A quiet winter for us, partly weather, partly a family Christmas in Cornwall and partly getting the garden ready for Spring after a very wet nine months.

Another winter of heavy snow, the third in a row now, led to some unusual garden visitors for us, especially this Fieldfare.  This single bird stayed for around two weeks, taking advantage of the fresh fruit we put out every day:

As well as the garden bird we've been conducting winter thrush surveys for the BTO.  The summary is farmland is mostly a desert whereas land not farmed contains lots of bird food and therefore birds.  I wonder where the missing 44 million nesting birds were lost from?!?

Once the snow melted, the Nene tributary flooded again:

This is about the worst we've seen it, and this is the third flood of this level in the last nine months.  With all the preparation we've done to the hedge, the vegetable area, under the trees, in the orchard, hopefully we'll have a really good growing year this year.  Can't wait!

It's been a while

True to the title, it has indeed been a while. We've not been entirely lazy though. Last weekend we did a (rather daft) visit to the WWT at Slimbridge on Saturday morning, arriving at opening time. The trip was prompted by the promised sunshine and hoped for migrant swans and/or geese. We didn't in fact see too many of these, however the sunshine did show-up so that was something!

The Chilean Flamingos were already out:



Their reflection provided a romantic back-drop for these displaying Crested Ducks (also natives of South America):



I don't know if this Goosander is a captive or a wild visitor:




One new guest of the WWT is this family of Otters:



Photographing them proved tricky as they are enclosed in a tall glass pen, which of course is very hard to photograph through. Cue standing on a nearby bench and trying to shoot over the glass, which actually meant it was too high to sight through the lens, still a reasonable snap so worth the effort. Apparently the WWT took these animals in as the previous 'owners' were unable to keep them and no-one else would take them.

Every time we walked past the glass the Otters would swim out and then under the path before re-emerging. I think it's their game. Hugely cute and great that they are making a comeback across the country.

As well as the above mad-dash, we've been getting the garden set for winter, so taking delivery of more tree-chippings (next Spring's mulch); gathering leaves for leaf-mulch (two years to mature) and generally getting everything tidied-up. The next job is to have the hedge lain-down, which we'll do in January when it's fully dormant. That should give us, in three or four years time, a very dense, productive and secure natural border to the house.

We do have new visitors to the garden, this year, including a Marsh Tit:

Various members of the Northants Bird Club suspected Marsh Tit rather than Willow Tit, this was confirmed when we heard it shouting at us when topping up the feed one lunchtime!

Already regulars for the winter, Long-tailed Tits:

Great Tit:

Blue Tit:

We do also get visits from the occasional Coal Tit but I've not yet caught one on camera. All the birds are nervous, due to the daily visits from the local Sparrowhawks, we see three different birds a day, including this juvenile:

From time to time we get buzzed by a Kestrel too:

Something killed our garden mole, we found it dead on the lawn a couple of weekends back, possibly a neighbour laying poison, as the animal looked unharmed. On the positive side, we do have a new group of mice moved in, so hopefully they'll attract back the Little Owl or Tawny Owl...

to view the blog posts

Dear Reader, I've noticed that the changes to the software include removing the link to older posts and putting less posts on a single page. Right now this means you can only see half of the posts from the recent US trip. If you'd like to see more, please select the specific posts from the 'previous posts' section in the upper right portion of the blog. Thank you. Michael

A tale of two cities - Wednesday

Wednesday I woke up feeling heavy with cold, bunged up and generally sorry for myself, which of course boded well for the flight home.

To make the most of our last day in and around LA we decided to work our way towards the airport, following coastal Route One, and to head for Ken Malloy/Harbor Regional Park which we'd located during a quick web search the previous evening.

