Devon occasional

Ring in the new...

2012-01-29T14:03:00.000Z

A milestone today - our first ringing session of the year (non-garden) and somehow there's a need to include Sabina in this experience. I set off early with David and Peter, opening the nets early enough to make it worthwhile, whilst Na brought the youngest member of the group along at about 10 (bang-on 10 in fact: German punctuality strikes again!).

It was a typical day for this time of year: a couple of feeders are occasionally topped up by one or another of us so that there is some focus to the birds during the winter, and consequently much of the catch is Blue, Coal and Great Tits. However, we continue to accrue some useful information about the number of Poecile tits on site: three Willow Tits caught, two recaptures and one new bird; all of them last year's juveniles.

Willow Tit (Poecile montana kleinschmidti). A rather small and neat bib on this bird, but you can see many of the key features which indicate Willow rather than Marsh: clean white cheeks, strong bill (and longer than Marsh) with no clear white spot at the base of the upper mandible, a rather dull and extensive black cap, a hint of a pale panel in the wing - and if you look carefully, a very different tail pattern than you'll see on Marsh.

A closer look at that tail - notice that the outermost feathers are rather shorter than the innermost, and that there is a clear view of most of the feather tips at regular intervals between the extremes. On Marsh, this would not be the case; almost all the feathers being similar in length except for the outermost pair, which are rather shorter.

A bit overexposed, but here you can see that nice pale panel in the wing... as well as seeing how long the cap is.

We also caught two new Marsh Tits, a female Reed Bunting and an unusually-marked male Great Spotted Woodpecker. The woodpecker appeared to be one of last year's young as well, with new glossy black greater coverts and mantle feathers contrasting very strongly with a set of unusually pale outer greater coverts and primary coverts. You might also be able to pick out in the picture that the secondaries also appear rather washed-out.

Young male Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major). Those pale wing feathers stand out a mile in the hand, but would be almost impossible to see in the field, I think. Would be fascinating to catch him again after the next moult and see what's happened there.

Female Reed Bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus). The amount of wear on the tail in particular suggested to us that this was a bird born last year.

Gulls, gulls, gulls

2012-01-22T20:05:00.000Z

Gulls, gulls, gulls. Yesterday evening was an indulgence of mine, though many would consider it a penance. A friend organises an annual gull-count on the Exe, which attempts to keep tabs on the number of gulls using the river as a roost - they're not monitored in any other meaningful fashion here, unlike some other wetlands where the BTO's Wetland Bird Survey volunteers note the numbers each month. To be fair, the number of gulls present on the river in the daytime is a shadow of the numbers roosting overnight, so the WeBS counts would not be particularly representative. Anyhow, three of us gathered at the Topsham recreation ground to count the birds moving south down the river.

This is the gull-count view. Birds tend to mass over and behind the bridge in the background, before moving down the river at anything between 1 and 100m height.

The gulls tend to come downriver in a particular pattern. First of all, there are always a couple of hundred birds loafing around the river when we arrive; mainly Black-headed Gulls, with a smattering of Common and Herring Gulls here and there and perhaps the occasional Great Black-back. Looking upriver past the M5 road bridge which spans the floodplain, you can see a gathering mass of Black-headed Gulls floating and swirling around the Countess Wear sewage works. The first flocks of Black-headeds start to make their way purposefully down past us, initially twenties and thirties, but soon building to a constant stream of birds. The first birds come through low down, perhaps 10-20m above the water, but the bulk of them drop down from somewhere above 100m height, slight black silhouettes against the evening's grey skies. Common Gulls are sprinkled sparingly throughout the flocks; it's tricky, but feasible, to pick out their slightly more rakish shape amongst the Black-headeds which are by now sleeting past us.

Eventually the Herring Gulls put in an appearance. At first just singles and twos amidst the smaller gulls, soon they are the bulk of the flight, many of them dropping down from even higher than the Black-headed Gulls. The numbers of Black-headed and Common Gulls dries up rapidly, leaving us with a stream of Herring Gulls floating down in gathering darkness until they too peter out. A last quarter hour of patience is rewarded with a late flock of about a hundred Black-headed Gulls suddenly hurtling past, bellies almost touching the water, and a couple of groups of Herring Gulls, necks stretched and calling as they sail past.

Spot the Common Gull.

So, limbs numbed with the lack of movement in a biting northwesterly wind, and brains slightly numbed with counting gulls past in fifteen-minute blocks, we end up with a total count that is - once again - slightly lower than the previous year. One day we'll perhaps be able to find out why the number of gulls roosting on the river is dropping, but for now we're happy to guess that it might be a combination of climatic changes across Europe, population declines of some species (especially Herring Gulls) and/or changes in food supply and availability in the catchment of the Exe.

Either the sun just came through below the cloud, or Haldon Forest has just been taken out with a tactical nuke. I favour the former personally, as though it does make counting tricky for a while, at least it means dinner will still happen.

Today (Sunday), for variety's sake we took a pleasant mid-day walk down the river Otter; Na, Sabina and myself. We started out from Budleigh Salterton and wandered upriver to the footbridge across the river, then back down the eastern bank. Despite the continued presence of the same stiff north-west wind as yesterday's gull count, the weather was pleasant enough to find an increasing presence of spring flowers: hazel catkins are out in some numbers - yellow tassels bobbing and flapping in the wind, spreading pollen on the air; Red Campion and Herb-robert shining pink-red from the longer vegetation on the side of the path; Hogweed and Cow-parsley taller still with white umbels swaying in the gusts; and a small patch of White Deadnettle by the river, with their hooded creamy-white flowers looking richly succulent amongst a spray of vivid green leaves.

White Deadnettle

The rivermouth was alive with gulls (sorry!) using the fresh water of the ebbing tide to bathe and drink. The vast majority were Herring and Black-headed Gulls, with a trio of Great Black-backed Gulls hulking in the middle and a solitary Common Gull floating serenely downriver on the breeze. Further upriver, whilst Sabina settled into her lunch, a Dipper was peacefully hunting the edge of the water, ducking into the water and pulling out what looked like water-snails, then calmly battering them on a handy rock before swallowing them. We ended the walk - throughout which Sabina remained resolutely asleep - with a coffee on the beach, relaxing out of the wind in the afternoon sunshine. Couldn't really be much better than this, I guess...

Sabina relaxes and blows some bubbles after a tiring day being carried around in her sling.

The afternoon sunshine, looking westwards along the coast towards Ladram Bay.

New year; fresh start

2012-01-19T19:42:00.001Z

Another new experience at the start of the year to chalk up to life: we are now a family proper, with the arrival of a daughter (Sabina) on January 8th. It's been an interesting experience all round.

She was born at home at the ungodly hour of 3.30 a.m., which meant that all three of us slept in for quite a while on the Sunday morning. In common with the vast majority of newborn babies, she spends most of her time eating and sleeping, though she's already developing a short 'play' time in the afternoons, where she tends to lie around and wave her arms and stare intently at any moving objects in the room.

We've been out for a few walks as well - it's easy to feel a bit cabin-feverish when you're used to being out on a regular basis, so we've walked some undemanding local walks - Na's a little anaemic still, so we can't do too much yet. Fortunately Sabina sleeps readily when we go out, so she's fairly easy to please; although this means that she missed the Iceland Gull that we bumped into yesterday. Such is life...

She sleeps. A lot! I might post some more pictures when I have some with eyes open...

More New Year Cheer

2012-01-03T19:13:00.000Z

(First of all, an apology - not only is this a bit of a beast of a blog, but there's no photos to relieve the monotony!)

Nice to get a new year off to a good birdy start... Pre-dawn, the peace was shattered by a Tawny Owl (according to Na - I was fast asleep and missed all the excitement), with a January dawn chorus filling the air a couple of hours later: the local Robins ensuring their territories are still secure, reminding themselves where their neighbours are - and sneakily checking to see whether next door made it through the night, and if their patch of land could in fact be annexed.

As it's been a rather mild winter so far, in stark contrast to the last two, there is a bit more to our January chorus. Dunnocks have been adding their silvery little warble to the mix for a couple of weeks now and a Song Thrush started some proper song about 10 days ago. The Blackbirds haven't yet got into full-throated melody, but a male has recently been singing to himself at the bottom of the garden; perhaps getting in tune for some early breeding, should the weather hold mild.

A little later - once there is some proper light in the sky - the Woodpigeons begin their raspy growls and the nearest Mistle Thrush can be heard shouting a simple strident series of notes into the air. Throw in some chirpy House Sparrows and there's a not-too-bad early morning chorus going on. There is something particularly satisfying about New Year's Day - there is so little traffic on the road in the early morning that the birds sound especially clear and crisp - we will have to wait until sunrise is about 4.30 in the morning before the dawn chorus is that peaceful again now.

We managed to get out before the hangover-cure walkers staggered along the river, adding a smattering of the local woodland birds to the new year's tally. The pair of Mandarin Ducks is still present and looking mighty furtive - perhaps they will settle in and breed successfully in the woods this year. Would be nice to see them more often (not something you can often say about non-native species, but there doesn't seem to be a negative impact associated with Mandarins, though I may have missed something in the literature somewhere) as they really brighten up a dull winter's day! Another early sign of spring - or perhaps a winter territory being reinforced - a couple of the local Dippers were in full song on bankside rocks, one interspersing his mix of chirps and jangles with a bit of mimicry of Grey Wagtail song.

Buoyed by a fine start to the day we returned home, collected my in-laws and headed on out to the Exe. Although there isn't a lot of water around the marshes yet this winter, there was sufficient shallow flooding to have ducks peppered across the fields and pools. The bulk of the birds were Wigeon; males calling out their slightly suggestive whistle whilst the females growled and chattered amongst themselves as they waddle busily across the grass. On the shallowest water fringes, pairs and small groups of Teal were feeding and calling their 'preep' calls; males occasionally breaking off from feeding to surround a female and swim in excited circles, head-feathers raised to prove they really do have a neat crest.

Further onto the water again were pairs of Shoveler, powering across the pools with heads submerged, then occasionally lifting their heads clear so we could see their bright golden eyes and outsize rubbery-looking bills. Finally, deepest of all, were a pair of Pintail, supremely indifferent to the hustle and bustle of the rest of the duck, upending calmly and quietly in the depths the others couldn't reach.

Surrounding the ducks was a rustling, chattering, squalling mass of Starlings, who were swirling around a mix of Lapwings, Black-tailed Godwits and Curlew, all busily probing in the wet grass for invertebrates. Every so often something would spook this whole crowd of birds, so there would be a rush of wings, a cacophony of calls and the duck would suddenly be mid-pool, whilst the waders and Starlings swirled and dived in the air above. Opposite all this fuss and palaver, a small group of Canada Geese fed with the complacency of birds which know they are too big to be bothered by most things here - and with them, a rather fine Glossy Ibis.

We eased our way down to the Turf Locks Hotel, where hot chocolate and tea beckoned. The ebb tide had fallen enough for a broad scatter of waders busying themselves across the mud (including the Dutch-ringed Redshank C73). Avocets, Grey Plovers, Redshank and Dunlin were busily feeding in every direction, and the first gulls came drifting downriver like confetti in the breeze, to settle in to their roost on the river; which seemed a suitable cue to take for us to head home too, leaving the birds to follow the edge of the tide into the gathering dusk.

New Year Cheer

2011-12-29T16:47:00.002Z

Some Chinese duck to wish you luck and bring some cheer for the coming year. Best wishes for a successful and healthy 2012...

Drake Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata) on the river Bovey this Christmas-time

A toast to Redpolls

2011-12-11T21:23:00.001Z

A short blog to share some pictures of some Lesser Redpolls we've been catching at our Dartmoor site.


Tail and primary tips of a bird born this year

Tail and primary tips of an adult

You can see from the pictures above how much fun it can be to age these birds: in effect you're looking for evidence of wear on the tips of the tail feathers and primaries. You'll also notice the broad fringes and darker base-colour of the adult bird's feathers: this is basically due to the better quality feathers that adults grow, compared with the feathers that young birds grow in the nest.

A nice crisp adult (perhaps a female) with a good hint of a pale rump.

A particularly dark young bird with very pale retained greater coverts (the white feather-tips across the wing)

A full-on adult male, ringed in 2010 at a nearby site by a friend, and retrapped by us recently. Not the best picture, unfortunately, but he was pink everywhere: cheeks, chin, rump, breast, flanks... smart.

Australia: a final tranche

2011-12-07T16:44:00.001Z

A final internal flight; a closing of the loop. We returned to Sydney, where we were met by my uncle, who whisked us off to Lindfield where we spent the final few days of our Australian adventure. Unfortunately, the poor weather which dogged our final day in Tassie followed us up, so that most of the last week was a mish-mash of rainy spells and overcast skies, with a cool onshore wind.

Our first full day in the city began with a gentle tour of the northern suburbs and fringe, up as far as Palm Beach, courtesy of my aunt. A decidedly chill wind kept us from walking much as we explored the local surrounds, and a bout of heavy rain around lunchtime dissuaded us from exploring the Lindfield area at first. However, a bit of cabin fever threatened to set in, and the prospect of a good walk sent us scurrying out onto the Great North Walk route. The trail led us along the forested banks of the local river, serenaded by Rainbow Lorikeets, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and Galahs - quite an overpowering racket at times. As soon as the rain eased, the wildlife began to emerge: we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a mixed flock of fantails, scrubwrens and honeyeaters, with White-throated Treecreepers and Variegated Fairy-wrens tagging along for variety's sake.

Having recovered and reinvigorated ourselves, we headed into the city first thing the next morning, to do the obligatory tourist thing and ogle the opera house, look at the harbour bridge and shop for some bring-home souvenirs. The harbour bridge was duly stared at and photographed; the opera house ogled and perambulated (it's much smaller than I'd imagined, and the roof has a rather nice pattern in it), but the overcast skies meant that it wasn't a great day for photos. Moody lighting, in the main.

Can you guess what it is yet?

We continued into the botanic gardens - immediately next door to the opera house - and spent some time admiring the Grey-headed Flying-foxes roosting over the information centre. Serendipity struck: when I went to ask about the bats, there was a photo of a Powerful Owl on the wall, so I asked - jokingly - if they knew where it roosted, to be told 'we'll take you over there if you like'. So we had an impromptu tour across the gardens, taking in some of the more interesting trees, the history and context of the gardens - straight over to the roost of the owl, which looked at us with some horror, then over to see a fine Tawny Frogmouth at it's nest and finishing with a visit to the memorial to the children deported from Britain under the 'Child Migrants Programme' - a practice which ended not long before I was born.

~~Badly-furled umbrellas~~. Grey-headed Flying-foxes.

Powerful Owl in the Sydney Botanic Gardens. Ask at the information centre: they tend to know where he is, or where he may be.

After this, a visit to Lady Macquaries Chair was a little bit of a let-down, but we struggled on manfully. By this time we'd had about enough of wandering, so a 30-minute ferry trip across the harbour to Manly and a wander out to see the sea seemed like a good idea. It was a good idea, but for various reasons we were flagging a bit by this stage. We made it out to the lookout at the end of the harbour, where we viewed with some disdain yet another couple of Humpback Whales sporting in the surf. As the wind freshened yet further and the rain began to spit in earnest, we headed for the nearest bus-stop and retraced our route into the city to buy gifts for our homecoming.

Making the opera house look much larger than it is.

We decided we had enough puff to head across the city the next day, to the world's second-oldest National Park: Royal NP. We hopped off the train at Engadine and headed into the park, following the walking tracks towards Heathcote through yet more dry sclerophyll forest. By the time we got to the park it was mid-morning, so the birds were getting few and far between: the best of them at first perhaps being a confiding party of Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoos stripping branches to get at sap. We then started following a trail towards Audley, which in retrospect could have been a bit of a mistake! The track led through increasingly rugged countryside - and as we trailed down into the base of a small valley we disturbed a large Red-bellied Black Snake, which uncoiled with alarming rapidity and headed straight for my feet. I executed a strategic retreat in quick time, and watched with some relief as it headed quietly into the hole under the stone I'd been standing on. Soon after this, the day improved even further with a brief burst of song from a Superb Lyrebird (if you don't know this bird, you should: watch this YouTube clip. Ours didn't have quite as varied a repertoire, but just as fine a songster).

Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoo

We finally found ourselves traipsing down to a picnic area: to an eager audience of Purple Swamphens, Dusky Moorhens, kookaburras and Sulphur-crested Cockatoos: all waiting for a scrap of food. We disappointed them by only having a couple of apples to eat, though the swamphens were quick to take the cores off us and dispose of them tidily. By this stage, however, we weren't quite sure where we were, nor how long it was going to take us to get back to the railway. There was a road opposite with regular traffic, but which way led out? Fortunately there was a small boat-hire shop open just across the creek, so we trotted over the bridge and asked, to be told that it was about 20 minutes to Loftus, headed 'that way' along the road. Hooray, we thought. Twenty minutes later we were still climbing the hill out of the valley, and began to think that the owner of the boat shop might not have suspected we were travelling on foot. Ten minutes later we reached the National Park offices, in the carpark of which a kindly man put us right, pointing us to a traffic-free path to Loftus and explaining that it was about half an hour further to the railway line. We eventually trudged into the station - after taking our lives in our hands by crossing the Princes Highway on foot - dog-tired and in the perfect state for a chunk of restorative mud-pie from the bakery across the road. Perhaps the best piece of cake I've had in ages: hunger is by far the best sauce around.

Purple Swamphen poses for a photograph...

...then gets down to some essential apple-core recycling.

Our final day in the country was spent taking a short walk around part of Garigal National Park; another of Sydney's urban national parks. We were dropped at one end of a little trail, meandered through along the riverside and eventually ran out of energy and enthusiasm somewhere in East Lindfield. Although relatively quiet and non-wildlify, we still managed to see a final new species for the trip: a pair of Dollarbirds which appeared with startling suddenness on top of a dead tree whilst we had a drinks-break. This walk was perhaps most memorable for the incredibly confiding Eastern Water-dragon who basked in the path in front of us, and then refused to be intimidated by us, posing for some beautiful portraits of what is, unarguably, a stunning lizard.

