Etherow Country Park : 31st October 2016 On the last day of October we took a drive out to Etherow Country Park where I hoped to add to my year list what is normally the easiest year tick of Mandarin Duck I am ever likely to find. As it happened they proved to be a…
Highlands Day 4 : 17th October 2016 We started off the day with a drive up past Nethy Bridge to Dorbach to the area of moorland that holds the Black Grouse lek we have seen before. The last time we tried here the rain was so heavy and the mist was so impenetrable that we…
Highlands Day 3 : 16th October 2016 We stared out at 8am and drove down to the main car park at Abernethy Forest. This proved unproductive so we changed plan and went on to the RSPB Loch Garten visitor centre where we had more success. After the Osprey season they actually mothball the visitor centre…
Highlands Day 2 : 15th October 2016 We had the idea that the Black Isle might not be as wet as the rest of the immediate area which turned out to be a rather optimistic outlook as it actually rained non-stop everywhere we went and often quite heavily. We started out for the Black Isle…
High Tide at Hoylake, Riverbank Road and Burton Mere Wetlands : 1st October 2016 The weekend of the 1st and 2nd of October was “Wirral Wader Festival” with lots of events at Thurstaston, Hoylake and Red Rocks etc. With a “low” high tide, only 9.2 metres, at 12.30pm we thought that Hoylake was probably the…
Summary September 2016 Species this month = 60 New Species added to 2016 Year List in September= 1 Little Stint at Inner Marsh Farm on 8th September 2016 New UK Life List Birds In June = 0 Running Total for the 2016 UK So Far = 185
Connah’s Quay and Burton Mere Wetlands 8th September 2016 A weather forecast indicating poor weather getting better by mid-morning saw us set off for a visit to Connah’s Quay, a reserve we have not been to in a while, and Burton Mere Wetlands. It is getting to the time when we can expect to see…
Shapwick Heath 30th August 2016
Steart Marshes 28th August 2016 WIth three nights at Montacute we had a chance to visit a site that we had both read a lot about and also seen TV clips on – the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust site at Steart Marshes. This is a recently created wetland between Bridgewater Bay and the River Parrett….
Portland Bill 27th August 2016 On the morning of the 27th we were due to return to Montacute where we were staying in our friends’ house for a few again, this time while they were away in Lanzarote, so we made sure that we fitted in some birding en route. Our first stop was Portland…
