Lockdown birding rewards
As part of our permitted exercise regime, Stephen and I have been walking most Saturday mornings along the River Parrett estuary and other of our local patches - socially distanced (naturally) and all above board. The last couple of weekends have been ‘Baltic’ down here , with freezing winds coming whipping across the Bristol Channel - but if we time it right, and our walks co-inside with a high tide, we are often rewarded for our efforts.
We have been seeing goosanders on most trips, usually on the Huntspill River. These are cracking large ducks - sawbills, due to their long thin and serrated bills. The male bird is particularly splendid with a dark green head, grey/black back, red bill and creamy white breast. Top bird.
On the mud flats, there have been many different waders - redshanks and dunlin - they are by far the most common with large numbers. There have been plenty of heavier/chunkier plovers; grey plovers - always nice to see - along with up to 200 avocets, which are impossibly graceful. It is wonderful that we now hardly take a second glance at these beautiful long-legged, long-billed, pied birds - once so rare in Britain, now spread right round most of southern England’s coastline.
We were rewarded with a much rarer plover a couple of weeks back, when unexpectedly the Kentish Plover that had been reported before Christmas sat up nicely on its own on the Parrett sea wall just about a hundred yards from Stephen and myself. We had previously scoured the long sandy beach at Burnham to no avail, although, in fairness, Stephen had actually caught a brief glimpse of it just after New Year - but, as is always the case, rarities pop up when you are least expecting it. The small pale coloured plover stood quite unperturbed as we tried to get it in focus on our phone through our telescopes. It is so hard to keep your hand steady whilst holding your phone over the eye-piece. Click - success, and after a bit of cropping, we got a pretty clear photo of our Kentish plover.
Kentish plover
Another time, on Tealham Moor, there was a sitting peregrine falcon on one of our walks. It was a beauty, and I got so cross with myself trying to get a photo of it - I was swaying around like a Glaswegian drunk (no comments please), to and fro with my camera over my telescope - however, judge for yourself - after several aborted attempts I got one reasonable photo for posterity.
Blurry peregrine through scope
Another Saturday, another mega-bird.
Would you believe we had a white-tailed eagle only a couple of miles from Walls Farm?
I was due to meet Stephen down at the Patch at our usual 9.00am, and I had not checked my phone until I got up around 7.30 - Stephen had left a message late the night before saying that he had been given a tip off that one of the white-tailed eagles from the Isle of Wight introduction programme had been tracked to our part of Somerset, and he was going out at first light to look for it.
It was another freezing morning, and I thought, well I am not going traipse around the lanes of Somerset looking for a needle in a haystack - admittedly a very large needle. Indeed, I had not long before seen two white-tailed eagles at Christmas when we were up in Glenelg.
Sea Eagles? we see them all the time up there…
My phone rang at five past eight.
“Get yourself down here now, I have a white-tailed eagle in my scope, a mile from my house in Mark”
Bloody hell, he’s good, I thought, Stephen’s gone and found the eagle…. and five mins later I had hooked up with him and was looking at youngster No.463, a year old bird that had been released on the Isle of Wight last summer.
'“Who’s a pretty boy then?”
Another blurry photo of the
white-tailed eagle
I must try and get a shot of this big boy, and again I swayed around the eye-piece of my telescope with my phone snapping hopelessly out of focus photos of probably the only white-tailed eagle I am likely to ever see in Somerset. Fortunately another birder, with steadier hands than I, caught up with the bird, later in the day, and took a much sharper shot than my efforts, before the ‘barn door’ took off and headed back towards Hampshire.
That’s a bit better - photo by Dave Nevitt
The bird was tracked by the Roy Dennis Trust who are co-ordinating the Isle of wight reintroduction programme, along with other great projects - see more info here https://www.roydennis.org/
I now know what I want for my birthday (hint, hint, Kay)
https://www.at-infocus.co.uk/product/pa-i6-6s-ats-atx-pa-7-8-ats-atx/