Minsmere and Westleton

As its half term, I have been able to do lots of birding. On Monday, Dad and I went to Minsmere. We started off at North Hide. We got the usual ducks, but no Pintails. We also got Dunlin, Cetti's Warbler, Oystercatcher, Marsh Harriers and common passerines. We then spotted one of the Redhead Smews. It wasn't distant, but the light was poor, as a result of this poor picture.

We then went out to look onto the sea, and got around 30 Red-throated Divers, and a Guillemot which was a welcome fly-past. Public Hide produced another Redhead Smew and a Goldeneye showing well, but this pic was taken with my little camera, so it looks distant in the photo, but it was only about 60 yards away....

We then went back to the visitor center to have lunch, and I had Prawn Mayonnaise Jacket. Absolutely gorgeous. We then headed out to Bittern Hide. Not much in there, apart from a distant Kingfisher and another Marsh Harrier. We then went on to Island Mere, and got Snipe, Otter and a flypast Bittern.

Final stop was at Westleton Heath, where we got a brief Dartford Warbler on the top of the heather before it flew off. Not a bad day. Better than going to school hey!

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