29th January. Casper

The gull roost has been building up again with mostly Black-headed Gulls (c.2000 last weekend) but last night several hundred big gulls roosted, raising my hopes of a white-winger. No white wings last night but a near adult Caspian was in the roost from 15:30 onward. Frustratingly I couldn't get a good look at the underwing, but the head shape, bill and beady dark eye looked spot on.

The video (taken in High Speed mode) adds nothing to the I.D of this bird except to show just how strikingly obvious the dark beady eye is. What you don't see is me running up the earth bund behind me and flapping my arms around in an attempt to mimic a huge bird of prey, a trick taught to me by hermit like warden Nick Riddiford on Fair Isle during that ill-fated trip of 86'. The point of flushing them was a desperate attempt for the bird to lift it's bloody wings - it did not even raise a metaphorical eyebrow! Actually this is not the intended video as that is 240mb and my (as previously mentioned) old laptop is currently grinding away trying to upload it!

Fortunately the bird roosted again this evening and Andy, Pete and Roy managed conclusive views and better photos. Incidentally this bird appears to have a knackered left leg.

27th January. New Toy

It's been a while since I did any digiscoping, mainly because my near vision is a bit crap these days and even with glasses I couldn't focus on the small screen of my well used Samsung NV3. After pondering for awhile over whether or not to get a new compact I narrowed the choice down to two cameras the Canon S95 and the Nikon P300. Being a fan of all things Nikon I opted for the latter - though being a typically tight Yorkshire man the £5o price difference swayed me more.

The Orgreave Little Owl was still present this morning and despite a strong breeze proved a good subject for the new camera to get to grips with.

Quite pleased with my first attempts and even happier with the homemade adaptor (saving more of my precious Yorkshire £'s).

The Video setting is very useful with High Speed and full HD, though the latter won't play on my ageing laptop (but the 720 option is more than adequate).

Overall the P300 is very easy to use with simple navigation around the more useful settings i.e. exposure compensation, ISO, aperture and self-timer.

15th January. Long Weekend

The long weekend got off to a good start with a Little Owl on the 'Plains' a new record for the site. Not much of a surprise as I've seen Little Owls at all the adjacent birding spots, with the exception of RVCP.

A pair of Peregrines putting on a spectacular aerial display was the highlight of Saturday afternoon. The evening gull roost has drastically reduced to just handful of large gulls with birds now favouring the more traditional Broomhead roost. Despite this I stuck it out until 4:15 when the numbness in my fingers became too much!


Sunday was another very cold clear start though the building cloud suggested that it might be a good day for goose passage. Sure enough between 9:15 and 9:45 at least 700 birds passed through. A Water Rail, on the river, was a useful self found year tick and almost made up for not finding this Whooper Swan.

8th January. Snow

Stumbled into this rather charming and very obliging Snow Bunting this morning. It's possibly the bird that's been popping up briefly since November, but the first time this year so I'm having it so there!

6th January. The Bus Home

There was something wrong with the bus journey home this evening. It all started when I overheard the bloke behind me moaning to his mate about how the only things in his freezer was pies.I would have offered to empty it for him, but he was wearing one of those hoodie things and probably would have stabbed me or worse.. That however wasn't the most disturbing thing (because nobody should moan about a fridge full of pies) the thing that upset me most was that when I got off the bus I was faced by one of those posters showing that witch Thatcher's evil bastard grinning head - okay so it's really Meryl Streep but it's close enough. Surely this would make a more appropriate poster for the buses of South Yorkshire...

2nd January. A Pie New Year

As the clock struck twelve the list hit zero and for a brief moment I was sad that my years efforts had come to an end, but soon the Unicum had kicked in and I was feeling more optimistic about the coming year and just a little bit pissed.

Nasty nasty nasty stuff

The First Pies Of The New Year

Spent the last day of 2011 at Slimbridge -why? Well we were down at the brother-in-laws for New Year - just a stones throw from last years Oriental Turtle Dove, and Slimbridge being just fifty miles away seemed a good bet for a day out. Obviously we saw lots of nice ducks with half their wings missing and some that had got there under their own steam. However the highlight was an half hour question and answer session on the Spoon-billed Sandpiper chicks that have been brought there with the aim of breeding, and eventually boosting the woefully low number of breeding birds. Following a brief talk we were treated to some live on site CCTV footage of the young (most of which had now attained 1st winter plumage). Ok so it wasn't Samut Sakorn, but it's probably the nearest I'll ever get to these enigmatic birds.

