Posts about birding
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Marshside Migrants
It’s a nice time of year at Marshside. The winter visitors are arriving, migrant birds are on passage and dragonflies are at their most visible.
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Quick dash before the rain
Presented with a sunny but blowy morning with impending rain, I decided to check out some of the ponds on the landward side of the Coast Road. I’d heard that during the hot weather a couple of weeks ago these ponds had been packed with dragonflies but not investigated at the time.
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Dodging the clouds around South Ribble
On a day that was either cloudy with sunny spells or the other way around - hard to tell which - and with a bit of a chill in the air after overnight rain we started at Longton Brickcroft.
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A dragonfly weekend
I attended a dragonfly course at the Field Studies Council’s Preston Montford gaff.
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Marshside and Mere Sands Wood
We started the day at Marshside, where the Glossy Ibis was showing well in appalling light for photography and insects were buzzing around, including a few big dragonflies - probably Emperors - that whizzed past on the wind and a few things just out of binocular range at the far side of Junction Pool. Blurry photos of a Sphaerophoria hoverfly and a Colletes bee were to be had along the path.
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Business as Usual
A largely uneventful morning at Sandgrounders, with Glossy Ibis and Cattle Egrets both on Rimmers and not a lot in front of the hide except black-headed gulls. The weather was sunny but only sort-of warm, so all was slow in the insect department too. An Emperor dragonfly whizzed past at one point, and a Large Skipper made an appearance. I chased an Ichneumonoid of some kind around without getting a decent picture, but I’ll have a go at comparing it to some keys one day!
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Paxton Pits
“The only medium-sized soldierfly with a more or less completely blackish body … The veins of the costal zone of the wings are especially dark.”
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Sharnbrook
We had a quick stroll by the River Ouse in search of some ‘southern’ Odonata in the late afternoon, in breezy conditions with short sunny spells.
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Marshside 25/05/2019
A pre-RSPB walk along the ditch at Hesketh Golf Club was mostly uneventful until I was returning to the car and startled a Broad-bodied Chaser in the brambles by Hesketh Road. Prior to that I’d seen Azure and Blue-tailed damselflies, a few butterflies including Orange Tip, Small Copper, Large White, Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell catterpillars, as well as a few bees, hoverflies and moths - few of which stayed still enough for photos. The small copper I took some snaps of really demonstrated why they’re not called ‘small orange’ with a beautiful coppery sheen.
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malta
Read more…non-uk-birds: - Sardinian Warbler - Purple Heron - Zitting Cisticola - Cetti's Warbler - Spanish Sparrow - Little Egret - White Wagtail
