Summary August 2013

Summary August 2013

Garden

The weather was a bit mixed for the first couple of weeks of August with some good dry days, some uncertain days and some plain wet ones. The combination of sun and rain has done wonders for the garden and it is easy to see why some birders turn to insects at this time of year as the bees and butterflies have been abundant. There does some to be a, somewhat erratic, return of birds to the garden and some days we see quite a bit. On other days the cast of characters is reduced. But we have started to see juvenile Blackbirds and both adult and juvenile Goldfinches in modest numbers. We have had a Greenfinch coming to eat the black sunflower seeds that I have started putting out again. Indeed even the Blue Tits seem to prefer them. I have head a few Starlings and briefly seen a Dunnock. A Coal Tit has returned to the feeders as well so things are starting to look up in the garden bird department – at least by the middle of the month.
By the end of the month things were mixed again and the garden birds seem to come and go. We did see a Sparrowhawk flying over the garden in settling on a neighbour’s shed.

Birding Days Out

With the weather getting a bit more uncertain towards the end of the month, we got a good forecast for the first so we headed off to Moore Nature Reserve where we managed to at least hear Yellowhammers even if we could not see them. We also had an amusing encounter with a bird that I hoped for the briefest of moments might have been a Parrot Crossbill. Closer examination proved me very wrong however and later consultation with the Cheshire County Recorder turned up its probable identity !. The following week we went to the West Yorkshire coast (see below), which was fantastic and, shortly after that, we went to Aston Rowant (also see below). Other than that our only day out was on the 23rd when we went for a day out around the Wirral for some high tide bird watching We stopped off at RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands where we got nice views of a Kingfisher and a Barnacle Goose. and also at Hoylake where we got great views of large numbers of Terns and also incredibly large numbers of Ringed Plovers and Dunlins.

Holiday Birding

Last August we went over to the West Yorkshire coast to visit the seabird colonies there and this year we decided to repeat this but to add on a couple of new sites – at least new to us. The first of these was the RSPB site at Blacktoft Sands where we had fantastic views of several Marsh Harriers and also clocked up a number of good waders including Green and Wood Sandpiper, Greenshank and Common and Spotted Redshank. We went from there to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Site at North Cave where we saw a Kingfisher, Black Swans and some Common Terns. We stayed overnight in Hull before heading off the next day for Spurn Head where we spent the morning before driving up to Flamborough where we were staying and then on to RSPB Bempton Cliffs where we got great views of Gannets, Kittiwakes and somewhat distant Puffins.The following morning we had an early walk along Flamborough Cliffs where we got a fantastic view of two Peregrine Falcons having an aerial battle and also saw a few Puffins. After that we returned to RSPB Bempton Cliffs where I left my scope behind and instead took my 500mm lens to try to get some good views at the Jubilee Corner where the Gannets and Kittiwakes were close to the viewing platform. This time we managed to see a couple of Fulmars but still no Skuas ! We headed off from there and dropped in at the site that had been recommended to us at Spurn, Filey Dams Wetlands where we saw a pair of Green Sandpipers and a few other waders. Over the two days we had been to six different birding sites and had seen sixty one bird, four of them year ticks.
We also went down to Oxfordshire on 20th August where we saw many Red Kites near Aston Rowant NNR .

Birding Group

The birding group season does not start until next month – probably around the 10th September.