Birding road trip, October 2023

A casual birding road trip in October, starting with a Rutland Water, followed the next day by a Raptor photography workshop near Market Harborough, then WWT Slimbridge before arriving in Seaton. While in Seaton, I made two excursions, BOPH Autumn cruise and RSPB Ham Wall. Both were fairly quiet, especially Ham Wall.

Rutland water

No late Osprey this year, but 12 GW Egrets were showing at the Crake hide.



 

Slimbridge

A large, professional and educational wetland centre.



BOPH cruise

No sign of 511, the Scottish Osprey, but the two WTEs were visible but rather distant.  There was a large number of Spoonbills (61) on the lagoon, apparently the second largest group in the UK.




Seaton Wetlands

Good to see the Kingfisher but in general the BHM was very quiet again. On one visit NO birds were visible at all from the Island hide. I can't help but think that the poor management of fresh water inflows is leading to uneven water levels, drying out of large parts of the scrape and therefore poor food supply for visiting birds.

Curlew Sandpiper

 
 
 
 
 

Bowling Green Marsh

Visited at high tide, a positive because of the higher number of birds, but a sunrise, which was a big mistake as it made photograph almost impossible.

 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WWT London, Jan 2024

Image
I took advantage of a rare day of sunshine to visit the WWT London site in SW13.   There was a Bittern sighted in the morning, but it eluded me (no surprise) and it had not been seen by anyone I talked with in the hides. As always, it was a pleasure to get close to their managed collection of waterfowl. Canada geese Common Pochard (wild bird) Cormorant (wild birds) Common Crane Eider Goldeneye Greater Scaup Hooded Merganser North American bird, female pictured below. Maned Duck Australian wood duck. Red crested Pochard Southern europe / Central Asia bird but there are reports of it breeding in the Uk, possibly escaped birds. Ring necked Duck Smew Wood duck North American perching duck. Vagrants occaisonally arive in the UK. I saw one in 2022 on Creekmoor ponds. That bird was assumed to be an escapee. Ring necked Parakeets (wild birds) Goldcrest An apparently very confident bird, feeding on a fire tree right next to a path. However it had a damaged right eye, so perhaps it was exp...
Read more

North Norfolk, late April 2024

Image
We had a lovely short break in a hotel near Holt at the end of April. The weather was not kind, wet and with a bitter wind from the North but we enjoyed ourselves nevertheless. Weeting Heath We stopped at Weeting Heath NNR on the way up and the way back to watch the Stone Curlews (a first for us). We had good views on both visits, spotting 5 birds on the way and 6 on the way back.  They had a well sighted webcam on one nest and the birds swapped incubation duties regularly. The Stone-curlew ( Burhinus oedicnemus ), also known as the Eurasian Thick-knee, is a distinctive, nocturnal wader found in the UK, particularly on dry, open grasslands and heathlands. With its large, yellow eyes, upright stance, and cryptic plumage, it blends well into its arid habitat, feeding primarily on insects and small invertebrates. In the UK, its breeding range is mainly confined to the southern and eastern regions of England, with conservation efforts helping to stabilize its population. Currently, th...
Read more

Which SD card to use in the Canon R7?

Image
The Canon R7 has two UHS-II slots and relatively limited buffering capacity.   To delay hitting the buffer limits, the ‘no-expense spared’ solution would be to buy expensive well reviewed UHS-II SD cards such as the Lexar Professional 2000x (£154 for 128Gb), ProGrade Digital SDXC UHS-II V90 300R (£149 for 128Gb) or the Sony SF-G series TOUGH (£189 for 128Gb).   Or perhaps the even more expensive 256Gb versions. However, some of us can’t afford these high-end solutions – hence the rest of this post. The similarly specified but more modestly priced Kingston Canvas React Plus SD card has also been well reviewed on several camera sites, so I purchased this when the price dropped, briefly, on Amazon UK to £83 for the 128Gb card.   I also managed to pick up two Kingston Canvas React Plus 64Gb micro-SD cards for the ridiculously low price of £12 each from another UK site. These don’t seem to be available anymore – I think they may have realized their pricing error! Using C...
Read more