Hen Harrier movie

Here is my video of the female Hen Harrier featured in my last post.

Beddington SF

Hi all,
Phil and I popped over to Beddington today to try and see yesterday's Spoonbill, of course it was a one day job only staying an hour and flying off North-West, so it proved to be as untwitchable as most other Surrey Spoonbills. I have started to go to Beddington quite regularly now and am let in often. As usual there were loads of Gulls (no Glaucous because the tip wasn't working or something). it was quite active today with loads of passerines etc with more Tree Sparrows at the feeder than usual.
Kevin Guest took Phil and I quite deep into the Sewage works. In one of the little ditches there was a Green Sandpiper. Gulls included Common, Herring, Black-headed, probable 1st winter Yellow-legged and a Lesser/Great Black-backed which was big but had a smaller big and less white and steep tertials and pink legs; so it had things going for both there. There was also a very pale Herring Gull on the tip There was a Skylark with Linnets and Golfinches along one of the paths and a Little Egret flying there was also a Green Woodpecker in the usual place along the bank where there are loads of young Willows.

Here are some videos using the phone-scoping method again, which I am getting quite fond of.

Pale Herring Gull

Skylark (wait until the video has been running for 20 seconds then you can actually see it!)

Tree Sparrows

Some phone-binned garden bird videos

Here are some videos I took by holding my camera phone up to my binoculars. I was a bit bored while my mum and nan were chatting downstairs so tried this method, not expecting much but it actually came out alright.

Cat and Goldfinch

Female Blackbird

In order of appearance: Blue Tit, female Blackbird, House Sparrow, Goldfinch, Starlings and finally the female Blackbird again

I caught this camera shy stinker!

There are 2 White-breasted Nuthatches in the backyard here at work, and they are easier than heck to see through binoculars. But as soon as you raise that terrible thing they call a camera, they instantly disappear around the opposite side of the trunk/limb/branch/twig/leaf. They are impossible to tell apart, so I often treat them as one. Its camera-shy behavior combined with terrible photo-taking weather, has made me more persistent than ever to nab my little buddy. It's 3 degrees F windchill, and the sky is bright and cloudy, causing my eyes to water dreadfully. I followed the nuthatch with my camera as it skillfully swung from branch to branch like a little monkey. I was finally about to give up, when all of the sudden, it decided to land 10 feet away from me, in the dumped bird seed! I won this time, as you can see. As soon as it got its peanut, it quickly disappeared into the bare tree again, probably ashamed that it let itself be seen by "that terrible things they call a camera."














After this episode, I guessed it decided it might be safe to grab another peanut or two, and I was able to get a short video:



EDIT: I forgot to mention that: no, the nuthatch is not barking in the video. It is my "favorite" (sarcasm emphasized) neighbor dog, "Baxter." Baxter enjoys barking all day, every day, at the House Sparrows nearby. As you might expect, the House Sparrows simply ignore Baxter, resulting in a furious pup.

London Wetlands Centre 9th December 2007

I went up to the London Wetlands Centre on Sunday. I got 43 species all together.
There were many Lapwings, Wildlfowl (including Wigeon) loads of Cormorants, Gulls etc. We watched one Cormorant struggle as it tried to get an absolutely huge carp-like fish down its throat.
Gulls were interesting with a Yellow-legged and a Caspian (I got a phone scoped video of the Caspian). The Caspian was my first confirmed and the Yellow-legged was my second with one at Dungeness the week before.
The highlight was the Bittern that someone eventually located in the reeds (an area of reeds we weren't expecting it to be in) and I got good veiws through the scope and a phone-scoped video (hopefully my videos will improve after Christmas because I am getting a powerful 40x optical zoom digital video camera!)
Enjoy (the Bittern shows better right at the end of the video):

"If we work together we will survive!"

Anyway here are some videos that you might enjoy watching:


Eiders at Titchfield Haven


Curlew Sandpipers at Keyhaven


Snipe at Brandon Marsh