A Good Start to the Year

 So we are 12 days into 2023 and this is our first post of the year. I''ll start with a short walk at Loch Leven on New Years Day from the Kirkgate car park to the screen overlooking the Loch. It was actually very quiet with not a lot to report, some Mute Swans of course, a few Goldeneye, a flock of Lapwing racing around the loch edge from the viewpoint. But the highlight was a very confiding Goldcrest near the screen:

Sadly by the car park was a poorly Pink-footed Goose;

The aforementioned Lapwing:

and some trees!!

On the 2nd we took are annual winter pilgrimage up to Braemar. Lots of snow when we arrived, the Glenshee Ski Centre car park was rammed, so we passed on through down to Braemar, we usually stop to look for Mountain Hare and Snow Buntings but too many people!!

The following day the weather wasn't great so we took a drive down the Linn of Dee, again it was very quiet, but we did manage to find a Dipper on the Dee.

We did go looking for Crossbills at Invercauld but to no avail. We had wanted to go for a walk but the weather precluded that.

Next day we headed over the Lecht and visited Loch Garten to look for Crested Tit, these have surprisingly eluded us on our last two visits, but this time they came out to play!

We also saw Great Spotted Woodpecker and Treecreeper which was nice,

as well as the usual Tits, Robin and Chaffinch,

After Loch Garten we dropped by the hide in Boat of Garten overlooking a frozen Milton Loch on the edge of the village, the only things on the Loch were Mallard, so I thought I should take a photo!

From there we drove up to the Cairngorm Ski Centre to see if anything was about and were rewarded with Snow Buntings by the car park:

 By now it was starting to get dark so we started the drive back to Braemar.

Next day we went walking locally around Braemar and along the Old Military Road at the back of the village, but little was seen.

Our next day out was to Glen Muick on the Balmoral Estate for a longish walk. Again we saw very little, some Red Deer, Rabbit and a Raven flying through, but no Grouse, we usually see Red and Black but neither this time. We stopped for a for a coffee at the end of the walk at the visitor centre, when we heard load "chip chips" and a flock of birds descended on the tops of the Scots Pines, Crossbills!! Unfortunately the light was terrible, so I won't bother with adding a photo of the Crossbills, but here's some scenery instead!

Finally we had a day out at Loch of Kinnordy and Loch of Lintrathen over in Angus. There was still a lot of ice on the Lochs that the ducks were using:

We also saw our first Pintails for a long time (left of the Swan!)

Kinnordy is always reliable for Red Squirrel,

a Robin posed nicely,

while a Buzzard did a fly past,

Long-tailed Tits are an absolute delight,

and it was great to get our first Tree Sparrows of theyear,

So a nice start to our birding year..... 49 species so far!

A Week in Sometimes Wet and Windy Norfolk - Holkham NNR

We made a few visits to Holkam during the week, 2 full dayers and a pop in on the way back from elsewhere at dusk. There are a few great reasons to visit Holkham apart from the exorbitant parking fees! Firstly there are two great hides for viewing the Pink Foots coming in, in the evening, Secondly a wider variety of birds are to be seen and the Marsh Harriers (17 one night going down to roost in front of us.) are an absolute treat and thirdly great walks especially when you are rewarded with "a drift" of Snow Buntings and "an exaltation" of Shore Larks. (sorry getting in to my collective nouns!)

This was our first visit since the new visitor centre, called; "The Lookout" has opened, basically it's a Cafe! But at least it has good toilets, this was sadly lacking before, but does account for the hoick in the car parking costs. The lookout does provide chained down binoculars for looking out over the lifeless new pool/scrape that they have created, however the windows have huge thick vertical beams on the outside spaced about 50cm apart, so if you did see anything worth looking at, you can't track it, too much wood in the way. Bonkers!

Anyway so on to our visits, the first was to spend the day in the two hides, with a bit of a walk. Again the weather wasn't too bad, so some good views were had,
Sparrowhawk,

 Egyptian "Tree" Geese,

 Grey Heron,

 Kestrel; having a snack,

 Marsh Harrier and

 Greylags and a Galloway!

The Greylag flocks also contained a number of White-fronted Geese, but not in the above photo.

The geese didn't show too well that night.

The next full day took us along the beach back towards Wells to find the Shore Larks, at first there was no sign, but then the aforementioned drift of Snow Buntings turned up:

But no Shore Larks, however with a little bit of patience a group of six arrived. Now the area they like is now roped off, to protect them no doubt from over zealous photographers, this I understand, as much as I love taking photos and hoping to get that perfect shot, I would rather just watch the birds than disturb them, however tempting it is to get closer. So a rather poor photo of one I'm afraid:

Other birds seen where a Great White Egret in addition to the usual suspects:
Little Grebe,

 the Great White Egret,

 Marsh Harriet at sunset.

and Red Kite.

Talking of sunsets, we have been visiting Holkham for about 10 years now and one of my favourite views was a distant copse of trees at sunset as the sun goes down behind it, indeed in our dining room I have a blown up photo of it:

we were deeply saddened to see that the tree fellers were in! (I'm sure there's a joke there somewhere) but this is it last week:

I'm sure by now the last three trees have gone, just seems senseless to me.

So finally we had some great Geese moments, much to dark to photograph, but we did get some video, which I will post when I've finished these posts.

I forgot to mention we also had a Bittern drop into the reeds in front of the Washington Hide on one occasion, brilliant! (not fast enough with the camera though.) Also only our second Rough-legged Buzzard in the UK, the first was 4 years ago at Holkham.