Sulphur-crested Fiend-in-feathered-form.

Unidentified, but rather fine, flower

Eastern Water-dragon auditioning for The Return of the Son of the Mask of Zorro.

Eastern Water Skink. I think.

Unfortunately, that's the end of our Australian adventure. I suspect we won't be going anywhere exotic for a little while now, but you never know what life may throw you. Watch this space...

Tasmania - part two.

2011-12-05T20:36:00.000Z

Our journey took us north to the central east coast of Tasmania: the Freycinet Peninsula. The landscape during the journey continued to resemble Europe - for a short while we even drove along an avenue lined with plane trees and hawthorn (at least, that's what it looked like to us!) with pasture and gently rolling hills rising to wooded heights, interspersed with the occasional sea-inlet fringed with saltmarsh and rushy pasture to our right.

Our immediate aim was a walk to stretch our legs. We left the bed and breakfast and headed along the little local beach, where Hooded Plovers lurked, looking rather like delegates at a hangman's convention. A scatter of loafing Pacific Gulls also added a touch of elegant menace, with something of a thuggish swagger to their appearance.

Hooded Plover

Red-capped Plover.

Pacific Gulls in the hood

The next morning dawned clear and sunny, so we headed without further ado into the nearby Freycinet National Park to explore the much-lauded delights of Wineglass Bay. This is an extremely popular walk, as we quickly discovered: the carpark was showing signs of creaking at the seams at 8.30 in the morning. Nevertheless, we signed in to the walkers' book and headed off, determined to make a round trip to Hazards Bay. The initial climb was a short sharp one, tracking up a wide gravelled path dotted with tourists. We took our time (how should we do otherwise?) and eventually reached the lookout over Wineglass Bay, where we joined a gaggle of other tourists admiring the view - admittedly very nice. We pressed on with some enthusiasm, looking for somewhere a little quieter where we might see some of the wildlife, and were almost immediately rewarded: a Bassian Thrush foraging beside the path, a pair of Eastern Spinebills flitting through the canopy, a Flame Robin glowing in the understorey - and then a pair of Wedge-tailed Eagles drifting serenely overhead, chocolate-brown against a Prussian-blue sky.

Skink skulking by path

Soon after this, we noticed a pair of Grey Fantails making a hell of a racket in the trees a few metres away. A pair of Scarlet Robins joined them, dashing down towards a branch, then up into the neighbouring branches or the nearby trees: classic mobbing behaviour. A careful scan of the branch showed us the culprit: a sizable Black Tiger Snake slowly picking its way down the tree, about 2.5 metres off the ground. Clearly the birds were taking no unnecessary risks whilst alerting their neighbours that the predator was around, and letting the snake know exactly what they though of it! We left them to it and plodded on down to the bay.

The view from the beach was, to be honest, a little disappointing. A bit like the view from above, but without the perspective. The path towards Hazards Bay beckoned; enticingly free of walkers... The woods here opened out somewhat, with wattlebirds and Green Rosellas making a noisy entrance for the day. To our left we began to get glimpses of Hazards Lagoon, a large reed and sedge-scattered body of water which appears to be quite shallow. The view across to the hills to the south was placidly stunning, making up for rather a lack of birdlife on the water (a pair of Black Swans and a pair of Mallard), whilst the aptly-named Banjo Frogs plonked a charismatic chorus around the edge of the water (imagine a handful of rubber-bands being stretched to different lengths and then plucked at irregular intervals, rather like you used to do at school and you;ll get the gist of it).

Hazards Lagoon

The path led us on along a couple of boardwalks, where we admired the glinting beauty of Ringtail damselflies, then over a little sand dune and there was Hazards Bay in all its glory. White sand stretched away in either direction; the sea was a rich medley of blues, ripening from near-shore turquoise to a vivid ultramarine in the distance; the sheoaks along the dunes drooped grey-green sibilant-hissing needles towards the sand. All very tourist brochure really...

Metallic Ringtail damselfly

Hazards Bay

Hazards Bay colours

We wandered - paddled - up the waters'-edge to the point where the rocks started and the path led us inland again, then stopped for a well-deserved lunch-break. The rest of the walk became little bit of a slog, to be honest: the path undulated along between the sheoaks, the sun beat down in its usual fashion, and the view north to Cole's Bay apeared intermittently through the trees. The rather basic map of the route was a little misleading, and we were grateful to eventually reach the carpark, where we were greeted by a couple of optimistic Red-necked Wallabies looking for handouts.

Red-necked (Bennett's) Wallaby.

We continued on to the nearby lighthouse, where we sat in what was rapidly becoming a rather biting westerly wind, relaxed and looked through another steady stream of Short-tailed Shearwaters, trying in vain to pick out something different amongst them. A couple of whales teased us into thinking they might be Southern Right Whales, but eventually proved to be Humpbacks - what's it coming to when I'm disappointed to see a Humpback?!

The following day, our final full day in Tassie, was spent exploring a little of the nearby Douglas-Apsley National Park. The park seems to be somewhat the poor relation of Freycinet as far as tourists go, but this was only to our liking. We trailed through the forest peacefully, watching Black Currawongs, Olive Whistlers and Superb Fairy-wrens until we eventually reached the end of the trail at the riverside. We waited patiently until the walkers who'd arrived before us decided where they were going, then headed off down the riverbed to get back to the car. The riverbed walk wasn't something you'd even entertain in the rain, but on a fine bright day with a nice low river it was great fun. We scrambled up and down along sweeping curves of rock worn smooth by the river, balanced and hopped our way across the smaller boulders and scrunched through the pebbles and gravels of the slower stretches, under the watchful gaze of a family party of Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos and a pair of Brown Falcons.

Orchid (Caledenia fuscata)

End of the riverbed walk in Douglas-Apsley NP. Also the start of the walk if you wish.

Riverbed walk in the Douglas-Apsley NP

A vertical sundew: Drosera peltata

Returning to the car, we headed back along the road towards Freycinet, stopping off in the nearby town of Bicheno for dinner and a gentle seaside walk. Our final paying highlight of Tasmania was a visit to a nearby colony of Little Penguins (a.k.a. Fairy Penguins or Little Blue Penguins). We joined a small group of people at the local surf shop, hopped aboard the bus to the colony and set out on a guided walk which was both informative and enthusing. Our guide gathered us all from the bus and introduced himself, then explained that photographing penguins at colonies was now prohibited under Australian law (bang went my plan of trying to get some sneaky photos without flash!) and that there were some basic ground-rules to observe - which boiled down to keep behind me, don't make any more noise than necessary, and don't tread on the wildlife! All pretty easy to obey really...

Female Superb Fairy-wren. A blurred male in the background.

We wandered down the track to a small grove of trees as the light faded, waiting for the birds to arrive and learning some facts about penguin ecology and behaviour. A handful of artificial nest-burrows were tucked against a nearby shed, testament to several years of patient work by volunteers (timber cases) and local schools (concrete over chickenwire). Soon the pale light of the torch revealed a small group of penguins huddled near the rocks close to the waters' edge. More patient waiting - and a degree of quiet jostling for position - and the first birds came waddling up the path in front of us, pausing for their second breather about 10 metres away. The whole group of people were quietly spellbound, watching the birds stretching, preening and generally getting their courage and strength together for the final plod to the nest, where they would replace their partners for incubation duty. We were soon asked to follow on a little further, to the next point where another group of about 30 birds were taking their rest. We stood in a quiet half-circle along the path and waited whilst this group filtered between our feet - over feet in some cases - and towards their burrows. A chorus of mellow braying calls split the air around us as pairs reunited, reaffirming their bonds and ensuring that the bird about to take over control of the burrow was indeed the correct one.

Our final day in Tasmania was a relatively straightforward journey to the airport at Hobart. Unfortunately it began in driving rain, which rather disrupted our original plans of a walk. Instead we chickened out and sat in the car to see what we could see at the local Moulting Lagoon Ramsar site. Despite the rain coming straight at us, making it difficult to see much out of the windows without either losing visibility to rain or getting drenched, we enjoyed a peaceful half hour or so at a saltmarsh, complete with Black Swans, White-faced Chats, Pied Oystercatchers and Skylarks (yes, the common-or-garden Skylark was introduced to Tasmania, along with Blackbird, Goldfinch and Greenfinch).

White Kunzea on the Bicheno coast

Tasmania: the Tasman Peninsula

2011-11-24T16:06:00.022Z

Tasmania dawned bright and cheery, with a stiff south-east breeze (brr!) and glaring southern sunshine (mmm!). The roads were pretty quiet, so we headed off towards the Tasman Peninsula with light hearts. The countryside reminded us of parts of Scotland and south-west England, with rolling hills, open pasture and rugged rocky coasts; though the patches of Eucalypt woodland aren't so familiar-feeling.

The Tasman Peninsula from the Devil's Kitchen

The drive to the Tasman Peninsula was pretty uneventful, and in due course we arrived at the beautifully-named (and beautiful) Eaglehawk Neck in time for a restorative ice-cream. The view from the lookout near the carpark treated us to our first Black-faced Cormorants, a couple of Kelp Gulls and a flock of shearwaters offshore which proved on closer inspection to be mainly Short-tailed, with a handful of Sooty and Flesh-footeds mixed in. The telescope revealed that rather than the apparent couple of thousand birds milling around, there was a constant mass of birds as far as the eye could see - easily tens of thousands, constantly wheeling up and down the face of the waves; all apparently just killing time before heading in to their next burrows after dark.

Dry sclerophyll forest

A walk in the woods was clearly in order, so we set off south. Passing the spectacular crevice of the Devil's Kitchen, we headed along the track towards Waterfall Bay. Coastal heath, not unlike that in Queensland, dominated at first. The air was occasionally pierced by the shrill squeaks of Brown and Tasmanian Thornbills, Tasmanian Scrubwrens and Eastern Spinebills - a honeyeater which looks and behaves somewhat like a hummingbird. Gradually the woods closed in. The occasional pair of Green Rosellas bounded past to sit high in the treetops and regard us suspiciously. Black Currawongs carolled and warbled in the trees above us and a variety of lizards waddled or scurried away through the dead leaves, depending on their relative size.

Pygmy Sundew (Drosera pygmaea)

Again, almost no-one around to share this walk with us; it was half shocking and half pleasant: here in Britain the track would have been heaving with people, but then again, there would probably have been less wildlife to see too. We finally reached a stream and campsite where the track led off to the lookout over the bay. Just as we rounded the corner, we almost fell over a small ball of woolly-looking fur and spines, huddled against a treestump. Clearly it was an echidna, but it wasn't going to show us any glimpse of it's face. We left it in peace and walked to the viewpoint, settled down for a bite to eat and enjoyed a fine view - complete once again with Humpback Whales breaching.

Echidna

Heading back up the track, the echidna had emerged from it's stump and was bumbling around the forest floor near another rotting treestump. This time we were able to stand and watch it as it stomped around, pausing periodically to shove its beak deep into the soil; presumably sniffing for or licking up ants. Every so often an exploratory sniff must have yielded something worth pursuing, as the front feet were used with formidable force for such a relatively small creature to rip out a hollow about 10cm deep. Eventually it swaggered off around the stump and we regretfully picked up our bags and continued on our way.

Echidna, emerging

We stayed at the Norfolk Bay Convict Station, a friendly and characterful bed and breakfast with enthusiastic and knowledgeable owners.

Norfolk Bay Convict Station: now a pleasant B&B

The next day saw us head out along the Mount Raoul peninsula, in order for a proper walk to do. A drive out to the end of the road took us through increasingly Dartmoor-esque countryside, complete with clumps of Juncus, conifer plantations, rough grazing - and European Gorse. Although adding a touch of homeliness for the European traveller, this is - in this part of the world - a hideously invasive species. By the time we arrived at the end of the road, it seemed so much like Britain that the sight of a pair of Chestnut Teal on the nearby pond threw me completely for a moment. Fortunately a kookaburra began laughing and put me back in my senses.

Wet sclerophyll forest

The walk proved to be through more mature forest than the previous day. Dry sclerophyll gave way to wet sclerophyll, and in both the range of flora was superb. Perhaps a highlight of the walk out to the cape was the sight of a large Black Tiger Snake, which uncoiled from it's basking spot and slid smoothly and calmly away across the path in front of us. As we dropped over the side of Mount Raoul, the vegetation suddenly changed to a mixture of head-high heath and whispering groves of sheoaks. Like the conifer plantations here that they resemble so well, there was little wildlife within these groves, although a Tasmanian Pademelon startled us both by bounding away from the edge of the path suddenly.

Coastal heath flowers

More unidentified flowers...

Pink powder-puff-type flower

Tasmanian Pademelon

We finally reached the end of the path at Cape Raoul, where we settled don for lunch, admiring a young White-bellied Sea-eagle, the Pig-face flowers at our feet and the abundance of Brown Cutworm moths littering the ground; not to mention the spectacular columnar cliffs.

Cape Raoul

Coastal heath on Cape Raoul

Brown Cut-worm

Native Pig-face (Carpobrotus sp)

White-bellied Sea-eagle

When we rose to go, we realised we weren't alone: another family had joined us and were busily exploring the small pond for frogs - the children informed us with some importance thet there was a little echidna around that bush, which we might see if we were lucky. We wandered around that bush, and there it was, head-down in the scrub.

I wandered in to try for a couple of close-ups, but there was too much vegetation in the way - and then it decided that it was coming out, so I moved off to give it space to go where it would, and in the hope of a picture uncluttered by twigs. Crouching back on my heels, I was surprised when it headed towards me - and more surprised still when it walked straight up to me and dug its beak into the ground under my instep! As is of course the rule, Na's camera was in the bag on my back. It then moved over to investigate the ground under my other foot - and then seemed to settle down to sleep, tucked in close between my ankles.

Eventually I could see myself being there all day, so I levered myself carefully up and stepped back, at which point it looked up at me, perhaps in some bemusement, and decided to wander off in the opposite direction. Strangely, the walk back to the car was rather uneventful in comparison.

Echidna, en route to my ankles

Echidna, shortly after vacating the space between my ankles

The lone echidna, wandering off across the heath

Our final day on the Tasman Peninsula was taken up with a trip around the peninsula on a Tasman Eco-tours boat, steered by the chirpy and chatty duo of Damo and Damo. A brisk southwest breeze had built up a decent swell for the first part of the trip, so the initial 40 minutes were a rather rollercoaster-like series of runs across the Tasman Sea. An inshore fare of Black-faced Cormorants and Kelp Gulls was rudely interrupted when a Shy Albatross glided impassively past, in true clichéd fashion, not beating a wing as it slid effortlessly over the waves.

Black-faced Cormorant

Soon we were rounding Tasman Island, where a small hangout of young male Brown Fur-seals (a.k.a. Australian Fur-seal) took great exception to the boat-load of tourists pointing cameras at them, and flopped
inelegantly into the water to escape.

Brown Fur-seal

We then turned our attention to the open waters, partly to look for Humpback Whales, and partly to enjoy
what was becoming an awe-inspiring flock of shearwaters. In all, there must have been close to half a million birds in the general area. Mainly Short-tailed Shearwaters, but with a smattering of Sooty Shearwaters and the occasional Shy Albatross to dwarf them both, the whole sea seemed to be in constant flux, as parties of birds took off, wheeled away and settled again nearby. As far as the eye could see, there were shearwaters. Had this been a fishing trip or a bird trip, we could happily have stayed out there for hours, searching for a little more variety in the flock, enjoying the sheer mass of birds present in the area; but unfortunately we were on a scheduled tourist trip, so carried along steadily until we came close enough to shore for the birds to peter out. A final wildlife-moment, as we stopped off to admire some New Zealand Fur-seals - the polar opposite of their Brown cousins in their laid-back attitude, and we were soon bumping gently at the jetty at Eaglehawk Neck...

New Zealand Fur-seal

Short-tailed Shearwaters.

Short-tailed Shearwaters

Crested Tern at Eaglehawk Neck

A farewell to palms.

2011-11-22T18:41:00.000Z

Eastern Grey Kangaroo. Not tied down.

One bonus from hanging out with a bunch of bird-banders is that they know the best places to look for waders, and they tend to have a tide-table conveniently to hand (thanks Brenda!) - so Monday saw us heading back south towards Brisbane, to the pleasantly anonymous town of Toorbul, at the civilized hour of 9 in the morning. Unfortunately the weather wasn't going to let us have it all our own way: a stiff southerly breeze was bringing cool air into the state, with scudding clouds and the occasional burst of rain to remind us what we were missing at home in England.

Toorbul is the sort of place you'd probably never think of going unless you had to. Nice enough, but nothing particularly special - apart from hordes of kangaroos feeding along the roadside. We followed the road to the very end of town, south until we had a nice view of Bribie Island, then parked up by a little grassy bund, beyond which was a small sandy beach. Even as we parked, the first birds were pushing in on the rising tide, looking for a safe spot to hunker down until the mud was exposed again. Larger migrant species; Bar-tailed Godwits and Whimbrel, made up the bulk of the flock - only about 150 birds at first - with a handful of resident White-headed Stilts, Pied Oystercatchers and a couple of disconsolate-looking Gull-billed Terns.

Curlicues.

Wader palindrome: Bar-tailed Godwit. Grey-tailed Tattler. Sharp-tailed Sandpiper. Grey-tailed Tattler. Bar-tailed Godwit.

