Martin Bevan and myself set out quite late for us today ( 6 o'clock ) to drive down to St. Brides to try and connect with the Western Orphean Warbler which has now hung around for over a week.
Arriving at the car park at 8pm we found it to be quite full already. Outside the gate we spoke to Mark Hipkin who was helping with the marshalling duties again and he told us that the bird had been seen, that 40 birders were in the garden and a queue was forming for the next batch of birders to be allowed in.
We joined the queue and probably waited about an hour before we had the signal to enter the garden. Lots of birds were present mostly Blue Tits, Great Tits, Blackbirds and Chaffinches so the binoculars were kept busy ( Yes Mr Bell I did remember to take them ). Finally after 20 minutes the Orphean appeared and gave us some stonking views feeding on the apples or perched out in the open. A cracking little bird.
It was also nice to have a chat with Pauline Hogg from Leeds who we met on 2 occasions on the Bilbao ferry. Rob were your ears burning? We did agree that Pauline's jokes were of a much higher standard than yours.
We then went up to Dale airfield where we bumped into Pauline again with her two travelling companions where between us we found some Lapland Buntings definitely six possibly double figures, we just could not get them on the floor.
It was then down onto the Gann where we found the reported Great Northern Diver and a Cormorant give us a good laugh by catching a quite big flatfish which it had great difficulty getting down it's neck, in fact I'm not absolutely sure it did.
Last call was Marloes Mere which contained really good numbers of wildfowl, lapwings and another great bird to finish a Ringtail Hen Harrier.
There was one hundred and thirty people today and four hundred collected.Last day for vistor.
ReplyDeleteGood birds, good people, sounds like a cracking day out, tidy. I've got the 3rd weekend in February off, pencil it in now.
ReplyDeleteMike don't be too hasty what if you get a load of socks for christmas there's no way your going to get them sorted before March, glad you had a good day out lads they reckon there could be up to 19 lapland bunts at the airfield.
ReplyDeleteNever mind the socks, the Bird Atlas just arrived, I could be in for months.
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