Romania with Naturetrek - Part 2

So Day 3 too us to the Piatra Craiului National Park, we started with a drive up a gorge, finally stopping and walking the rest of the way, this was a gentle climb up, where we saw many Grey Wagtail,

our first ever Wood Warbler, that proved to difficult to photograph, and great views of Fire Salamander.

The gorge was stunning,

with everyone searching for Wallcreeper, which we eventually found, sorry again no photos, as it moved around so much and stayed fairly high on the rock faces, but we had great views through the binoculars.
Up on a distant ridge a couple of Chamois were spotted,

even with the big lens they are still dots, but we had good views through Justin's scope.
There were also some fairly gigantic snails about.

High above the gorge, both Common and Honey Buzzard were seen, then on the way back a Dipper showed nicely.

So back to the guest house for lunch, before heading out again for a long afternoon/evening. We started by heading for some open countryside, with plenty of Stork nests around,

At this point we saw our first ever Lesser-spotted Eagle, it flew around us, but never too near.

Unmistakable Eagle wings!
From here we turned up a track going for what seemed an endless walk in scorching sun, with very little shade, little was seen, although we were looking for Golden Oriole, but none showed. We did see our first Black Woodpecker. We couldn't believe the size as it flew by then disappeared into a copse. With the scopes we tracked it down and I took a somewhat dubious photograph.

We stayed on the track until about 6pm, then it was to find some Brown Bears.......
We met a ranger who escorted us to a raised woodland hide over looking a forest clearing. The ranger put food out for the bears and charge 25 Euro a head, but it was worth it.
We saw three bears, a Red Fox and Ravens over the two and a half hours,

A great end to a very long and tiring day.

Romania with Naturetrek - Part 1

We have just returned from a 10 day trip with Naturetrek to Romania. For us this was a full on experience, this is only the second time we have gone for a dedicated wildlife trip, the other being to the Shetlands four years ago with Shetland Wildlife (and David Lindo). This was a reasonably relaxed trip and very enjoyable especially with David's style of guiding. (ie we are on holiday!)

This wasn't quite the case with Naturetrek! First we had a new tour leader, that is it was his first time leading a trip, in fact his first trip quiding at all. Having said that Justin was a good bloke, although he did forget at times he should be guiding and not on holiday himself. Thankfully our local guide, Florin, (we wanted to call him Two Bob) with us for the whole trip was brilliant.He certainly made life easier for Justin.

Anyway, no birding the first day as we weren't meeting the group until 18:30 (we had come direct from Birmingham rather than with the group from Heathrow) So we had an enjoyable couple of hours having a late lunch and a couple of local beers at the airport.

Day two was an eye opener. We departed from the guest house at 9am to climb a bloody mountain! The Naturetrek description of the trip was 'easy'. This first morning was tough, it was hot, steep and rocky, we were told it was a 3km there and back walk, it turned out to be 7km! This put us to say the least in a bad mood and wondered what the rest of this 'easy' trip held for us. It was made worse by the fact we didn't see a lot. What we did see in the distance were;
Yellowhammer, Common Crossbill, Tree Pipit, a very distant Black Redstart, Common Buzzard, Kestrel, Barn Swallow, Jay, Raven, Woodpigeon, Magpie, Hooded Crow, Starling, White Wagtail, Lesser Whitethroat and a Nutcracker.

The Nutcracker was certainly the highlight. But it was a very brief sighting,

I've had to pull in and lighten this photo up quite a bit as from our viewpoint, it was distant and silhouetted.
This photo gives and idea of the start of the walk, we came up from the road below,

we climbed up for a long time after this. Thankfully though not quite this high as in the picture below. That's the town of Zarnesti in the distance, where we were based for 3 nights.

The Tree Pipit did show quite well on the climb,

as did the Lesser Whitethroat, again in a bad position to photograph.

An additional item of interest on the long way down was an Eastern Green Lizard;

After a very long morning we returned to the guest house for lunch, after which we had half an hour before setting out again and heading for Bran (The home of Dracula!)
The castle;

No sign of vampires though.
The afternoon added, Linnet, Great Tit, Red-backed Shrike, Hobby, Honey Buzzard, Marsh Harrier, White Stork, Common Swift, Collared Dove (in abundance) and Grey Wagtail. No photographs of this lot as the weather was turning a bit inclement and all the birds were a long way away.

So back to the guest house to freshen up, have a beer and a surprisingly good dinner.

Now comes the other Naturetrek bit that we can't get our heads around. After dinner while still at the table out come the checklists! (Provided by Naturetrek to everybody)
Firstly I have to say Tina and myself have our own set of rules.. ie it only counts if we both see it, also we are terrible with bird song, we have tried many times to get to know the calls, but apart from the obvious, we can't distinguish the birds at all. So we don't count heard either, because we don't know what we are hearing, even when pointed out. This applies especially in woodland with many birds calling at the same time. Both Florin and Justin, would fire off in quick succession, that's a Goldcrest, that's a Whitethroat, Firecrest, Tree Pipit etc We honestly didn't know which was which!

So when it came to the checklist, it didn't matter who had seen it or heard it it was added to the list even if it was only one of us! We keep our own list, I note down as we go along, so we didn't really partake in the nonsense, so according to Naturetrek figures we saw about 30 less species than the rest by the end of the holiday.

