2010-09-10T10:56:04Z Mark & Jen Copyright 2010, Mark & Jen SPHPBLOG

Heading back from the US today. I'll hopefully add a number of blogs for our trip over the coming weeks (including a review of the Canon 500L IS USM lens that we rented!) but here's one of my favorite pics to wet your appetite.

-Mark- ]]> http://www.allaboutwildlife.co.uk/Blog/index.php?entry=entry100618-151532 2010-06-18T00:00:00Z 2010-06-18T00:00:00Z
First post in a long while. We moved house at the end of last year and since then seem to have been far too busy to take many pictures. The following were taken at Pagham Harbour Nature Reserve while on a short break. Enjoy...


Wheater (F)

Mark's Pics. Click to enlarge..

Wheater (M)	Oystercatcher	Grey Heron
Reed Bunting	Pipit	Buzzard
Turnstone	Greenfinch	Blackcap (F)
Dunlin	Common Sandpiper	Whimbrel

Whitethroat

Jen's Pics. Click to enlarge..

Whitethroat (m)	Whinchat (m)	Swallow
Greenfinch (m)	Kestrel	Robin
Willow Warbler	Blackbird (m)	Orange-tip Butterfly (m)

]]> http://www.allaboutwildlife.co.uk/Blog/index.php?entry=entry100419-173236 2010-04-19T00:00:00Z 2010-04-19T00:00:00Z
Puffin in Flight

Guillemot

Puffin

Razorbill

Skomer is a small island off the South West coast of Wales famous for its bird collonies and wildlife. Unspoiled by civilization Skomer is and will remain a protected area of outstanding natural beauty managed by the National Trust.

Having tried unsuccessfully to visit last year and again a month or so ago this year it was beginning to look like we were going to miss out again. However on Thursday last week all came good and we finally managed to make it to Martin's Haven on a day when the boat was able to cross and get a seat (seats are limited and available on a first come first served basis only).


The Boat & Skomer

For any bird enthusiast the excitement begins before you even dock on Skomer with large numbers of Puffins, Guillemots and Razorbills fishing in the waters surrounding the island. They'll also be there to greet you as you climb the steep stairway that leads you up the cliff face when you dock.



We decided to head clockwise around the island sticking pretty much to the coastal path which unfortunately meant we didn't get opportunity to check out the various lakes and hides on the island. We'll check those out next time :) and in any case there was plenty to keep us excited on our chosen route.

At this time of year the island really is Puffin paradise with them showing up pretty much everywhere! Ignoring the Puffins just for a moment one of the first treats that we had having just started out was a Short-Eared Owl!


Short-Eared Owl

OK so it wasn't a great photograph but its the first one we've ever seen and we actually got a pretty good look at him through the bins! :)

The next landmark that we arrived at was "The Knapp"; a place where you can expect to have Puffins quite literally at your feet. The path takes you straigh through their collonely with burrows on either side and you can stand and watch as the adults come back from the sea with their beaks full of Sandeels!



Also at this point you can see a large number of Razorbills and Guillemots, Fulmars and Kittiwakes.



We moved slightly away from here and found a quieter spot to sit and eat a spot of lunch before continuing our trip around the island.



To be continued...]]> http://www.allaboutwildlife.co.uk/Blog/index.php?entry=entry090625-070000 2009-06-25T00:00:00Z 2009-06-25T00:00:00Z Final Day - Journey back home...

As the title says, this was our last day spent at Pagham. We spent most of the morning packing up and getting ready to head out. After we'd gotten checked out, we headed around the harbour one last time before we headed back.

The wind was absolutely brutal, with gusty winds blowing across much of the area. This made looking at anything through the binoculars or taking any photos a difficult if not impossible challenge. We saw the mergansers in the same spot as we had all weekend, though at a further distance than before. Additionally we saw the large flocks of Linnets that Mark had seen over the weekend, with plenty of goldfinches mixed in. Various waders were along the tidal line, which was right the way in, so gave us good views of anything there. Redshank, Curlew, and Oystercatchers were the most common sightings. Also along the way we saw one lone little egret hunched down out of the wind.

We made the dam wall in good time and had a decent look around. More Redshank, Curlew and Oystercatchers were about, with a lone Grey Plover. On the right of the dam wall, there were plenty of waterfowl about, including Wigeon and Teal, a few Black-tailed Godwits, Lapwings, Great-crested Grebes, Cormorant, and heard a Cetti's Warbler nearby. We also got an alright look at the male Garganey through the binoculars, though he was huddled up against the far bank. With the high winds, photos were impossible.

