Once Bittern Thrice Shy (continuing bad humour)

I started writing this post on Sunday evening, then tiredness won and I forgot to press "publish" before heading off to bed. Sorry about that... Anyway.

Despite the LIES of the whole weather-watching community, we decided to embark on our third visit to Lakenheath on Sunday. Not a bad run up there, so still had a decent amount of time for a wander round despite the late start. Superior birders were also in attendance, and may provide you with a more useful summary of the day.

There were lots of birds, many of which I can't remember now. Plenty of sedge/reed warblers everywhere, several cuckoo there like last time, and bearded tits amongst the reeds. As well as the now really boring bittern booms, we think we heard some young bittern calling which was pretty cool. Bit late to see the cranes out and about, but we heard them too so is tickable I suppose even if not satisfactory. Of course the real reason we went an hour and a half out of our way was to try and catch a glimpse of some golden orioles before they disappear for another year. Me and this one heard some very distinctive singing, and together we saw a couple of flashes of yellow through the forest with an audience of about 20 other people. I am told this was an oriole, but we must try harder next year I think.

I was a bit distracted by all the butterflies everywhere, so apologies for the lack of photographic evidence of any of the above. Here is what I did manage to get though...

There were more birds than this, but it was the only one that made it into my photographs. Young great-crested grebes were on my Things To See list for this year, so it was worth documenting.

The less cuddly variety of buzzy things. Was quite obliging for the photo though.

Small tortoisehell butterfly, one of a great many.

An Essex skipper, or so we believe. Feel free to correct me with your superior knowledge...

I'll try to avoid moths and butterflies and try to concentrate on the birds more next time, my most sincere apologies.

Scientific Birdan

Me and the boy managed to drag ourselves out of bed this morning bright and early after winning a pub quiz last night, in order to carry out some very important super scientific surveying.

Our BTO survey square isn't all that amazing to be honest- it consists mostly of wheat fields, with the odd hawthorn hedge, grass verge and angry property owner thrown in. It was good to see there were still a few skylarks kicking about (including one very obliging individual who flew nice and low over the crops), and a great spot woodpecker flying over was a surprise considering the habitat. There were plenty of spiders and beetles in the field, and it was good to see that despite the lack of diverse habitat, the hedgerows along the road were enough to support a good variety of butterflies. I think we managed to spot small white, large white, green-veined white, ringlet, meadow brown, peacock, painted lady and some sort of skipper.

small white butterfly

common ringlet butterfly

The star of the show had to be the yellowhammers in a hedgerow towards the end of our survey. There were at least three individuals singing and I saw a female amongst some chaffinches. We haven't really seen them here before although we knew they were in the area. They looked like they were defending a territory or something so we will have to go see if we get more of a flock during the winter months. Beats the Ingrebourne lot anyway :P

tweet tweet (i can't remember what they actually sing..)

Hopefully heading somewhere more interesting tomorrow, depending on whether the promised downpours appear or not. Managed to finally get my windscreen fixed, so wherever we go I will be planning on avoiding loose stones on road. Occupational hazard of driving to interesting places I suppose...

OMG AMAZING!!

Or not. Haven't had the time to get out in the zoo with a camera this week so far, so no amazingly cute photos yet. There are about a million ducklings in the gorilla moat at the moment though and fledgling sparrows everywhere, which are pretty entertaining. For those of you not in the know, London Zoo has one of the largest sparrow populations in london or something.

Other than that, the nearest to wildlife watching I've got to over the past few days is spotting some magpies, rooks, starlings, a good number of various Columbiformes a few red-legged partridges, and a single robin darting across the road on my way home today. Oh, and a yellowhammer :)

On the home front, the tank is still going swimmingly (sorry), thought I still need to plant it up some more and up my fish stock levels. Contemplating disbanding project platy, and going with a plan b...

I am hoping all this rain that has been forecast for the weekend doesn't materialise, as we were planning a day trip out somewhere nice on sunday, not to mention a weather-dependant windscreen fixing on saturday. Bah. Fingers crossed it holds up for the weekend...

Hannahfield etc...

