southerlies for the rest of the week should blow in a few summer visitors. They are all getting rather late now....lets hope for a long spell of settled weather to enable nature to catch up with the calendar, it is the middle of April after all.......the first swallows and cuckoos are just around the corner!

Mr Lucky blanks!

We've been up North for a few days visiting R kid, friends, family and of course the cheap and excellent local curry house! The girls agreed to let us have the day fishing on Sunday. The chosen venue was the Rufford Canal out towards Southport. R kid has been trying ;-)) to catch a pike on here for a few weeks, so would some of Mr Lucky's recent good fortune rub off?? Read on to find out...

Small... yes... but what a beautiful fish!

The canal was really a slow moving drain and we started off on the tree covered stretche near ye olde Rufford Hall. Below freezing overnight, there was still a thin veneer of ice here and there as we walked to the first likely looking spot.

I had a bite after about 30 minutes but messed up the strike. R kid moved into the spot....had a run and missed it! As the outside world woke up, boats and dog walkers on the tow path became a bit of a nuisance so we moved on to a quieter stretch a mile or so north. Despite lots of tree roots, reeds and mats of weed we couldn't manage a bite.

Moving again past a club match, we found a stretch that looked very promising and eventually R kid managed the little beauty you see here. Mr Lucky failed to catch!  On the way back the match guys were packing up...despite barrow loads of gear, several had fished five hours without a bite and R kid would have probably won the match with Jack! Chatting as we drove back we realised (apart from Jack) we hadn't seen a single fish all day.....no bait fish no pike.

Never photographed a woodcock before.....

But today I managed to snap not one but two in the same image! I arrived at Titchwell at around 9.15 am to be told up to three woodcock were "showing well" near the entrance to the picnic area. Showing well is not a phrase normally associated with these most skulking and cryptically coloured birds. Eventually, I managed to spot one... and then two shuffling along in thick undergrowth about fifteen metres from the path.

For woodcock this is indeed showing well !

Intervening branches to distract focus, moving target, variable light in the undergrowth and simply finding the bird in the view finder were all problems that the fabulous Panasonic FZ150 overcame with flying colours. No, I don't work for Panasonic but if you are looking for a camera to get decent on-screen recordshots of birds then this is the one to invest in!

The wind on the beach was bitter and despite the superb light there were almost no birds on the beach or sea, save for a few distant red-throated divers heading east. The now almost resident female long-tailed duck was easily seen from Parrinder hide and several marsh harriers were rehearsing their sky dancing routines over the reedbed.