Few words, some images

Bunkers at Harrington Airfield



Convenient chair



view from chair.

Peregrine

well good photo of a SEO

Spot the shortie!

well good photo of a SEO #2

Time and a place

Now I like owls as much as the next person. Probably more infact. Much more. But when sleep is interrupted by a sexed-up Tawny Owl making an enormous amount of noise outside my window at 2am my previous opinion of owls goes out the window!
Shut up you feathered bugger and go and murder the local voles! Better still, have a go at one of the local cats, I bet you could have one. Have a punt at the fat one that looks like a Friesian cow. You know you want to.

Bonanza

A bonanza of owls to be accurate. 14 sightings (plus two "heard onlys"!) over the past 2 days with 4 different species involved! I would now commence a long winded and ultimately boring post about these sightings but I cannot be bothered. The salient facts are this: all species have been seen besides Long-eared Owl and despite the large number of sightings not one photo has been obtained - mainly due to a combination of it being too dark/far away/flighty. To explain further stuff that flies around automatically excludes itself from having its photograph taken - its impossible for me to track a bird using the scope AND skillfully hover the phone camera about 1cm from the scope eyepiece AND press the "take photo" button at the same time. I don't have enough hands! Or the co-ordination. And owls (Short Eared and Barn in particular) like flying around and stuff.......so I can't take photo's of them. The end. Goodnight.

EDIT: I've just spied that Paul has just posted a few images from this evening so look at his site to get a feel for what my images would have been like had I taken some. I wasn't with Paul this evening (but I was yesterday, hence the irregular number of sightings for me!) but was viewing the same birds from a different, and further away spot. The key thing to remember however is that my images would have been much much worse. Plus I saw two barnies that he didn't so I win. Sort of.

3rd time's a charm!

Taking full advantage of having a working automobile again I made my way over to Harrington Airfield at first light this morning hoping to strike third time lucky and finally see the Great Grey Shrike that seems to have chosen Harrington as its overwintering destination - I do hope it stays for the duration! Anyway, arriving on site just after 7.45am I was pleased to find myself being the only person present (because it is likely to be the first visitors of the day who will accidently put up a SEO) and wasted no time in walking the path through the scrub towards the first set of bunkers. I'd just reached the first set of bunkers when I picked up a bird flying straight towards me at a lowish height from the North. Looked a bit like a magpie in flight. Only smaller. Thats the boy! It did the decent thing and dropped onto a perch not too far away either - perfect for a bit of gratuitous scoping!
It stayed in this area for the best part of half an hour and even allowed me to move a tad nearer so I could take some crappy record shots as it flitted from perch to perch. What a cracking bird!

After feasting my eyes on the bird for a good while I was cocking about on my phone sending a couple of emails and whatnot and looked up and realised it had gone! Bugger! Another birder turned up shortly afterwards who had seen it flying southwards from the area that I had seen it in towards a very distant wood. I called time at that point as it seemed reasonable to suggest the bird wouldn't be returning for a good while and went and spent a couple of hours at Blueberry farm in the hope of shorties again. No shorties but loads of migrant thrushes along with single Merlin and Treecreeper.

On the way home Stanford reservoir produced this nice Grey Wagtail along the inflow channel too. The below image is phone-binned, my first attempt at that in ages!

So a productive morning out birding.....no owls unfortunately, that might change later though!

two failures.....

Yep thats right, two attempts at seeing the Great Grey Shrike(s) at Harrington Airfield and two failures.

First was on Tuesday in the hope of completing a hat trick of lifers in as many days. The shrike had been seen about an hour previous to my arrival but none of the other birders that I encountered (there were a fair few) had seen it. I did see a Merlin over the entrance upon my arrival and the large flock of Golden Plover (I counted 427) provided entertainment whenever they were put up into the air.

Harrington on a nice calm day (not really, it was horrendously windy)

Plovers innit.



I walked the line of bunkers (visible in the distance of the top image) a few times in the end but got bored with seeing no Shrikes so I gave in and stopped at Blueberry farm (cheers Paul!), Maidwell for a lookie on the way back. Didn't see any SEO but a Peregrine at least gave me something to look at when it drifted over gaining height and then proceeded to stoop at what must have been 6,000 miles per hour. At least. Unfortunately lost it as it broke the skyline so I didn't manage to see the conclusion of the stoop but it was still the best that happened whilst I was there.

Blueberry farm - quality SEO habbo

And now we move onto today.....

