Kinver Canal

The weather was pretty good Tuesday so we headed out to do one of our favourite walks to Kinver along the canal adjacent to the River Stour.

Our list of birds is what you might expect for a canal walk, although we did manage 3 birds of prey, Buzzard, Kestrel and our first Sparrowhawk of the year. Sadly none provided the opportunity for a photo. Four types of Tit were seen, Blue, Great, Long-Tail & Coal. Another year first was a Song Thrush:

Towards the end of the walk, we saw our first Goldcrests of 2015, three of them were flitting around, but just wouldn't stop long enough for me to focus on them, I did manage to get the backside of one of them though!

That is if you can find it in the above photo.
So now just a few photos to cover the walk of which the Goosander was the highlight, although the Moorhen having a splash was nice to watch.

Dudmaston Hall NT Shropshire

We made an afternoon trip out on Sunday to see the Snowdrops at Dudmaston Hall in Shropshire on what was a very dull and dismal day, at least it wasn't raining. Only the parkland was open to visitors for the special Snowdrop walks. It's a while since we have been to Dudmaston and we had forgotten how wonderful the walks are we will definitely be going back soon!

Anyway looking at the weather and considering that we were there for Snowdrops I took the 500mm lens off the camera and put my small lens on, so no bird photos in this post. Just a bit of scenery and some Snowdrops. That doesn't mean we didn't see any birds on the contrary, we had some good sightings; Kingfisher, Buzzard, Shoveler (4), Tufted Duck, Great Crested Grebe and Mute Swan as well as Jackdaw, Crow, Woodpigeon, Blackbird, Coot, Moorhen, Mallard and Robin. We thought we also saw a Goldcrest but the bird flitted away before we could confirm it.

So just a few scenic snaps from our walk:

Next stop, possibly Kinver on Tuesday!
TTFN

Orkney

A simple title for this post, but a great week was had on a very cold and windy Orkney. We stayed in a fabulous barn conversion not from St Margarets Hope on South Ronaldsay only 10 minutes from the ferry.

We toured the whole of Mainland Orkney, South Ronaldsay and the small islands in between, with a day out on Hoy as well. I won't go into all the places we visited, there were too many! But from a birding point of view it was a great success not to mention the absolutely stunning scenery.

We managed a total of 61 species with some great highlights and a new species for us as well, a Glaucous Gull:

We had great sightings of Hen Harrier too, with one flying past the lounge window of our Barn on a couple of occasions, but we got the closest though from the RSPB hide at the Loons:

We did see a male as well but we were driving at the time and he quickly moved out of range of the camera. One of our target species was Long-tailed Duck, these are Tina's absolute favourite and we saw them regularly especially from the Churchill Barriers, but not close enough for good photos, but for the record:

We had hoped to see all three Divers, but no matter how we searched we only found the Great Northern:

The only down side that we found on Orkney was getting close to the birds and two of the RSPB sites being closed, anyway what else did we see.....
St Mary's Harbour on the mainland was a favourite spot as me passed through it most mornings and evenings, in addition to the above Diver, it gave us;
Goldeneye:

Turnstone:

Ringed Plover:

Redshank:

Slavonian Grebe:

At the Geo Slipway at Deerness we added Purple Sandpiper:

and a Rock Pipit in the snow:

Whooper Swans were on a number of the Lochs:

and flocks of Lapwing were to be found most places:

Curlew were abundant as well:

Every where that we went on the Lochs and Coast were Wigeon, as much as I love Wigeon, it got to the point that we would stop and look and go, "oh, its just Wigeon again!"

Later in the week after the gale force winds had subsided we started seeing a fair number of Black Guillemot about:

On the Thursday we went over to Hoy for the day, this I recommend to anyone visiting Orkney, it is easy to get around and it is stunning. We didn't walk to the Old Man as we wanted to explore the island and doing the walk wouldn't have left us enough time, so that's planned in for our next visit in 2016 or 17!

A couple of real highlights on Hoy were a flotilla of circa 200 Long-tailed Ducks, viewed from the road down in a bay, but there was no way down to get close for a photo. We then saw our only Buzzard of the trip followed by some Winter Coated Mountain Hare:

We also came across a gaggle of Barnacle Geese which was brilliant:

Finally on the last day we came across another Glaucous Gull:

So a brilliant trip, we are already looking forward to going back some time

TTFN.

Bumble Hole

The other day we took a walk along our canal to Bumble Hole (Warrens Hall NR). It was a nice sunny day, but cold again, but that's the way we like it! Having seen Winterwatch this week we just wish that we were up in the Cairngorms too. But we are off to the Orkneys soon so we will end up driving through some fantastic views and snow. Anyway I digress, back to our walk out.

The Canal was frozen and quiet, just a few Mallard, Coot and Moorhen about foraging as best as possible in the few bits of open water.

A bit further on a Heron gave us a fly by:

We stopped for a coffee at a bench opposite one of the old canal basins and were treated to a few Long-tailed Tit feeding on some trees on the opposite side of the Canal, along with Blue and Great Tits.

We carried on to Bumble Hole itself and walked down to the viewing platform where we saw 8 Little Grebe keeping very much together, here are seven of them!

The only other birds of note on there were two male Tufted Duck:

We carried on walking fining a pair of Bullfinch but not much else, we eventually ended up on the same bench as before for another coffee before heading back down the canal and home. Whilst having our coffee though 2 Buzzards landed in the trees at the far end of the basin. So for the record:

TTFN!

Croome Park NT

Last Sunday we had a an afternoon out at Croome. It's a great walk with the backdrop of the Malvern Hills and even better it was a lovely sunny but cold day. There were plenty of birds about in the trees and on the lakes and river.

Our first encounter were Pied Wagtails in the car park, followed by a perched but distant Kestrel at our first coffee stop. We walked around the lake where of course the usual suspects were on the water; Mallard, Coot, Moorhen and Mute Swan, I was surprised though to see some Gadwall and Tufted Duck:

The surrounding trees revealed some Thrushes and Long Tailed Tit:

The Mute Swan had a couple of young, can't really call them Cygnets any more:

We left the formal parkland and headed across farmland towards the river, after a while we spotted a Kestel in its characteristic hover and then saw it plunge down and disappear behind a hedgerow. A few moment later it popped back up and headed for a dead tree where it settled. We approached carefully, never going directly towards it and of course not getting too close. We then saw it was having afternoon tea!

That was a real treat, I don't know who enjoyed it the most the Kestrel or us. We left the Kestrel to his lunch and walked on to the river, to find this Grey Heron in a tree:

So onto our next coffee stop a nice bench by a pool at the end of the river, before crossing and heading back. There we were treated to our first Grey Wagtail of the year, sadly no photo as it was chased off by two very aggressive Robins. We did see a mixed flock of Redwing and Fieldfare streaming by a few of which stopped for a breather in a tree the other side of the pond:

Not much to report on the way back, some more Heron, Redwing, Fieldfare and Corvids, but we did get a Buzzard in the fading light, again our first of the year!

The sun did make a final appearance as we were near the end of the walk:

Another great day out!