29th December. Last Of The Year

That's it, this afternoons visit was my final to the patch this year. It, like much of the 400 or so visits throughout the year was pretty uneventful and I failed to add any more species to the self-found year list. The list stalled at 131 back in November and despite much leg work I just couldn't get another. I'm not complaining though, I managed 11 more species than last year. A total of 141 species were recorded at Orgreave this year - which given the habitat isn't half bad.

Three records of Black-necked Grebe this year - all in cracking summer plumage. This bird was found on my first bus visit after ditching the car.

Even the detritus strewn River Rother produced some good birds.

Some new additions to the site list were a little underwhelming.

Despite the at times constant disturbance breeding birds did remarkably well, with success from Redshank, Oystercatcher, Lapwing, L R Plover, Tufted Duck (4 broods) and Common Tern - the latter species' presence and persistent patrolling against predators no doubt helped the other breeding birds.

A total of 24 species of wader were recorded throughout the year.


One of my personal favourites this year was this totally unexpected Arctic Tern flock on the 29th July.

A good year for Wheatears with 'flocks' in double figures and an unprecedented number of Greenland birds.

So it all starts again on Sunday - or in my case Monday. I'm feeling a little negative at the moment, I always do at this time of year, but the excitement of a new challenge is already starting to fuel my enthusiasm - maybe this year I'll find I'll get my first BB rarity on the patch.

19th December. 12 Days

With only twelve days of the year left, I can already feel the new year bells ringing in their anti-climax marking the end of one of the best years local birding that I've ever had. But a lot can happen in twelve days and it's perhaps a little too early to feel the chill of Old Father Time. One of the glaring omissions on the Sheffield area list is Lesser Scaup and with the Orgreave Pochard flock reaching almost 200 birds it's surely only a matter of time before it falls, and something that is well and truly at the top of my Christmas list.

Meanwhile I spent a good chunk of the weekend tracking down the Redpoll flock and with a little help from Jean C Roche and the magic of MP3 I managed to keep them in one spot long enough to find at least one Mealy among them, though there were probably at least two others. Something to keep me busy in the coming weeks.

The gull roost is still coming up with the goods with Martin scoring a putative 1st year Caspian or hybrid (see his blog for details) and at least two Yellow-legged Gulls and the green-ringed Med' Gull still roosting most evenings.

It seems a long time since some quality pies featured on the pages of this blog, so here in all it's naked pie porn glory is a quality Huntsman Pie purchased, from Cannon Hall Farm Shop in Barnsley, by a very kind colleague who understands my need for savoury pastry products.

Stuffing, Turkey and Pork - Pietastic

14th December. Good Evening

The lack of blogging lately has been down to one or two things; like most working birders the general lack of daylight at this time of year restricts us to weekends, occasional days off and er sick days. Managed to miss out on a fine herd of seven Bewick's Swans at the weekend due to me being a nesh lazy git! Hence the self-found list remains stagnant at 131.

There's also been an appalling lack of scandal of late, though having recently thrown myself off Facebook my source for gutter birding news has all but dried up. I did attend an interesting bird group meeting recently where the speaker was like a cross between Eric Hoskings and Bernard Manning - and that's where we'll leave it....

"......Tits like coconuts"

28th November. Not Available In The Shops

Those of you who've been worrying about the health/sanity of LGRE need fear no more. Since his disappearance from the birding scene (well since he got kicked off Bird Foru...Blah Blah Blah) rumours of his dwindling health have been rife. Thankfully it became clear on Friday that it was in fact his lesser known doppelganger a Mr George Michael that was indeed ill and that aids (shouldn't that be aides?) close to LARGE knew his whereabouts.

Turns out LiaRGE had shut himself away in the cupboard under the stairs of his Little Chalfont home, with his Fisher Price tape recorder and a months supply of chicken cup o soup, to bring you his latest musical offering 'Praise Me'. Remember this is not available in the shops and stock is shifting quick (ten copies were dispatched to an address in Crawley this lunchtime) Order now in time for Christmas....