The birds aren't so good at the moment. Went to Hanningfield with the boy on Saturday, and found very little bird-wise to entertain us, and not even many dragon/damselflies to keep us distracted. I was hoping at least for some cute and fluffy ducklings even if not anything too exciting, but even those were pretty thin on the ground. Despite that though, it wasn't a bad way to kill the afternoon after all the excitement of lakeside in the morning.

My favourites were probably the little grebe family in the lake next to the causeway. Please find enclosed some high quality photographic evidence herewith.

Aawww. Little grebe family and one chick being fed by parent.

Red crested pochard was the most interesting thing on the reservoir, and even he looked a bit scraggy with fading head feathers.

While searching in vain for dragonflies and the like, I did find some ever-awesome pondskaters. How do they stay up?! Aaahh physics...

For those of us who aren't arachnid experts (me) this is a cucumber green spider. Thanks Natural History Museum website.

I will try to remember to take my camera in to work this week to get some baby photos and stuff before it gets hideously busy for the summer holidays, so watch this space.
In other news, I received some exciting post today, so you might not be hearing from me for a while. After 24 DVDs I am hoping to be very wise in the fields of both Wildlife and Attenborough.

To cheer you up on a Tuesday...

Because everybody knows that Tuesday is the worst day of the week, and because everybody likes butterflies.

Here is a nice heartwarming tale about an awesome reintroduction programme of an awesome butterfly which unusually for a reintroduction programme seems to have actually worked...

It's quite a long article but is definitely worth a read, they have a really interesting life cycle involving battenburg cake or something :)

Off for a picnic

In an effort to cheer up the boy, yesterday we skipped off to Danbury for a picnic. Having done most of the Essex coast by now I wanted to try out somewhere new, and Danbury seemed to be mentioned quite a lot on the Internets. With the promised butterflies and dragonflies I was also hoping to exercise my photography muscles for the day.

It didn't feel much like Essex, what with all the heather and bogs and the fairly considerable hilliness, but it's nice to experience something other than marshland/distinctly average forests less than 40 minutes from home.

Me checking out a Big Tree- concluding it was indeed quite large.

If I knew more about plants I'm sure I would have been much more exciting, but it was a pretty unusual habitat what with reedbeds and bogs tucked in the middle of a forest, then heathland and meadows etc. Even with my limited experience I could tell there was a pretty amazing variety of plantlife across the site. Plenty of floral displays was seen by all...

Honeysuckle smells awesome

There were foxgloves everywhere, which was a stunning suprise. This foxglove was taller than me- photographic evidence may be provided upon request.

As mentioned already, there were loadssss of dragonflies including lots of small blue ones, one reddish medium sized ones and about four big beigy ones (yes I need to learn how to ID them), but they're fast little bastards so you'll just have to use your imagination on that one. There were a few very obliging Speckled Wood butterflies that might make up for it. Also not included were some shiny beetles, some entertaining pill beetles and a lacewing.

Very shiny and new-looking Speckled wood in Danbury.

The woods itself was awesome, with some really ancient trees mixed in with some coppiced areas. The path followed the route of a stream for quite a while too, which was lovely :)

Whooshh...

On the bird front it was pretty quiet, but considering the time of day and year it wasn't too suprising. There was a nice family of blackbirds in the hedges where we had our picnic, and alos managed to pick up the usuall wrens, blue tit, great tit, chiff chaff, chaffinch, willow warbler, blackcap. High light was a greater spotted woodpecker in the trees, and bizarrely a pair of yellowhammers on Danbury Common. I think we'll definitely be coming back at a later date to check out it's full potential, and most importantly to try out The Griffin Inn which was closed for refurb...

A rabbit using it's soundspoons most effectively to detect my clicky camera.

Trying to catch up...

I'm not very good at keeping up to date with my blog, must try harder...

We haven't really been up to much this weekend, as due to all the torrential rain we were *promised* we thought it foolish to venture anywhere too far and interesting. Lunch on the boardwalk at lakeside was about as adventurous as our travels got over the past two days. Having said that, I most heartily recommend this as an excellent way to waste a couple of hours :)

The boy made a pretty good summary of our week in France, so I won't bore you too much with the details. Just sorted out all the photos though, so a proper post is pending. Quick taster for you though :)

Mallards on the Loire in Tours, with some pretty flower things that seemed to be everywhere.