Small flocks of waders soon started to appear, heading down into the wind in straggling lines: mainly godwits, but an increasing number of smaller migrants as well: Grey-tailed Tattlers, Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, Great Knot, Red-necked Stints... A line of Black Swans stood offshore on a small sand-bar, black curlicues against the green-grey waves. The roost built up steadily to around 1,500 birds, then the parties of waders pretty much stopped coming - those that had been displaced by the tide all arrived at their respective hangouts. Caspian Terns joined the party, and with the birds a little more settled, we began to pick out a few other species: a small group of Greenshank, a Black-tailed Godwit or two; best of all a smart Terek Sandpiper, with yellow ochre legs and a perpetually smiling expression.

Snooze-time on the sand. The bulk are Bar-tailed Godwit, with a smattering of Great Knot (smaller, slightly curved bill, dark chevrons on the flanks). A single tattler on the left with a plain grey back and an out-of-focus Curlew Sandpiper at the front left, disappearing out of shot.

The birds may have been settled, but they were far from still: the larger birds tried to sleep, heads turned round and bills under wings, whilst the sandpipers trotted rapidly around below them, tucking in to the unfortunate invertebrates in the sand. Every so often one of the Pied Oystercatchers would take great exception to all these interlopers and take a run at the roosting birds, sending them running - or flying - out of its way.

Eventually the tide turned, the birds began to think about moving off to the mud again, and we headed back towards Palmwoods for our last evening, before heading south, to Tasmania and a whole new week.

Ichneumonoptera chrysophanes (a.k.a. Carmentera chrysophanes), a clearwing moth, bids us goodbye from Queensland, leaving a parting kiss on my jacket.

Green Tree-frog on pot.

Nudgee Nudgee, wink wink, say no more...

2011-11-16T18:19:00.001Z

Our first full weekend in Aus. We headed off south to meet a bunch of bird-banders - for so 'tis termed outside of Britain - at the Border Ranges National Park, just over the New South Wales border. En route, we thought we'd pay a visit to what looked like a bit of tidal estuary; break the journey at least. We arrived at Nudgee Beach to the sight of water lapping the carpark fringes. Clearly, the tide was going to have the last word over any plans to see mud-loving birds! Undaunted, we set off around the short boardwalk to the one and only hide that we encountered on our travels. The path leads through some rather nice Grey Mangrove woodland, which is always a treat for the mangrove-less European. A forest of aerial roots, light beaming through the canopy and the salt-laden scent of the mud make it a wholly satisfying experience. The birds were there, though thin on the ground - it was getting hot by this stage - Mangrove Gerygones flitted through the canopy doing a good impression of Chiffchaffs, an Australian Spotted Crake trotted quietly through the roots and a rather bored-looking Osprey sat on an exposed branch by the hide. Rainbow Bee-eaters and soaring Brahminy, Whistling and Black Kites were a good supporting cast, with Collared Kingfishers prowling for the abundant small fish in the myriad of pools.

We were also slightly mystified by the number of single men wandering around the boardwalk, particularly as some of them looked fairly blatantly as if they batted for the other side, so to speak (we were later told that the site has a bit of a reputation as a meeting ground for gay men, which explained that, though why in a mangrove swamp? The mosquitoes must be a bit of a passion-killer).

After a brief tussle with the Brisbane traffic, we were suddenly out on the road to Tamborine, winding through gently agricultural country, interspersed with Eucalypt woodland and homesteads. The countryside then changed around Beaudesert, becoming more determinedly agricultural with - frustratingly - a lot of shallow wetlands alongside the road, often chock-full of birds, but nowhere safe to stop and look. We finally left the Mt Lindsey Highway at Innisplain and wound our way into the mountains along an increasingly wriggly and potholed track which eventually gave up all pretence of being a tarmac surface and settled dolefully into a corrugated dirt track.

The Pinnacle (that lump on the right) and the view into New South Wales.

We stopped for lunch at a lookout, surrounded by the chiming calls of Bell Miners and the weirdly melodic wails of Pied Currawongs (try this link for an idea of their call). Finally we returned to the car and headed into the National Park proper. The weather began to close in a little, with swirling cloud dropping down, so we were slightly apprehensive that the journey would be in vain, but after a four hour drive (for a single weekend's banding! Youch!) we were keen to get out of the car and move around again. After encountering several groups of Brown Cuckoo-doves and the odd Crimson Rosella on the road, we finally arrived to find the early-birds putting up nets. A quick intro to Graham (or maybe Graeme), Brenda and Stephen and we dived in to help learn the net positions and some of the birds we'd be handling. Immediately there were some new species: Yellow-throated Scrubwren, Large-billed Scrubwren, Grey Fantail, Brown Gerygone in the nets, whilst Green Catbirds and Noisy Pittas called unseen from the surrounding forest. The cloud, and the temperature, continued to fall, so the nets were furled for the day, tents erected and we sat around and waited patiently for Jon - leader of the pack - to arrive. In the gathering gloom, a Satin Bowerbird paid us a fleeting visit, before deciding that we were not going to be any use to him (not quite blue enough with cold, I suspect).

Grey Fantail. One of the more abundant species in this part of the forest, where they inhabit the canopy and edge habitats, frequently flitting out into the open to snatch insects, with tail fanned behind.

The more colourful relative: Rufous Fantail. Behaves in a similar fashion to Grey Fantail, but seemed to inhabit the understorey rather than the canopy.

Jon arrived and we were all informed about what we'd be doing the next morning, whilst a Fawn-footed Melamys, one of Australia's few native rodent species, scurried around behind the boxes of food, trying to get a snack.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, the rain finally arrived. A blaring alarm at about three a.m. signalled that someone hadn't quite worked out their new car's safety features. The rain then came a little more persistently, and by 4.30, the designated getting-up-and-getting-out time, we knew we weren't going to be banding any time soon. Bravely - or was it foolishly? - I left Na curled up in the warm and got up to see what everyone else was doing, to discover that the rain was expected to be short-lived and that with any luck we might get going at about 7.30. I returned to my bedclothes, where, to my horror, I discovered that the water level was rising. Inside the tent. It's amazing how fast you can move when you have to. The bedclothes and all our belongings were rapidly thrown into the car to prevent them getting any wetter, and we slunk over to the barbeque shelter, feeling a little sorry for ourselves, to have breakfast.

Antarctic Beeches; Nothofagus antarctica. Truly magnificent trees, which my photo does no justice to at all.

True to the forecast, by 7.30 the rain had eased enough to get out and get on. The two of us piled into Jon's car and headed off to the 'Antarctic Beeches' lookout, where we were to put in our effort. The skies cleared in that tropical manner - one moment thick cold cloud, the next a clear blue with added steam - and we banded. There's a lot of effort involved in setting nets for relatively few birds, when compared with our own sites here, but when the background chorus is Rufous Scrub-birds and Albert's Lyrebirds, with Paradise Riflebirds (one of Australia's four Bird-of-Paradise species) and Rose Robins backing them up, you don't really care. Besides, the species being banded were all fairly new to us, so there was a lot to learn about deciding on their age and sex.

Yellow-throated Scrubwren - a male (black lores), and apparently an adult (crisp black centres to the median and greater coverts [the small feathers on the wing, just above my index finger], with broad olive fringes)

The same male, demonstrating exactly why he's called a Yellow-throated Scrubwren

A succession of scrubwrens, thornbills and fantails was enlivened by a very smart Bassian Thrush - somewhat like a large and scaly Mistle Thrush (or a White's Thrush if you're of the birdy persuasion) - and a couple of Yellow Robins; I was then handed a suspiciously large and lively bird-bag and instructed not to look in closely before opening it. I carefully slid my hand around to get the bird inside into a safe grip through the bag (a useful trick at times), then carefully opened the drawstring to be met with a rather long, hook-tipped bill and a baleful beady yellow eye at the bottom of the bag. A Pied Currawong. It was eventually ringed with minimal blood loss (on my part - none on it's part), measured, photographed and released with some alacrity.

Jon and Naomi deal with a Bassian Thrush

I take instruction from Jon on the most appropriate way to handle a currawong ('I'm not touching that; you can have it', was, I think, what Jon actually said). Photo courtesy Naomi Barker

That's why it's called a Pied Currawong. Photo courtesy Naomi Barker

Ready to fire. Note the careful distance maintained between bird and anything remotely sensitive on the body. Photo courtesy Naomi Barker

We eventually tidied up and headed back to base to help finish off their day. A similar mix of species had been caught near the campsite, rounded off with a fine Rufous Fantail. As the day drew to a close, the weather began to close in again. Na pottered off to nap in the relocated tent - now on higher ground - whilst I sat out and did a spot of birding. The rainfall radar suggested some heavy rain to come, and the cloud thickened perceptibly. Suddenly the sky grew blacker and blacker. And blacker. Within about 10 minutes, the wind picked up and within another five the trees were lashing like the masts of a yacht on a lively sea. There were a couple of rumbles of thunder - the equivalent of the cloud clearing it's throat for the main event - and then the rain hit. Like some over-the-top scene in a film, water poured out of the sky, and Na emerged from the tent and joined us in the barbeque shelter at a pace that would have stunned Usain Bolt. After 10 or 15 minutes the rain and wind settled into a 'normal' thunderstorm mode, and we all gradually relaxed again, to the background rumble of the occasional tree falling in the forest around us.

A surprisingly uneventful night passed, and we set up for the final morning, all together at a third site just down the road. The whole forest still seemed to be saturated with rainwater, so as the rising sun lifted the temperature, everything steamed. Aside from the steam, the rain had brought out a sever attack of the leeches. These seem to have a bit of an action-hero complex, as not only do they attack from the ground, they drop from the trees and attach to your neck, ear or even eye (for one unfortunate person we met, in any case)! This final ringing session produced such delights as a Pale-yellow Robin, a couple of Golden Whistlers, Russet-tailed Thrush and, best of all, an Azure Kingfisher. A final tally of some 130 birds over the weekend seemed to be a very good return, judging by the happiness shown by Jon, and we headed back to take lunch, pack up and enjoy a final walk from the campsite before tackling the road back to Palmwoods.

A rather beautiful skink, living in a rotten log along the path near base camp...

...and this is the neighbour: a Black-bellied Swamp Snake. Rather small and very elegant, this is a venomous but not particularly dangerous species - chief food items frogs and skinks. Living about a metre from each other, we wondered whether snake viewed skink as a larder, of skink thought it better to keep your enemy in plain view.

Brindle Creek steaming in the morning sun. You can't make out the leeches from this distance.

Grey Shrike Thrush.

The Greater Peeved, or White-browed, Scrubwren. A bird which has evolved a perpetually grumpy expression.

Female Golden Whistler. Pretty...

...but not as spectacular as a male. Not the best photo out there, but a stunningly-bright yellow. Fine, fine birds.

Azure Kingfisher. The camera didn't pick this up, but under the wings, along the flanks, the bird has the most stunning lilac wash I have ever seen.

Azure (you don't say!) Kingfisher.

Noosa and beyond

2011-11-10T18:10:00.000Z

A distinct turn for the better in the young lady's health meant we had the opportunity to get out and about a little further from Palmwoods. A trip to Noosa was on the cards! We headed up the coast road, stopping first at an outpost of the National Park at Coolum, just to the south of Noosa. Designated to protect the highly endangered coastal heath and dunes, which would otherwise by now be a concrete sprawl of Costa del Sol proportions, it's a clue to the habitats that were present a couple of hundred years ago when the continent was just being colonised by our forebears (not to be confused with any other kind of bears).

Pea species in flower in the coastal heath of Noosa National Park

Parking in a small patch of dry sclerophyll woodland, the path almost immediately deposits you into a most superb landscape. Behind you is the woodland, and somewhere in front of you the sea - you can hear the waves rolling onto the sand. All around is a scrubby, semi-open, sandy tangle of shrubs; many of them covered in a bewildering variety of flowers and attended by White-cheeked Honeyeaters, which look a little like large feathery humbugs. The whole landscape is squeezed into a narrow ribbon a couple of hundred metres across, before rising sharply into dunes covered with more dry woodland, then dropping precipitately onto a broad golden sandy beach, littered with people exercising themselves and their dogs. Rainbow Bee-eaters patrol the dune fringe, swooping and gliding between lookout posts.

Australian Brush-turkey. Not a lot you can say about this one, beyond the fact that it's a pretty ugly bird!

Fringed Lily.

We continued on to the main focus of the National Park, where we walked out to a lookout point called Hell's Gate along a scenic, though rather flat, path, crammed to bursting with joggers and walkers. Being a tad slower, we stopped frequently, which resulted at one point in a tea-break and sea-scan. Idly watching a yacht tacking slowly north, the calm blue ahead of it was suddenly rudely shouldered aside by about 60 tons of suddenly-airborne whalemeat. Unsurprisingly the yacht rather quickly changed tack. After breaching a couple more times, the Humpback returned below the surface. A small pod of Bottle-nosed Dolphins just offshore was almost anticlimactic in comparison. At the headland, we saw another two or three Humpbacks somewhat closer in, though they were resolutely staying within the water. We trekked back along a far less popular track, which was well worth doing for the peace and quiet alone. Note to others, by the bye, settling down for a quick kip under the trees is likely to result in a party of concerned Aussies enquiring loudly whether you are alright. Kind of them, but not conducive to a nap... Despite an intensive search, we failed to find any Koalas, but the searching paid off with a fine Tawny Frogmouth instead - every cloud...

Lizard species. Noosa National Park

Frilled Lizard.

Finally, we headed back towards Palmwoods, briefly trying another section of the park on the way, but the heat of the day defeated us and we slunk back to loaf and - some of us - to swim.

The very next day we returned to the area, this time with my relatives, to spend a little time wandering the tracks around Lake Cootharaba; a large lake about 20km north of Noosa. Despite its size (about 15 square km) and shallowness (on average 1.5m), it proved to be relatively birdless, probably because it's pretty brackish. Nevertheless, the day was fine, there were enough birds around to be interesting, Na was convalescing well and it was a properly chilled-out day. Much of the entertainment was derived from watching a bunch of schoolchildren at Elanda Point campground, who enthusiastically paddled canoes around some 100m off the lakeshore; and when they fell behind their mates, got out and pushed until they caught up. Clearly not really a lake for swimming in...! (On a serious note, apparently it's really not a good lake to swim in in some areas, as Bull Sharks frequent some of the channels; not something to tangle with).

Never trust a bird that smiles. Laughing Kookaburra at Elanda Point campground

Lake Cootharaba. There are some Australian Pelicans somewhere in the picture too.

Crested Pigeon lowering it's spike preparatory to charging.

Lake Baroon, Kondalilla, Maroochydore

2011-11-04T16:25:00.000Z

Native - or Ivy-leaved - Violet Viola hederacea

A visit to the doctor meant the prospect of Na's stomach clearing up seemed a distinct proposition, so we carefully planned an excursion to Lake Baroon Pocket Dam, with the option of a walk up into Kondalilla Falls National Park should she feel fit for it.

Lake Baroon is a fairly small reservoir to the west of Palmwoods, popular with picnickers. Surrounded with Eucalypt woodland, it looks a bit like a Spanish or South African reservoir, though at least here the Eucalypts are native. We started with lunch at the dam itself, watching Pacific Baza displaying whilst a couple of Australian Pelicans drifted languidly in to snooze with cormorants and darters on the little island just offshore. A gentle wander to the lookout below the dam yielded few birds, but some information boards helped us to identify some of the trees around us (Grass-trees, Red Oaks and the mildly-amusingly-named Black-butt). Fuelled with enthusiasm for a longer leg-stretcher, we headed off up towards Kondalilla Falls.

The birdlife immediately changed - an early morning visit would have been ideal, but we were there in the late afternoon. Sulphur-crested Cockatoos screeched incessantly from the taller trees, occasionally pausing to regard us with a baleful eye as we ambled by. Brown Thornbills - somewhat like a plainclothes Goldcrest - twittered and flitted in the understorey and the canopy, occasionally joined by Rufous Fantails which flicked determinedly after them, their tails splayed wide in a splash of vivid russet against the browns and greens of the trees.

A break for water at a bench offered us our first snake: a Black Whip-snake gliding rapidly past us, keeping a wary eye in case we attacked it. We kept a wary eye on it in case it attacked us, and so the danger passed by for all concerned. We wandered on until we reached a small waterfall, where again we stopped and admired the view and a Grey Shrike-thrush (neither shrike nor thrush, but definitely grey).

Kondalilla National Park - the river below Lake Baroon

Waterfall in Kondalilla National Park

Lake Baroon from Kondalilla NP

The following day was a relapse day, so we confined ourselves to Palmwoods and the local ponds again.

Native waterlily species (Nymphoides indica?)

Splendid Longlegs Austrocnemis splendida

Wandering Percher (Diplacodes bipunctata), I think.

Eastern Water-skink Eulamprus quoyii

By evening, Na was well enough for a brief jaunt to Maroochydore, where we wandered along the beach in the dying rays of the sun, watching the waves break and the dog-walkers, joggers and walkers going their different ways. A handful of Red-capped Plovers suddenly popped up with a couple of Red-necked Stints, and a rather nice collection of Gull-billed, Crested and Common Terns streamed in to roost on the sand-bars at the river-mouth. We rounded off the day with a couple of Mangrove Honeyeaters and a pleasant picnic dinner.

Sunset over the Maroochye river

Inselaffe goes walkabout

2011-11-02T21:19:00.000Z

Touchdown... "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Sydney"... look out of the window: it's raining... bundled out of the plane and down to immigration and a 14-km queue of sleep-deprived, tousled, gaunt tourists trying to gain admittance to the sceptred isle... finally, squeezed out past the customs officials to the baggage carousels, where our bags come through - remarkably - at the head of the queue... and over to the Qantas check-in desk to be told we've just missed our connecting flight to Brisbane... into the bus... Silver Gulls... over to the other terminal... onto the next plane to Brisbane... and down the runway to sit and wait for a suitable window in the weather that will allow us to land at Brisbane... and finally touching down at Brisbane to miss our second bus connection by five minutes... Noisy Miner, Common Mynah, Australian Raven, Australian White Ibis... spitting rain... onto the bus for an hour to Ettamogah (Aussie World: some bastardised pub-theme park)... and into the car for the last 20 minutes to Palmwoods and finally FINALLY stop travelling, because we've arrived in Australia and can take a breather.

