Wales

29/05/10
on the way to pembrokeshire........
an overcast, crap weather day, not perfect for red kite watches anyway, this year was terrible for raptors,
i have proved that my thery is correct and that Buzzard numbers are down, even with the bad weather, in the entire 160 mile journey an amazingly low number of only 9 were seen, 9 Buzzard, that is truily terrible, saying that though the weather didnt help either
only 1 kestrel was noted, but 2 very nice male YELLOWHAMMER were noted signing from overhead wires,
12 RED KITE were counted, but all were quite far away, this included a single flock of 6 kites hunting over a hill on the outskirts of the brecon beacons,
a PEREGRINE flew over, as did a sparrowhawk,
but the main highlight was a LITTLE EGRET which was seen feeding in a river as we crossed over a bridge in some random town/city thing???????

30/05/10

a trip into tenby town added a single fulmar to the year list,
Next my favorite pembrokeshire patch
MB

AUCH!!!!

22/05/10
upton warren
mega pain recounting this day, but here goes;
dropped into the moors and slowley walked down to the west hide, as nothing had been seen, i wasent in a rush. entered the west hide to be greated by any patch workers worst comment:
'you'll never guess what you just missed?'
'what'
'SPOONBILL'

AUCH, i missed a rare bird by a mind numbing 5 mins (if that), it was so close to it the finder hadent even got the news out yet, so i offered to let all the 'upton boys' know with my free texts, quite a few came through with just the words 'bloody hell', i couldent belive how bad my luck had got recently(without MY med gull), every good bird i seem to be missing, but this was the one that hurt, so much it hurt.

about 20 mins after i got a call from brian telling me he just had the bird flying over grimley, he searched the area long and had after that but the news 'spoonbill relocated at ?????????' never came, and hopes failed and i was left downhearted.

Just as well that aq couple of half decent birds wer at the flasehes or i weould still be suffering from SLBAD (seasonal and lack of bird affected disorder). we had been in the hide for some time and we were joined by 'mr spoonbill' (the finder that is not the big white spatular bird), and my acute hearing honed into a singing 'GRASSHOPPER WARBLER' at the back of the 1st flash, and soon after a CUCKOO joined it and started singing behind the hen pool.

and there we go, the most painfull day this year so far!!!!!!!!! :-(
MB

Blog update!!!!!!!

i appologise for the lack of posting recently, to be honest i been inundated with coursework, homework and revision, so therefore no time for blog, but will update soon

i PROMISE

MB