You can't expect to just drop into one of the premier RSPB reserves in Northern England for a few hours and get lucky .... or can you? Well, although I'd dearly love to be able to build a bit of literary tension and say something like 'no of course not .... unless you're a couple of 'gun ho' birders hell bent on following the sun and the birds', but the reality is of course slightly less colourful, only slightly mind!
By lucky I guess some reportage of a 'twitchable rarity' or a gripper of a view of some local speciality would fit the bill but the truth of it is we (that's myself and Mark P) had a damn fine time without either of those eventualities and still had some magic birding moments .... and that I think bears testimony to the unique charm of birding.
In our window of opportunity we set a course for the Northwest because we knew that it was going to be drab again in Yorkshire but the sun was going to shine in Lancashire .... only one place to head for -
Leighton Moss!
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| A 'murmuration' of Starlings (courtesy of Google Images) |
We arrived late afternoon on the 28th Nov and headed straight for the reserve, the sun was already dipping but a walk down towards the public hide provided us with a totally unexpected
Cettis Warbler, calling from the reeds, several
Water Rails calling and one seen on the path and then a procession of
Little Egrets flying overhead as they came into roost (up to 117 have been recorded here at the roost site). Later, as the light faded and we realised that the predictions of -4C were correct, we bore witness to the regular gathering of thousands of
Starlings as they swirled about in the sky before they all settled down into the reeds to roost .... totally awesome sight as they filled the sky above and totally impossible to estimate numbers but these 'murmurations' can top 100,000!
Not a bad start and certainly something to talk about over fish and chips and a pint at
'Ye Olde Fighting Cocks' our hostelry for the night.
Suitably refreshed and much heartened by a good old full English breakfast we headed for
Arnside Knott, a local landmark affording excellent views of the Lancashire / Cumbrian coast on one side and some of the high peaks of the Lake District on the other ..... look closely on the first pic and you should be able to make out snow on top of
Skiddaw and
Helvellyn 
As you can probably gather it was a beautiful day, freezing cold but the light was amazing. Good job I had my standby point & shoot camera with me because even though I thought I'd charged it up, somehow, inexplicably the battery pack on my SLR was flat! Real shame because within minutes of finding that out we had one of those magic birding moments. I'd climbed the hill before Mark, found out the battery pack was flat and then double cursed my luck as I came on to 5
Waxwings flying in from across the bay. Having not yet had a
Waxwing in the wild moment (as a pose to the more usual suburban sightings) he was understandably a bit disappointed at missing that but moments later 2
Waxwings floated in from somewhere and landed in the top of a tree right in front of us ... to be joined within seconds by a whole group of them (we reckoned about 45). It was an awesome sight. I've seen plenty of these birds over the past few weeks but get such views in such a location and in perfect light made this my best
Waxwing experience to date ...... just think how these pics might have turned out with the SLR and big lens!
Sod's law strikes again on the camera front but nothing can take away the memory of these beauties. We watched them for 30 minutes or so taking yew berries from a nearby bush and flying back up into this tree and then we moved reluctantly on.
In the same location we also had
Nuthatch, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Fieldfare and
Redwing
On then to Leighton Moss again but ah the daylight hours are scant at this time of the year and by the time I'd recharged my camera at the visitor centre it was already 2.00pm and the shadows were lengthening! Again we had the briefest glimpses of
Bearded Tit and
Water Rail, and at least 2
Marsh Harriers but nothing to really focus on except some reasonably close ducks from one of the hides ..... nice to get a good shot of a male
Shoveler (
pic left) and both male and female
Goldeneye (
below)
A little earlier and taking every opportunity to use my freshly energised camera I captured one of the many tamish
Robins along the footpath that some locals feed meal worms to .... this one was particularly confiding. He looks hopeful doesn't he? Well we had no meal worms in our pockets but my word he looks well fed to me!
Before long we were into another spectacular evening display of
Starlings coming into roost, better than the night before because they were 'whooshing' right over our heads and at dusk probably one of many
Sparrowhawks in the vicinity swooped menacingly over the reeds looking for a stray one ... my guess is that the 'Spars' don't go hungry around here!