On our way back I got a close-up view of a Kestrel as it battled the winds directly above Mark's head - winds making photos again just too difficult. We also spotted our first Little Tortoiseshell, which gave us good views and a chance to photograph something out of the wind :) And our last spot of the day was a lone Meadow Pipit. Here's a selection of the very few photos we managed this day:

Meadow Pipit	Curlew
Small Tortoiseshell	Grape Hyacinth

~Jen]]> http://www.allaboutwildlife.co.uk/Blog/index.php?entry=entry090323-094304 2009-03-23T00:00:00Z 2009-03-23T00:00:00Z Day 3 - WWT Arundel

This was another of our 2 full days in the pagham area. Mark started off by taking the morning shift around the harbour.

I'll leave space here for him to fill in his experiences, but will again leave a selection of photos he took this morning.

Skylark	Redshank
Redshank	Ringed Plover

After his tour around the harbour, we set off to nearby WWT Arundel. It was a glorious day, so there were certainly more people than usual. And by far the most big lenses and fancy cameras I've ever seen in one place. This was not our first visit to Arundel, and despite it not having the larger grounds of the two WWT sites near home (WWT Slimbridge & WWT Wales), it's still a great setup.

I spent most of the time taking photos of the ducks and other waterfowl. We did see some snipe from one of the hides, but with lighting less than ideal, there aren't any photos to share of that. Here's a selection of the various birds from this visit.

European Wigeon	Pheasant
Hooded Merganser	Hooded Merganser
Scaly-sided Merganser (m)	Spectacled Eider
Baer's Pochard (m)	Ring-necked Duck (m)

After our visit to Arundel, Mark took another quick tour around the harbour, and this is another spot he'll have to fill in. But here's another selection of photos:

Snipe	Snipe
Redshank and Snipe	Curlew in Flight

Then I had a turn around the harbour as well. The sun had pretty much gone down by this point, but I still got a decent look around. I did see the red-breasted mergansers again, various redshank and curlew, ringed plovers and a few grey plovers as well. I heard the occasional skylark, and saw linnet, gulls, cormorant, little egret, grey heron, wigeon, brent geese and turnstones. A real treat however was seen from one of the harbour walls, a grey seal. Here's one of the only photos I caught of him:



~Jen]]> http://www.allaboutwildlife.co.uk/Blog/index.php?entry=entry090322-152811 2009-03-22T00:00:00Z 2009-03-22T00:00:00Z Day 2 - March 21st, 2009

When we do visit this nature reserve, we always have the kids with us, aged 3 & 4mo at this time. And as anyone who has kids know, looking for wild birds and having kids this young along don't mix, so we tend to take shifts taking a walk without the kids. Mark took the morning shifts and I got the evening shifts.

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The Mudflats & Lagoon

My morning walk took me around approximately half the harbour (inc. down onto the mudflats), the dam wall and lagoon at the top of the harbour. It was a gorgeous morning with warm sunshine and only a gentle breeze which quickly took the edge off the cold morning air. The tide was relatively far out with lots of waders showing down on the flats, so that's where I headed first.

Down on the flats there was a good variety of gulls, ducks and waders including:

Teal Wigeon Pintail Shelducks Black Headed Gulls Herring Gulls Little Egret Cormorant

Dunlin Knot Turnstones Grey Plover Oystercatchers Curlew Black-tailed Godwit Lapwing

Heading back up off the flats a sizable flock of Linnets circling the pastures and 2 Kestrel were a very pleasant sighting.

The Lagoon at the top of the harbour was as picturesque as ever with many of the ducks and waders already mentioned plus both Great Crested and Little Grebe and all the usual favourites (Mute Swans, Mallards, Coot, Moorhen, etc). A large number of Reed Buntings were seen darting in and out of the reeds and nearby a few Cetti's Warblers could also be heard. A Buzzard overhead gave me a few nice snaps and another much paler Buzzard was also observed in the fields beyond the Lagoon.

The highlight of the morning however was the first of several sightings over our few days away of a Snipe on the far edge of the Lagoon.

Here's a selection on photos from the morning...

Linnets	Pintails in Flight
Turnstone	Grey Plover
Dunlin	Buzzard
Black-tailed Godwit	Magpie

-Mark-

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Then we attempted to head over to Church Norton to view some of the slavonian grebes that had been reported there. But after a disasterous attempt with bringing both the kids, we headed back. Stopping along the way back near a marshy area, I had the chance to view my very first avocets. It was only a pair of them, but it was fantastic to see, and although I improved on the photos we had, there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Avocet	Avocets

After this bit of success, we headed back to the caravan, where I left Mark and the kids and headed off on my own little walk. The light was mostly fading, but I still made the most of my time. I walked over to see if the red-breasted merganser was still there, and I was in luck, he was still there and closer than ever. He was remarkably unafraid of me, so I had fun getting some great close-ups of him. I tried to photograph the female later, but she was as shy as anything I'd seen, and simply would not come within good range of my lens. So I had to settle for a record shot of her, as I never was able to get a good shot of her during our visit.