After the news yesterday that two Shrikes had been seen together at the airfield after a paucity of sightings since Tuesday I headed back over to Harrington before uni this morning. I got there at about 10.30 (damned snooze button....) which gave me a nice window of two hours to hopefully pick up one of the birds before I had to go and learn about conservation and stuff. My beginning tactic today involved pulling over at the Memorial layby in the hope of (albeit distantly) picking up one of the birds in flight because although you can walk through the scrub patch and thus be close to the birds the density of the habitat means you can rarely see more than twenty yards in front of you. And so I chose the lay-by in the hope of a better overall view of Shrike land. This cunning  plan seemed cunning too. A birder had seen one, maybe two birds from that very spot not twenty minutes beforehand......
"I'm in here", I thought.
No I wasn't. At least they'd turned off the wind machine today.
Within minutes of arrival a Short Eared Owl was quartering up and down through the scrub patch however which admittedly did cheer me up as recently I've been trying for my first this Autumn and shorties are one of, if not my favourite birds.
About a hour into my allotted time I became paranoid that the Shrike were still in the scrub patch around the bunkers but were on the wrong side of it to be seen from the lay-by so I decided to give in with Plan A and go to plan B - walk the bunkers. So I did, and saw precisely zero shrike. But a guy walking about 20 yards infront of me accidently put up the Short Eared Owl from the long grass close to the path and it gave brilliant views - even better for the guy infront of me, he could have reached out and touched it! And then I ran out of time. So had to leave. Doesn't seem like they've been sighted since though....a crack of dawn jobbie seems the most realistic prospect of seeing them at this point. We'll see how that goes!

Shrikeland

Got there in the End!

Allah, Vishnu and Megatron all combined to great affect over the past few days and kept the White Rumped Sandpiper at Rutland until this afternoon when I was finally free to go and see the little beastie. So after uni finished 15 mins early today I promptly legged it over to Rutland......actually I didnt, still couldn't resist checking a couple of SEO sites en-route in the hope of my first sighting this year (all of last winters sightings were before the new year, that mega cold snap pushed them out of these parts). So first stop was in Maidwell at a farm I've forgotten the name of where no Owls were seen but decent numbers of Yellowhammer were in evidence along with two decent sized flocks (perhaps 60 birds) of Redwing moving overhead.
Didn't linger here due to the appointment with the Sandpiper at Rutland but couldn't resist pulling over at the Memorial lay-by at Harrington Airfield in the hope of a shortie. Not to be. Also if I'd have bothered to check the Northants news page I'd have been informed that there was a Great Grey Shrike present. And a Hen Harrier. But I knew none of this. So off I went to Rutland where thankfully the bird was showing immediately as I entered the hide (which only had 3 people in it, much better than the reported masses from yesterday!)
and was actually rather close. See.....

best photo of rare ever.

I of course attempted a few phonescoped pics, here's a selection of "not completely terrible" images:

back

of

the

net

Myself and another fine gentleman in the hide then proceeded to try and pick out the American Wigeon amongst the masses of other duckies but no dice.
Leaving Rutland soon after I stopped off for a lookie at Great Easton in the continued hope of a SEO but again drew a blank.....it was rather quite windy today and I wonder whether that put pay to my chances. Even my two best Little Owl sites failed to produce, whats going on!!?
But, at least we know what Hooded Birder is going to be doing tomorrow........Shrike hunting! In the attempt of getting 3 lifers in as many days!

modest lifer!

Being relatively new to birding has several downsides (i.e. general incompetence) but also has one major upside - loads of ticks! I don't need to leg it across half the country because some stranded siberian waif has turned up in a grotty bush in Northumberland, I can happily bodge my way around local sites ticking the shit out of everything! Patch ticks, site ticks, year ticks, life ticks, might have ticked it before but im gunna tick it anyway ticks - they're fucking everywhere!
Today I wasn't very happy with life - instead of a potential life tick in the form of the WRS at Rutland I was subjected to driving to Sheffield to pick up Amy and then Manchester for some bemusing underground tour of Manchester that my darling twin sister had arranged (the ginger bitch).
Now the conurbations of Sheffield and Manchester don't offer much opportunity for lifers and the fact that I didn't take any optics with me also boded for a pretty birdless day but I wasn't to be denied!
So what was the life tick? Two Red Grouse thats what! Only fleeting glimpses were attained from the A57 running up Snake Pass towards Glossop - a superbly named pass!
I know, I know Red Grouse isn't much to sing and dance about and some of you may well be wondering how on earth I'd managed to reach the age of 25 without ever seeing one but the answer for that lies in where I live. Leicester. Leicester has no grouses and neither does Northamptonshire, Warwickshire or Norfolk (where I have done nearly all of my birding to date). So thats why i'd never seen one before. So fuck you! If you are looking for ammo poke fun at the fact that currently I've never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever seen a Skua! Not a single one. Of any species. Ever. Now that is laughable!
Other stuff seen from the car today (one day I will die in a mangled fireball because im incapable of keeping my eyes on the road) included Peregrine, several Raven and two Jay