27th March. Snake Pies

Despite the Met office's poor forecast the weather this morning looked promising and seeing as Beth was keen to see the adders it made sense to have another short trip out to Hatfield. Having noted the position of three basking snakes we went for a look at the cracking summer plumaged Red-necked Grebe before returning to the now basking adders one of which showed particularly well.

Snake


Grebe

and a nice selection of pies to finish.

22nd March. White Arse

Apologies if I've said this before but "Whetears give me the horn"! There's something about these hardy chats that fires something off in me giving me a sudden rush of adrenalin. I don't know what it is about them or why they have this affect on me - they just do. So a nice drake this morning was more than welcome as I trudged up the muddy track from the largest of Orgreaves two lagoons. It's the same rush every spring - a flash of white, a warm all over fuzzy feeling and a sense of euphoria comes over me as though I'd just found a top draw 'rare'. Subsequent early spring birds have the same affect but come mid-October the flash of white usually leaves me cursing "bollocks it's just a Wheatear"! What fickle creatures we birders are.

20th March. Alone Again

From the weather forecast Saturday looked promising and had it been mid-April a pre dawn raid on Orgreave, would have been necessary in order to get in place before the dog walkers and 'other' birdwatchers arrived. This however was still March and the only likely species would be a few early migrants at best. Sure enough halfway round I picked up my first Little Ringed Plovers of the year followed immediately another. A newly exposed bit of mud on the smaller pool held three Dunlin which was briefly exciting and a sign that at least birds were moving, so four Sand Martins over were hardly surprising. The rest of my two and half hours visit was quiet but I never set eyes on another living sole - bliss!

17th March. The Strife of Brian

It’s that time of year again when I can grab a precious twenty minute, or so, birding spell before work takes over.So once again I have been paying regular visits to Orgreave usually arriving around 7am. This has several benefits one of which is that I’m usually the first on site and that the birds are all mine. Not this week though. I arrived yesterday and noticed the obvious silhouette of a birder – you know the one we make when we lift our bins’ to our eyes. Filled with dismay I decided to stick it out as from my vantage point I could keep ahead of the ‘intruder’ who for the benefit of this story we will call Brian – Brian Dead. Scanning the shore line I picked up three Ringed Plovers which Brian subsequently saw as he almost trod on them, as by now he had begun to walk right along the shore line in dog walker style though without a dog. Brian continued his walk along the shore seldom lifting his binoculars, except to follow the fleeting birds from under foot, until he came to a nice gathering of c.150 Black-headed Gulls with a handful of Commons among them, which he duly flushed. Brian was back again this morning but must have arrived early as he was already halfway round when I arrived at 7am. God knows what he’d already flushed but once again he managed to clear the Black-heads, in fact as he glanced at his watch his pace increased and he successfully managed to flush every bird off the lake including two Mute Swans – it takes a true pro to flush Mute Swans. Now before any one comments I must point out that I have on occasions accidentally flushed the gulls at this site and I have walked along the shore line – however in my defence when I walk along the shoreline I scan it as far as I can see and move well back so as not to cause disturbance. Brian sadly seems to be lacking in that all too rare skill seldom seen in birding these days called ‘field craft’ either that or he is blind and it is for his benefit that Rotherham Borough Council added the braille text at the bottom of this sign!
I doubt very much that Brian will read this. But in case he does it's nothing personal just take a little more care when walking round the edge of any birding hotspot*

*Technically Orgreave is far from a hotspot more slightly tepid!

Thanks to Rebecca Nason for awarding me this sunshine blog award.

Rebecca's Blog full of proper photographs can be found here

14th March. Adders

Despite the milder weather of the last couple of days the first migrants of spring remain absent, at least in these parts. Having given Orgreave a good going over over the last couple of days I decided on not only a change of scenery but also a change of subject.

I have tried to see Adders on Hatfield for the last couple of years, mostly without any real success, so a cool morning with sunny spells seemed ideal. Ideal it was. We found two straight away which posed nicely and a third individual that let me get within just a couple of feet. Despite this and over 250 shots I managed just a handful of 'keepers' probably due to using a monopod instead of tripod, though I suspect the latter would have caused too much disturbance.

