Seaton Jurassic update & a hungry Heron

The new Seaton Jurassic building is doing the trick with both locals and Easter tourists it seems; the Trams and the Centre have been very busy lately. A few people contacted me regarding my post about having products in there, and it seems that the team have been so busy at the Centre that my things haven't reached the shelves yet. At least the Centre is doing well; that's the important thing!

As for bird news, the Marsh Harrier was still present at Bridge Marsh this morning. The weather for tomorrow looks favourable to get another fall of birds too so hopefully there'll be something new to report soon. In the meantime, here's a Grey Heron with a rather large meal.

More passage birds around the Axe Patch

The favourable winds did indeed push in some new birds today, as anticipated!
A check of Seaton Marshes at first light yielded nothing of particular interest other than a pair of Kestrels mating and the lingering Glossy Ibis. A family of recently hatched Mallard Ducklings was also nice to see.

General news:
- Tim Wright picked up a Marsh Harrier yesterday evening which was still present this morning
- Phil Abbott found a Ring Ouzel at Beer Cemetery Fields
- I heard a Whimbrel on the estuary so hurried down to Tower Hide and sure enough there were 3
- Tim Wright had a Sandwich Tern grounded from Tower Hide late afternoon

The next couple of days should give some more new arrivals too so watch this space...

The aforementioned 3 Whimbrel

Throwback Pic - Kingfisher Portrait

Workload has been prohibitive of spending much time out birding since the Iceland Gull, so I'll do a typically late 1am post with a blast from the past. I don't generally like strong Sunlight for photography but it certainly emphasised the colours of this gorgeous male Kingfisher here. I was a teenager when this pic was taken but am knocking on the door of 25 now...

Iceland Gull - what a stunner!

A text from Steve Waite had me hurrying straight out of the door! His persistence looking through gulls on the Axe Estuary paid off with him finding a gorgeous 1st winter Iceland Gull. I parked up along the road South of Coronation Corner and walked towards where Steve and Ian Mc were viewing the bird from. I hurried towards them so they could help point out the bird but turns out that wasn't necessary; I couldn't believe how obvious the Iceland Gull was! It soon flew and headed towards Tower Hide so I nipped over there to try and see a bit more of it - it's a patch tick for me so it was an educational bird. Unfortunately it was difficult to pick out from there; myself and Ian Mc didn't pick it up until it was flying again. It flew around for a couple of minutes before eventually gaining height and heading off North.

The below pics are pretty heavy crops due to the distance, but what a bird!

Cheers Steve!

SEATON JURASSIC is officially open!

Well it was a pretty miserable day in terms of weather for the opening of a new attraction to Seaton, but the new building was busy and buzzing none-the-less.
It truly is a fantastic building; hopefully it helps bring more people here in the tourism season.

I hear that they are stocking a range of greeting cards and mounted prints featuring some very local wildlife photographs, taken and produced by a certain someone...

Yep - I'm pleased to announce that Seaton Jurassic is now an outlet of my photo products; my first 'store-front' in Seaton. A lot of the designs will have featured on this blog over the last few years, although there are a few 'new' ones which have very intentionally been kept off of social media due to the content. Occasionally you get a unique opportunity to capture a special moment with a camera; this happened in 2011 when I got some extraordinary images of Kingfishers on a local River. All images were taken legally and responsibly - but due to Kingfishers being a Schedule 1 species, I decided to leave the photos off of social media until the site was no longer active, just to guarantee that I didn't indirectly cause disturbance to them through the actions of other people. I found the location of the nest site (along with another 3 nest sites) and these photos were taken at a favoured feeding area, away from the nest site. The site no longer exists as it was destroyed by flooding and erosion a couple of years ago. With the number of outlets of my products increasing, the time has come to release some of my most treasured images.
The main one of interest will be a shot of 5 Kingfishers together with all of them posing beautifully, blissfully unaware that they had landed in front of a man with a camera. One shot did have 6 birds in the frame but there was too much unwanted movement in the pic to make it a commercially viable image.

It is still my intention to leave the aforementioned images off of social media due to the inevitable controversial conversation that it would generate - if you want to see these images of an extraordinary event, then you'll just have to visit Seaton Jurassic... Oh and please purchase a print/card or two ;-)

Robin posing (it's pretty much a pet)

There's loads of Robins around and a couple of them on Seaton Marshes are incredibly tame. I get the impression they've been hand fed at some stage or at least had food left for them. They fly to meet you to see if you have anything for them! It was raining and the light was pretty dull, but when the bird is at point blank range that doesn't present much of a problem. Hopefully the next species to appear on this blog will be a little less common...

Glossy Ibis Posing

A decent look around over the last couple of days hasn't yielded anything new of significant interest, so I made do with taking a few more pics of the long-staying Glossy Ibis. The flight shot was obtained due to two old guys deciding to climb the bank and look over the fence, just outside of the hide, rather than looking through the windows like any sensible/responsible person would. I did photograph the blokes 'in action' flushing the bird, but one of them is a regular local so I'll save him the embarrassment... Flushing something inadvertently is okay and will inevitably happen, but looking over a fence which is there purely to shield people from the birds' views, thereby scaring the bird off, certainly does irritate me. Some birds are tame and then the ethics of trying to get a better view aren't as rigid. Put simply, if it flushes, you shouldn't have done it (a rare exception being if it's coming to the end of the day with poor light, and there's a bird which you are unsure of the ID of).

That's enough ranting for one year I think.

Today certainly felt warm in the Sun; it finally seems as though Winter is completely over and we are well and truly into Spring - both with the weather and the birds.