Birding through a haze of sleep deprivation and lack of food can be quite fun. However, birding off the back of a strong cup of coffee can be so much more fun! We rolled up at the door of my aunt & uncle in Queensland to the sight of a Pale-headed Rosella bouncing over the garden fence, the shrill chatter and screech of a family of Rainbow Lorikeets in the bottlebrush and the glorious feeling of a nice steady 27 degrees Celcius. Mm-hmm.

After a pause to freshen up, feed ourselves and generally learn the lay of the land, we all headed down to the local ponds for a bash at some semi-rural birds, beasts and flowers, a chance to unwind and an attempt to get some blood moving in the legs again. A mildly bewildering flurry of new sounds, smells and sights - Blue-faced Honeyeaters, Noisy Friarbirds, Laughing Kookaburras, the scent of Eucalyptus in the air, and a background which looked both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. On the ponds, Dusky Moorhens look pretty much like Common Moorhen, but shoulder-to-shoulder with Purple Swamphens which are after your pie-crumbs? And though the swallows look superficially like Barn Swallows, they sound like Red-rumped Swallows and are actually Welcome Swallows. Confused? Me too (briefly). By this stage the coffee is wearing off, so head back to the house, relax, read and recover.

Dusky Moorhen.

Static Wandering Whistling-ducks.

Pacific Black Duck. Made up to look a little like Buster Keaton.

Lotus (?) blossom on the local ponds

And at dawn the next morning, a cacophany of new sounds: Laughing Kookaburras chortling away, Rainbow Lorikeets squealing, King-parrots peeping (a most un-parrot-like sound), Magpie-larks wheezing their strange 'beep, bleep' duet, and all interwoven with the melodic whistles of Australian Magpie and the blasts of sound from Blue-faced Honeyeaters and Noisy Friarbirds. Unable to stand the suspense ("what the hell was that anyway??"), I slip quietly out of the house at 5.30 and go for another walk around the ponds. Yesterday's cast is joined by a Double-barred Finch, which looks like a mini House Sparrow dressed as a pavement mime, some Silvereyes - small Willow Warbler-green birds with brilliant white spectacles and a White-browed Scrubwren, which looks a little like an ornate wren with beetling white eyebrows and behaves like a Dunnock.

Blue-faced Honeyeater.

Laughing Kookaburra looking a bit like those cuddly toys that you press to get a bird noise from. Don't be fooled: they're killers. Look at that beak. They take more children per year...

Rather bad photo of a Rainbow Lorikeet.

After breakfast we head out to the local Bushland Botanical Gardens to stretch legs whilst remaining within dashing distance of a loo for Na, who's picked up something undesirable from the plane (and before you say it, no, she picked me up long before this plane trip...). Our first butcherbirds appear: Pied and Grey Butcherbirds both parade around the picnic areas waiting for an unwary Aussie whose lunch can be pirated. Scaly-breasted Lorikeets join the Rainbows in the bottlebrush bushes, squabbling for nectar. In the trees, above all the low-level trashy parrot-noise, Scarlet Honeyeaters and Mistletoebirds flit and shimmy from flower to flower with the larger olive-green Lewin's Honeyeaters. We sit and watch kookaburras perched in the trees, who in turn watch the ground, before dropping with surgical precision onto some unfortunate skink, or worm, or snake.

Australian Flatwing Austroargiolestes icteromelas

Pied Butcherbird just washing down a small child.

In the afternoon we head over to the grounds of the Sunshine Coast University, to look for Eastern Grey Kangaroos. Just two animals are out there feeding, but the ponds yield some more interesting birdlife: Masked Lapwings with chicks, Fairy Martins building bottle-shaped mud nests under a canopy, a Black-faced Cuckooshrike posing in the dying sunshine, and a smattering of egrets: Cattle, Intermediate and Great.

Noisy Miner. How did I forget to mention these birds in the text? Especially their morning chorus of twangs, plinks and squeaks. Endearingly unmusical...!

Eastern Grey Kangaroos whispering secrets to the worms.

Scotland. There's sunshine here somewhere.

2011-07-15T19:09:00.000+01:00

Thursday.

We packed the tent and headed south, to a campsite I'd last stayed in many years ago when I was a teen. The journey took us down the west coast, through Ullapool (shop-stop) to Gairloch, via a quick soup-stop where a White-tailed Eagle drifted distantly past. Throughout the journey the sun shone, the birds sang and the weather was generally pretty fabulous. Weird.

We finally arrived at Big Sand campsite (yes, that's really the name of the place) and had a gentle wander along the beach to relax.The campsite was stuffed with Six-spot Burnet moths and Small Heath butterflies; and with Meadow Pipits, Skylarks and Wheatears feeding on the caterpillars. Shame they don't eat midges.

The stony end of the sandy beach at Big Sand, looking to the Torridon hills

Six-spot Burnet moth.

As the evening seemed nice, we thought a spot of seawatching might be in order, so we headed off to Rua Reidh lighthouse, a few kilometres up the coast, to see what might be on offer. As we arrived, the weather closed in and a few spots of rain began to fall. Nothing daunted, we sat and watched - or I did, whilst Na wrote postcards - a steady stream of auks passing by, with the odd Black Guillemot pepping up the mix a little. A few parties of Manx Shearwaters drifted through, killing time before heading in to their roosts overnight. Even better, a first-year Great Northern Diver appeared just offshore, and to cap it all, a pod of about 60 Common Dolphins hurtled past southwards.

Looking north from Rua Reidh

Rua Reidh lighthouse, looking to the dim and distant Outer Hebrides

Friday

Once again woken by the rain, but swiftly forced out of bed by a combination of sunshine and midges. We trotted off to Gairloch harbour to investigate a whale-watching company, booked ourselves on their afternoon trip and set out for a brisk walk to blow out the cobwebs beforehand. The walk produced our only dragonflies of the trip: two Common Bluets (Enallagma cyathigerum), a couple of Goldenrings (Cordulegaster boltonii) and what looked like a single Black-tailed Skimmer (Orthetrum cancellatum), though the latter went past quite briskly in the wind. We also managed to find a Golden Eagle circling up in the sunshine and yet another pair of Greenshank.

We enjoyed a leisurely lunch by the loch-side, then headed back to the harbour and kitted up for our trip. This entailed putting on a rather large survival-suit, or some such beast, which made me at least look like a bit of a charlie.

Sailor Na

Sailor J, camping it up.

We were soon on our way out of the loch, heading out in search of cetaceans. After a rather disappointingly empty sea had been scanned for a while, we eventually picked up the occasional Harbour Porpoise, but nothing more significant. So off we headed for the distant flocks of Kittiwakes and Gannets, putting the wind up a few auks as we passed.

Gannet. Not camping it up - Gannets are too straight-laced to act in such a fashion.

The bird flocks signified nothing more than birds for a while, until a Minke Whale finally put in an appearance, sounding majestically near the rib, then diving in search of food. He/she/it did this a handful of times in the end, coming within 100m of us as we drifted along on the current. This was all fine and dandy, indeed quite spectacular - until we drifted into the patches of air where it had breathed, and my word!, does a whale's breath smell bad... if you've every had the misfortune to smell a septic-tank which has been cracked and the leachate is stagnating in the sunshine, well that's about as close as I can come to it - and believe me, I've no desire to come any closer.

Minke Whale diving, having just let out a vast blast of halitosis

Fulmar, gliding serenely by on its way somewhere. I bet they home in on feeding whales by scent.

We drifted far enough from the whale to start the engines up again, and headed off to be shown small pod of Short-beaked Common Dolphins, which really weren't interested in our boat. Sometimes you get the dolphin, sometimes the dolphin gets you, I guess. Anyway, whatever the reason, they headed resolutely off into the blue, so we had to be content with a drive-by viewing of a Common Seal haul-out, a handful of Grey Seals, and then a steady steam back to the harbour and dry land. Not a bad day, in the end.

Short-beaked Common Dolphin getting out of the water...

...and getting back in. Perhaps it was too cold out.

Friday

A return to form by the weather, so we headed slowly and steadily southwards in order to break up our return to Devon. A walk along the base of Slioch was uneventful in many ways - the highlights definitely a couple of newly-fledged Ring Ouzels and a pair of Golden Eagles heading down the valley - and we dawdled our way down to Pitlochry with a relaxed attitude. Pitlochry came as a bit of a shock after the slow and gentle pace of things in the north and west - the town seemed to be teeming with people and vehicles, rather like that first time you go to London as a child who's grown up in the country (if you've ever done this, it's a bewildering experience for a while) but all too soon it settled down into just being back in 'civilisation'. Cracking meal in the Turkish restaurant though... moussaka and lasagne followed by a richly sticky portion of baklava (mmm!), all washed down with a niiice red wine. Civilisation has its benefits.

Fragrant Orchid

Scotland. It's warmer further north...

2011-07-07T20:39:00.000+01:00

Monday.

After another brisk night amid the pines and another grey and gloomy start, we headed on northwards in search of better weather. We broke the journey with a quick stop at Chanonry Point to look for Bottle-nosed Dolphins, which put on an obliging show for us and a cavalcade of admirers, then headed on northwards into the murk. The journey was brightened up by a very obliging couple of Black-throated Divers at Lairg, though a walk at the other end of Loch Shin failed to produce much of interest - bar a brief snatch of Ring Ouzel song. We pressed onwards to the north, eventually finding a campsite at Scourie with a view along the sea-loch towards Handa island. Gratefully we pitched the tent and headed off for a short walk.

Wood Tiger moth, livening up a rather quiet walk near Loch Shin.

Next to the campsite a small stream runs out into the loch, with a little road across the mouth damming it back into a small marsh. This was packed with a wide variety of plantlife - Marsh Cinquefoil, Northern Marsh Orchid, Water Forget-me-not, and some spectacular Monkeyflowers. A Sedge Warbler gave us a brief rendition of his song before breaking off to beat up his neighbour. Following the patch on towards Tarbet, we climbed the hillside and enjoyed the view before the weather once more began to close in on us.

Northern Marsh Orchid

Tuesday.

We awoke to another grey and cool day, so decided that plan B was the one to execute. We packed a substantial lunch, filled the thermos and set out cheerfully to walk from Duartmore to Ben Stack, then round the base of the mountain and back the way we'd come. We soon arrived at our kick-off point. An auspicious beginning: within moments of setting out, a male Merlin hurtled overhead, a pair of Common Sandpipers bobbed around the rocks of the little roadside lochan, and - believe it or not - the sun came out. Briefly. The old road along which we set out was fringed with Fragrant Orchids, studded with butterworts and heathers. All in all it looked good. The path soon left the road and plunged wildly up and down over the gnarled gneiss which underlies the wet heath and blanket bog of this part of Scotland. Squelching through mires, skirting lochs and lochans, we headed on away from the road and deeper into the hills. The sun didn't fulfill its earlier promise, and indeed the cloud slowly dropped down the tops throughout the day, but the walking kept us both warm. We eventually crested the highest point of the walk, dropped down to yet another loch, and settled in to lunch to the sound of Greenshank, Common Sandpipers and the omnipresent Meadow Pipits, whilst a Black-throated Diver kept a wary eye on us from the middle.

Arkle. In the lowering cloud.

Small White Orchid

The next part of the walk was probably the least interesting: a switchback path led us to a steep drop to the main road, along which we trudged for about three miles before we turned away along the western side of Ben Stack, trudged steadily up the slope to where we'd had lunch, and finally turned our noses for home. Whilst the bird-life wasn't exactly spectacular at any point along the way, at least we were serenaded by Golden Plovers on the journey back. In all it worked out at a quite respectable 20 mile walk, there or thereabouts, which we felt justified some slightly stiff legs and a good appetite: well and truly satisfied with a fine meal at the Scourie Hotel later that evening.

Lesser Butterfly Orchid

Wednesday.

By contrast, Wednesday morning was fair of face, rather like Sunday's child is meant to be in the old rhyme, so we splashed out on a boat trip to Handa Island - a Scottish Wildlife Trust reserve. We arrived bright and early, in fact about half an hour before the first boat, but soon realised that that was probably a very good move: people appeared in droves just before the boatmen and began queuing on the jetty. Fortunately we managed to get on the first boat of the day and were swiftly ferried over to the island.

We were met by a pleasantly efficient warden who instructed us all to remain on the paths, explained where the best places were for the purposes of Puffin-viewing and told us a little of the history of the island before releasing us all to the tender mercies of the wind and the skuas. In case you don't know what skuas are, they are close relatives of the gulls which lurk around your local town centre and steal your food. Skuas, however, are generally chocolate-brown coloured (without getting into complexities of colour morphs) with pale patches towards the outer edge of the wings, and they live by stealing food from auks, gulls and terns. In fact, Great Skuas (a.k.a. Bonxies) will attack anything up to the size of a Gannet, and rather than steal from the smaller seabirds will sometimes just eat the birds and their lunch. As all seabirds do, they come to land to breed, and have an undeniably effective method of protecting their nests: if you come near it they'll beat you up. Simple...

Great Skua

The path to the seabird colonies of Handa take you through the skua colonies. Fortunately the birds seem pretty phlegmatic about people, so contented themselves with a few token eforts, circling us as we walked and occasionally gliding around behind us to keep us on our toes. A solitary Red Grouse popped its head over the skyline as we walked up towards the cliffs, and then we arrived. The first to notice is the nose: a mildly fishy, tangy smell wafts over the edge of the cliff in the updraft. Then the ears start to pick up the murmur of the birds on the ledges, and as you get to the edge, the view below spreads until you feel you're teetering on the edge of it all, a clamour of growling, gurgling, squalling Guillemots, Razorbills, Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Shags, Puffins and gulls assaults your eyes, ears and nose simultaneously.

Red Grouse

Gradually the whirling mass of birds resolves itself into some sort of order. Fulmars drift along the edge of the cliffs, apparently revelling in their ability to ride the updraft with the minimum of effort: constantly wheeling down into chasms and crevices to be able to pop up again at the top of the cliff a moment later, twisting and turning with splayed feet, crooked wings and fanned tail until they come almost to a halt, then whirling away again in a series of twirls and swoops.

Fulmar, demonstrating wind-hanging skills

Gulls and skuas also patrol the cliff edge, but they drift elegantly along the wind on the lookout for an unwary auk coming back from the sea with fish for its offspring. Puffins loaf on the edge of the cliffs, where the soil is deep enough to dig a respectable burrow. They pop in and out of the plants, looking a little incongruous with their outrageously colourful and oversized bills. Occasionally one will arrive from the sea with - or without - a neat silvery row of small fish held tightly in their bills, whilst their wings whir them up to the land, where they scurry post-haste down into the safety of their burrows.

Below all this is the main activity of the colony: the Razorbills and Guillemots. The Razorbills tuck themselves into the deeper ledges, where they can lie flatter on their bellies and relax. If there is a crack behind a rock into which they can press themselves, so much the better. They tend to sit carefully in their pairs, a respectable distance between themselves and their immediate neighbours. The Guillemots, on the other hand, cram onto the smallest possible ledges, shoulder to shoulder with one another, yarring and growling, attempting to stab one another (or so it seems) with their long slender bills. There are abandoned (infertile) eggs scattered around the ledges like childrens' toys, and a constant stream of adults rocketing up to the cliffs from the sea below, with fish clasped lengthwise for their chicks.

Interspersed with the auks are the Kittiwakes and the Shags - the former gluing nests made of seaweed and birdshit to the ledges, decorated with whatever comes to hand, often bits of old fishing gear, and usually sitting together on their nests, nuzzling one anothers' faces and screaming at their neighbours with a deafening 'kitt-a-waaak, kitt-a-waak' call. The Shags confine themselves to deeper ledges like the Razorbills, building a messy stick-based nest which is liberally spattered with droppings, and brooding with a squat, menacing look, emerald-green eyes alert for any attempt by the neighbours to steal bits of nest material.

The sea offshore is peppered with auks, all bobbing gently on the slow swells that roll in from the Atlantic, some diving for fish near the colony, others washing and preening before heading back out to better fishing grounds elsewhere.

A pair of Razorbills deciding whether or not this ledge really, actually, honestly suits them.

Scotland. It's cold up there...

2011-07-01T19:43:00.000+01:00

Friday.

There's something wrong with getting up at 2 in the morning on a holiday, but with the prospect of having to get past Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow on the same day, we felt it was worth getting an early start. So off we set, and were past Manchester by 7.30, leaving us well-placed to have a break, meander into Scotland and leave the Glasgow traffic to get on with things in our absence... which I'm sure it did. We eventually arrived at Aviemore in the early afternoon, pitched the tent at the Rothiemurchus campsite and went out to stretch our much-cramped legs. A gentle wander down the Glen Einich track paid immediate dividends for our southern sensibilities: huge black slugs like ambulatory liquorice on the path, Snipe chipping from a nearby bog, Juniper sprawling across the heather, Chickweed Wintergreen, Mountain Everlasting and Pale Persicaria in flower at our feet and a family of Crested Tits purring in the pines beside us. Never mind that the weather was grey and chilly, never mind that we were dog-tired; we'd arrived on holiday and we were ready to chill out.

Mountain Everlasting

Saturday: The Caledonian pine forests.

Chill out was exactly what happened overnight too: at some point in the early hours the cloud rolled back and the temperature dropped like the proverbial. We shivered, shuddered, turned over and went back to sleep, to awaken to the gentle sound of rain pattering on canvas. Ah yes; camping in Scotland. It all came rushing back. Nothing ventured, as the saying starts, so we got up and out and wombled off to Loch Garten and Abernethy Forest. We felt that we were tougher than needing to visit a luxury Osprey-observation-facility, so headed along the tracks between the dripping pines - all very atmospheric - and admired such delights as downy Goldeneye ducklings, Common Sandpipers twiddling on the lochside and a quartet of Red Squirrels having the most almighty bust-up. It couldn't have been a more acrobatic sight if it were the olympic gymnastics - there were squirrels hurtling up and down treetrunks with reckless abandon, chasing each other out into the thinnest of the branches - and dropping out of them - bounding helter-skelter across the logs, heather and juniper on the ground and starting the whole breathless endeavour all over again. Never did find out what it was all about though.

