Derbyshire. Owl. Flowers

In that order.

Over last weekend myself and Amy ventured into Derbyshire for a few days of Cottaging (without the associated homosexual activities) in the village of Brassington near Carsington Water. Brassington was a cracking little village but with no internet, no phone signal and no shop (but two pubs thankfully) it was certainly a slight shock to the system.
Didn't do much birding to be fair but several Tawny Owl were calling around the village on the first night of the stay but strangely not again. A walk along the Cromford canal didn't produce the hoped for Hawfinch but did produce some real quality views of Little Grebe, with 6 pairs occupying a relatively short stretch of water. The amazing clarity of the canal also allowed you to watch them hunting underwater, a rare sight!
A trip up the Heights of Abraham was also interesting as I'd never been up it before but now i'm going to put on my tight trousers and complain about the price. 13 beans each it cost and yes it did also include a guided tour down the old lead mine at the top. But considering I could go to Twycross Zoo for example and pay a similar price to be amused by stuff like Giant Tortoises humping and Gorillas eating their own sick (yes, I've actually witnessed both those events before at Twycross!) I think Abraham is being a greedy fuck.
Anyway less moaning, Its time for a photographic interlude.

can I tick this?

Wahey!

Back to today:
I had to drive to Northampton this afternoon to hand in an assignment and on the way back I checked a couple of Little Owl sites and happily found two birds at separate sites although only one bird played the "im going to let you take my photo" game. Its the same bird as featured a few weeks ago and im happy to report these photo's are an improvement!

I also had a quick blast with attempting to photograph some of the emerging spring flowers in the garden too:

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:

12th Sept. No seabirds and an owl.

Yesterday afternoon I did a small tour of a few of the reservoirs in Leicestershire on the hunt for seabirds again. First stop was Thornton which looked like this:

No seabirds were present however and the best of it came from 3 Little Grebe that were quite rightly avoiding the swarms of bread-crazed fake ducks that inhabit Thornton. Didn't bother with circumventing the reservoir as frankly I couldn't be arsed so I moved onto the dam at Cropston reservoir which was.........fucking windy to say the least.

Cropston being windy

So windy infact that using a telescope became almost impossible and stable viewing could only be achieved using bins. Not there was anything particularly fancy to see anyway, a juv. Arctic Tern brightened things up nicely however as I had been considering dropping into Watermead on the way home to see the bird that has been lingering there recently.

The third and last reservoir I visited yesterday was Swithland which was also poor (also scuppered by the fact that I chose to view it from a spot looking directly into the sun) but did throw up single Greenshank and Common Sandpiper and also a couple of Nuthatch in the trees surrounding the res. I do suspect more waders were present than the two I saw but as I said, I picked about the worst place to view from. I was going to visit Groby pool as I was in the area on the hunt for the Redstart that has been knocking around there recently but I decided to bail as such a plan involved walking - far too much effort!

Yesterday evening I went out for an owl again with the intention of staking out the likely Tawny Owl roost site - no sightings were made during the last hour of light. Previous to this I had visited a Little Owl site where I was reasonably confident of a sighting - in periods of high wind the owls can be quite easy to locate aslong as you know the sheltered spots where they like to hide from the worst of it. So sticking my head over a hedge to see if the Owls were present I was rather surprised to find no owls but one Paul Riddle instead who was erecting some perching posts for future use by the owls. After a chinwag over the hedge with Paul who gripped me off immensely recounting how he'd just had 5 owls in that very spot (and got to within about 10 feet of them)  about ten minutes previous I headed on and soon after picked up one of his displaced juveniles perched above a knot in a roadside tree. No photo's unfortunately as I didnt bother taking the scope out last night (shows how confident I was about my Tawny stakeout!).