Costa Snow Bunting
It is ironic that even in the wildest of the weather that Islay threw at us last week the best bird turned up in the car park of Islay’s remotest cafe. As we drove onto the gravel at Sanaigmore in anticipation of a much needed coffee a Snow Bunting flew up onto the wall. The […]
Goose Feast
Islay in October is always wild but this years weather was in the extreme. Gales and torrential rain prevailed and our walks had to be undertaken in-between the showers, with fingers crossed. Despite this the spectacle of 50000 Barnacle Geese on one Hebridean island is not to be missed and regarded by many as […]
Salmon On The Run
I have never gone looking for Salmon before but after a day of heavy rain on the 23rd there followed a superb Autumn day on the 24th so I knew that if Salmon were going to come up the Ribble they would be in the right position to jump the falls at Settle that day. […]
Redwings And Jays Everywhere
The first Redwings of Winter appeared on Hopwood on the 12th with three separate parties totalling twenty eight birds. This paled into insignificance in comparison to how many passed over Winter Hill during an eight hour watch on the same day by three birdwatchers when more than nine thousand three hundred were recorded. Clearly the […]
A Season Of Plenty
Today’s cold North East winds have probably brought to an end one of the finest late Summer and Autumn periods that we have ever had. Everywhere you look there is an abundance of fruit and I couldn’t resist this week’s photo showing the Horse Chestnuts cracking open to reveal every school boy’s dream, the conkers. […]
Surprise Visit By Ibises
During the week I paid a visit to the Horwich moors to observe the four Glossy Ibises that had appeared a few days before. They are part of an influx that included a dozen at one locality in the Lake District and should have migrated in the opposite direction down to Iberia. The Ibises in […]
Long Tailed Tits On The Move
Until this last week I have seen very few Long Tailed Tits this Summer and I attributed this to an abundance of food in the woodlands. On Hopwood on the 25th at least a dozen were passing through the birches along with all the other tits so I would suspect that they have also had […]
Corporate Vandalism
This week’s photo shows what is now left of a vibrant larch plantation at Clough Bottom near Burnley. I have been monitoring the breeding birds in this plantation for more than thirty five years and on the fourteenth of May each year there would have been more than fifteen species of birds nesting in the […]
American Migrants Arrive
Another visit to Morecambe Bay on the fourteenth produced this week’s distant view of not only one but two Pectoral Sandpipers as they fed happily next to a Snipe. The wader passage this Autumn has been exceptional and in addition to the Sandpipers there were still seven Greenshank, three Spotted Redshanks, four Curlew Sandpipers and […]
Waders On The Move
More good weather during the week . I spent a glorious four hours on Morecambe Bay filming up to ten species of wader. The undoubted highlight was filming twenty four Curlew Sandpipers which were birds I had never even seen before. Most were juvenile birds that had come from Siberia and usually pass through the […]