Sunday 30 June 2019

Venus Pool - Black-tailed Godwits

John Martin's perseverance with VP paid off with a nice find of 7 Black-tailed Godwits this morning. I called in both morning and evening when they were still there. Never far from the middle island, a heck of a lot of distance to deal with!

Here's all 7 reasonably close together


And using three together, a sensible way to use the highly cropped frame!




Those legs allow feeding birds to cope nicely with the current high water conditions!


Waders... we need more passage waders!

Venus Pool - Blackwits - Flashback to 2006!

The seven Blackwits at VP herald the start of some good wader movement and I thought I'd take a hunt through the archives to 11th June 2006 when an unparalleled number dropped into Venus Pool. I can still remember it clearly - in the those days, the blog hadn't been created and the pool was a whole lot tidier!

I can't guarantee the three pics don't overlap and probably incomplete coverage but there were 68 Black-tailed Godwits (I remember counting multiple times with Geoff Holmes) on and adjacent to the middle island,!






Those were the days eh? Despite no long lens!!

Saturday 15 June 2019

North Shropshire - Quail

I've been spending quite a bit of time at one or two locations in the North of the County hoping for Quail. The best I've managed 'on call' was four birds at one site. Brief glimpses eventually followed  from the parked car but then.... The icing on the cake came today and it lasted literally 2 or three seconds!



Job done I reckon?