Wildwings and Wanderings

Wednesday, 5 May 2010

Brown is Beautiful

No, NOT Gordon Brown! (You wont ever see any mention of him on here, well apart from just then!) But these gorgeous creatures.

Waved Umber.

Our first new moth for a while.

And on the estuary this afternoon I somehow managed to creep up on this lovely Whimbrel - in my bright red car! It was having such a successful time feeding on juicy worms it just didn't seem to mind my being there. Usually when you pull up next to Whimbrel they immediately fly to the other side of the river. Photographic opportunities are therefore a bit thin on the ground so I was very pleased to get this one. I will now celebrate most self indulgently by boring you ( unless like me you really, really like Whimbrel) with far too many of my efforts.

Sunday, 2 May 2010

White-throated Sparrow

When news came through of a White-throated Sparrow at Boscastle in Cornwall, Bun and I 'pencilled it in' for tomorrow, after all we'd seen the one in Hampshire last April so there wasn't any immediate rush. By 1.30 we were on our way there!! Well, the Hamshire White-throated Sparrow was our 'bird of the year' last year so it would have been a bit daft to have risked not seeing this one and hopefully getting some better photos. It showed briefly almost as soon as we got there but I wasn't able to get any shots, fortunately we only had to wait a further forty or so minutes before it reappeared though. It just 'materialized' in a small bush close by and started singing before flying down to the lawn to feed. I managed to get a couple of good photos and a decent video clip too. What a little gem! What a great song! Bird of the year again this year? Probably....very probably :-)

Here's the video. The bird only sings once at the very beginning. It appears that before it can sing a second time it gets distracted somewhat by a bee. I've called it 'White-throated Sparrow II - Return of the Whistler of the North' It's much better than last years effort (here). Who said sequels are always worse than the original? ;-)

Dancing Ledge

Yesterday Bun and I went over to Dorset again, this time the target was my first new orchid this year, the Early Spider Orchid. Although there are much more accessible places to see this rare orchid along the Purbeck coast, namely Durlston CP, we decided to go to Dancing Ledge, about a mile to the south of Langton Matravers. Our reasons were twofold, firstly the site is much more remote and therefore would be less crowded (which is always a good thing). Secondly AND more importantly there is a small Puffin colony here. I've only ever seen Puffins in flight while seawatching and from the Scillonian III, so was hoping to get better views of one here. I wasn't to be disappointed either because as soon as the coastline was in view Bun picked out a couple sitting on the sea with his scope, a third joined them briefly before flying up to the cliff-top (which was annoyingly just out of sight around the corner). We descended the steep path to Dancing Ledge (an old disused quarry) from where we enjoyed superb scope views of one remaining bird. I could have got some really nice digiscoped pictures if I hadn't been a total wuss and wimped out of lugging my (I'm sure it gets heavier by the day) scope down (and especially back up) the very steep slope. Serves me right! Still I was more than happy to have had the good views.

There were literally hundreds if not thousands of Early Spider Orchids on the downland. When seen in numbers like this it's hard to believe they are actually such a rare plant. Like many orchids they are quite inconspicuous at first, but up close they're amazing. This one is meant to mimic a species of solitary bee, not a spider! Here are a 'few' photos from the trip.

Scenery

The path down to Dancing Ledge

On the Ledge looking west.

Looking east..

Just below where the waves are breaking over the lower ledge there is a swimming pool cut out of the rock, (the tide was in too far to see it unfortunately). It was made for the use of Durnford Prep School at a time when schoolmasters knew how to really pamper pupils!! ;-)