Isle of Mull - Day 3 and Nightjars

I shall start with some food. I have been very busy the last couple of days, so no time to blog. By the way, Happy Fathers Day to all you Dad's out there! I was busy cooking all day yesterday, making a cracking Cheesecake for today and a Pizza for last nights supper.

Day 3 of Mull - Target Bird - Corncrake

We were heading to Iona today to hopefully connect with the Corncrakes. On the ferry, we saw Common and Arctic Tern, Gannet, Kittiwake, Shag, Razorbill and Guillemot. Someone reported a Mink but we didn't see it. We got over to Iona, and went to the fields at the back of the Fire Station. Straight away, a calling male was wandering below a gate.

He then came out into the open.

We got a couple of Sedge Warblers plus another Corncrake, and the Gannets were fishing out in the bay. We walked back round towards the ferry when we picked up a fourth Corncrake! Not showing very well, but you could see it's head.

We then moved on to Fidden, and we picked up about 25+ Whimbrel.

We then went to Uisken, and on the beach held Rock Pipit, Ringed Plover, Dunlin, Turnstone and a couple of summer plumaged Sanderling.

Very Poor Light! Sanderling on far right.

We got a nice Yellowhammer, Mountain Hare, White-tailed Eagle, 4 Great Northern Diver, and Raven on the way back to the hotel.

Raven

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On Friday Night, Dad and I went on the guided Nightjar walk at Minsmere. They took us onto the Bridleway to the heath, not Westleton Heath like last year. We could hear a Nightjar churring as soon as we got to the heath. In about 10 mins, 2 males were flying about through the woods. And then, at about 9:35pm, 3 Nightjars were flying feet above our heads. I was using the White handkerchief trick to attract them, and it actually worked. Best views of Nightjar ever. Unfortunately, I left it too late for the camera. :(

Fantastic well done to Jonny Rankin for finding the Pacific Swift at Trimley. An amazing find. Pity we can't go and see it! 

Happy Birding!

A New Years Treat!

This is the first of my 3 posts that I need to get done about the first week of January's Birding. Well, on New Years Day, we headed down to North Warren in the morning, and Minsmere in the afternoon. If you looked at the Daily Sightings Page, you may have gathered what we saw that day, but for those of you who haven't, I won't spoil it for you now. I get on with the pictures and videos then. We started off the day with a Pheasant with an Albino bird in Coddenham.

We then got to North Warren Car park, and a nice surprise was a female Stonechat in the grass

We then got to the path across the field and we parked our scope mid-way down, and scanned for the Red-breasted Goose (and the three feral birds) amongst the Barnacles. Well here's what we got.

I believe that this is the wild bird but I'm not sure.

I'm not that fussed to know which one is the wild bird in these two photo's because I know it's one of them. These are 4 individual birds. The wild bird was a 1st-winter, and the 3 feral birds were adults. We also saw White-fronted Geese.

And Barnacles...

And then we saw some ducks, including some Pintail, but a little distant.....

And we finished with some Lapwings...

We then moved onto Minsmere, and we started with food in the cafe, then we moved onto North Hide. We didn't see the Waxwings in North Bushes, but some ducks were added to my year list including 4 Smew..

There was 4 birds (another Redhead), but she wandered off!

Then we went to Island Mere, meaning we missed out of the rest of the hides due to flooding. We didn't go up to south levels either to see the Bean Geese, because of time. We got a few Marsh Harriers and missed a Bittern by 30 seconds :( 

We then got 3 cracking Bullfinch's!

We got to Bittern Hide at Dusk, and with 4 Bewick's Swan flying over, we didn't expect to have 2 Otters fishing on the lake and river...

Happy New Year