And Finally.

Thanks to Stephen Dunstan for bringing this to my attention.

6th/7th March. The Piewich

For once the Met office got the weekends forecast spot on, wet on Saturday with glorious sunshine on Sunday. I had a couple of oil changes planned for the Saturday so that would keep me busy for the morning at least. Unfortunately I couldn't raise the enthusiasm to pick up the binoculars in the afternoon but did go to Morrisons and having not eaten since the previous day created this:

The Piewich

Having written Saturday off I was torn between two choices for the promised sunny Sunday, either Grigrin Farm Red Kite feeding station with bonus Black Kite or the long staying Black-throated Thrush at Newholme. The Thrush hadn't been seen since Wednesday so there was really only one choice. Arriving at Newholme (yes I foolishly chose the latter option) it became clear after around five minutes that the thrush had moved on one way or another. Feeling somewhat like a wedding guest who'd turned up on the wrong Saturday we hung around for an hour out of shear courtesy. That left us with two choices head back via Scarborough and Filey or go a bit further north and get an insurance tick in the form of the Saltholme Hooded Merganser. Once again I made the wrong choice and headed north. Now as far as birding goes this area takes some beating and has a track record that some east coast spots can only dream of, but It's such a depressing area. The subsequent no show of the Merganser didn't improve things but a couple of red-head Smew provided some compensation - but not much! Of course the very fact that I didn't see Merganser will ensure that it makes it on to category A!

27th-28h February. Great White Bites Back

Friday was a complete washout and Saturday was going to be difficult for numerous reasons. A cunning plan involving ironing and general housewife duties was hatched in order to get across to Mirfield for the Ring-billed Gull. Thirty minutes into the ironing I sneaked a peak at RBA only to go into a headless chicken rare bird flap - "Great White Egret Thrybergh Tip flew south at 7:07" bugger south of Thrybergh is RV and other various suitable water bodies. With only 15 minutes having passed since its departure the Iron was switched off and Beth hurriedly dressed I headed to Blue-mans Bower, Catcliffe, Treeton and Orgreave all of which had no big white herons. It later transpired that the egret was found not by the regular watcher but by another with a less than perfect reputation. Fortunately for the latter he managed several photos removing any doubt over this record - which goes to prove that it's no always wise to bandy around the stringer label, because sometimes 'stringers' find rare birds!

Back at the ironing pile I managed to pull back enough brownie points to make a trip to the Ring-billed, which I managed to pick up after it had disappeared for a while. Still terribly rare in Yorkshire with only two twitchable and frustratingly absent from my RV list following a short staying adult in 96.


Despite the cold weather set back of last weekend some signs of spring are starting to appear for instance snow drops and singing Skylarks, but a more noticeable feature during the milder days has been the appearance of fruit on the Dog Shit Tree. These curious specimens began to appear around twelve years ago but have recently begun to occur more regularaly particularly around public parks and wooded areas.

Picking the fruit of the dog shit tree is not to be recommended

For the last couple of weeks.

Finally managed to get out with the new camera and take some photos, some bad and some not so bad. A small flock of Waxwings on the right side of Doncaster (though in another sense very much the wrong side) were too tempting though disappointingly chose to sit within a school compound making them almost impossible to photograph, though with double the resolution I did get a record shot.

A spot of hilarity mid-week with the report of a Black Woodpecker on the side of a telegraph pole in Cumbria. I greeted it with the usual chorus of "Bollocks that's a Green Woodpecker". Not surprisingly it then came out that the reported Black Woodpecker report was erroneous, which as we all know is political correctness for 'Bollocks'. What did have me rolling around the floor was that when the truth came out it turned out to be a plastic cut-out of a Black Woodpecker nailed to the telegraph pole in order to keep Great Spotted Woodpeckers off the poles! Why would UK Great Spot's even recognise Black Woodpecker? Wouldn't it be more productive to nail a stuffed cat to the post.

Some sun on the 19th meant I might be in for some photo fun, so we decided on a stroll around Clumber. No Hawfinches but plenty of these.