Species list for the trip (
total 79)
- Common Pheasant
- Red Legged Partridge
- Red Grouse (en route)
- Greylag Goose
- Pink Footed Goose
- Canada Goose
- Mallard
- Northern Shoveller
- Common Teal
- Goldeneye
- Gadwall
- Eurasian Wigeon
- Tufted Duck
- Red Breasted Merganser
- Shelduck
- Little Grebe
- Grey Heron
- Little Egret
- Cormorant
- Common Kestrel
- Red Kite (en route)
- Eurasian Sparrowhawk
- Eurasian Buzzard
- Marsh Harier
- Water Rail
- Common Moorhen
- Common Coot
- Eurasian Oystercatcher
- Northern Lapwing
- Common Redshank
- Dunlin
- Turnstone
- Eurasian Curlew
- Common Snipe
- Common Gull
- Herring Gull
- Black Headed Gull
- Great Black Backed Gull
- Lesser Black Backed Gull
- Feral Pigeon
- Wood Pigeon
- Eurasian Collared Dove
- Common Kingfisher
- Great Spotted Woodpecker
- Eurasian Jay
- Carrion Crow
- Rook
- Eurasian Jackdaw
- Common Magpie
- Bohemian Waxwing
- Great Tit
- Blue Tit
- Willow Tit
- Long Tailed Tit
- Bearded Tit
- Eurasian Skylark
- Cetti's Warbler
- Eurasian Starling
- Eurasian Blackbird
- Fieldfare
- Redwing
- Song Thrush
- Mistle Thrush
- Eurasian Robin
- Meadow Pipit
- Pied Wagtail
- Goldcrest
- Winter Wren
- Eurasian Treecreeper
- Eurasian Nuthatch
- Great Spotted Woodpecker
- Dunnock
- House Sparrow
- Greenfinch
- Chaffinch
- Golfinch
- Linnet
- Common Redpoll
- Eurasian Bullfinch
hang around in trees .....
Cormorants on the other hand are maybe not the most photogenic of creatures and I know the anglers around here and elsewhere hate them because they take fish by the bucket load. Fair do's I say and just as Peregrine Falcons have I'm sure learnt that the Weekends are great for hunting racing pigeons, maybe Cormorants seek out gangs of rubber clad men with rods & poles! There were about 10 perched high up on overhead power lines surveying the scene when I was there but this one taking a lunch break made for a better picture!
Lastly here's a pretty smart looking Black Headed Gull, not anywhere near the feeders but I have them occasionally in my garden picking up the scraps that all the other birds tend to leave ... pizza crusts usually! I have to say that I tend to have a bit of blind spot about gulls generally but having seen many fine pictures of gulls of all descriptions on various blogs recently (most of them better than this one!), I'm determined to give them more of a look. I'm not convinced they make pleasing subjects for the camera but my word there seem to be more rare / unusual gulls being seen these days ..... Caspian Gull? Never heard of them before this year!
A fine day yesterday and a perfect opportunity to procrastinate yet again over my Xmas shopping and pop out for a couple of hours to the Derwent Valley in search of Northern swans. I'd heard there were a few Berwick's Swans in the area, these days the scarcer of the 2 species that arrive in our country from the near Arctic circle. 
I decided to head out from the Bubwith bridge end along the narrow strip of river bank still above the flood water simply because it looked so inviting .... almost surreal walking out there with the light being so good. 
Always good to get a good bird on my local patch and the reappearance of Stonechats on Strensall Common after a barren couple of years was a noteworthy highlight of an otherwise uneventful tramp around in the cold and snow threatening weather this afternoon. Totally ubiquitous on the continent, Stonechats are rather less common as a breeding bird in the UK. There were 3 or 4 breeding pairs on the Common until that very cold winter of 2010 / 11 killed them off entirely so very promising to see them back again and fingers crossed for less severe weather this Winter and a successful season in the Spring.
Suitably refreshed and much heartened by a good old full English breakfast we headed for Arnside Knott, a local landmark affording excellent views of the Lancashire / Cumbrian coast on one side and some of the high peaks of the Lake District on the other ..... look closely on the first pic and you should be able to make out snow on top of Skiddaw and Helvellyn 
As you can probably gather it was a beautiful day, freezing cold but the light was amazing. Good job I had my standby point & shoot camera with me because even though I thought I'd charged it up, somehow, inexplicably the battery pack on my SLR was flat! Real shame because within minutes of finding that out we had one of those magic birding moments. I'd climbed the hill before Mark, found out the battery pack was flat and then double cursed my luck as I came on to 5 Waxwings flying in from across the bay. Having not yet had a Waxwing in the wild moment (as a pose to the more usual suburban sightings) he was understandably a bit disappointed at missing that but moments later 2 Waxwings floated in from somewhere and landed in the top of a tree right in front of us ... to be joined within seconds by a whole group of them (we reckoned about 45). It was an awesome sight. I've seen plenty of these birds over the past few weeks but get such views in such a location and in perfect light made this my best Waxwing experience to date ...... just think how these pics might have turned out with the SLR and big lens!
