Crepuscular Spectacular

OK, maybe spectacular’s the wrong word, but I had a good trip up to Wharncliffe Heath with my mate Andy the other night on my annual hunt for nightjars. It was a lovely evening weather-wise, but foolishly we picked the Longest Day, meaning the timescale between nightjars showing and the last bus from Deepcar to [...]

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Baby boom…

Last Wednesday I took the morning off work to finish my BBS survey at Damflask. Not a lot to report, except loads of juv coal, blue and great tits around, and a family party of nuthatches. On the way back I stopped off in the Loxley Valley and came across a couple of grey partridges [...]

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The weekend

I’m being vague with location due to some sensitive species, but not a bad tally on a daytrip this weekend with grey partridge, yellow wagtail, corn bunting and common crane(!) added to the year list. I was hoping for woodlark and turtle dove in the area I was in, but the crane more than made [...]

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Northumberland 2010

At the weekend Laura and I had our now annual trip to Northumberland. We started on Friday with pleasant, if a bit windy, weather, and pootled about Bamburgh for a bit, where we watched sandwich terns and eiders, as well as distant guillemots. After checking in at our B&B at Beadnell, we had a quick [...]

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Rainy Rutland and others…

On Saturday I had a trip to Rutland Water to see the star attraction of the site’s breeding ospreys, and see what else was around. The reports from the week before had been quite tantalising, with red-necked phalarope, black tern, white-winged black tern and Temminck’s stint all seen in the days preceding my visit… But [...]

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