new camera #2

Ginger santa (sister) obviously has more money than sense as she splurged a few hundred beans on a new camera for her dear brother and today was the day that I finally found enough time to get out and about and see what it could do....its only got a couple of baby lenses with it so im not expecting the world but as something to help me figure out the basics of bird photography this should work quite nicely. So, off I headed today to find some owls to point the camera at. For those who were out in the midlands area today you will know for the most part it was a glorious sunny day with loads of lovely lovely light to illuminate the owly goodness - the downside was the wind! By heck it were windy today! And that put the owls off. Out of the 15+ visits I've made to the site this winter today was the worst in terms of numbers of owls seen, the range at which they were seen from and the duration they spent in view. So all in all a pretty poor day really although I still saw 5, maybe 6 Short Eared Owls though which on face value sounds pretty good......

birdwatching! patch tick na na naaaa

I've managed to do some birdwatching of sorts over the past few days - i'm itching to get over to Rutland in the near future but haven't managed it so far, a trip to the owls yesterday produced this image with the new phone:

And i've just spent the best part of an hour down at Jubilee park fulfilling my resolution to visit the "local patch" more often...at least its only about a month inbetween visits this time! It did further highlight that I do see new/mildly interesting stuff there if I actually visit - today it was a possible patch tick Grey Wagtail on the river (can't remember if i've seen one here before or not, certainly not for the past two years or so) and a definite patch tick Weasel that was hunting along the opposite bank. Other stuff seen included a Little Grebe on the river (river tick), two male Greater spotted Woodpeckers in the same tree and precisely 6 Wigeon on the pool. Oh and a Kestrel provided the raptor supplement for the day, combined with a Sparrowhawk that went over the house earlier. No images unfortunately except this one of the lovely vista of the river/test gravel pool at Jubilee.....

In terms of garden watching i've been trying to get decent images of the Bullfinch that have been visiting lots recently but I've not been getting on too well, firstly the birds are reluctant to come to the nearer of the two sets of feeders (even if I put their favoured sunflower dispenser on that feeder pole) and secondly any sunlight that graces the garden in the afternoons comes from a terrible angle. Here are the best of a bad bunch:

New camera!

I've lured you in thinking i've got some dangerous SLR beastie haven't I? Well unfortunately that isn't the case, i've merely upgraded my phone. To a shiny new samsung galaxy s2 that has a whopping 8 megapixel camera attached to it. Considering my old phone had a shameful 5 megapixel bag of turds attached to it this must thus be regarded as a technological advancement on par with the invention of the wheel. By my estimates I should be able to produce 60% better images now!

A veritable plethora of assignments and suchlike has prevented me from doing any birding over the past couple of weeks except a couple of quick visits to see the Short eared Owls on the way back from uni so over the past two days I've been having a quick blast at the birds in the garden to see what sort of images I could attain with the new toy:

there's a few of these around at the minute.

and loads of these...

about 5 or 6 of these too....

but only one of these!!!

damn you autofocus!

squirl

terrible image (i can still do those) of a coal tit.

hungry goldie

perching goldie

perching bluey

ENORMO FINCH!!!

Best yet

Dropped in to see the owls at Maidwell on the way home from uni again this afternoon - my route home almost goes straight past the site (or straight past if I take a longer route) so it would be rude not to! So getting on site at an earlier time than usual of 1.20pm I was rather pleased to immediately see several Short-eared Owls floating around doing their usual business of hunting, sitting and fighting. Very nice. A conservative count would say I saw 6 birds with a couple more way off in the distance but I suspect I saw more. A couple of the previously mentioned sitting birds did the decent thing and sat within range (ish) of the cameraphone and as the light was much better than previous attempts the results were much better. The best yet infact. Although admittedly that isn't much of an achievement.

 Oh go on then, lets crop one to death:

I enjoyed cropping the pants off that other image so much im going to do it again:

but you can make out its ear tufts - educational and amusing!

Enormo-finch

The other day I noticed a juvenile greenfinch under the feeders that had clearly been on the pies:

you

fat

knacker

Now I know first winter birds of many species are larger than their parents - I believe the tactic focuses on the theory that juvenile birds need larger fat reserves to get them safely through the tough times of winter because they're amateurish at feeding and stuff but I've personally never seen such a big Greenfinch!

The big smoke. Life tick!

Hooded birder smoked loads of narcotics today. Loads.

I didn't really, I went to London to visit Kew gardens and to become the Hooded botanist for the day! I shall explain further - my Biodiversity and Conservation class went on a fieldtrip to Kew today for a guided tour around their herbarium and to look at the plants and whatnot.
If I liked plants as much as I like birds this would have been like leafy heroin for me, I imagine it would be like the reaction I had when taken to Slimbridge for the first time as a bird mental 7 year old. Said reaction involved pant-wetting, high-pitched gibberish and four grain bags being emptied within the first 5 minutes.
Unfortunately the gardens didn't quite have the same effect today but it was still damned interesting - for those who don't know what a herbarium is (which included myself until this morning) its basically a library of plant samples. Kew's is massive. 7.5 million specimens massive. These plant specimens range from recent to over 400 years old and there are even specimens collected from tombs of Egyptian Pharoahs! We were also lucky enough to be shown some of the actual specimens that Darwin himself collected on the HMS Beagle which was frigging cool!
Anyone thats been to Kew will know its a truly huge site so what was my life tick? Ring necked Parakeets! Admittedly im somewhat less excited about seeing these birds for the first time compared to others i've recently ticked but it was nice to finally catch up with them. One bird did cause enjoyment by mobbing a Sparrowhawk, im somewhat surprised it didn't end up as lunch! Most common woodland species were seen/heard around the grounds too so it wasn't a bad day all in all!

Autumnal stuff

Fancy greenhouse

Inside fancy greenhouse

Cactus House

Distractions but a patch tick!

Apologies for the lack of recent posts but in my defence I haven't been out birding much in the past fortnight due to a number of reasons. Such as sorting out tedious car related issues, working on my dissertation and generally being rather busy. But who am I kidding, the main reason for the lack of birding has been the recent release of computer gamery from two of my all time favourite franchises - The Call of Duty series and the legendary Football Manager.
So little birding has been achieved in the last fortnight so what have I done? Leicester City qualified for the Europa League after four seasons of hard graft and I have a KDR (kills to deaths ratio) of 1.48 on COD and have just prestiged for the first time. Im not sure why im even writing those words on a bird blog.......

***NEWSFLASH***
Hooded birder went birding! Ok it was only a quick jaunt down to Jubilee but after this recent influx of Whitefronts to the UK, the enormous feral goose flock that haunts the floodplains of Jubilee Park were certainly worth a look over incase a couple of bonafide wild geese had attached themselves to the happy throng. They hadn't. There was this though......

100% wild Snow Goose - please note tactic of shooting through reeds for enhanced appearance of wild and rare.
And please note further the use of a poor camera so the nice shiny ring on its leg isn't noticeable.

This however was certainly wild enough to be allowed and was definitely a patch tick! Hooded birder wins.

unrEGRETtable. poor I know.....



The wilds of Jubilee Park also threw up single Grey Wagtail, Reed Bunting and 5 Wigeon on the pool, a flock of around 12 Linnet were knocking around and there was a couple of Common Gulls in with the BH gulls. Flyover Sparrowhawk and Buzzard were also seen and I've resolved to visit the place more often. It is afterall less than a mile away and certainly has potential to throw up decent birds. Whether it will or not however is another matter.