The Young Birder

I recently had some time away in South Devon, staying at a friends in Budleigh Salterton. After attending a solitary bee ID course a few months ago, I've become absolutely hooked on the group so I decided to see if I could find some Southern coastal species on this trip.  Devon has a huge variety of solitary bee species and I was lucky enough to see quite a few, including this splendid female Black Mining Bee ( Andrena pilipes ) , which was seen along the Budleigh Salterton seafront on bramble. Like the Black Mining bee, the Cliff Mining bee ( Andrena thoracica ) usually nests in soft rock cliffs, which are plentiful around the Budleigh Salterton area.  The female of the species are very distinctive , as they show a bright orange hair pile on the thorax and an almost hairless, black abdomen. One of my favourite walks of the trip was from Budleigh, crossing over the River Otter and then walking a stretch of the South West Coast Path. The coast path route takes in some fan...

Its time for my Spring and Summer patch update!  My patch is Longdon Marsh, Worcestershire, where I do a WeBS (Wetland Bird Survey) for the BTO. My highlight of the Spring was undoubtedly finding a pair of summer plumaged Black-necked Grebes  which stayed for a few days on the main scrape. I saw them the day I was doing the WeBS count for May; a very welcome edition to the day's list!  The Black-necked Grebe is a scarce bird in Worcestershire and therefore classed as a local rarity.  Here's the Black-necked Grebe pair together...just! They were probably on their migration, passing through their breeding site.  Another record shot of a passage migrant seen during late Spring, a  Black-tailed Godwit , the first I've seen on the reserve. It was most likely a failed breeder from Iceland coming back to Britain to spend the rest of the year.  As I was about to leave one morning, this Greenshank dropped into the scrape, calling frequently. Probably another f...