Out and About Around Our New Home

 We are spoilt for choice of places to go birding near our new home, but we are conscious that we need to keep as local as possible, so we are trying to keep it within five miles and also trying to find places to walk where the paths aren't an ice rink! With continual sub zero temperatures that is proving difficult.

But we have manged walks at Loch Leven and Lochore Meadows and a bit of driving around to familiarise ourselves with our new surroundings.

So with just doing that we are up to 43 species so far for 2021, not too bad. But with the current restrictions, I don't see that number increasing much in the near future.

Here's just a few pics from our travels:

Lochore Meadows CP

 Well it's been a long while since I have posted, but we managed at least to get out for a couple of hours to Lochore Meadows Country Park, which is just a 10 minute walk from our lovely new house in Kelty.

We have broken the back of the packing and got the house ready for Christmas, although very different to any other year, in these sad and strange times.

This was very much a quick explore, to find the bird hider and get our bearings. It is a beautiful place and cant wait for the spring to see what we can find.

Plus a few birds: A Little Grebe,

Male Goldeneye,

Female Goldeneye,

and loads of Teal.

A Male Goosander was on the pool, the other side of the reeds, so didn't lend itself to a decent  photo, a Sparrowhawk swooped through, much to the Teals annoyance. A couple of Wigeon were seen, as were a couple of Gadwall and Pochard.

22 Species in all for a short walk, so a good start to our new local patch.

A bit busy!

 There haven't been any posts for a while, we haven't had that much time for birding and even less time to sort out photos and do any reports. Normal service will be resumed, when we have completed our move to Scotland.

Til then!

Musselburgh, East Lothian

 Final catch up posting, we had to go to Scotland at the beginning of October for a week and in the middle of a hectic few days we managed a lie in an afternoon out and took ourselves off for a bit of relaxation at Musselburgh Lagoons. We spent a good couple of hours there in the concrete roofless hides, thankfully it stayed dry, before driving along the Forth to Longniddry.

The Lagoons were really busy, with;

Plenty of Redshank,

Oystercatchers and Greylag Geese,

Bar-tailed Godwit,

a Couple of Whooper Swans,

Knot,

Barnacle Geese,

and Dunlin.

Just realised a never took a photo of my favourite waders, the Curlew!

In addition there were a couple of Ruff about, as well as Wigeon and Teal. The boating pond produced Mute Swan, Mallard and Gadwall. We had some great socially distanced chats with some of the local birders all very friendly. It was a great couple of hours. Can't wait to go back, but now we are in Tier Two, and the Central Belt in Scotland is under tough restrictions, it won't be happening for a while. 😒

Longniddry was very quiet, some Turnstone, a couple of Rock Pipit, fly bys by Cormorants and some distant Eider and Goosander to round off the day. We had planned to carry on to Aberlady but ran out of time and tide.

Winsford, Cheshire

 A family visit took us up to Cheshire in September and the River Weaver again not many birds about but there were a few other things around.

Buzzard going over,

Red Admiral,

The River Weaver,

Common Hawker (I think!)

Always wanted to get a Dragonfly in flight and finally managed it!

Juvenile Goldfinch,

Speckled Wood,

Common Darter, again I think it is, no expert on Dragonflies,

and a distant Heron.

Lovely Day!

Kinver Canal

 We have been very busy with one thing and another the last few weeks so haven't had time to post anything, so I am starting a bit of a catch up. Back in mid September, we popped over to Kinver and one of our favourite walks. It takes you between the canal and the River Stour. From a birding point of view it was very quiet, the highlight being the Grey Wagtails:

Otherwise not much to add just some bits and bobs:

The full bird list: