Eric & Lesley's Wildlife Blog

The Wood is Alive

24/5/2017

Spring is here and lots of African migrants are arriving. Flycatchers, Waders and Terns, and Warblers like this Wood Warbler. This is a male proclaiming a patch for himself and one other - provided it is a receptive female.

For hours every morning he sings his heart out: surely the sweetest song of all our Warblers. It is still a fairly common bird of Western Scotland but becomes increasingly less common in Eastern Counties so we treasure the song which we hear only in selected places. It is also declining overall so one day we may have to travel much further to hear it.

0 Comments

One Good Tern

10/5/2017

0 Comments

It has been a while since we visited the East coast. The reason for this is that for the best part of the last six weeks the wind has been from the East. The result is that when the weather has not been poor light, a very cold wind has persisted. Today we visited and were not disappointed; that said it was slightly chilly.
We had hoped to encounter some Auks and Terns which would be firsts for the year. In the event, we only saw distant flocks of Razorbill, with the odd Guillemot mixed in. With the terns we did better. A few Sandwich Terns flew calling my name (Some wag in the past suggested they say Errric!). However, the day was made by one Arctic Tern.
I shuffled up to a reasonable distance taking pictures. It was clearly at ease since it was frequently wing stretch horizontally. Once it did the vertical stretch and I was hooked. It took a further half an hour before I got the picture (opposite). You need to leave a lot of picture space for those wings.
Recent storms had deposited a huge amount of kelp on the beach so it was no surprise to find waders enjoying the feast of sandhoppers and other goodies. Particularly noted was a flock of Turnstone in various states of plumage enjoying the banquet.

0 Comments

The Wood is Alive

One Good Tern

Author

Archives

Categories