Loch Mallachie looking gloomy and romantic. In a perverse sort of fashion.

A hot drink was needed, so we settled down on the banks of Loch G., got out the gas-stove and brewed up some soup. Mid-way through this warming exercise we noticed a smallish duck with a trio of ducklings in tow. With some incredulity we watched this female Wigeon paddle serenely to the shore next to us, haul out and lead her young into the grass beside us. She constantly talked to them with a subdued version of the husky growl that you hear from the flocks in winter, whilst they piped excitedly back and dashed around the bankside feeding on insects and plants.

Wigeon plus one of the three ducklings

Sunday. Cairn Gorm.

In a similar fashion to the previous night, the cloud rolled back - but this time we awoke to glorious sunshine. This was the opportunity we were awaiting, so we scarfed down our breakfast and set out for a brisk walk onto the Cairngorm plateau. The way up is either short and nasty, long and steady or up the funicular railway - fortunately the latter starts at 10 in the morning and passengers aren't allowed out of the Ptarmigan Restaurant's grounds when at the top, unless they're on an organised tour. We slogged up the short and nasty route, stopping for Wheatears, Meadow Pipits and breath. Eventually we reached close view of a patch of snow, where two incredibly under-dressed birders were scoping for Ptarmigan. We stopped for a mouthful of water, scanned quickly with the bins, and headed on up - only to bump into a family party of Ptarmigan within about 5 minutes. We stopped and admired the beautifully patterned chicks, still in their down coats, and the amazingly cryptic female who chuckled away to her chicks the whole time we watched. We eventually moved off on and up, past the restaurant and up to the peak, where another cup of soup was in order whilst we admired the view east into Aberdeenshire and north up to the Moray Firth. Fine indeed!

We continued on around the mountain, skirting along the ridge towards Ben Macdui. A snatch of Snow Bunting song held us up for a while, but as he seemed happy to use a corrie as an echo-box, we let him be and continued along our way. We soon came across a fabulous spring-head, with rolling waves of Purple Spoonwort cascading down the wettest track: it would have been interesting to stop and search the mosses and liverworts more thoroughly, but I have no great wish to cause boredom and strife with Na, so we wandered on in search of birds. Eventually we found ourselves looking onto the slopes of Ben Macdui, with a cracking male Ptarmigan close by. As I scanned around the rocks - more in hope than expectation - a male Dotterel popped his head over a rock and gave me a dirty look. Close by was a female, with at least one downy chick trotting rapidly back and forth across the stony heath. We watched them from a restrained distance, then strolled over to admire a pair of Snow Buntings, and finally began to make our way back down the mountainside to some shelter and lunch. The journey back to the car was enlivened by a selection of nice montane plants: Globeflower, Trailing Azalea, Dwarf Cornel and also what appeared to be a clump of White Wood-rush.

Purple Spoonwort cascades down the moutainsides...

The Cairngorm plateau from the top.

Trailing Azalea

We tried a bit of hide-based birding at Insh Marshes to round the day off, but there really wasn't anything going on. A couple of Roe Deer grazing on the edge of the marsh were the highlight, so we headed back for a well-deserved dinner.

Surprise, surprise surprise surprise

2011-06-15T17:18:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I was helping to run some training for colleagues. During the indoor session I noticed a Wren dashing rapidly back and forth, as if it was visiting a nest - and when we took our lunch-break, I had a look. There, sure enough was a Wren carrying food up to the edge of the office. More interestingly it was carrying it to an open-fronted nestbox. 'Aha,' thought I, 'this is an opportunity to have a quick butchers at the contents of a Wren's nest without disturbing the nest itself' - wrens tend to build a mossy globe of a nest which you can't check for eggs/nestlings without damaging; something no responsible person wants to do. But, a nest in a nestbox offers a chance to peek in through the front without touching...

Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) at open-fronted nestbox

...so...

today I remembered to go and check the nest. I scrambled up the ladder with a colleague at the bottom, waiting to ~~watch and laugh~~ catch me if I fell, and to have a quick look at the nest herself. Typically the ladder was a tad too short, so I was balanced a little precariously near the top when I got my line of sight over the rim of the nestbox...

...and....

Big enough to swallow a poor wren!

WHAM! A huge orange gape came lunging out of the nest. At this point I nearly did fall off the ladder - partly though shock, partly through excitement: we have a baby cuckoo which has taken over the Wren's nest on the office! Interestingly, the Wrens seem to have taken over the box from something else themselves - the biter bit, you might say - but it seems to be the Cuckoo which will have the last laugh. I apologise for the shocking pictures, but it's so dark up there as to be almost unworkable, and trying to manually focus a lens whilst balancing on the top of a ladder is not for the faint-hearted, I can assure you.

With a little care and balancing, it was eased out of the nest, ringed, and returned to the mossy comforts of it's home, where the poor wrens lost no time in resuming their feeding - they'll be worn to a frazzle by the end of this season.

Juvenile - pullus, in fact - Cuckoo. Interesting to note the number of white feathers on the head.

A timely pointer also to some on-going research on the behaviour of Cuckoos: we know next-to-nothing about their migration routes or wintering grounds, so the BTO have begun a project which has satellite-tagged 5 male Cuckoos in East Anglia and is following them through their breeding - and their post-breeding seasons, with some unexpected results already... well worth a look. You can follow - and sponsor - each individual cuckoo if you so wish.

A final point of some vague interest is that this is the second Cuckoo chick we've found on site this year, both attended by wrens - presumably the same female Cuckoo's work. Comfy nest to grow up in, mind.

TO...YP

2011-06-05T19:36:00.001+01:00

It's turned noisy in the garden now. The air is filled with a shrill insistent demanding whine, as recently-fledged Blue, Great and Coal Tits work a determined line along the trees and through the veg. The potatoes seem to be particularly favoured at the moment, which leads me to suppose that there is some sort of insect food to be had there - perhaps the aphids have found the potatoes themselves and are now being snacked on by the growing birds.

Moving out to the edge of the moors, and the situation is similar, though the number of birds out in the scrub is greater still. The addition of broods of Marsh, Long-tailed and Willow Tits, and the first fledgling Chiffchaffs, as well as a smattering of Robins makes the willow scrub echo with begging calls first thing in the morning. The grass has grown appreciably in the last month, and the first flowers of Creeping Soft-grass - Holcus mollis - are showing. Ragged-robin and Yellow Flag-iris raise patches of shocking pink and yellow flowers up above the green on occasion; the former is something of a magnet for Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary butterflies at the moment, creating an outrageous clash of vivid pink and orange which somehow seems to look perfect.

Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary amongst Ragged-robin. The butterfly is mid-way between meals, which is why it's not sharp.

Maturing Large Red Damsel. Everything's in the throes of growing up and/or breeding at present. It's a fabulous time of year.

The Pied Flycatchers are also fledging in the woods. One, or perhaps two, more visits and we'll be finished with them for the year - it's frightening how quickly the season goes in many respects. Nice to see that we've again had a good breeding season for them this year (so far!) and we can hope for a good number of returning birds next year, all things being equal.

Pied Flycatcher and young. The youngsters at this stage haven't yet got to their full feathered state, so look like a cross between gawky teenager and Sesame Street character.

Male House Sparrow framed amongst the remains of our old kitchen

David and the Owl

2011-05-27T20:59:00.000+01:00

A cold and almost frosty morning is a good time to be up at the crack of dawn, especially at this time of year. The world is devoid of human life, at least in our neck of the woods, and the only sounds are birds getting on with the business of the season, which is - well - doing the business.

The latest visit to our shared ringing site paid off with a spectacularly unexpected Tawny Owl in the net. He seemed a little out of sorts, as was only to be expected, but that's all part of the fun of it. Interestingly I've been seeing day-active Tawnies a lot recently, perhaps because food's been hard to come by for them and they have a growing family to feed.

More exciting still than the owl, though, was an unexpected mist-net catch: a Narrow-bordered Bee Hawkmoth. Despite being well tangled in the net, we eventually extracted it without major harm - some scales rubbed off the abdomen - brought it back for a quick photoshoot and watched it warm up, and head off into the blue.

Despite the lack of rain in this part of the UK - seems more like the southeast than the southwest - there is plenty going on. Our 'lawn' has come out with a spectacular show of Yellow Rattle. This is a semi-parasitic plant which is often found in good quality hay-meadows, and was a component of the green hay we spread across scarified ground last autumn, hoping for something a bit more interesting than the dog-muck-fertilised Perennial Rye-grass that we then had. The lack of rain hasn't helped much, but a bit of diligent watering and some luck has produced a nice selection of species, including Hairy Tare, Black Knapweed and a handful of eyebrights.

Since this last ringing trip I've been out on the moors doing site assessments, which haven't necessarily resulted in a lot of interesting things to write about. A draggled-looking Pale Tussock caterpillar (I think) on some Soft Rush was a nice find, though I have a sneaking suspicion that it is in fact dead...

...some spectacularly warty lichens growing on the granite...

and some atmospheric Hare's-tail Cottongrass waving in the wind.

What...

2011-05-05T19:01:00.000+01:00

...is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Desperate to get out of Devon, we shot up the M5 like scalded cats last weekend. We threw ourselves out of the car, clapped on various bits of kit and trotted smartly into the Avalon Marshes, where we were greeted by a dodgy-looking geezer with a tunic and horse who asked if we'd seen Merlin. Na gave him her Paddington-Bear-stare, and we shunted on into the wetland, past a watery tart waving a sword around (shouldn't be allowed) and into the relative safety of a nice quiet hide.

The memorable page about the sexual proclivities of otters was no longer there in the logbook (shame) - I couldn't find it anyway - and true to form we missed seeing one by about 20 minutes, but the sound of a booming Bittern and the sight of a Hobby or two elegantly drifting over the waters took the edge off the disappointment. I was slightly stunned by the number and variety of dragonflies already out - Large Red, Azure, Blue-tailed, Red-eyed and Variable Damselflies all in numbers, and Hairy Dragonflies and Four-spotted Chasers like you wouldn't believe. We must have hit a major emergence of the latter, actually, as they were literally everywhere: clouds of them lifting from sheltered spots. Surprised the Hobbies could still fly, to be honest.

A prolonged stroll through the reserve produced no fewer than five booming Bitterns - one of which we saw briefly - and a couple of Marsh Harriers, as well as perhaps the most pompous photographer it's been my pleasure to listen to for a long time. Maybe the lens was compensating... We also bumped into a small flock of Black-tailed Godwits, all gingerbread-red and ready for Iceland, as well as a trio of Bar-taileds, though sadly they were all pretty much in winter duds. And a final treat: our first Swifts of the year drifted over amongst the Hobby flock. Mmmm. Nice.

Just to prove that summer's on the way, plenty of nice invertebrates have been out and about locally...

Hoverfly. Species.

Green Tiger-beetle.

Brown Silver-lines. This one has an unfortunate disability: one hindwing has somehow become twisted and now sticks up over it's back like an aeroplane's tailfin. Don't think it's a survivor.

Small Purple-barred moth. Now flying on a heathland near me.

Common Redstart. Having serenaded us from the roof of the office, he sat nicely in the neighbouring Rowan so I could take some distant photos.

White Rock-rose Helianthemum apenninum. For no other reason than they're pretty.

Signs of things like spring

2011-04-26T20:45:00.000+01:00

As things seem to have been a little quiet of late, here are a few of the bright points of spring in our part of the world. For almost the last two months we've been pretty much rain-free, which is unusual, and it's starting to be a little worrisome for the sake of our garden veg. That's beside the point though...

The sun hits the back of our house full-on, so early on in the year the plants get a good boost of warmth and get on with flowering. We're then visited by a variety of invertebrates, bumblebees and honey-bees first, then overwintering butterflies and an increasingly varied crop of flies, bees, wasps, moths and beetles. As it stands, we've not got a great deal in the way of early-flowering plants to offer them nectar, but the bank of grape-hyacinth behind the door is particularly popular with the bees.

Honey-bee at grape-hyacinth.

Soon the birds get in on the act. Song swells from the odd Robin and Great Tit, then they're joined by Mistle Thrush, Woodpigeon, Song Thrush, Dunnock, Wren, Blackbird... and it's not long before we're seeing Blackbirds and Robins hurtling through the garden with beaks full of nest material, looking like some kind of surreal handlebar moustache.

Blackbird nest. This one in a particularly vulnerable place, next to a track and almost on the ground - in fact no more than 20cm off.

The variety of flowers on offer in the garden also starts to increase, and the bees are quick to take advantage. From the early few Bombus terrestris, we're now seeing a nice variety of bumblebees, including the ambulatory ginger-snap which is Bombus pascuorum.

Bombus pascuorum.

By this time there are plenty of other species beginning to emerge in the woods and lanes around the house, and working out of the Yarner NNR office has its advantages when there is a wealth of wildlife around to enliven lunch-breaks...

Pearl-bordered Fritillary. A species which emerges early in the season, and has benefited from the last few years of warm dry springs down here in Devon.

Woodpigeon. The half-murmured growling coo of Woodpigeons is one of my favourite sounds, always associated with hot, lazy, sunny afternoons, redolent with the hum of bees and hoverflies and the scent of green things growing.

And now, by the end of April, we've got the first brood of Robins squalling for food just beyond the fence - dicing with death at the hands of the neighbours' cats. Given that about 90% of young birds die in their first year, their chances aren't good, but for the moment the weather at least is doing them a favour. Shame I can't say the same for the local cats...

Robin. One of the early broods to come out - much squealing and agitation when mum or dad hove into view with a juicy morsel.

Finally, I was lucky enough to see what looks like a Large Tortoiseshell butterfly in my in-laws' garden on Saturday:

Large Tortoiseshell - believe it or not. A species probably now extinct in Britain and only occurring as an escape, a deliberate release or as a wandering vagrant on easterly winds. Given the state of this one, I'm going for the latter!

Dartmoor's most elusive mammal...

2011-04-01T08:04:00.000+01:00

Have you ever walked the blanket bogs of Dartmoor? They can seem like an empty, open, drear place with little wildlife and an apparently limitless expanse of Molinia – a Chameleon-like grass which changes in character from purple-tinted green in summer to winter white. You may have heard the bubbling trill of Skylarks, the 'sweet-sweet-sweet' calls and songs of Meadow Pipits and perhaps, in the loneliest and most remote areas, the dry trilling calls of Dunlin. Other than these hardy birds and a specialist invertebrate fauna, you could be forgiven for thinking the place was pretty empty. Not so: take time, walk quietly and spend some time looking carefully at those bog pools – some are the home of a very special mammal: the Dartmoor Pygmy Sperm Whale. Known scientifically as Microkogia devoniensis, this is not only the sole freshwater European cetacean, but is also the world’s smallest whale; and it is a shy endemic resident of open bog pools on the blanket mires of Dartmoor.

Dartmoor Pygmy Sperm Whale - a rare glimpse in summer in an exceptionally well-vegetated pool. The flat back with dorsal fin just out of the water is characteristic of logging behaviour like this. They are easily disturbed, though, and an unwary footfall will result in nothing more than an expanding ring of ripples on the surface. This animal may be a lone bull, perhaps an adolescent feeding in the rich waters until he is of sufficient size to be capable of competing for a mate.

The Dartmoor Pygmy Sperm Whale is a fraction of the size of its better-known relatives - which include the world’s largest animal (the Blue Whale, Balaenoptera musculus). Measuring a maximum of 16cm from nose to tail, this is a unique creature in many different ways.

Much remains to be discovered about the biology and ecology of these diminutive specialities of the Dartmoor uplands. They appear to spend much of their time feeding in amongst the fringes of the Sphagnum moss which grows into the pools, perhaps hunting small invertebrates or even freshly-hatched tadpoles. There has been speculation that they even burrow their way into the mats of Sphagnum, though there is as yet no evidence of such behaviour. Their whereabouts in winter are also a mystery, although there have been reports of sightings at the ice fringe in the hardest weather, suggesting they probably remain faithful to their summer haunts throughout the year. It seems likely that they are able to live off their fat reserves through the tough winter conditions.

The clearest image yet obtained of this elusive species: the characteristic humped back and stubby projecting dorsal fin of a whale about to make a deep dive to the submerged vegetation. This appears to be an exceptionally large bull; the cows are more frequently seen, and are significantly smaller.

Your best chance of seeing one of these remarkable beasts is to find a bog pool, sit quietly and scan the water’s surface for the telltale ‘blow’ the animals make when they come to the surface. Their diminutive size means they surface rapidly, and even in a light wind, the ripples on the water’s surface can be sufficient to hide them. They rarely lift any part of their body far clear of the water, although tail-slapping and fin-beating are not unknown during their spring courtship period. However, other typical cetacean behaviour such as breaching is as yet unknown in the species.

Keep a close eye on the water when you're out there...

South Devon coast-walking

2011-03-02T17:48:00.000Z

This is more like it! Spring is in the air. If you don't know how to tell that in the UK, here's a tip: the rain gets warmer and the wind blusters around you when you go out, trying playfully to tease your coat from your shoulders. It's a little like the old fable about the sun and the wind, competing to persuade a man to take his coat off as a test of which was the superior weather: the wind huffs and puffs, blows and blusters and all the man does is clutch his coat around himself. The sun shines bright and hot, and foom!: off comes the coat. Being Britain, of course, the wind then gets in on the act again and the coat goes back on. Then the sun tries again, and off comes the coat - and then the rain gets in on the act and you start all over again...

