Warbirds at Duxford, Part 1

Thanks to my great kids, who bought us tickets for my birthday, for the Duxford Battle of Britain Air Display last weekend. It was a great if sometimes very wet Sunday, with lots to see.

Kicking off with a re-enactment from the 1969 film the Battle of Britain.... well what would a re-enactment be without a few Messerchmitt Me-109s:

Actually post war Spanish built Me-109s (Hispano HA-1112 Buchon, for those that are interested)

Of course these can't be allowed to roam the skies unchallenged so, 4 Hurricanes and three Spitfire Mk 1s were "scrambled".

So after a bit of a dogfight, two Me-109s were chased off and two "shot down"!

This was followed by two aircraft from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight;

The mighty Lancaster:

and a Spitfire PR XIX in D-Day Stripes as were a lot of the aircraft, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day Landings.

Basically the invasion stripes were added to all allied aircraft operating over France on D-Day and for a while afterwards, so that our ground forces wouldn't shoot at them and prevent "Blue on Blue" casualties!

A change of pace after this back to World War I....
Two SE 5s

 A Fokker Triplane, chasing a Sopwith Triplane,

 Royal Aircraft Factory BE.2,

 Sopwith Triplane,

 Two Fokker Dr.1s (Triplane)

 SE5a

This time the Germans seem to get the upper hand in the dogfights!

After some glorious sunshine the weather now started to become overcast as three Hawker Furies taxied out to display..

The Fury was our last piston engine fighter, coming after WW II and seeing service in the Korean War, where one actually shot down a Mig-15 Jet, one of which was at the show, but didn't display as the weather for its scheduled slot was too bad, it was actually torrential, but here's a photo of it:

It's actually painted as the Mig-15 flown by Yuri Gagarin, before he ventured into space.

So following the Hawker Furies, we turned to the U.S. with a display from a B-17 Flying Fortress  and A P-47 Thunderbolt, the B-17 known as Sally B, is painted up on one side as the famous Memphis Belle. Sally B is the actual B-17 that "played" Memphis Belle in the 1990 Film.

and the P-47....

This P-47D was built in 1945 and never saw action, it was later sold to the Peruvian Air Force.

Staying with the U.S we then had four P-51D Mustangs;

The weather was really poor now, so two of the Mustangs landed, leaving just two to display.

I think that's enough for one post. If I get time I will do part 2 tomorrow. Where you might see photos of a formation of 15 Spitfires! To whet your appetite, here's just some of them on the ground.

A Quick Visit to Sandwell Valley

A quick visit to Sandwell Valley on Saturday with my Birders-in-Law. To avoid paying Sandwell Council to park we drove around to the RSPB car park and started from there, I know tight aren't we!

We only had a couple of hours and spent most of that time in the hide, it's nearly always shut when we go so that was a treat! Nice friendly, if a tad noisy, people in there, so a nice time was had, especially with a couple of Snipe showing well up one of the channels;

Not much else of note, a Littrle Egret was flying around the river, but didn't come close, there were the usual Lapwings, Cormorants, Black-headed Gulls and some distant Goosander.

A nice female Tufted Duck came by;

and a Kingfisher put in an appearance over the far side of the lake;

It moved from post to post before coming right past the hide like a little missile.

It was the Autumn all-dayer in the West Midlands, for the non-birders reading this, that is when (twice a year Autumn and Spring) all the nature reserves in the West Midlands have an unofficial competition to count the most species of birds, between dawn and dusk, on their patch. I believe Sandwell Valley ended up on 88, of which we saw a meagre 24!

Firth of Forth South Coast

We have just returned from a loooong weekend in Edinburgh, we were up for our daughters birthday, where much beer and wine was consumed! In between we managed a couple of short trips along the south coast of the firth calling in at a couple of our favourite spots.

Our first trip out after some errands took us to Musselburgh, Prestonpans and Aberlady. However before we arrived at Musselburgh Lagoons I realised that I had left my camera at our daughters place! Which was a shame as the sun was out and the birds were showing really well on the Lagoons, especially the Curlew Sandpiper, this was a first for us in the UK, but not a lifer, but it did edge our UK list up to 234, not too bad as we don't twitch.

I know there are some great birds about at the moment, but I don't fancy a 5 hour drive down to the tip of Cornwall to see the Brown Booby or Wilson's Petrel!! Anyway there are so many photos being posted on twitter, saying look at what I have seen and you haven't, it gets on my nerves! Sorry rantette over! (could be jealousy!)

Back to to Musselburgh..... in addition to the Sandpiper there were tons of Black-tailed Godwit, Sandwich Terns, Oystercatchers, Dunlin, Redshank, Curlew and a some Greenshank, Lapwing and a couple of Ruff. There were Gulls of course, Black-headed, Lesser Black-backed and Herring. A few Teal were wandering around too.. plus a couple of early Wigeon dropped in just before we left. The other great thing to see were the Gannet fishing just offshore always a delight.

