Monday 30 January 2012

You know what they say about Geese with short necks...Pink-feet.

Hello again. Hope you're well and surviving, keeping busy or at the very least breathing whilst rejecting reality in front of a bright screen. The usual excuses apply for the lack of blog related media, busy blah blah. Anyway despite being probably the quietest end of the year here some nice bouts of sunny/still/warm weather have made looking at stuff for the 20th time pretty pleasant.

Lower Moors bigging itself up in the sun.

And why shouldn't it? When you can get super Anas combo's like this (Blue-winged Teal and Gadwall)
Spot the Iceland Gull...

There it is!

A fairly substantial bike driven bird today saw the Iceland Gull still mooching round Hugh Town while a wander around Porthellick produced more Anas action (in the form of Mallard, Gadwall and Teal) and some lovely views of this tchooing beauty...





That's right, Siberian Chiffchaff..not that you can tell with these pics anyway. It fed down to 4ft giving its distinctive tchoo call frequently but was far to active for anything better than silhouettes.



Further round the coast the 2 Pink-footed Geese were totally freaking out in the fields below Carn Vean. So wary! And I was miles away and partially hidden ish.


Little Egrets are still getting their intertidal zone on in many of the small bays.


 

And don't be thinking that birds are the only way to get your mid-winter grip on. Oooh no. The traps have been sporadically productive, generally correlated with the weather (unsurprisingly) and so I decided to point my lens at their thoraxes.


Pearly Underwing

Early Thorn

Silver Y

White-speck
Acleris hastiana

These Bermuda Buttercups are flowering all over the shop, hopefully the forecast cold weather over the proceeding days won't screw their lovely sour flowers over.


Stone-crop I think...even the fleshy plants are putting out new growth.

And finally just 'cos its nice...Fern sp. and the harbour




Tuesday 17 January 2012

Blue Skies

Not much to report today so here's some Blue-winger pics taken today at Lower Moors.






The 1st winter drake Blue-winged Teal showed lovely in the sun at Lower Moors.


And this Greenshank was loving life.

Finally a Moorhen cos its got a nice bill.


Monday 16 January 2012

Winter Sun

What a day! Every day is awesom but today the sun once again smiled upon these isles allowing some stuff to be seen. Not much time to construct a long-winded tangent about how the refractive qualities of water, when combined with intense sunshine and low wind speeds, allow great seaduck watching...oh wait.



Anyway the highlighs from today were 6 Great Northern Diver, 3 Slavonian Grebe, 8 Brent, 2 Scaup, 2 Eider and 2 Long-tailed Duck plus the dark 1st winter Iceland was hanging out with the yobs down the dump.





Meanwhile all this winter dullness of late (discluding todays beautiful conditions) inspired my to photograph some of the bits flowering around the garden at the minute:











Will add their names when I have time later...exotica versus natives.

Finally there's not been much going down on the moth front, certainly due to very low tmeperatures and a brist SE wind. But here's an Acleris hastiana, a neast little tortrix that loves the winter.


And some bird pics...

Robin..duh!


Chaffinch.


Iceberg Seagull

See you on the flipside.


Friday 13 January 2012

Shady Pies

Where I'm from Shady Pies means Dusky Warbler and this posting will briefly fixate on said shady blob later.

 The past few days have presented us with some absolutely stonking weather! Warm, still and sunny made the Islands feel distinctly spring tinged. So the prospect of outdoor pursuits became more attractive with lots of flogging down producing the same goodies in slightly different spots.
The nights have been as spanking as the days really look how fat that is!

The Dusky Warbler has definately decided it prefers hanging with the Carduelis and Fringilla Finch crew up at Harry's Walls where it is feeding on the deck along with some Goldfinch, Chaffinch and an iffy Chiffy.


Nice comparison with Chaffinch, allowing easy elimation of this confusion species ha

Iffy Chiffy. Very very nice looking bird, so good looking that its essence was captured even with my shady lens skills.


Other percieved species included Gulls species! Guess where I was hanging out? Yep the dump. Smelly and full of rubbish (and that's just me). Here's some more pics of Iceland Gulls and marinus.

Gulls, and rubbish.

Call me a Melaninist but I love White-wingers!


Iceland Gulls, not that they've featured much recently...ahem.

'What the f##k you looking at?'

Other news and shiz is the ever present wintering Chiffchaff in the garden joined by up to 19 Redwing and 1 Fieldfare over the past few days. Raptors haven’t been resting on their laurels either as Kestrel, Peregrine, Buzzard and Sparrowhawk all featuring frequently. Our scaly friends moths have also been reppin’ as they say in Ghetto with Pale Pinion and an extremely confused Dark Arches being highlights of late.  


Pale Pinion - classic springish species

Dark Arches looking weird cos its totally phenologically confused.