Still, Spring seems to be springing - the birds are singing more consistently, and it's easier and easier to find flowers out there: the first Celandines I'd noticed last week suddenly followed by Early (I think) Dog-violet, Primrose, and a few Red Dead-nettles. The glossy shield-shapes of Cuckoopint leaves are prominent in the base of the hedgerows, and a flush of green is climbing up from them, as Cleavers, nettles and Red Campion get themselves going for the year. All in all, it's pretty heartening.

We walked from Sidmouth to Branscombe, following the beach between Seaton Mouth and Branscombe, returning along the South West coast-path on a blustery, showery, invigorating day. The climb out of Sidmouth led to superb views west along the coast, with the town sprawled white in the valley, the old red sandstone cliffs rising abruptly to the west, levelling off to the flat land around Otterton and then drifting into an increasingly blue distance. The lines of showers were clear to see, marching down the flanks of Dartmoor and through the South Hams.

Sidmouth and the western cliffs

We continued on to Seaton Mouth, choosing to skirt the land and follow the shingle beach east. We distracted ourselves for a while looking at a plethora of fossils in some of the more recent landslip - all shells and tracks, patterns and marks, but fascinating to muse on, especially when you start to think about the layers with and without fossils, and the periods of time that elapse between.

The long trudge along the shingle was brightened by Rock Pipits flustering from the tideline, Peregrines gliding effortlessly overhead and the occasional presence of clumps of Coltsfoot, shining yellow on the pinky-red sandstone.

Coltsfoot

The western fringe of the Jurassic Coast, looking east towards the Isle of Portland

The foot of the cliff is also marked along this section by lines and streaks of salmon-pink stone, which occasionally twist and contort into shattered-mirror fragments, hinting at some cataclysmic event millions upon millions of years in the past. Of course, I could be utterly wrong about that. For periods the pink stripes are mirrored by a soft blue-grey clayey material which must have been somewhat softer than the surrounding sands or muds, as it appears in blotches and dots either side of the main stripe: rather as if a painter had walked several miles along the beach with a pot of grey paint, occasionally shaking the excess off their brush or carelessly dripping onto the rocks either side.

Stripy-stripy

Branscombe Mouth from the top of the slope to the west. It's a steep old climb, but on a day like this, the view is well worth it.

We eventually reached Branscombe, scarfed a welcome ice-cream, and headed back along the mud-slicked coast-path, trudging up a series of punishing hillsides, then coasting along the level tops, before plunging back to the valley floors. The brisk northerly wind made it a very good idea to keep moving at a steady pace, admiring the view which was now shower-free, and clear all the way to north Dartmoor, nearly 40 miles to the west.

Looking west towards Seaton in the distance

Couldn't resist messing with the exposure

A gratuitous picture of spring-like stuff for you

Isle of Man. Part II

2011-03-01T17:28:00.000Z

Time flies by. Sorry. Our trip to the island was rounded off by a patchwork of ringing, abortive ringing, birding and walking - we headed over to a harrier roost to admire a handful of birds coming in to sleep, we spent time in a local garden ringing normal garden fare, we walked the Agniesh Valley to the old mine spoils (and boy, are the motorcyclists making a mess up there!) and we rounded it all off with a pleasant couple of hours at a brand-new wetland near Onchen and at Derbyhaven Bay. Brief, and to the point.

Hen Harrier, in the dim

Near Snaefell

Snaefell

Chris. And Kay's hat.

Evening light

Langness from Castletown

Isle of Man

2011-02-07T19:55:00.000Z

It just draws you back... Na and I caught the early-morning flight from Birmingham to be with Chris & Kay for the weekend. From a drear grey English morning to a bright, sunny Manx morning, fresh with promise of walks and wildlife and a few nice meals with friends... Castletown was positively glowing in the sun when we stumbled out of the airport and down for a restorative coffee in Kay's pad. The day brightened still further with a small party of Choughs flying down past the window to forage in the deep beds of sea-washed wrack on the tideline. They are always a pleasure to watch, with their cheerful-sounding 'cheeow' call and their constant wing-flicking and self-important walk. Whilst we admired the Choughs, a couple of dapper Eiders dived for shellfish just off the breaking surf.

We headed out for a walk round into Port St Mary Bay, following the round-island coastal path across fine maritime grassland in the teeth of a fresh onshore breeze. A Stonechat perched up on a gorse-bush gave us all pause for pleasure - they've been hit hard by the cold weather over the last two winters, and this was the first any of us had seen this year. We carried on round into Port St Mary Bay, where a Little Egret pranced around one of the rockpools, amidst a flock of large gulls, a scatter of Wigeon and a pair of Gadwall - a relatively unusual bird for this part of the island.

Tired heads forced a return to the greasy spoon in Castletown, where a solid helping of bacon rolls and egg-&-chips got the cholesterol pumping once again, and we headed north to Laxey.

Choughs, bickering over who should eat that particular juicy sandhopper

Saturday saw an early start, heading north to the old gravel pits near the Point of Ayre, where Chris had a bird-monitoring transect to walk. We helped. The pis are typical worked-out gravel extraction, with a sandy, shingly ruderal look to them, and a good selection of duck lurking on the pools. The bulk were Pochard, Tufted Duck, Mallard, Wigeon and Goldeneye, but a couple of Goosander lurked in one corner, and the large flock of Greylag and farmyard geese held a single Greenland White-front and a rather less convincing Bar-headed Goose. The geese eventually decided we were more risk than they liked to run, so headed off for pastures west, leaving the duck and ourselves breathing a collective sigh of relief at the lowered noise levels. The final pool held a pleasant surprise: a small flock of Whooper Swans circling nervously on the far side, heads bobbing and tails waggling. We carefully left them in peace and finished off the transect.

A brief sea-watch at the point produced almost nothing of note, bar a couple of distant Scotsmen on the adjacent mainland (you could tell they were Scots because they were wearing kilts). A Gannet or two, single Kittiwake and Red-throated Diver and a handful of unidentifiable auks do not a seawatch session make, so we headed back to Ramsey and another welcome cholesterol feast. We left in timely fashion, to the welcome sight of a Kingfisher on the harbour wall: we duly admired it and then headed off to the Curragh. A short quiet walk around the site paid dividends: no fewer than five Red-necked Wallabies were seen, all watching us with deep suspicion from the shelter of the woodlands.

Red-necked Wallaby through the trees. They eat Purple Moorgrass - perhaps we should be using them to maintain the south-west Culm grasslands...

Wallaby no.1. They not only look quite rabbit-like in profile, but they occupy a similar ecological niche

Red-necked Wallaby. A final goodbye.

Frozen cold

2010-12-29T09:48:00.000Z

Some winter cheer - best wishes to anyone who's reading that you have a happy and successful 2011.

You may have heard that the UK's been suffering the coldest December for a century: it's certainly been an interesting one down here in Devon! A bit of chilly weather in mid-December, whilst the rest of the country was gripped by ice and snow, left some of us feeling smug and happy that we lived in the 'soft south'...

Pre-snow, Exminster Marshes in the first hint of the cold weather: the pools all frozen and almost every bird on or around the main storage lagoon on the site. Picturesque, though.

A pale and watery sunrise, reminiscent of Turner's work. Only in England...

Reed Bunting

However, a short while later a 20cm layer of snow appeared overnight, wiping the smile off my face. A nice selection of interesting birds promptly appeared in the garden, including the expected Brambling, Redwing and Fieldfare, and a thoroughly unexpected Moorhen, walking down the neighbours' hedge!

Chaffinches were confused by the depth of the snow

A poor and grotty photo of a nice bird in the garden: Redwing

Even the squirrels were out making snowmen

Moorhen wondering what on Earth is going on.

And of course, a sunny day makes a perfect opportunity for a walk and a chance to take some pictures.

The river Bovey, as it ripples and roils downstream to join the Teign

Dipper

Holly in the Bovey

Holly in the Bovey. Again.

Snow, snow, snow...

Freezing fog dusts a lone oak on the edge of the Parke estate

The river Bovey between Bovey Tracey and Lustleigh, steaming in the early morning sunshine

Frozen birch

More frozen frosty snowy trees. You know the score.

Yarner woods looking monochromatic and chaotic

The clear skies and even layer of snow also made a very nice combination to take the camera for a walk when we headed over to my parents' place for Christmas.

Haldon Belvedere in the evening sun

Nice male Brambling. Through the parents' double-glazing.

Blue Tit

The lure of a handful of apples was enough to bring in plenty of Blackbirds and Starlings, with Song Thrush, Redwing and Fieldfare thrown in for good measure. One female Blackbird in particular was extremely aggressive, chasing everything - even Fieldfares - off 'her' apples.

Blackbird vs Song Thrush

Blackbird makes victory salute after a first round KO

Apples: they've got tough skins...

...takes some effort to get...

...that...little...

...bit of...(aargh)...

skin off!

Just as a thaw was predicted, the temperatures tumbled lower: Boxing Day morning saw a rather nippy -7C at my parents' house, close to Exeter (I know it's nothing compared to many others, but cold enough for us, thankyou very much!) - a walk around Exminster Marshes that morning was particularly interesting.

To begin with, the canal was frozen solid. A small hole in the ice was kept free by a group of Coot, with a pair of Gadwall and a single Little Grebe - all moving rather sluggishly in the cold.

The Exeter ship canal, sans ships.

Coot freezing into the canal

Spot the Gadwall

Coots still freezing in the ice. Little Grebe huddling in for warmth.

A little further along the canal, a small seep of flowing water into a ditch was providing a life-line for a Water Rail; normally a bird which is extremely wary - this one was presumably so close to the edge that it let us wander past a few metres away without running for cover.

Water Rail, on the edge

At the Turf Locks hotel, a disconsolate group of Black-tailed Godwit, Lapwing and Oystercatcher huddled on the frosty grass, whilst Dunlin and Black-tailed Godwit flew up and down river, searching for the earliest opportunity to get onto fresh mud before it froze solid.

Black-tailed Godwit - looking odd because its legs are tucked in to its belly, rather than flapping along behind - they look oddly chesty in this pose.

Turf locks jetty

Lapwing heading over to check whether the marshes are snow-free yet. Nope.

Crystals on the fringes of the snow

To cap it all, ice floes were floating down the river Exe on the ebbing tide, with cargoes of Lapwing and Dunlin. Quite, quite surreal!

Lapwing and Dunlin drift downriver on ice-floe.

Reed-heads in the growing sunlight

Lapwings looking mournful in the snow

Lapwing on ice

Cheers... to a successful 2011!

Drake is going west, lad

2010-12-07T17:45:00.000Z

So off we headed east. The weather was a pleasure - down in Devonshire at least. We wombled off to Cambridgeshire to walk round Wicken Fen, arriving just in time to have a short walk around Britain's oldest National Nature Reserve before dark. Vast numbers of woodpigeons clattered out of the trees as we worked our way around the western side of the site, with Reed Buntings diving into the fen to roost and Snipe rocketing out of the fen to feed. We spent a while munching chocolate cake and watching the swirling starlings from the tower hide, as Marsh Harriers gathered to roost; all rounded off with a fine Barn Owl floating low along the canal banks in front of us and a ringtail Hen Harrier which nearly flew through the hide on its way to roost in the sedge-fen.

A rather Turner-esque sunset over Wicken Fen.

A bright and bitter morning dawned on us unsuspecting Devonians, as we circumnavigated the horrendous Cambridge traffic and headed off across the unremittingly flat Cambridgeshire countryside to Welney WWT. Clear skies meant that the temperature had dropped off strongly, so most of the little water present on the floodplain was frozen solid. A mass of Whooper Swans were feeding intently on food left out for them in front of the main hide, along with a handful of Greylags. A nicely mixed bag of ducks - Mallard, Teal, Wigeon, Pochard and Shoveler were loafing and preening in front of the hide, whilst a host of Wigeon grazed the banks on the far side of the floodplain. Lapwing were scattered across the grassland, looking miserably cold...

The Ouse Washes - mainly frozen but very beautiful

Whooper Swans make sure to keep the Greylags at bay as they feed

We finally returned to the cafe, had a cup of tea and admired the feeding frenzy of Collared Doves, Jackdaws, Greenfinches and House Sparrows on the feeders outside, with a handful of Tree Sparrows mixed in. Time to move on, after scanning quickly through the flocks of swans on the neighbouring fields, just to have a look at some Bewick's Swans amongst the Whoopers - not so easy to pick up quickly when everyone's up to their nostrils in mud! Fortunately the size difference helps.

Whooper and Bewick's Swans on the fields near Welney

A brief covey of Grey Partridge later (whatever happened to those in Devon?!) we continued on to Norfolk - a marginally less flat county than Cambs. As we were on holiday, we took the scenic route through the back-roads, rather than mingling with everyone else on the A149. Half-way to Holkham we happened upon a flock of some 3,000 Pink-footed Geese, which gave us the perfect opportunity to hold up, have lunch and enjoy the sounds of the flock squeaking and squabbling.

Pink-footed Geese in the Norfolk hinterlands

On we drove, towards a blank wall of dark sky - which eventually dumped a couple of inches of snow on us over the next 20 minutes. We carefully navigated our way through to Holkham, thanking everything possible that we'd chosen to take the quiet roads, coughed up £2 for parking and went off for another wander, admired the sunset and finally booked in to our B&B (Arch House; very comfy, and a superb cooked breakfast - can thoroughly recommend).

Sunset looking from Holkham Gap towards Burnham Overy and Scolt Head

Saturday morning saw us up bright and early, and walking out into the teeth of an inordinately stiff northerly wind. The birds were - unsurprisingly, but disappointingly - completely blown out. Several disconsolate-looking Lapwing were huddled on the local pitch-and-putt golf course, apparently waiting for the weather to ease. A handful of Sanderling scurried around on the beach, along with a few Turnstone as we struggled along from Wells to Holkham - the happiest-looking group were gorging on the remains of a small dogfish. We pottered along steadily, and finally swung into the dunes at Holkham Gap, where we erected the tripod, poured some soup and waited for the local group of Shorelarks to emerge. Despite a nice flock of Skylark and Linnet showing well, we lost out on the Shorelarks, due in large part to the behaviour of the other people looking for them: one group in particular stringing out into a line and walking the saltmarsh in order to flush the birds. Hardly fair on the birds in sub-zero temperatures and force 6 winds.

We gave up rapidly, rather than join in the 'fun', and went to look across the marsh which lies inland of the pine-tree belt. We quickly found a superb Rough-legged Buzzard, which kept us occupied for a while and made Na's several-hundredth new bird seen this year. The marshes were pickled with Wigeon, Teal and Mallard, and a fine drake Goldeneye was lurking on a small pool on the edge of the trees, but there was little else to distract us, so we continued along the coast to Cley-next-the-sea and the famous Cley Marshes.

Looking from Cley to Blakeney, along the shingle beach. A stiff northerly wind made it tough to see what might be on the sea, not to mention the shivers at the thought of being out on that 'orrible North Sea chop.

The wind hadn't abated in the slightest, so we were rather limited - a stroll along the beach, dropping in to the North Scrape hide along the way. Since the Environment Agency finally decided that an annual bulldozer-fest to maintain an artificially high shingle ridge was no longer economic, the ridge has become far more natural-looking, with some superb washover fans, and the marsh behind has now become slightly more saline, by the look of it. A sprinkling of Wigeon and Teal on the scrape hid a couple of Shoveler and Gadwall, with three Avocet snoozing regally behind them.

Brent Geese over Cley Marshes - whilst we admired the North Norfolk coastal marshes and huddled out of the freezing wind as best we could, the Brents got up from the west and headed east - just like us...

Brent Geese

Little Egret. Superbly camouflaged amongst the snow, when it comes.

Cley, looking west along the shingle ridge. Smashing washover fans of shingle now that the bank is no longer maintained by force. Looking towards the North Scrape hide.

Our final full day in Norfolk was characterised by an absolute lack of photos. After a late start and a leisurely cooked breakfast in the local greasy spoon, we headed for a walk round Roydon Common in the west of the county. The skies grew steadily darker as we drove, and by the time we arrived it was positively crepuscular. Despite that we had a pleasant walk, seeing such delights as Fallow Deer, Common Buzzard (relatively rare out there!) and Tree Sparrow, but nary a glimmer of light worth photography...

We left Norwich - finally - after an abortive attempt to see Waxwings and stopped for a quick wander around Thetford Forest. We took a short walk to freshen the cobwebs out of our lungs, but with snow falling more and more heavily, it felt like a good time to head west, like Drake, for the relative comfort and security of sub-zero Devon.

Snowfall in Thetford Forest

National London bus aquarium

2010-11-23T21:23:00.000Z

You wait for ages, then they all come at once. Some pictures from a recent visit to the National Marine Aquarium at Plymouth. Not all of the titles of the pictures are accurate...

Plymouth sound from Sutton Harbour

Plumose Anemones

1980s Headbanging Anemone

Many-tentacled leaping anemone

Upwards Snakelocks Anemone

Downwards Snakelocks Anemone

Moon Jellyfish + Helena

Moon Jellyfish+Chris

Indigo Zombiefish.

Bandy shrimp

Frondy cammofish

Giant Pacific Octopus.

Yellow man-eating anemone

Yellow fish-eating anemone+clownfish

Catshark

~~John Prescott~~ Lumpfish?

Thorny starfish

Lionfish

Coral reef tank

New birds, old birds, autumn

2010-11-23T20:53:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be in the office when news of a 'possible' American Robin began to spread around the county. As only the fourth record for Devon, and perhaps the first on the mainland, it was quite a draw - add in the fact that the last time I was able to try and twitch (ouch) one, it was last seen the day before I got there. Despite some initial scepticism about the reliability of the sighting, there were plenty of people out searching, so I was able to take a leisurely wander to the site during an extended lunch-break, dodge some nasty, nasty rain showers and see a right beautiful bird before the ravening hordes descended at the weekend.

