Brixham break


A family short-break to Brixham was not embarked upon with natural history in mind, but you know how it is... my binoculars came along, I kept one eye firmly on the skies and just around the corner was Berry Head! The view above is from our well-appointed cottage. The garden was the size of a sixpence (remember them?) but the view and elevation made it a birder's dream. I sat there and visualised the viz-mig potential (which was born out by a trickle of pipits and wagtails), plus overflying Peregrine, Raven and Turnstone.

I cannot help but wander around such places with a fantasist birder's hat on - checking out the migrant hot-spots, imagining Yellow-broweds and Red-breasted Flys (at the very least), flicking from bush to bush. A Brixham birder has a wealth of habitats to check, from sheltered bays, open seas, tidal harbour, copses, vegetated headlands and - the jewel in the crown - Berry Head.


Talking of which, this was the scene on Friday (looking back towards Brixham). I had hoped that I might jam in on a late-flowering Goldilocks Aster, but with no firm site I drew a blank. Maybe it was all over, maybe it isn't found plentifully here, but I reckon that I looked in the right areas (that is, if the right place to look is where the other rare plants are to be found). Berry Head has been kind to me in previous visits, with Honewort, White Rockrose, Small Hare's-ear and Small Rest-harrow all being seen, not forgetting a rather splendid white Gyr Falcon back in April 1986.

Clouded Yellows were still on the wing, regularly encountered. What with the temperature reaching 19C in a very warming sun, it was more like summer than autumn.

Comments

Unknown said…
You shoulda asked. Goldilocks Aster was flowering not too long ago between Berry Head and Sharkham Point.
13 October 2014 at 10:37
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more