The coastal route proved very productive for us, so much so that we got out and wandered along a few of the near deserted beaches. The first thing that caught our eye was a small group of Dolphins moving slowly down the coast:



Further along the coast we did get out for a wander and in an hour or so saw loads, so in no particular order, a Willet:



Yellow-rumped Warblers:

A Whimbrel:

A Western Gull that let us get quite close:

Say's Phoebe, a new species:

Sanderling:

Red-throated Diver:

A flock of Heerman's Gulls:

Our last new species of the holiday, Lesser Goldfinch:



Killdeer:

House Finch:

A Brandt's Cormorant (left hand side) and a Pelagic Cormorant:



Both my feet got soaked taking this picture; as I was concentrating hard on framing the birds a wave came in and washed over the tops of my boots. Doh! Good to see the species side-by-side for comparative purposes though.

Black-bellied Plover:

The coastal route was a very pleasant drive and walk combined. When we reached Malibu we were expecting something spectacular. Instead we found a line of large houses on the beach and on the hillside, then a line of small houses tightly packed on the beachfront and then the town itself, and all with a 5-lane highway running through the middle. We suspect the reason that Malibu is so revered as a location is that compared to the rest of LA, which is pretty grim, it's not that bad. We wouldn't live there though, you'd never get any peace and quiet...

With time moving on we headed on to the park in downtown LA to see if it does indeed provide a good source of city birding. It's fair to say Martin Byhower who suggests it is not wrong. We saw loads of birds in the park, no new species but had we started here of course that would have been a different matter. Again in no particular order, Marsh Wren:

A squirrel in a tree convinced that by staying still it couldn't be seen:

Anna's Hummingbird:

Bushtit:

Cinnamon Teal:

Red-tailed Hawk:

Common Yellowthroat:

Other species seen in the park included Northern Mockingbird, Northern Shoveller, Mallard, American Coot, Great White Egret, Snowy Egret, Great Blue Heron, Black Phoebe, Song Sparrow, Golden-crowned Sparrow, Eurasian Starling, House Finch, Western Grebe, Pied-billed Grebe, Yellow-rumped Warbler, California Towhee, Mourning Dove, Great-tailed Grackle, American Kestrel and spookily, the last bird of the holiday was the same as the first, Western Bluebird, first a female:

and alongside, a male:

We were very fortunate to have the opportunity to have this short break on the West Coast of the United States and thoroughly enjoyed it. We won't go back to LA, we'll go South, North and East around it but never in or through it again we genuinely don't like the place, all noise smog, cars, trash, etc.

San Francisco has a completely different vibe, much more relaxed and fun to visit and we'll definitely return, probably starting there and heading North on a road-trip, who knows. Every time we visit the USA we're reminded just how vast and in some places pristine it remains, and how varied the wildlife that remains is. There's so many more places we want to visit...

We added 62 species to our USA list (242 now) and 53 to our life list (875 now).

A tale of two cities - Tuesday - The return trip

Our guide decided to make the trip back more enjoyable, so once we had picked-up the other passengers back at the first stop, we headed to a small lump of rock off the coast of Santa Cruz, a home to nesting seabirds. We saw Brown Pelican, Pelagic (new species) and Brandt's Cormorants, Western Gulls and on the shoreline, a Black Oystercatcher:



In the water a Pelagic Cormorant:



And a Brant (another new species):



A wing of Brown Pelicans flew towards then past the boat - click on the pic - they're flying in formation just above the water:



We headed back to Ventura Harbour though this time the crew were pointing out some of the birds we were passing, including a raft of Surf Scoters:



Cassin's Auklet:





Xantus's Murrelet:



Rhinoceros Auklet:

Pigeon Guillemot:

Common Murre (we call them Common Guillemot):

Heerman's Gull:

Our first ever Shearwater, this a Black-vented Shearwater:

As we headed further from the Islands, the sun was setting:



Leading to some spectacular effects:

This last picture includes a new species, Black-bellied Plover, however you can only see the back of the bird, the sunlight on the water is cool though:



We really enjoyed the trip back even though we got very chilly and my mild cold overnight transformed into a full-on heavy cold, it was worth it. We thanked the crew for bringing the trip to life on the way back. We noted the other passengers had all enjoyed the show too. We were also delighted at having seen the Island Scrub-Jay, mission complete.