Hobbies and Little Owls, Seaton & Colyton

*Insert generic excuse for not blogging for approximately 5 weeks due to an excessive workload here*
After an 18-hour day of work yesterday (7am til 2am this morning minus eating time), it was good to have almost a whole hour free today. By free, I mean I was temporarily prioritising birding over work, only to resume work upon my return. In this hour I went to see some Little Owls at a private location. I saw one adult bird which seemed to be trying to entice a chick out of the nest by holding some food near the nest entrance, and hooting and screeching quite frequently. Unfortunately I didn't have time to see if it's endeavours were successful. Here's one of the shots; fairly poor but better than nothing!

Now on to Hobbies. I've seen Hobbies on patch with surprising regularity recently. I'm interested to know where the nearest breeding pair is, if anyone knows? Or if there's a single bird staying locally. I've seen one a few times over the last month, without actually looking for one. Near the beginning of the month, there was one hunting over Black Hole Marsh yet again, and last week I saw one flying rather erratically from my doorstep (Colyton). And no, I am not getting them confused with Peregrines or any other bird of prey. I have photographic evidence of the Hobbies but the pics are LAME compared to the ones I took at Exminster so I won't be posting them. So if anyone knows anything about local(ish) Hobbies, I'd be pleased to here from you! It's odd that last year was the first time I'd seen Hobbies in Colyton, and I saw them right through the breeding season. It sems as though this may also be the case this year.

It's gone mid-June, and I STILL haven't seen a dragonfly this year. I know they're about, and I'm not incapable of spotting them, I just have no free time to go out looking for them. I'll have to make do with Damsels for the time being; they're far more tolerant of the weather! I took a couple of pics of some on my one free afternoon of the month so far. I think it was actually drizzling on the day so it's not all that surprising that I didn't see any dragonflies.

Other news:
I recently purchased a Panasonic Lumix FZ150. I bought this primarily for the convenience as the lens covers a range of 25-600mm (in 35mm terms) in a small package. Also if the weather looks a bit dodgy, this camera can fit underneath a coat whereas my DSLR gear definitely cannot. The camera is very good, and although it's consistently rated as the best bridge camera on the market, it's certainly not a replacement for my Canon 7D with some 'L' glass on the front (not that you'd expect it to be). Definitely good enough to use as a back up should the weather/situation dictate it though.
Also, I'm now back up to a 6+ day working week! So with juggling multiple jobs, a girlfriend, twice-weekly choir, people wanting meetings for photography advice, other people wanting photography tutorials via e-mail, fitness & workout routine (I've started growing in the wrong direction and I am DETERMINED not to lose my 6-pack. Toned abdominal muscles if anyone doesn't know what that refers to), oh and I've got to sleep at some point.
I'll try and keep this blog going fairly regularly; if summer actually arrives and the rain & cloud become less prevalent then I'll be able to go out in the evenings after work. We shall see...

7-12 HOBBIES ?! Including a semi-decent pic...

Okay, so this may have been an off-patch venture, but with my recent Hobby sighting at Black Hole Marsh, and with a lot being seen over Exminster Marshes, I just had to go and have a look. It's really satisfying when you go somewhere, with a specific species in mind to go and see, and then you actually see it. Especially when the first Hobby seen was about 5 mins after leaving the car park and looking over the marsh. I took a few snaps of this bird just as record shots rather than for the purpose of decent pics. Here's one of the pics of it landed (light was bad; the sun was directly behind the bird so I had to wait for the sun to go IN. And needless to say it was then a bit dark. I couldn't win!!)

I then noticed a lot of Hirundine disturbance about half a mile further along the marsh. I put my binoculars up and had a look. Yep, Hobby. Then a 2nd. Then a 3rd, 4th, 5th... at least! All hunting over the same area.
Here's one of the (many) shots of it flying:

Stunning birds!

Some pics to accompany previous post inc. Hobby

Not much time so here's a few pics from the last weekend and previous weekends.
You'll have to try and excuse the terrible image quality of the bird of prey shots. With the speed they were travelling I'm surprised I managed to get any shots at all, especially as viewing time during each attack may have been 2 seconds tops until the bird had flown out of sight again.

