The Young Birder

  Some of you may already know that I've been doing regular visible migration watches (vismig) counts, both from my garden in Herefordshire and from Much Marcle Ridge, around 15 minutes drive away from my home.  In this post, I'm going to go through some of the species which I've seen over the course of the Autumn so far from both locations. Before I start though, I must first mention my  friend Dan Webb, who has helped, taught and encouraged me a huge amount - his enthusiasm for the subject  is infectious!  I can't thank him enough. Vismig  can be observed almost anywhere, though it is best to watch from a natural high point, like Marcle Ridge, which funnels the birds around it in the right weather conditions or [preferably] a costal headland such as  Spurn Point in East Yorkshire.  Spurn is one of the best places to observe vismig in Britain, as the geography of that area is perfectly suited to receive large numbers of migrants. I've b...

I'd gone to WWT Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, really just to discuss volunteering but since I was there...I thought I'd do a bit of birding as well! There was nothing showing on the sightings page so I didn't think I'd see much.  I made my way up to the estuary tower, where I met a couple of other birders who were scanning for the American Golden Plover which had been seen the day before.  We didn't manage to see the plover, but a Wheatear , Marsh Harrier , 20+ Ruff and a steady trickle of Redwings moving through kept us interested.  I was thinking about moving on to the next hide when me and Mike King (his blog can be found here:  https://theglosterbirder.co.uk/ ) saw a grey warbler, feeding in the scrub below us. Just before it disappeared back into the Blackthorn, I managed to grab a few quick record shots; with the views we had, we couldn't tell if our bird was Barred or a Garden Warbler.  Only Mike and I saw it initially, so my photos were very useful;...

I recently visited the North-east coast to observe the superb migration which occurs during Autumn. The ideal weather conditions would have been overcast, with northerly or easterly winds but instead it was a week of no wind, bright sunshine with barely a cloud in the sky! As a result, migrants were thin on the ground.  The first location was Flamborough Head, a famed sea-watching  headland and migrant trap. The star find of the few days was this  Pied Flycatcher , freshly arrived in off the sea, seen between Thornwick Bay and Bempton Cliffs on the outer head ,  feeding amongst some vegetation on the cliff-top path.   It will have fledged in Scandinavia and moulted its body feathers soon after (not wing or tail feathers though). The tertials (the 3 most upper wing feathers) have quite a large white edge, aging this bird to being a 1st-winter. Over the course of my stay at Flamborough I found three Wheatears , all  feeding in stubble fields next to the ...

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...