We moved east to Prestonpans, seeing Eider and Red-breasted Merganser, which was nice, we also found a nice parking spot behind Lidl that gave us great views across to Edinburgh, the water and some shoreline, here we picked up a group of Turnstone to add to our list, as well as more Eider.

We then carried on to Aberlady, sadly we had got the tide wrong, so there wasn't much about other than a large number of Gadwall, Greylags and Canada Geese. Not a bad couple of hours.

On Monday we went out again, this time with the camera, but the weather was really dull and when we got to the hides at the lagoons, all the birds had decided to move as far away as possible! Species wise there was no sign of the Greenshank or Ruff, but the Curlew Sandpipers were still there. We did add some Shelduck and a Ringed Plover to our Tally though.

Then a visit from the RAF... that's what got the birds up!

We didn't have a lot of time, so we just popped up to Prestonpans again, where we added, to our surprise, a Wheatear to the tally.

A Bit of Garden Stuff

With the sun shining spent a few hours lazing in the garden over the past few days, not much going on but took a couple of photos, the Cricket is from my phone camera.

A Speckled Bush Cricket (had to google that, not an expert on Crickets) decided to stare at its reflection for a while,

 talking about Cricket.... England, Ben Stokes, Jack Leach.... Awesome, say no more.

 House Sparrow admiring the Marigolds

 and a Goldfinch having a look to see what's going on.

In addition Tina spotted a couple of bright red beetles, looked those up and turned out to be Red Cardinal Beetles, nice to see, but didn't have a camera handy!

Bitten at Middleton!

Sorry, not a Bittern, just bitten to death by midges and mossies as we walked through the trees up to the main part of the reserve. Now two days later our arms are covered in lumps and bumps that itch like ......... (add your own word here)

But hey ho, that's what you get for going birding in the summer!

It's over a year since we have been to RSPB Middleton, we just find it such a pain to get to from where we live, the M6/M42 is always a nightmare, but otherwise we would have to go through Birmingham also not a fun prospect.

But go we did, but was it worth it? Well shall we say it was a lovely walk... The walk from the car park through the woods was very quiet, although we did see our first Swallows for ages around the farm and if you like rats then the feeders by the boardwalk are excellent. Am I painting a grim picture, I don't mean too but that's what you get for visiting in August.

Once we arrived at the main part of the reserve over the canal bridge,

the mossies didn't bother us as much, we chose to walk anti-clockwise around the lagoons up along the river, but the same as our last visit the reserve seems very overgrown and despite there being lots of benches and places to sit the views are across the reserve are non-existent, even the path has been diverted away from the river, so not much to see.

Eventually we got to the hide with only seeing Mallard, Gadwall, Swan, Coot, Moorhen and Starlings on the way, plus a few butterflies and lots of Damselfly and Dragonfly. Oh and a ton of Canada Geese on the river.

Sorry I forgot the RSPB want us to call the hide 'The Lookout', not a hide. Here we had more success, with Green Sandpiper and Snipe showing well, along with a Little Egret, Teal, tons of Gadwall, Lapwing, Great Crested Grebe and Mute Swans. There was no sign of the reported Garganey, although on twitter today there are now 5!
3 Snipe,

 Little Egret

 and Green Sandpiper.

We stayed a while in the hide, sorry lookout, this added a Great White Egret that flew along in the distance, which we caught up with at the screen at the Jubilee Wetlands.

So not much else to add other than some distant Egyptian Geese and a Rabbit!

We won't rush back to Middleton, its 23 miles of arduous driving, even tried a different route back, ignoring the satnav, which was better, but still not great. I think we will leave it until the winter when the vegetation has died down and the winter waterfowl hopefully turn up. Might even see a mini murmuration.

Another Upton Warren Visit

Last week we took some good friends for an afternoon at Upton. Parking at the sailing club we visited the flashes first, with waders showing particularly well; Avocet of course, a Snipe, Common Sandpiper, Green Sandpiper, Black-tailed Godwit, Little Ringed Plover (and chick!), Curlew and Lapwing.

There were a few Common Tern about,

along with the usual Coot, Moorhen, Mallard, Great Crested Grebe, Canada Geese and a single Juvenile Shelduck.

After a late lunch at the Sailing Club Cafe (Good sandwich!!) we popped over to the Moors Pools, visiting all the hides, we added Greylag Goose, Cormorant, Mute Swan, Little Egret, Gadwall, Reed Bunting, a Juvenile Chiffchaff, Buzzard and Kestrel. Plus Blue, Great and Long-tailed Tit.
The Little Egret

 and one of the Gadwall.

Surprised not to see any Little Grebe and we missed a Kingfisher by about 20 minutes, but you cant win em all! Be boring if everything turned up all the time! Still 43 species seen in an afternoon which isn't too shabby.