Hobby arriving for the first attack

Hobby leaving after first attack

Sparrowhawk taking a dive at BHM

Swallow BHM

Common Sandpiper in front of Tower Hide

Redshank in front of Tower Hide

Garden shot

Hobby attacks Black Hole Marsh

After work on Saturday 5th, I motorbiked over to BHM to see what was about. First surprise was the HUNDREDS of Hirundines flying low over BHM. Various birds of prey were trying to take advantage of this. A female Sparrowhawk made 4 attacks, and a HOBBY was also present. It flew through over the marsh very hastily the first time I saw it. I knew something was around because the Hirundines started making a lot of noise and began to fly around, quickly and well above the water. About half an hour later it returned and again attacked. If only the Island hide had a transparent roof; the Hobby flew straight over it so it was hard to get a decent pic, especially with the rate at which it was flying. I'm fairly sure it caught something as after it's final attack it glided relatively slowly over towards some trees, and it certainly looked as though it was intending to land. As I was riding home, I once more saw the Hobby flying, near to where I had approximated it to have landed after the attack from earlier, so it seems as though it probably was sat somewhere in a tree for a while!! (I did walk over to Colyford marshes to see if it was in any of the trees between BHM and there, but with no success. It seems I must have walked passed it- shame)! With such a good show of birds on the 5th, I visited BHM again on the 6th, but it was much quieter. Hardly any Hirundines so I wasn't expecting any bird of prey attacks over the marsh- and there were none. The 3 Grey Plover from the Tower Hide were nice to see (my first ones).
I went for a brief walk down the Coly (Chantry end) today to see what was about. 1st Spot Fly of the year, only saw one but heard a few more. NO kingfisher activity at all. There has been none for the past 3 weeks. Unfortunately both nest sites were heavily disturbed (illegally) by the public and I'm 99% sure that the birds were driven out from their nests BEFORE the floods. Although with the Coly rising over the fields during the flood days, I'm not sure that the nests would have been successful anyway. A great shame as the young should have been fledging either this or next week (based on my findings from previous years) had the disturbance and floods not occurred.
I'll post again within the next few days (hopefully!!) with some pics as I don't have time now. There will also be some from the last 4 weeks, as I also didn't have any time to put posts up at the relevant time.

Red Kite over Seaton Marshes

I was finally free from my compulsory daily duties by early afternoon so I headed to Seaton Marshes for a change (prompted by Steve Waite's report of a Redstart from yesterday; no luck with that one though). After checking the Burrow Pit and seeing nothing other than a Mute Swan...

... I carried on to the hide. After about 3 minutes ALL the gulls on the Estuary went up. And stayed up; they circled overhead for a fair while and this is the reason why:

First Red Kite I've ever seen (anywhere, not just on patch). The pic is lacking in IQ as it's been heavily cropped; the bird was flying very high up on thermals. This was at 14:55. I spoke to a few other birders who turned up there but no-one else saw it... Anyone over at BHM should have had some nice views as it started gaining height from only a couple hundred metres up in that area. It was a good 1/2 mile up by the time it was over Seaton Marshes where I was.
After that bit of excitement, there was another nice surprise:

Nothing special, but it is only the 3rd one I've seen in the wild in my life (alive one, I've seen hundreds of dead ones!!).

Brief bit of Kingfisher news from the Coly. A few days ago I went for a quick look by the river, and FINALLY saw a female Kingfisher which is a definite gender ID (there have been a couple of questionables). There was a lot of Kingy noise, and looking at the mannerisms of these birds, an unwelcome one was close by:

(Posting a deliberately bad pic. For reasons see last blog post!)

These two were in the area between the two Kingfishers nests which I already mentioned in a previous post; are abnormally close together. Not altogether that surprising that there's some territorial rivalry going on.

I think I'm going to have to give up on the patch year list idea. It's become very clear that other local patch birders are able to invest a LOT more time into birding than I am! I check the blogs at both of my breaks during my working days (usually 5/6 days a week and the remaining day/(s) has/have other fixed commitments) and it's quite depressing to see the majority of the local birders being able to go out at pretty much any time of the day if something of interest should arrive on the patch. Ahhh this is a luxury which I wish I had the time and freedom for. So, with no chance of getting a reasonable list, I might as quit whilst I'm err... behind (my list is currently 50 short of Gavin's relatively impressive total). I know, It's my fault for working the amount that I do, but hey; I need money. Quite frankly I'd gladly do 80-100 hours if I was allowed.

More of the Coly Kingfishers and Dippers

Given the glorious weather, I spent most of today down at the River Coly. Unfortunately a heck of a lot of other people had the same idea, except they were nearly all accompanied by dogs... So much for trying to get pics of undisturbed wildlife!
Here's a few shots which I did manage.

Kingfisher pics now removed as too many people are coming down the Coly asking where they can be seen; without considering that they're disturbing the birds by looking for them (unfortunately one of the nests is all too obvious and a lot of people have become aware of it's whereabouts). Sitting there opposite the nest with your dog and thinking you're not disturbing the birds??? Oh COME ON!! (This applies to a lot of people, some of which I know read this blog. Take the hint).

Kingfisher info, 2 peregrines and 2 cranes...

(Severe lack of time so I'll make this quick):

...although unfortunately the Cranes were in Somerset. I was out flying (model planes) for the day with Dad, and we heard some calls which we recognised as Cranes, and there were two of them gliding on thermals over the airfield, in brilliant synchronicity. Had some cracking views, and they flew around in view for a good 7-8 minutes. First ones I've ever seen in the wild.
We saw the 2 peregrines in the morning; we heard their distinct calls whilst packing the car so we looked up and sure enough there were 2 birds flying close together right above us (150 metres up I guess).
I went for a brief walk along the River Coly yesterday and saw a few Kingfishers. I can now confirm that there is a pair at ALL THREE nest sites that I've mentioned in previous blog posts. Now all I need to do is find where they perch to fish so I can get some action shots (photo opportunities will always be down to luck regarding when there are dogs/un-subtle people around)... I have found a couple of areas which are prone to Kingfisher presence (other than the nests of course) so I'll ty monitoring these areas and see what I come up with.