Puffintastic!

How can you not love them?!

In praise of Terns...

The Farne Islands are a wonderful place, and I honestly cannot believe I’ve never set foot there before. Despite spending about ten hours setting foot no further than the jetty, failing to see the Bridled Tern that had attracted me there, I mean that with complete sincerity! Having dipped the tern twice already, I was pretty relaxed about the possibility of it happening again, and determined to enjoy another weekend in a stunning place. There’s just nothing quite like the constant melee of a seabird colony, birds coming and going, loads of noise, the smell – it’s brilliant. Guaranteed to be better than any birding that London could possibly offer!

So, rather repeat the story of a near-dip, I’ll home in on photos of the birds.

First, Arctic Terns. These guys have serious attitude, dive-bombing innocent passers-by to deliver sharp pecks to the head, screaming and shouting at each other (and us), posturing aggressively all the time.

Utterly fearless, if they’re not attacking you, they’ll sit tight however close you get, allowing for some real close-ups – macro lenses are by no means a crazy option here! The short end of my 100-400 zoom was well worth having.

One of the key food items for the terns is sand eels, a species that has declined markedly in the North Sea over the past 30 years, causing concern for conservationists.

Of course, there were good numbers of fairly recently fledged juvenile terns in evidence (and also some smaller chicks that had some growing still to do). These youngsters were much less active, sitting alongside the crowd of patient twitchers, waiting for parents to drop off a tasty morsel or two… or having a nap!

Other terns noted included plenty of Sandwich, a few Commons, a very smart pair of Roseates:

… and some other weird thing that people kept getting very excited about? No idea what this is.

Introducing His Imperial Majesty…

… the Purple Emperor!

(No, not the Right Honourable Member Prime Minister for Little Chalfont, as several people suggested when asked who or what I might have been referring to by “HIM”).

These majestic creatures showed superbly well at Lady Wood, south of Fermyn Woods near Corby on Sunday morning – I reckon I easily saw a dozen individuals (all males) late morning when the sun finally emerged. Unlike most butterflies, Emperors can be quite tricky to see, since they spend much time inactive high up in the canopy, rather than at ground level. But when the sun gets out, they come lower, gliding up and down the forest rides, before dropping down to feed on the tracks. This is in order to take onboard essential minerals from muddy puddles or (apparently even more delicious) animal droppings. This fox scat was a particularly choice morsel…

… though other observers footwear and trousers were also favoured! (“Hmmm, I really must change my socks / brand of antiperspirant / underwear…” (delete as applicable))

At times, there were up to five individuals on show along a short stretch of the track at one time, including three males around the same ‘delicacy’. These two posed rather nicely!

And despite the heat, it was a complete pleasure to spend an hour or two taking photos at point-blank range, especially since all the individuals were very freshly emerged, in pristine condition. They’re just stunning!

Back to macro

OK, so it’s taken me until the very end of June to crack, but today it was time to put the birding kit to one side and get back into butterflies and dragonflies! John, Graham and I headed up the M1 out of London, through Birmingham, and on to Whixall Moss on the Welsh border – one of the most southerly raised sphagnum and peat bogs in the country, and home to a range of rare species including two lifers for me. White-faced Darter is a pretty tricky dragonfly to see in the UK, with only a handful of English sites, while I’ve never been in the right place at the right time for the slightly more widespread Large Heath butterfly.

Arriving at Moss Cottages (SJ501364) on the eastern side of the site mid morning, the weather was far from perfect – largely cloudy with only fairly brief sunny intervals, with a fresh breeze. However, we were well pleased to find both target species almost immediately, along a small ditch on the left of the track only a couple of hundred yards beyond the last cottage.

Over the next few hours, we saw around 6-8 White-faced Darters, all males apart from one pair seen briefly in cop. Pretty smart little dragons, and reasonably obliging for photos!

By contrast, the Large Heaths were very tricky to see well – tucking well into the vegetation out of the wind most of the time, and then being carrying swiftly by the wind when they did get airborne. We only saw two or three on the deck, with this individual the only one I managed to photograph at all!

The real star of the show from a photographic point-of-view was the Four-spotted Chaser, the most abundant dragonfly at the site by some margin, and regularly perching out in the open and sitting tight for photos. I’d forgotten how tricky it is to get sharp images with a macro lens (and the correspondingly shallow depth of field), so plenty have just gone in the bin – but I’d also forgotten how much detail the Sigma 150mm can extract when you do get it something close to right. Pleased with some of these – click to enlarge!

Before heading back home (and suffering the post Grand Prix traffic on the M1), we popped into the nearby Prees Heath Butterfly Conservation reserve to have a look for newly emerged Silver-studded Blues. We quickly found about half a dozen of these, again showing well.

All in all, an excellent summer’s day!

Dip-dippity, dip-dippity, dip-dip Dip-per!

No prizes for originality this weekend – Jono and I trod a predictable path to Thetford yesterday, for the long-staying Black-bellied Dipper. No apologies for that, though, since it was absolutely superb! Very confiding, and brilliantly charismatic. We stayed at least three hours, and I could’ve happily been there longer still.

As is usually the case with Dippers, its favoured area was shady and rather dark, so photography wasn’t easy… I might well be tempted back on a brighter day. But I’m pleased with a few of the shots, and the whole experience was a great antidote to work and stress in London.

One of the great things about this bird was the amount of behaviour you could watch, up close and personal, and attempt to capture on film (OK, disc!). It was feeding pretty voraciously on some sort of larvae (anyone know what? please comment if so), which had to be extracted from black twig-like shells, before being swiftly despatched.

And then, in quieter moments, he was… preening and stretching…

… swimming and bathing…

… yawning and blinking…

… and even singing! Ok, no photo of this – but here’s a recording from the excellent Xeno Canto archive, of a Scandinavian bird wintering near Amsterdam:

All in all – a stunning little bird, and well worth the trip. Anything I see this year will have to go some to beat it!

Any other birds this weekend? Yes, actually quite a bit! The notebook includes Long-tailed Duck (still on the Girling Res in N London – wish I could get close to that, it’s a cracker), Black Redstart, Great Northern Diver, 3 Slav Grebes and at least 4 Velvet Scoter on the Blackwater, and a typically distant and mobile Great Grey Shrike in Herts, where there was also an excellent array of old-fashioned farmland birds: Corn Buntings, Yellowhammers and Grey Partridge in abundance. If only more of the countryside was managed the same way…

Finally, this Grey Wag was rather confiding at Rowhedge near Colchester… often a companion to Dippers on picturesque breeding sites, this one was in less salubrious surroundings, around puddles on a derelict wharf!

Hornemann’s Arctic Redpoll, Aldeburgh

Ok, I’ve seen a few of these before on the Shetlands, but it was still absolutely awesome… hopping around, unconcernedly, no more than about 8 or 10 feet away. Beautiful little bird, mega rarity, huge distance from its home, and not far from ours. Excellent!

Here’s my selection of the many, many photos taken on the beach today. As usual, click any to view a larger (1280px) image.