Red-breasted Merganser Male	Red-breasted Merganser Female

]]> http://www.allaboutwildlife.co.uk/Blog/index.php?entry=entry090321-125231 2009-03-21T00:00:00Z 2009-03-21T00:00:00Z
I'm going to go over the 4 days we were visiting there, spreading them over 4 entries.

Day 1 - March 20th, 2009

We spent most of this day travelling from our home here in Wales to get to the church farm site. We made it in plenty of time, seeing many birds along the way, including countless buzzards, wood pigeons, kestrels, and many many rookeries.

As soon as we got our keys to the caravan we were staying at, we headed off to the nature reserve to take a bit of a stroll. Immediately Mark spotted something new in the pool nearest the haven site - it was a red-breasted merganser, a stunning male. He wasn't very close, but we took several snaps of him (which we improved upon later).

There were plenty of other birds about, this haven site has an abundance of wildlife just on site. You could hear loads of greenfinches buzzing, a green woodpecker yaffling, house sparrows, tits, plenty of wood pigeons, rabbits, and a variety of seagulls as well.

Further off on the nature reserve, in the same pool as the merganser, there were tufted ducks, goldeneyes, coots, moorhens, great crested grebes, and mallards. Along the shoreline of this pool you'd also see the occasional redshank. To the right of this pool was the mudflats. The sun was in that direction, so little could be seen other than a few redshanks and you could hear the curlews making some noise.

By this time the light had mostly faded, so we took some sunset photos and called it a night.

]]> http://www.allaboutwildlife.co.uk/Blog/index.php?entry=entry090320-124002 2009-03-20T00:00:00Z 2009-03-20T00:00:00Z

The above image was taken at distance in awful lighting conditions; the cropability of the Canon 50D's 15 Megapixel images is unbelievable!!

-Mark-]]> http://www.allaboutwildlife.co.uk/Blog/index.php?entry=entry090208-110000 2009-02-08T00:00:00Z 2009-02-08T00:00:00Z Buzzard (left) was the other side of a large field barely visible with the naked eye and the Sparrowhawk (right) was no more than a black splot against the skyline.



Some teasing glimpses of a Great Spotted Woodpecker hammering away at the top of a tree...



Buzzard in Flight


Buzzard


Reed Bunting (prentending to be a Snow Bunting! :)


Other sightings for the day included Snipe, Siskin, Bullfinch, Green Woodpecker, Nuthatch, Raven and all the usual favourites. :-)

-Mark-]]> http://www.allaboutwildlife.co.uk/Blog/index.php?entry=entry090207-183305 2009-02-07T00:00:00Z 2009-02-07T00:00:00Z WWT Website.

We really had a fantastic time there. There was a huge number of birds taking sanctuary here from the harsh weather that was hitting the UK at this time; freezing temps, high winds, and snow in much of the country. From the hides we were able to see large numbers of wild birds, such as: graylag, whitefronted geese, canada geese, shovelers, pintails, gadwalls, teals, wigeon, mallards, redshank, little grebe, and dunlin.

But the stars of the visit had to be the Tundra Bean Geese that were visible from the hides, which unfortunately we were unable to get a capture of due to the distance and poor lighting involved. Also a few first for us including the Water Rail and the Glaucous Gull. Unlike the photographers waiting for the bird to take flight, we were happy enough to see the bird and take a photo where he was sitting. We missed the Icelandic Gull which flew over this bird later on.

Water Rail	Glaucous Gull 1st Winter

While out amongst the hides, we came across a feeding station set behind some concrete slab walls, with some viewpoints along the wall. Really a great set-up they had here, with dozens of birds taking advantage of the varieties of food there. Amongst the many birds, here's a short list: Greenfinch, Goldfinch, Chaffinch, Long-tailed Tit, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Jackdaws, Crows, Wood Pigeons, Moorhen, Coot, Mallards, and a lone Pheasant.

Here's a selection of the photos we took of the birds there:

Greenfinches	Chaffinch (m)

Also next to one of the hides I saw my first Snow Drops. Hard to imagine spring on the way with the horrible weather we've been having, but it must be if these are peeking out already!

Snowdrops

After spending time at the hides, we took a quick trip around their collection ducks. Here is a selection of those birds.

Smew (m)	Red-Crested Pochard (m)
Lesser Scaup (m)	Lapwing (not part of collection)
Snow Goose (Blue Morph)	Eider

-Jen]]> http://www.allaboutwildlife.co.uk/Blog/index.php?entry=entry090201-133154 2009-02-01T00:00:00Z 2009-02-01T00:00:00Z