Waxwings!

As I mentioned in todays earlier post, I've been gorging on Waxwings this weekend, much like the birds themselves behave when berries are present.
On Friday afternoon, after I'd been to Swithland for a proper look at the Velvet Scoter I headed over to Stoney Stanton on the hunt for the Waxwings that had been loitering around the school for the past few days. In the end it was all relatively simple, the birds were quickly found in an area behind the school and a convenient alley allowed me to approach close to the rest tree;

Very nice indeed, although a visit this morning drew a blank which only frustrated me into being tempted to go for the enormous flock that had been found on the outskirts of Loughborough. Shortly afterwards this temptation was heightened when I nipped round to Paul Riddle's gaff to collect a couple of Owlsaboutthatthen calenders (an excellent stocking filler!) and he told me all about how he'd been there earlier in the day and that viewing was excellent! This was all the encouragement I needed and soon sacked off the Manchester derby and was on the way. Good choice. Loads of Waxwings - easily 150+, more like 200, hard to tell exactly though as they were never all together. They were even flitting down regularly to a large puddle in a nearby field, first time I've ever seen them on the ground!

This above image was just about the point where some clouds rolled in and things became much more miserable, just as Paul turned back up to try and get some more flight shots!

Loughborough Serengetti

Mr. Riddle nailing some flight shots

Garden birdage

After all that ranty wordness from earlier a shorter, easier on the eye post is the order of the day.

So... a few photo's of birds from the garden taken this summer will suffice.

Theres alot of Bullies around at the moment (up to 4 of each sex at a time). Like this male

      

And this female

                                                                 

And this terrible image of a Juvenile

There is generally loads of young stuff around at the moment with around 12 juv House Sparrows (pleasing) and around 6 Greenfinch being regular highlights. More occasional juv's seen at the minute include a couple of coal tits and a dunnock that is somehow surviving the gauntlet of feline attackers and being seen most days.

Yes this isnt a dunnock but it is the only Goldfinch ever that i've seen on our nut feeder!

Here are a couple of adults showing how its done

The undoubted prize for fledgling of the year goes to this beauty though;

This fellow has been visiting for around three weeks now and is absolutely hilarious, the most unco-ordinated woodpecker i've ever seen! He/She also likes to sit atop the bird feeders for minutes at a time just looking around like a chuffing parrot!

Other goodies seen in the garden include this young lady from last winter

Apologies but it was a dark day with a shit camera

and my first ever one of these that appeared whilst I was sat at the dining room table, eating a sandwich. I nearly fell off the chair!

Waxwing!!

Unfortunately this particular bird only lingered for around 30 seconds and as I spent most of that time faffing around trying to take the above crappograph I was left unsatisfied.
Fortunately about a week later whilst I was taking the girlfriend to the train station a flock of 20 starling sized chaps flew right over the car about 100 yards from my house and when I later investigated they were confirmed as Waxwings! This group lingered down the road from my house for over a month and peaked at about 100 birds. They were so close to the house I could wander to the end of my drive, peer down the road to see if they were sat in their favoured tree and then walk down if they were present! Here's the best photo I achieved of them.

Action shot. Oh yes