American Robin. Despite the poor photo, you can see the pale fringes to the greater coverts (halfway down the wing, if you didn't already know!) which age it as a 1st-winter bird. Worth wondering where it came from, as most of the Redwings here in SW England seem to be Scandinavian rather than Icelandic. Speculation all the way!

Soon after this piece of unashamed twitching, I was back on site, leading a training event about waterbird ID and ecology for some colleagues, with the help of a friend of ours. By some unaccountable event, we gathered on one of the two calm, sunny days sandwiched between howling winds and lashing rain. We started with a slow wander up the river from Powderham Church to Turf Locks... Immediately, we were faced with a mixed bag of waders and wildfowl feeding quietly on the rising tide: Black-tailed and Bar-tailed Godwits, Oystercatchers and Curlew, with a smattering of Wigeon and Brent Geese. A raft of female &/or juvenile Red-breasted Mergansers drifted gently upriver, and several small flocks of Avocet and Dunlin flew past.

Early days learning waterbirds... and just how far away waders can be.

Powderham marshes in the sunshine

Further upriver, we stopped to look at the quantity of bird footprints on the intertidal mud, coming right to the edge of the sea-wall, showing how much of the river the birds use at night when disturbance is lower - and bumped into the tracks of an otter, heading straight out across the mud, tail dragging behind it. First time I've seen evidence of Otter on the Exe myself, though I know several people who've seen the beasts themselves in the area.

Otter tracks - next best thing to seeing an Otter.

A little further on upriver, we were treated to spectacular views of a male Red-breasted Merganser feeding with utter aplomb just a few metres offshore; diving with barely a ripple, then bringing back a number of small fish to the surface where they were then squeezed and manipulated until they slipped down his throat - prompting much speculation as to the sensations experienced by both bird and fish! Can't say the fish gets much of a deal out of it, but there you go.

Drake Red-breasted Merganser, sans fish

Soon after this, we came across a flock of Lapwing doing just exactly what Lapwing do; bobbling around a grassy field amongst a herd of cattle, until a passing motorised parachute-thingy dropped down the marshes, circled the cattle and put them all to flight: a perfect demonstration of the effects of casual disturbance...

A temporary disturbance, but they all add up...

Soon after this, whilst we watched a cluster of Black-tailed Godwits probing deep into the mud, Amanda let out a cry of 'Ooh! - a Kingfisher!' and sure enough, there was a smart bird sat on the end of the jetty below Turf Locks, fishing in the canal-Exe confluence, and staying still long enough for everyone to enjoy good views through the telescopes.

Looking to the Turf Locks hotel

The gang get to grips with distant blobs, Avocets, Redshank and godwits

which are all out there. Somewhere.

A short while later, we managed to walk past the American Robin - and it's attendant twitchers - without so much as a backwards glance; the first time I've ever managed to walk past a major UK rarity without stopping to look. Weird feeling, I have to confess! After discussing twitchers and their various habits for a short digression, we spent a while scanning the marshes and discussing freshwater waterfowl and waders,from swans to Snipe. The marshes and pools were not particularly busy, compared with how things can be in midwinter, but a liberal dash of Wigeon and Black-tailed Godwit were on the fields, with a smattering of Teal, Shoveler, Tufted Duck, Coot and Gadwall on the pools - a backing track of Water Rail and Cetti's Warblers kept us company from the scrubby ditches.

The Exe from Powderham on a rising tide.

Finally we tracked back to the cars, then headed downriver to have a look off the back of Dawlish Warren and watch the departing roost. The weather and the tide combined to frustrate us, though, so we had to be content with views across the estuary and a very slowly ebbing tide, with a dusting of ducks up Shutterton Creek and a cloud of Woodpigeon in the adjacent copse.

A few Dartmoor autumn pictures follow, for the hell of it...:

The ascent of fungi

Between Hexworthy and Dartmeet

Dartmeet

More fungi, but not ascending - more like an exploded brain, really

Nuthatch

Dartmeet

Black-headed gulls again

2010-10-29T17:00:00.000+01:00

Must be winter. A lunchtime stroll to the quay in Exeter produced two returning Black-headed Gulls: one Latvian bird ringed a couple of years back, the other a Finnish-ringed bird which was ringed back in 1997, so 13 years and counting. They get to be like old friends, even if they don't treat you that way...

An American on the Exe.

2010-10-23T18:45:00.000+01:00

Every second Friday I have a day 'off' (working compressed hours, not skiving!) where I usually get to do the housework, shopping and whichever other miscellaneous chores have built up over the past fortnight. Yay. Yesterday, however, the sun was shining, there were birds to be seen and I had the bonus excuse that I need pics of some of the local waterbirds for a training course I'm running soon. So, down to the Exe I went. I started out at Powderham, where the autumn sun was low and bright, highlighting the turning yellows and browns that are starting to appear in the oaks, and bringing a velvety sheen to the coats of the Fallow Deer which roam the park. The tide was high, so after a cursory look at the mouth of the river Kenn, I headed back to the church and the track leading to the Turf Locks Hotel.

Little Egret heading upriver at Powderham, Somehow, they always sound so very, very angry when you disturb them.

Powderham Park glowing in the morning sun.

Powderham marshes doing likewise.

The Exe, glistening.

Soon after crossing the railway tracks, I noticed a Robin shoot to the top of a low bramble beside a ditch, sit straight up and start calling - he was rapidly joined by a Wren, which rattled and churred like a bird possessed. Very soon, a Stoat's head popped up out of the grass on the ditch edge, and looked coolly at the two birds, before it dropped back into the vegetation and continued hunting whatever it was hunting! The two bird tracked it along the ditch for a good 50 metres, never once letting up on their incessant alarm-calling.To be fair, the Stoat didn't seem at all bothered.

Stoat, regarding me balefully. I think it resented not being asked whether I could take it's photo, but mindful of the attitude displayed by the Stoats towards Toad, I made sure to keep a safe distance. In any case, I don't carry a cudgel, and Stoats are well known for being armed on a regular basis.

I could see that I wasn't going to have the day all my own way, as bruise-black clouds were building to the north, over Exeter. However, the sun was shining on me and the tide was ebbing, so I pottered on. A couple of flocks of Shelduck and some scattered Grey Plover diverted me for a short time, trying to get some halfway recognisable shots of the latter being rather tricky! Eventually I gave up and moved upriver. A Kingfisher on the rocks was another brief diversion, but unfortunately I managed to fumble the camera.

Greenshank. No, really.

This couple of Rock Pipits were so intent on beating seven bells of hell out of each other that they completely ignored me. The bird currently on top came out the victor in the end, but not before several air-to-ground tussles which looked, quite frankly, extremely vicious.

Rock Pipit - the victor.

I then settled down to a bit of a scan of the river, when a plover flew straight upriver past me. 'Hmm' - I thought to myself - 'looks like those pits need a wash'. The penny dropped with an audible clunk, and I worked out I was looking at either a Pacific or an American Golden Plover; the question then being: which one? As it settled, it resolved itself as a nicely greyed-out bird, with a chunky flared supercilium (technical term for what is the equivalent to the eyebrow on a bird) and primaries extending well beyond the tail, with rather short tertials. American Goldie it was - and is still there today, being perved at by dubious-looking men in long flasher-macs.

A truly awful picture of what is in fact a very nice-looking bird. American Golden Plover - see what I mean about the striking supercilium? The reason for the bad picture is that I was holding an old Panasonic Lumix to the eyepiece of a slightly clapped-out telescope. Anything for a record of a rarity, eh?

After that, everything else was bound to be a bit of an anticlimax, but that's life. A couple of Mediterranean Gulls up at Topsham, one bearing a red colour-ring (perhaps from Slovakia, if Dirk Raes' c-r birding projects page is up-to-date) rounded off a decent day.

Today's time was spent lurking around the head of the river, admiring a chunky flock of Black-tailed Godwits - one of which was ringed by my wife in Iceland a few years ago -along with a single Spotted Redshank and a handful of Avocet. A flyover Merlin shoo-ed them all away from the edge of the river, so I met up with a friend, wandered down the west side of the river, and then spent the last of the usable daylight watching the rising tide gradually shunting the Brent Geese and the waders ever closer to the shore by Starcross.

Black-tailed Godwits (the centre bird is the one Na ringed, hence another poor photo)

Black-tailed Godwit

Avocets roosting as far away as possible. One of these birds is also colour-marked. Which one?

Starlings in hawthorn

Every so often on the Exe, something out of the ordinary turns up. Sometimes it's from America, sometimes from Asia. Clearly, this Black Swan was fresh in from Australia - apparently unringed and very wary indeed. Or maybe it had just learnt from the Mute Swans around that people aren't to be trusted. Or maybe it had a bad experience with a handler..

A small flock of Redshank flying downhill upriver to roost.

Lundy - pictures

2010-10-08T11:41:00.000+01:00

Lundy Island - some photos.

Crossing to Lundy on the MS Oldenburg - a flat-bottomed girl who pitches and rolls with abandon in the choppy waters between Bideford and Lundy Island. Not for the faint-hearted when there's a swell running!

Not a lot to see from the boat; the highlights were a couple of pods of Common Dolphins, a single Great Skua on each leg of the journey, and a smattering of Manx Shearwaters, Razorbills and Guillemots

Looking down the East Side to the 'new' jetty, with Rat Island and Mouse Island in the background. The weather wasn't great, I'm afraid, so the photos are a bit dull too.

The church. Every island needs a church. Apparently.

Perhaps the most useless lighthouse in the UK - built high on the top of Lundy, the light itself is usually shrouded in cloud whenever bad weather occurs - which is whenever you need a lighthouse. Unsurprisingly, it was quickly abandoned as a working light.

As good as 'Earth from the air'.

Serendipity

2010-10-08T11:27:00.000+01:00

An entirely unrelated photograph.

We spent today (Saturday 2nd Oct) doing some unashamedly lazy walking, birding and twitching, mainly on the River Otter, in east Devon. Too many people at Slapton to make it worthwhile joining in, so we stayed away and stuck a couple of nets up in the garden for the first time this autumn (result: one Chiffchaff, one Wren, one Dunnock, one Long-tailed Tit and a couple of Blue, Coal & Great Tits - not astounding, but nice). When the birds dried up - which they did quite quickly, we headed out to the Otter.

The estuary was packed with gulls, mainly Herring and Black-headed, all loafing and bathing in the fresh water before the turn of the tide. A single colour-marked Herring Gull was an RSPCA project bird, but not an individual I've seen before. The code looks like it should be a reasonably old bird, so might be interesting.

Peacock butterfly - we're coming to the end of the butterfly season now - these and Red Admirals (see below) are the bulk of what is still flying.

The wet fields to the west of the footpath held a smattering of Teal, the drakes beginning to moult out of their dowdy eclipse plumage. Scattered around them were a loose flock of Pied/White Wagtails, a smattering of Meadow Pipits and several Yellow Wagtails - always nice to get good views of these in Devon. Further on, a trio of Black-tailed Godwits were belly-deep in the water, probing away for invertebrates. We strolled on round to the mouth of the river, then sat awhile and admired the gulls (I admired them; Na grappled with the ID of immature 'poxies' - not a fan). A couple of moulting drake Wigeon appeared, and the beach was rippling with Pied/White wagtails and pipits, all pausing for a while on the stones to feed, then heading off west along the coast in a flurry.

We tracked upriver to Otterton, then as we headed back in the blazing (har har) sunshine, the trio of Glossy Ibis(es) appeared at the back of a field, energetically preening and flapping. Up 'scopes for Naomi's forty-somethingth new species of the year, and we spent an enjoyable 10 minutes watching them cleaning up.

Red Admiral butterfly

The previous weekend was better still in some regards: Na chose to head off to London for a girly weekend with the gang, so I spent the weekend down at Slapton, for a bit of a change. Shame you can't do sarcasm on screen. Anyway; I arrived later than anticipated, and was met with a message that Nik was off putting some nets up, so why didn't I go and put some others up? The hint was duly taken, and I headed up the ley - only to scare up a Corncrake from the long grass. A very satisfying thing, as it's not really something you expect to see in Devon these days. This was followed up the next day with a Great Reed Warbler in the nets: the first ever caught on site, and a bit of a shock to come across in the autumn! Serendipity indeed...

Great Reed Warbler. Basically, it's a big Reed Warbler, isn't it?

Slapton sunrise. Note the mist-line along the bay - this seems to be, rather romantically, where the sewage outfall lies.

Inselaffe abroad part II: further on and further east!

2010-09-21T21:32:00.000+01:00

Yes, my friends, onwards and eastwards! We were woken bright and bleary by our landlady hammering on the door at some ungodly hour of the morning. Not being religious, this mattered not, so we sprang out of bed, grabbed our bags and waited patiently by the car to catch a lift to the station at Schwedt. Following a short drive, we sat patiently on the platform and watched the train pass by into town. As it returned to Angermuende it paused again, we hopped on, and our journey east to countries new began... Shockingly, the train was 5 minutes late getting in to the station, so our 7-minute comfortable changeover became a 2-minute mad dash under the lines and along the full length of the station to the next train. An hour and a half later we were left in Szczecin station, where the challenge of crossing Poland by train became apparent: there appeared to be no information to tell us which platform the train to Warsaw would go from... None of those little electronic boards above the platforms, not even a clicky board where the letters and numbers all roll over one another like a one-armed bandit with loads of potential combinations. We eventually found a paper notice with the day's trains printed on it, which seemed to suggest that platform 4 was the one to be on. Dilemma two: platform 4 was actually two platforms. Cunningly, the platform was also divided into four 'tors', for which we could divine no purpose. We finally found the correct train by watching the labels on the doors as they went past - this one was also late.

We ground into Warsaw and repeated the whole tedious process of finding the correct platform, and boarded another tardy train, then fell out of the carriage in Bialystock, bought some restorative coca-cola and a hot dog, and boarded the final train of the journey. This one departed on time, but we did have some unexplained pauses on the journey whilst various members of staff stamped up and down the length of the train at high speed, frowning. Everyone else (driver included) seemed as baffled as we were, and to be honest, we were grateful when we finally jumped ship at Osowiec, where we settled in to a rather comfy room in Biebrza National Park headquarters...

The next morning was a cracker: clear, cold and with a fresh NW wind. Migrant birds were passing over - we could hear Yellow Wagtail and Tree Pipit from the comfort of our bed - and so we leapt up, finished the food we had left, and headed out for some exploring. The trees around the little village were dripping with Chiffchaffs and Spotted Flycatchers, with a generous sprinkling of Pied Flycatchers. A couple of Wood Warblers appeared to add some sparkle, and we wandered slowly on towards the open marshes and fields. As the landscape opened out, different birds appeared: the bushes by the road were hopping with Lesser Whitethroats and Blackcaps, whilst the fields were scattered with Whinchats: all in all, a sight to delight any birder who's based in the southwest of England! All the while, Yellow Wagtails and Tree Pipits passed by overhead, joined by a single Black Stork, then a single White Stork to make things even.

After pottering back to HQ to pick up rented bicycles, we headed back out along the Fort II boardwalk, where a young male Elk was the surprise find of the day, then out through Osowiec village to a wet woodland we'd noticed on the maps. This was again dripping with birds: the same mix as earlier, but with a couple of added bonus species thrown in for good measure: a single Hobby and a couple of Honey-buzzards overhead, and Redstart, Cuckoo, Golden Oriole and adult Red-breasted Flycatcher at eye-level.

If you squint, you can just make out an Elk. Or a Moose, if you come from North America - I don't mind, though Woody Allen's moose sketch always echoes in my mind when I hear the name. Maybe that's reason to call it an Elk?

Wet woodland. Full of birds in autumn - it must be stunning at dawn in the late spring.

The journey back via Goniadz rounded the day off with a tranquil view across the marshes, with a handful of Black Terns hawking the river in front of us.

The northern part of Biebrza National Park, from the observation tower at Goniadz

Continuing the theme of distant wildlife: a Black Tern hawks over the marshes, against a beautifully complex sky.

The morning of August 30th was spent wandering along the Tsar Road, through a patch of former peat-cutting, which had been recommended to us by Urszula. This turned out to be a fabulous area, with a canopy of pine and Silver Birch over a shrub layer of the highly aromatic Labrador Tea (either Ledum palustre or L. groenlandicum) and heathers, interspersed with a myriad of dark peaty pools, many choked with a rich variety of Sphagnum mosses and Hare's-tail Cottongrass (Eriophorum vaginatum). The whole area must be heaving with interesting dragon- and damselflies in season, but we were left with a smattering of resident birds and an abundance of green frog species (maybe Pool Frog Rana lessonae).

Silver Birch over Hare's-tail Cottongrass, with Labrador Tea in the middle. Mmm.

Probably Dark Mullein Verbascum nigrum on the side of the Tsar Road

Fungus erupting from the trunk of a birch tree.

Whilst Na gave her presentation to the park staff, I wandered back to the boardwalk at Fort II, where I was rather stunned to see a Little Crake and a Spotted Crake loafing together below a willow, right next to one of the observation platforms. The Little Crake even had the decency to hang around until Na rejoined me - her second new bird species of the trip...

More distant wildlife. They're both in there somewhere. Honest. Little Crake on the left, Spotted on the right.

Sand Lizard juvenile basking on the boardwalk.

Common Figwort Scrophularia nodosa

Speckled Wood butterfly

Grasshopper sp. One day I might get an identification finished on these.

Pale (?) Clouded Yellow butterfly

Alkanet (Pentaglottis) sp.

Ant

We were then offered a boat trip down the river, and a visit to the mineral islands in the middle of the marsh. We met up and headed out early enough for the river mists to be nicely romantic, past a couple of feral Alsatians and down to the islands. At this point, disaster struck, when I lost my footing in the depths and submerged myself and my camera. That rather put paid to any further photos on the trip, so anything after this is likely to be courtesy of Na. The rest of the day was rather uneventful by comparison, and the wind began to pick up - an ominous precursor of things to come! Urszula kindly showed us around her home town of Suwalki - the last town in Poland - and we had our first chance to taste proper Polish cooking; as well as some awesome Polish hospitality!