Here's our Holkham list:

Bittern  ("Botaurus stellaris")

Blackbird  ("Turdus merula")

Black-headed Gull  ("Chroicocephalus ridibundus")

Blue Tit  ("Cyanistes caeruleus")

Brent Goose  ("Branta bernicla")

Buzzard  ("Buteo buteo")

Carrion Crow  ("Corvus corone")

Cormorant  ("Phalacrocorax carbo")

Curlew  ("Numenius arquata")

Egyptian Goose  ("Alopochen aegyptiaca")

Great Tit  ("Parus major")

Great White Egret  ("Ardea alba")

Grey Heron  ("Ardea cinerea")

Greylag Goose  ("Anser anser")

Hen Harrier  ("Circus cyaneus")

Herring Gull  ("Larus argentatus")

Jay  ("Garrulus glandarius")

Kestrel  ("Falco tinnunculus")

Lapwing  ("Vanellus vanellus")

Lesser Black-backed Gull  ("Larus fuscus")

Little Egret  ("Egretta garzetta")

Little Grebe  ("Tachybaptus ruficollis")

Long-tailed Tit  ("Aegithalos caudatus")

Magpie  ("Pica pica")

Mallard  ("Anas platyrhynchos")

Marsh Harrier  ("Circus aeruginosus")

Mute Swan  ("Cygnus olor")

Pheasant  ("Phasianus colchicus")

Pink-footed Goose  ("Anser brachyrhynchus")

Red Kite  ("Milvus milvus")

Red-legged Partridge  ("Alectoris rufa")

Robin  ("Erithacus rubecula")

Rough-legged Buzzard  ("Buteo lagopus")

Shelduck  ("Tadorna tadorna")

Shore Lark  ("Eremophila alpestris")

Snow Bunting  ("Plectrophenax nivalis")

Sparrowhawk  ("Accipiter nisus")

Starling  ("Sturnus vulgaris")

Teal  ("Anas crecca")

Tufted Duck  ("Aythya fuligula")

Water Rail  ("Rallus aquaticus")

White-fronted Goose  ("Anser albifrons")

Wigeon  ("Anas penelope")

Woodpigeon  ("Columba palumbus")

Wren  ("Troglodytes troglodytes")

Cairngorms

After a week on the west coast of Scotland, we had a brilliant weekend in Edinburgh with our daughter, before travelling north and stopping in Tomintoul for 5 nights. The weather was pretty good for the drive up, and we stopped at the Lecht for a few minutes, just in case there were any Snow Buntings. We found one on one of the buildings.

We then carried on to Tomintoul, but once we had checked in, the weather turned and the roads were closed behind us, so for a few days we couldn't visit our usual haunts on the east side of the mountains.

Luckily the west side roads were open, with care....

It was all very pretty though.
Our first destination was Abernethy Forest and the RSPB Loch Garten, for Crested Tits and whatever else we could find..
Crested Tits Galore!

and at least 3 Great Spotted Woodpecker,

There were a couple of Treecreeper about too..

plus plenty of Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Great Tit and Chaffinch;
Coal Tit,

Female Chaffinch and

 Male Chaffinch.

No Red Squirrel this time at Garten.. never mind.

The weather thwarted us on day two, we tried to negotiate Findhorn Valley, but there was a blizzard blowing and some of the drifts on the single track road were looking serious even for our Land Rover, so we turned around half way to the end. We did see quite a few Red-legged Partridge down there, but with the weather, I couldn't open the window to get any photos.

Day three we attempted to get up over the Lecht to the Braemar side, but even though some of the snow gates were open (to let the skiers up to the Lecht) as we went further we heard that a gate ahead of us had been closed due to drifting, so we turned around and went for plan B.

We drove back through Tomintoul and down to RSPB Insh Marshes, by the time we got there the weather was fairly miserable again, but we settled down in the viewpoint 'hide' for a couple of hours.
We didn't see that much as most of the wintering water fowl that should be there had disappeared.

Some Wigeon put in a brief appearance and there were about a dozen Whooper Swans over the far side of the marshes, but the main activity was on the feeders in front of the window,
where we saw our first Siskin of the year

 As you can see the Whoopers were very distant, these are two more flying in to join their mates.

We also saw a couple of Roe Deer through the trees, then just as we were leaving a Brown Hare turned up..

On our last day all the roads were open, so we had to decide where to go and we plumped for Glen Muick as we fancied a bit of a walk in a beautiful place.

We were well rewarded for our efforts, near the visitor centre we happened across a Red Squirrel, we had never seen one here before and we have been many times over the years,

then as we walked on in to a frosty head wind, with lots of ice under foot, we stopped to admire some Red Deer on the ridge.

As we were admiring the Deer a Snow Bunting came and landed next to us, so close that I had problems focusing the camera on it with my 500mm lens on, but I did manage a couple of shots;

The Red Grouse were also behaving well today,

As we completed our circular walk, we also had a Buzzard fly through the Glen,

the to our surprise we came across at least four Stonechat near the bridge on the approach back to the visitor centre.

So we stopped there for a bit to watch and have a coffee, I haven't mentioned coffee yet, but this was our second on the walk! We hoped that from the bridge we might see a Dipper, and with the way things were today, two turned up. Albeit quite distant, one either side of the bridge.

We finally made it back to the visitor centre, where we had a late lunch (and more coffee). We had another surprise there with a number of Rabbits about and a Red-legged partridge running through the yard. This was followed by six Black Grouse flying through, so a very productive walk, in a brilliant place.

After Glen Muick, we drove through Braemar and up to Glenshee, where we saw at least 200-300 Red Grouse flying in the valley, a number of Mountain Hare and more Snow Bunting around the top  car park at the Ski Centre.

It was very murky up the top of Glenshee and with all the skiers, it was bit like wacky races!
So that conclude our first Scottish trip of the year!