Saturday the 20th was a stupid day where most things went wrong. I fancied a bit of old school twitching, the kind that Rob and I used to enjoy back in the day when we were irresponsible youths with shit loads of time on our hands. Unfortunately my old mate was home on Shetland celebrating his 40th so I tempted Jo with such delights as Ring-necked Duck, Smew and Red-necked Grebe. Pugneys first where the Ring-necked Duck was showing well (depending on how you define showing well) at about 300 metres with its head firmly tucked in his wing. Following a trudge around the Calder Wetlands the drake Smew refused to show with the only consulation being some top fish and chips from the Wetherby Whaler. We were told that the Wintersett Red-necked Grebe was showing well, whatever showing well does mean it certainly doesn't cover not showing at all. I was feeling a bit despondent by now and couldn't be arsed to walk through the shitty path to the low res for a couple of Smew added to the fact that there was a gang of pikey looking youths fishing, that is hanging around dipping rods in to the res, whilst lighting fires, dumping rubbish smoking crack and planning to anally rape the next passing birder. I remembered just why I've only ever made two visits to Wintersett - it's horrible, cold and plagued by inbreds that make the Marshians of Killamarsh look normal!

Pissed off we headed for the Bewicks Swans that have been frequenting Mexborough since before Christmas. Surely we couldn't fail on these, even Jo had managed them on her lunch break! True to the days form we did.

Despite the run of failures a reported Red-necked Grebe at Langold was the final stop of the day, though I didn't give it much hope. Surprisingly it turned out to be gen and was well and truly showing well.

An unexpected dollop of Snow on Sunday left me filling in a Job application whilst getting distracted by the photogenic birds in the garden. But a Yellowhammer under the feeders proved to be the biggest adrenalin rush of the week being new for the garden. I have a soft spot for Yellowhammers, they were the first birds that caught my eye and completely responsible for my birding addiction and the subsequent troubles that they caused - but how could you ever hold that against them?

10th February. Bored

The two things that I love about February are that it's only 28 days long and it's next to March. The most frustrating thing is that it's just not light enough to go birding before work and just too dark to go after.

Birding during the last week consisted of just the Saturday morning around PHW, which was fairly quiet, dull and very wet under foot- just like your typical February day.

A text from Martin on Sunday afternoon alerted me to a Giant Canada Goose at RVCP. Now I don't much care for all this super species, sub-species, race stuff so I did a casual trawl of the net for an image or two. I must say I was a little disappointed and expected something with the name giant to look a little like this..



When this is actually what I found..

The diagnostic feature is clearly the hovering G.

There clearly needs to be a law introduced to stop the use of words such as giant when clearly they are not - they're just a bit bigger.

29th January. The Best Laid Plans

The best laid plans don't always go to plan and this weekend was no exception. In an attempt to get at least three species on the list I intended to put my day off on Friday to good use with a trip in to the peak. Unfortunately low cloud and general clag meant a change of plan. Instead I opted for a straying off the path visit to Orgreave. After trudging round for an hour or so I was covered in mud with the only reward being Peregrine. By now it had cleared up though it still looked black over Bill's so I made the decision to do the area around Spa Farm, Bole Hill and Blue Man's Bower, thinking that I might uncover some scarce bunting around the Farm. There was no scarce near the farm in fact there were no buntings of any description probably due to the hedge having a pretty severe flailing. In short the whole day was frustrating made even more so by a phone call from Andy informing me that two Golden Plovers were in a field at Leash Fen. With school collection duties to perform there was no way I that I would have made it there and back in time - so I went home and sulked!

Who'd have thought I could go an entire month without even a sniff of one of these

The remainder of the weekend was pretty much the same. I added no more species, walked five miles in a bird less Derwent Valley, got overtaken by Malc after I'd sent him the Barn Owl MP3 that almost certainly lead to my demise (penance for 'tape luring') and had another Peregrine, this time though grabbing a Collared Dove right above the garden which sort of made up for my failings elsewhere!

Back to more relaxed birding from now on with the first spring migrants just over a month away.