3 vital points, a king and lots of migrants

Tommy Spur and Richard Wood

An excellent weekend ! Wednesday only went and did it ! We turned up at Leicester went a goal down in the first five minutes, then missed a penalty and even the most optimistic supporter thought we had blown it. Have no fear... we equalised just before half time and then the team that came out for the second half were inspirational. We took the lead through Steve Watson who was outstanding all the match, Leicester then also missed a penalty before Leon Clarke lobbed the Leicester keeper to send us into delirium. The Wednesday support today was just unbelievable, the fans simply drove the team to victory.

My day was made when we noticed the team bus on the M1 on our way to Flamborough after the match. We stopped at the next services just outside Sheffield and amazingly the team bus pulled in to the services and several of the players got off to pick up their cars. Cue photographs!

Spent Sunday at Buckton - lots of 'new in' migrants including 2 Ring Ouzels, Tree Pipit, Grasshopper Warbler, 12 Wheatears, 2 Lesser Whitethroats, 5 Willow Warblers, 2 Blackcaps, Sedge Warbler and Yellow Wagtail. Outgoing birds included 3 Fieldfares and 3 Redwing. I put up 10 new Tree Sparrow nest boxes and noticed several of last years boxes were already in occupation.

Flamborough was equally productive, despite a bit of a run around I connected with the King Eider that was found last week (only 2nd ever Yorkshire record) and also saw Short-eared Owl and a smart Firecrest.

Come on you Owls !

Barn Owl at Broom GP, Short-eared Owl at Clopton

With only two games left this season and Wednesday languishing in the third relegation spot, now is the time to put on the 'battlepants', tomorrow sees us at equally relegation threatened Leicester. But with Southampton only one point above us and having to play West Brom and Sheffield United maybe, just maybe they are going down instead......

An Arctic blast !

If Monday was the day of the Whimbrels - with14 through Broom GP then today it was well and truly the turn of the Arctic Tern.

A rain front was forecast to pass from South Wales to the east across the UK reaching Bedfordshire by 10am, with spring tern passage often producing flocks of birds moving up the Severn Estuary and across inland England in a NE direction it wasn't too difficult to imagine a few Arctic Terns dropping into the various Bedfordshire gravel pits.

The morning at Broom GP was very quiet with two Whimbrel being the only highlights. As i was leaving at around 0830hrs it started raining and by 9am it was bucketing down, this lasted until 12 midday when I returned to Broom GP.

Wow!, I had not imagined the scene that greeted me - the main lake was packed with scores of beautiful (I don't use that word that often to describe birds!) silky Arctic Terns - all elegantly dipping over the water with their incredibly long tail streamers following behind. This was not just a visual feast as many of the birds were calling to each other particularly when they kept rising off the water high in the sky before returning again. In total the flock containing 90 individuals - a mega count for Broom GP's. As the conditions improved a break-away flock of 27 terns slowly circled together until they were high in the sky from where they headed off NE - no doubt being able to see the next body of water able to support their migration.

In the evening only a handful remained together with two summer plumaged Little Gulls.

Today epitomised inland passage birding at its very best - Arctic Terns rock !

Him up close

Little Gulls galore !

Spent 11 hours in the field today - very good passage conditions with low cloud and overnight rain on a NE wind.

Little Gulls were the main feature with over 80 being seen in Bedfordshire, I had groups of of 4, 8, 9 and 14 through Broom GP between 0555hrs-1200hrs and 1330hrs-2020hrs. Other birds included 2 Arctic Terns, 2 Black Terns, two Grey Plovers, a Greenshank, a Turtle Dove, a Hobby and a Cuckoo. Other birds in the county today included 3 Garganey at Willington GP, an Avocet at Warren Villas GP and 60 Bar-tailed Godwits through Harrold Odell CP.

A good day to be out !

Thailand April 8th-16th 2008

Had an excellent 10 days in Thailand seeing over 190 species, here are just a few highlights from the many photographs taken.

Gurney's Pitta, Banded Pitta, Gould's Frogmouth, Bridled Tern and Osprey.

More to follow.

April - a month of two seasons !

We all woke up this morning to a good covering of the white stuff !
Broom GP's looked rather different from yesterday when spring almost arrived. Quite bizzare scenes of over 100 Sand Martins and a handful of Swallows all hawking over the water in a snow blizzard ! Norman quite liked it and is just about getting used to the 6am weekend starts now - Higbee remained in the car snug as a bug. Birds included a female Merlin, LR Plover and Willow Warbler new in.

Last night I had brief and distant views of a Short-eared Owl at Clopton village in Cambs - a nice site tick.

Going AWOL now for the next ten days - more later.....

Him and Her

Birthday Osprey !

With my birthday being in early April on several occasions in past years I have been lucky enough to see a passage Osprey on this date. Today it was always on the cards with good numbers beginning to pass through the UK.

I spent several hours at Broom GP from 6am this morning with the highlight being 4 Pintail, a Kingfisher and my first Swallows and Yellow Wagtails of the year. At around at 9am I left and spent an hour at Willington - seeing my first Little-Ringed Plovers and Willow Warbler of the year. Being a Broom compulsive, I returned at 1020hrs and had just pulled up and was talking to Martin Stevens through the car window when Martin said "whats that" - looking over my shoulder and over the lake, all the gulls were up in the air and I just knew the large bird hanging above them was an OSPREY ! Martin shouted OSPREY and we both then watched it for the next 3-4 minutes as it hovered over the main lake being constantly escorted by just about every bird on the lake ! It slowly drifted NW quite low down.

Here comes the funny bit - only yesterday I took my battery out of my 40D Cannon camera so that Jenny could take it to Jessops to buy me an additional one - yep I hadn't replaced it ! So the only pic is somewhat a record shot through the scope with the coolpix. On the other hand, sods law says that if I had the battery then I would not have seen the Osprey ! I will take the Osprey thank you !!