Snakes and Kites

Posted on July 31, 2008 by ebirder

July is a pretty slow month for birding and this year has been fairly hum drum. I have been out and about and occaisonally seen some interesting things. I did manage a trip to Gigrin for the Red Kite show, and fancy I may fair better on another visit (outside the school holidays!)

I also had some excellent gen in order to pick up these adders!

With August coming I do hope to get out a bit more!

The Farnes

Posted on July 15, 2008 by ebirder

I had been waiting nearly a month for a trip to the Farnes since postpoining a trip in June due to high winds. Frankly I found my first visit to be totaly awesome!!

There are apparently 100000 (yes hunderd thousand) puffins on the isalnd, whilst we didn’t see all of them we must of come quite close….!!! It’s quite hard to reduce shots down from thousands to a few favourites, but I have tried.

Arctic terns are everywhere and present spectacular and sometimes bloodthristy shows!!

They show really when in flight – this is only at 100mm – that’s close.

These two profile pictures are probably my favourites – I can’t rememeber seeing the individual primaries before

Of course one of the big draws of the isaldns are puffins, and these comical penguins were everywhere. I was in heaven.

Puffins fly too!

Also it is possible to get some extreme puffin shots!

Overall these are my favourite puffin pictures.

With all the prey around there are some predaotrs looking for a snack. Like this monster, that’s a kittiwake for lunch. Nature can hit you full in the face sometimes.

The parents ‘wail’ at the loss.

There are other terns on the Farnes too, such as Sandwich, Common and Roseate – these are Sandwich Terns

I suppose the day was just too much for some – I can’t wait for another visit.

Curlews

Posted on July 13, 2008 by ebirder

Firstly welcome to the new blog, it’s part of an overall overhaul on the site in general. I had gotten quite sick of the advertisements on the previous blog. Please contact me if you have any feedback, thanks.

I have been up on the moors looking for more owls, but all I have managed to come across are these curelws. Curlews are really underated in my opinion, especially when they fly past scolding you for being anywhere near where they may want to be!