In fact a couple of years back we were on holiday (birding by ourseleves) on Lesvos and saw a Naturetrek group doing the checklist thing in a Taverna, we said at the time shoot us if we ever do that!

Now on the plus said once we decided how we were going to approach the holiday and do things our way, it was fine, we explained it to Justin and Florin and they accepted our approach. So despite everything I have said we had a really good time.

Chester Zoo

Being controversial here, not everyone will agree with our views, but here goes....

Last week we went up to Chester and spent a day at the Zoo. Now as I've probably posted before we are not huge Zoo fans, but after watching Secret Life of the Zoo on C4 and the good way that the Zoo is portrayed we thought we would give it one more go!

Our big mistake was that when we arranged a Hotel for the previous night, thanks to a great Groupon offer, but we forgot, when we booked it, that it would be in the Easter holidays so lots of children, not that that's a bad thing for the Zoo, just for us, when you are trying to look at the animals.

Having said that there were some incredibly well behaved and interested children there.

Anyway on the whole it wasn't bad, although some of the enclosures looked a lot smaller than on the television, especially the Chimps enclosure. After being lucky enough to see so many animals in the wild, it just didn't feel right, especially when we saw the Sumatran Tiger pacing up and down along the fence. Now we know how endangered the Sumatran Tiger is and that the Zoo breeding programmes are vital to its survival, but it still makes you so sad to see them like that.

Indeed that goes for a lot of the Animals. Another case in point are the walk through aviaries, which are fabulous and make you feel as if you are almost in the wild, but in fact the flying area is actually very small, but again many of the birds are red-listed, so it's a huge dilemma. I don't have an answer.

Towards the end of our visit we came across some small aviaries, all next to each other, containing a variety of Owls. Now an Owl of always wanted to see in the wild and would go to Finland or Norway to see is the Great Grey Owl and to see this fantastic bird for the first time in a tiny (relatively) aviary was just awful.

I think this will be our last visit to a Zoo, as we find it too upsetting, although I see no alternative for some of the animals if they are to survive and the conservation side of the Zoo needs the income from people through the gate to keep the breeding programmes going.

I'm not going to add any photos to this post, but I have put them on Flickr, here's the link if you want to have a look;

Chester Zoo Photos

A Lovely Sunny April Afternoon at Upton Warren

After a month devoid of birding for various reasons, we made a welcome return to Upton Warren on Thursday. It was great to be out and the weather was marvellous although a tad cool in a couple of the hides.

We visited all parts of the reserve starting with the Flashes mainly to get our first views of the returning Avocets,

and Little Ringed Plover,

The Shelduck were also looking splendid in the sun.

The birds today all stayed quite distant from the hide so good photo opportunities were limited. Other distant birds at the Flashes were Stock Dove, Gadwall, Shoveler, Lapwing, Mallard,Tufted Duck, Black-headed Gull, Canada Geese, Coot and a couple of Oystercatchers. A couple of Buzzards put in an appearance over the far hill side, briefly causing some excitement among the rest, but that was about it.

So we wandered (drove, much too muddy along the Salwarp!) over to the Moors Pools.
We started at the New Hide, this was pretty quiet, just some Tufted Duck, Coot and Mallard on the water, Blue and Great Tits, Chaffinch and a Bullfinch on the feeders. We sauntered (trying to use different verbs instead of 'walked'!!) up to the Lapwing hide and had coffee (this was our second)
Seeing a couple of Lesser Redpoll on the feeders at Lifestyles on the way.

From the Lapwing Hide we added a single Cormorant, some Teal, another pair of Oystercatchers, Little Grebe, Great Crested Grebe and a young Fox!, (gave a pair of Canada Geese a bit of a scare, before disappearing back into the reeds). We eventually found after much scanning two Snipe in the scrubby area in front of the Sand Martin box, that made our day as it's one of our favourite birds.

We now strolled back, purchasing a couple of Goose Eggs on the way and continued to the concrete hide. Here a Gadwall gave me a couple of nice shots,

as did a Dunnock

and a Reed Bunting

Finally from the tower hide a pair of Tufted Duck gave me a nice-ish photo,

So a very nice afternoon totalling 43 species in all. I haven't mentioned them all of course. We then completed a lovely afternoon with Afternoon Tea at Webbs, courtesy of my cousin Jane and family, who bought us this for a significant birthday!

Attingham Park, Shropshire

Our winter visit to Attingham for the Snowdrops and a lovely walk took place on Thursday, it was a bit of a dull and cold afternoon, but the Snowdrops still looked fantastic and there were plenty of birds about too. Hoever they were all pretty camera shy, or I was just to slow to get a shot.

At least the Snowdrops don't move, perhaps I should ditch birding for 'flowering' !

I did manage one bird photo!

The back of a Treecreeper!

We did see quite a few birds on our walk though...

Blackbird

Blue Tit

Carrion Crow

Chaffinch

Goosander

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Great Tit

Grey Heron

House Sparrow

Jackdaw

Jay

Long-tailed Tit

Magpie

Mallard

Moorhen

Mute Swan

Nuthatch

Pheasant

Pied Wagtail

Redwing

Robin

Rook

Song Thrush

Starling

Treecreeper

Woodpigeon

So not bad at all!

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!