Hen Harrier on patch April 22nd

River Coly, Colyton.
What an afternoon that was! Hen Harrier is a raptor I had been wanting to see on patch for a rather long time, especially after having already seen two of the rarer Montagu's locally. The sighting reminded me of the 1st Monty, with the view being both distant and brief, and confirmed (beyond doubt) from dodgy pics after the event. The Hen Harrier was so distant that I might have missed it had a Buzzard not flown up to mob it. I've been spending a lot of time looking up during the warm weather lately but this was mainly with the hope of seeing some more Red Kites, so you can imagine the excitement when a ringtail Harrier showed up. Hen Harrier was my initial impression with this bird but I wasn't confident enough to rule out Pallid until I'd got the pics home, at which point it became pretty obvious (thanks to Steve and Brendan for their views on some lousy BOC pics whilst I was still out). Some of the pics were overexposed so it looked artificially pale on BOC, but did appear to show 5 'fingers' in some (not all) of the pics from the little that I could see on the screens. It was rather bright outside and my experience with Pallid/Hen Harriers is not thorough having not seen either properly, hence the slight lack of confidence initially.

The below (cropped and adjusted) pic makes things look a lot clearer than what I had to work with at the time...

Versus the original, viewed on a dull camera screen whilst I was out in the field:

Now, a Pallid Harrier next would be nice wouldn't it? We can dream.

Red Kite

Blimey it has been a while since my last blog post! 2019 is proving rather challenging and I haven't been able to do much birding so far this year but have managed a couple of short walks this week. Dippers have been showing well on the Coly and providing excellent views; they're easily one of my favourite birds to watch, just so full of character!

A Red Kite heading west over Colyton at 16:59 on the 18th was also nice to see (not the best pic mind). I wonder if we'll get anything like the 100+ Kites we had over Colyton in 2 days last year  < SEE HERE >.

Total lunar eclipse

Clouds. Lots and lots of clouds. I did manage to get some (fairly bad) pics during the eclipse, but to give an idea of how challenging it was here in Colyton, the total eclipse phase lasted approximately an hour, and during that hour there were perhaps 3 or 4 seconds of moon viewing time. That doesn't mean clear skies for 3 or 4 seconds, it means I was able to take a couple of dodgy pics through the cloud for those 3 or 4 seconds only.

Worth the effort, but still a very disappointing night/morning.

Just under 11 years to wait until the next one! Well, one that's visible from the UK at least.

---GIVEAWAY--- Milky Way from Seaton Beach

It has been a while! I'm very sorry to those of you who check this blog regularly; I've had a busy few months. This page will hopefully get back to regular birding stuff soon!

In the meantime, I'm doing another giveaway on my photography page on Facebook. It's worth a plug here as it's to do with the natural World!

A bit of story on the image itself. I was initially disappointed to see the cloud coming in so soon after setting up the camera equipment, but fortunately the wisps were thin and showed some warm colours, presumably from light pollution around nearby towns.

This image is a stack/blend of 5 long exposures with a total exposure time of slightly over 10 minutes. This allows all areas of the image to be detailed without showing much image noise.

This link < HERE > should take you to the post.

GIVEAWAY CLOSES ON SUNDAY 25TH NOVEMBER AT 20:00 (local time) - see the Facebook post for more information if you're interested. There are approx. 100 entries so far.

Ruff

Well, it has been a while! I have been getting out for the occasional 30mins of birding but haven't been able to blog anything having not had a working week of less than 100 hours for quite some time now.

A quick visit to BHM in the strong winds this afternoon yielded nothing better than 2 Ruff, 2 Greenshanks, a Green Sand and 3 Grey Wags.

Cuckoo at Black Hole Marsh

There was a Cuckoo at BHM near Tower Hide on Thursday 9th. It was pretty elusive, only giving brief views and mostly seen in flight when the trams flushed it. We've also had more waders around recently with the best being a Curlew Sandpiper seen briefly by Ian Mc. The only other wader of much interest was another Wood Sandpiper.

Here's a pic of the Cuckoo but it doesn't have many pixels left. I took this from Island Hide, so it was a few hundred feet away...

Wood Sandpiper posing nicely

Black Hole Marsh has been looking absolutely stunning lately! Lots of birds, nice evening light with the recent Sun and a nice view over the whole marsh now that the overhead cables have been removed. We've had at least 1 Wood Sandpiper here over the last few days, showing well near the viewing screens at the end of the boardwalk to Island Hide at times. I took Dad for a quick visit this evening and it performed very nicely indeed. Other birds of note included 16+ Dunlin, 3 Green Sandpipers and a Greenshank.