More Wheatear


You cannot get enough Wheatear - doesn't matter which species, although here in north Surrey anything other than a Northern will not be believed. The smart chap above decided to give the Priest Hill hummocks a miss and perched on a tree instead. He was so happy with life that he even went into a brief burst of sub-song. I was able to stand and watch just a few metres away, and in the end left him alone, still perched on the branch. If I hadn't seen him fly onto it I might have checked that it wasn't limed...

The other highlight from this morning was a Common Snipe, flushed from the middle of Big Field. Why this species would choose to alight on a bone dry field on a day of clear blue sky I do not know, but there lies one of the reasons that we carry on birding - we just do not know what the next bird is that we will see. And if it happens to be a Wheatear, then that's fine by me. Want another? Go on then...

Comments

Derek Faulkner said…
I was in Surrey over the weekend, Yatley near Camberly to be exact, and was surprised to see how the river and large fishing lakes around there were showing signs of lack of rainfall, I thought it was just Sheppey. Back here on Sheppey we are still only getting summer migrants in very low numbers at the moment - one day we'll lose these cold North or Easterly winds and things will speed up.
19 April 2017 at 12:31
Steve Gale said…
Let's hope it all changes before mid-May Derek, otherwise it'll be too late!
19 April 2017 at 18:46
Gordon Hay said…
I wonder who will win the Wheatear photo prize this year?
19 April 2017 at 19:29
Steve Gale said…
If only I had kept it running for 2017...
19 April 2017 at 19:43
Jonathan Lethbridge said…
I LOVE WHEATEARS.
That is all.
19 April 2017 at 21:21
Gibster said…
We'd all scream Fix if you had...
19 April 2017 at 21:33
Steve Gale said…
I'd have just called that Fake News, Seth
19 April 2017 at 22:54
Steve Gale said…
What's not to love Jono?
19 April 2017 at 22:55
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