Na (R) and Urszula (L) fail to show how deep the water was between the reeds and grasses. Thigh waders were a necessity...

The first day of September opened with teeming, steaming, tipping rain. We were back at the park in time to meet up with Christoph, one of the two onithologists employed by the park and head into the Alder carr forest. For a Brit, this was a humbling experience. Wet Alder woodland in this country is usually a minor corner of a fenny area, perhaps a couple of hectares in extent if you're lucky, and often consists of a tangled patch of scrubby trees over a bit of Yellow Flag iris (perhaps I exaggerate, but the point is that our Alder wet woodland is small in extent). This was a single block of 1,000 (count 'em) hectares of wet Alder woodland of a quality to awe. Despite the rain, despite the fact that we were ploughing through water up to our thighs, despite the cold, it was probably the single most memorable day of the trip. Walking into a patch of wet woodland for an hour and a half, following a GPS track to find our way to our goal - the trifling matter of checking a White-tailed Eagle's nest - the sheer scale of the place was phenomenal. The icing on the cake was a female White-backed Woodpecker which posed about 50m away from us for a short while, before disappearing again into the depths of the woodland.

Christoph demonstrates the raininess of Alder woodland

Our journey home was broken with a short stop to admire the minor area of sedge swamp where the bulk of the park's Aquatic Warblers breed: a mere 5,000 hectare extent, which was in the process of being mown by several enormous tracked tractors, throwing up clouds of spray as they churned their way across the marsh.

Mowing the 5,000 hectares.

and a closer look at the beast in action. Two man cab so you don't get bored and fall asleep too. All mod cons!

We spent our final day in the Red Bog protected area, jamming in on feeding time for the rehabilitated Elk, Wild Boar and Wolf, and then learning a little about the structure, ecology and management of the bog and the acid grassland and woodland around it. A distant blob seemed to be another Elk - confirmed when it later disappeared when we took our eyes off it - but the day was oddly quiet. After the first day, the flush of migrant birds had really petered out, and the weather was cold enough that most of the invertebrates had been knocked on the head. The plants were pretty much over as well - we saw the leaves of Eastern Pasqueflower (Pulsatilla patens) whilst we searched for Thesium ebracteatum (which either has no common name, or rejoices in the name of Bastard Toadflax - I haven't yet worked out which). but September is really time to pack it in for much of the non-birdy interest. So we duly packed it in, headed back to Warsaw (both trains were on time - what are they trying to tell us?) and the airport, then off to Cologne, Na's parents and a party and a half to celebrate their Ruby wedding anniversary.

Urszula and self discuss the species present on a bit of acid grassland

Bog pine forest at the Red Bog reserve. Scot's Pine over Labrador Tea, heathers, bilberries and Sphagnum. Niiice...

Inselaffe abroad - part I: Germany

2010-09-15T19:34:00.000+01:00

A whole month goes by with no contribution. I plead mitigating circumstances: work, crazy-busy ringing at weekends, holidays (of which more later) and finally taking the plunge to buy a digital SLR, which I'm gradually coming to terms with. It's a relief not to be using a compact or bridge camera though, and the return to flexibility offered with changing lenses for different jobs has been like falling in love all over again. Sort of.

Na allowed me to tag along with her on the more exotic end of her scholarship trip to the Odertal National Park in northeast Germany and the tongue-twisting Biebrza National Park in northeast Poland. So, without further ado...

The Odertal.

We flew in to Berlin from Heathrow, then took a bus to the Hauptbahnhof and a train to Angermuende, where we were collected. We stayed at a very pleasant bed & breakfast in the village of Criewen (Pension Storchennest), where we had a clean, cosy and reasonably-priced double room. All well and good... in fact, the owners not only picked us up from the station, but they also produced a couple of bottles of beer to help us settle in for the first night - which were drunk in the back garden, with accompaniment from a variety of green frogs and a hedgehog floor-show.

For the next week I was kept busy exploring the various paths and tracks around the floodplain and forest fringe, whilst Na dropped by when she wasn't working with the park staff. The weather wasn't anything to write home about, but the wildlife was pretty good. A particularly poor summer in this part of Europe meant that there were spring/summer floods, which wiped out most of the birds' nests in the park - a similar story in Biebrza as well - so that many of the larger wetland birds had already moved on south: ducks, terns and waders all in very short supply. The flora was also pretty late, which meant we saw more than we might have, and the invertebrates were also perhaps not quite as expected - though the dragonfly populations didn't seem to be doing so badly! Some gain, some lose, I guess.

So, some of the highlights were...:

Odertal - a typical view across the floodplain meadows. The plants were rather late growing, due to the flooding, so it's all a bit uniform and relatively uninteresting. A sea of knee-high grasses, there were patches where you were suddenly into shallow-flooded marsh which was alive with frogs, dragonflies and flowers.

Odertal - evening light over the meadows

White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla. Honest. A daily bird, with half a dozen pairs present in the park - the most we saw in a day was some 6-7 birds, and their yelping calls were a good indicator of the adults, which were often loafing in trees.

Red Kite Milvus milvus checking us out for movement, or in case we're voles. These, the White-tailed Eagles and Marsh Harriers (Circus aeruginosus) were the commonest birds of prey.

Common Cranes Grus grus passing over - we saw at least a few every day, though never hit peak numbers - there can be a few thousand present later in the year.

Common Toadflax Linum catharticum. A common flower along the tracks and banks.

Common Bluetail Ischnura elegans

More of the Odertal... this is near Schwedt, towards the northern end of the German section of the park.

Small White Pieris rapae. on Viper's-bugloss Echium vulgare. As with Ruddy Darters (below), the combined totals of Small, Large (P. brassicae) and Green-veined White (P. napi) butterflies must have been in the thousands each day - everywhere you looked there was a dancing cloud of white, like confetti continually dipping and twisting over the grasses.

Ruddy Darter Sympetrum sanguineum. This was the most impressive sight of the German part of the trip: thousands upon thousands of Ruddy Darters swarming across the floodplains. They were perhaps at their peak abundance before the weather turned...

Touch-me-not Balsam Impatiens noli-tangere.

The countryside looks much the same towards Poland (the hills in the distance) too.

Male Blue Featherleg Platycnemis pennipes. A species coming to the end of it's season really. Several seen around the oxbow lakes, but not after the weather turned cold and manky.

Female Yellow-winged Darter Sympetrum flaveolum. I saw a fair few of this species, but this was the only one obliging enough to pose for me in any way. Sorry it's not a better picture...

Male Black Darter Sympetrum danae. Only a few of these around, but indicates that the system is on the acid side, at least in places.

More Odertal view - looking from Criewen to Schwedt. The banks along the canal are very flower-rich and attracted large numbers of white butterflies, bees and flies; which in turn attracted plenty of birds.

Campanula of some kind, growing in the woods. They reach about a metre tall.

Thrift Armeria maritima ssp. longifolia. Something of a surprise to me to find Thrift abundant at such an inland site, but what do I know? All seemed to bear a strong resemblance to longifolia.

Male Small Redeye Erythromma viridulum. Before the weather turned, there were plenty of these lurking along the edges of the oxbow lakes, perching on waterlilies, pondweeds and emergent vegetation. Sometimes you've got to get down to their level to get a nice picture.

Female Small Redeye. Not as pretty or as dramatic as the male, but a beautiful blue and dusty grey nonetheless.

And another view of a male Small Redeye... just to show how smart they are.

Male Ruddy Darter Sympetrum sanguineum

The banks of the Oder - pretty much species-rich neutral/acid grassland. Much richer than the floodplain grazing marsh and associated neutral grassland we have here in Devon, but that's not so surprising!

Indeed. Translates as: 'use at your own risk', effectively. I think they mainly mean that the boardwalk is slippery when wet, but obviously the risk of a tree falling on you is worth considering...

Part II to follow.

D is for...

2010-07-29T18:21:00.000+01:00

Downpour.

I spent a day doing some assessment work with a colleague, Clare, last week. We spent the entire day trawling the cliffs and beach between Baggy Point and Saunton, on the North Devon coast. I use the word trawl advisedly, as it didn't arf rain... Despite the unpleasant conditions, we found large quantities of Autumn Squill along the cliff, as well as some exceedingly unperturbed sheep.

Sheep contemplates pursuing the ultimate aim in an ovine life: suicide.

Sheep stoically chewing over the remains of some clifftop vegetation on Baggy Point.

Didymodon cordatus
Further along the cliffs is the main UK population of a small moss, called Cordate Beard-moss. It seems to be happy, amongst a very large population of Scrambled-egg lichen. A bit of the nationally scarce Sea Stock Matthiola sinuata enlivened a superbly soggy end to the working day.

A random picture of two lasses watching the surf - and the surfers at Saunton Sands.

Disease.
A stark reminder at Slapton that disease is a part of life for everything: we came across this unfortunate juvenile Blackbird, which is probably not much longer for this world. Not only showing some gross tumours, but the skin around the head was crawling with ectoparasites - a veritable garden of delights for a parasitologist, but I'm not one of those. Don't think we'll be seeing that bird again! If you're of a sensitive nature, don't scroll any further along this posting, please.

Whatever the cause, this is a pretty grotesque set of growths on a wild bird.

Written to music by the Dresden Dolls...

2010-07-17T21:22:00.000+01:00

Having possibly done something good in a previous life, I was allowed out of the office, with the express task of whipping through some basic monitoring at Prawle Point, one of my favourite places in the country. Sometimes life can be kind...! The day seemed to have been badly chosen at the outset, as when I woke up it was sheeting with rain, and the journey down was completed through a series of increasingly hefty showers. I wasn't worried though, because - in contrast to South Brent - it never rains at Prawle. True to expectations, the drop off the South Hams plateau to the coast was accompanied by a general brightening of the day and a lifting of the spirits.

We set out on our task in a stiff westerly breeze, which blustered around us and constantly threatened to remove our work, our coats and ourselves, if we were not paying close attention... Ignoring a couple of Cirl Buntings in the nearby thicket, we concentrated on the cliffs, finding such delights as the nationally scarce Autumn Squill, the dirt-common Rock Samphire and the variably rare Rock Sea-lavender (rarity depends very much on the lines you draw between taxa). We also managed to find a handful of clumps of the exciting (no, honest!) Golden Hair Lichen, which looks to me rather like a pan-scourer which has been steeped in saffron.

Teloschistes flavicans. Golden Hair Lichen.

Autumn Squill (Scilla autumnalis). The purple one.

Today was another day at Slapton, where ringing continued apace for the season. A bright and early start meant we were in the right place at the right time to catch two Kingfishers and two Magpies on the opening round of the nets. You may find it perverse, but we were rather more interested in catching two Magpies than the Kingfishers... in 50 years of ringing at Slapton, only 7 Magpies have been caught before, whereas we catch up to 10 Kingfishers a season on a reasonable year. All context, you see...

Magpies. What more can you say? The bird on the right of the left-hand picture isn't going blind, it's flicking the nictating membrane over it's eye. Don't know what AJ's bird grabbed, but I'm sure it wasn't as painful as it looks...!

Half an hour later, during a walk round the nets, there was a squeal of anguish from the other side of the open water on the higher ley. Looking up and across the water, I was just in time to see the female Marsh Harrier standing firmly on a juvenile Coot, which was the source of the squeal. Unfortunately - or not: depends on your point of view, I suppose - the harrier lost her bottle when she saw me, so flopped off north up the ley to harass something else.

The rest of the ringing didn't produce any great surprises, though a healthy number of Reed and Cetti's Warblers were ringed again.

Cetti's Warbler. A small one.

Tufted Duck update: the brood of 9 seems to have been reduced in size, but a further three (count 'em) broods were out and about, all of which look as if they hatched at much the same time. So, that meant a brood of 5 tiddlers on the channel between the leys, a brood of 4 tiddlers and a single tiddler on the graveyard pool, and a further brood of 4 not-quite-such-tiddlers on the graveyard with them; I'm choosing to assume that the latter are the birds from 2 weekends back, though this is purely lazy speculation on my part. It'd be good if some of them manage to survive the various predators around the ley and get to adult size.

Female Tufted Duck with downy ducklings. This is the girl on the channel, with proper tiddlers.

Fuer Denise...

2010-07-11T18:53:00.000+01:00

It's been a fun couple of weeks! The autumn ringing season's started up, so summer's out the way and we can concentrate on the fun of migration again - only semi-joking. Slapton started up last week, with a good first day - 133 new birds and another 20-odd retraps from previous years. Included within this total were about 25 new Ceti's Warblers - they seem to have had a decent year to put it mildly. Not included was this little baby: a Garden Warbler which could barely flutter along the path ahead of us. Carefully put into the scrub and left to call it's parents in, it was last seen chirping its way towards the sea, along the line of willow beside the road.

Juvenile Garden Warbler

Female Reed Bunting. An old bird which is beginning to develop male patterns and colours in it's head markings

We were also pleased to see a brood of no fewer than 9 very young Tufted Duck heading down the channel with their mother. At the edge of the open ley, the whole family began to learn how to take the business of being a Tufted Duck very seriously indeed: nine fuzzy little ducklings attempting to dive for perhaps the first time was highly entertaining! Several managed to get the hang of getting under quite rapidly, but had problems staying under - their down must trap a lot of air - so would resurface with so much speed that they left the water entirely. Others struggled with the concept of diving: they would take the proper Tufted Duck leap into the water, but misjudge their strength and do something of a half-somersault, going under on their backs instead of headfirst...

Tufted Duck brood

Midweek I helped lead a Nightjar walk on the edge of Dartmoor. We met up at 9:30 p.m. and strolled across the heath at a birder's pace, making all of 200metres per hour. After a diminishing chorus of Mistle Thrush and Blackbird, with a smattering of Willow Warbler and Redpoll, the light drew out into a fine sunset and the first Nightjar began singing from some distance down the valley - sounding rather like a faint two-stroke engine, churring up and down in tone. As usual with the first of the evening, he soon petered out into silence, but then a male appeared from below us and slowly sauntered past us, wings flicking like some giant tropical swallowtail butterfly. He circled round us at about 50m distance in the fading light, then disappeared back into the valley in the same silent fashion. After a little while, two more appeared from above us, chasing each other around and about in near-darkness. A third bird briefly joined in and we were treated to a spectacular display of nocturnal aerobatics and the rather treefrog-like 'gwoink' flightcalls, with accompanying song from a couple of more distant males.

Green 'unripe tomato' spider, found along the edge of the heath

Sunset over Trendlebere Down

Today was spent on a speculative attempt to confirm the presence of breeding Willow Tit on Dartmoor. Several of the group met up at a site where a couple of the survey group had heard birds earlier in the year and put up a couple of nets to ring. Bizarrely we managed to catch a single juvenile Willow Tit, as well as seeing/hearing at least three others in the same area. By far the best result yet on any site, and finally proof-positive that they still cling on on the edge of the moors. A very instructive bird to see in the hand too!

Juvenile Willow Tit. Note particularly the bull-neck, the long black cap reaching far down the nape, the lack of a pale spot on the bill and the chunkiness of the bill as well.

Finally, some pictures of the garden, as the title goes. (Cue music)

Random photos

2010-06-20T20:00:00.000+01:00

Friday saw the final brood of Pied Flycatchers ringed at Na's site; 12 nests producing 76-odd chicks. Total numbers are down in comparison to the past couple of years, but the productivity of each nests is way up. This, we think, is a good thing.

More pictures from the weekend. A bright and early start on Saturday (on the moors by 5:30 a.m.) was followed by a long morning of tramping over the heather and grasses in search of more nests. A goodly number of nests were checked - one Reed Bunting nest had failed, probably due to a sheep or cow walking through it and trashing it, but the rest were fine:

A brood of Whinchat, about six days old and the perfect size for ringing. At least four of last year's pulli seem to have come back to their natal area - always good to see...

Cuckoo, resting

Cuckoo, gaping

Cuckoo, lurking

Cuckoo, posing

A quick visit also to the Southern Damselfly site on Dartmoor - this is perfect habitat for the species.

Amongst the many Southern Damsels on view, this male was decidedly persistent in trying to come between a male Large Red Damsel and his female. Optimism, eh?

Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia)

Nests...

2010-06-08T21:07:00.000+01:00

Summer's nearly over for the local birds. Well, not quite, but it feels like it - nests are bulging with semi-naked chicks, grotesque with still-shut eyes, scrawny bodies and heads that seem to be attached by the frailest of necks, bills gaping whenever they hear a noise that may signal their parents. Before we know it, they'll all be up and out and off, through a brief danger-filled period of learning about cats, stoats, weasels, Sparrowhawks... those that make it past the predators and manage to find enough food, escape the rain and the cold, miss the cars and the windows and become fit enough to cross the English Channel will be off south to Spain, then North Africa - then for some species the minor matter of crossing the Sahara and finding their way through a whole new suite of predators and dangers, competing for food with the local birds and animals, as well as the northern migrants. And then it will all go into reverse for next year. No wonder so many die in their first year!

Even the local species, those we think of as resident, have a host of obstacles to overcome: predators, food, weather, us, competition from their own and other species... Tough life.

Meadow Pipit nest. OK, this one's not very difficult to pick out, as it's smack in the middle of the photo. Still, how easy would you find it to see when you're tramping across Dartmoor?

From a little closer, you can see the nest at the back of the clump of Molinia... even a vague glimpse of nestlings.

And this is one: Meadow Pipit nestling, at the perfect size for ringing.

Na gets to grips with a Meadow Pipit family

Other species nest off the ground...

And some are the archetypal grotesques... Carrion Crow chicks, for example

A random bit of Dartmoor evening

Judith shows off a Whitethroat chick; about 6-7 days old.

The same Whitethroat back in a brambly-bluebelly nest on the Dartmoor fringe.