Wednesday 18 February 2015

Oare Marshes and a return to Hampton

I was invited to join a couple of ex work colleagues Geoff and Tim, they were off to Oare Marshes. It was a beautiful bright sunny day, we arrived just after 11:00am to coincide with high tide which usually pushes all the waders off the shore onto the reserve. The Environment Agency are doing some work there at the moment so the road was awash with mud and the car park busy with agency workers cars. Whether it was the huge dumper trucks plying up and down the road or some other reason, I'd not seen Oare with so few birds before. We had a reasonable species count but nothing like the numbers of birds I've seen whenever I'd been before.
Male Reed bunting
We walked along the sea wall but there was very little around, a few Greylag geese squabbling on the scrape and an occasional passing cormorant. The reed bunting (above) was searching for food amongst the grass, although he was quite close it was almost impossible to get a clean shot, there was always some grass or stem in the way. This and two distant Bearded tits were the highlight of the outward walk, although we could pick out most of the common duck species on the lake. The only waders there in any numbers were Redshank and Dunlin, there were a few Godwits, Avocets and Lapwing and that was about it.
Distant Dunlin 
Whilst in the East hide I spotted a male Pintail fly up from the lake and land just the other side of the road, I knew there was a ditch there and a very small pond so I reckoned if it had landed in one of these it would be quite close to the road and could offer a 'photo opportunity'. I left the hide and got to the road as quickly as I could and sure enough there were two male and one female Pintail on the little pond - probably still ~30 meters away but in good light. I took a lot of very similar shots (although it is surprising that despite everything being pretty much the same for each photo, there are usually only one or two that catch everything just right - angle of the birds head, shadow cast by the bird or something else, sharpness etc). So I've learnt to take lots, it is easier to delete the unwanted ones than to go back for another attempt.
I was briefly distracted from the Pintail by a hovering Kestrel and although really just out of range I liked the action shot here. It's not that sharp and quite a heavy crop (the photo not the bird) but you don't usually see the legs dangling quite like this.

Squelching our way back through the liquid mud on the road we decided to move on. Geoff and Tim hadn't seen the Purple sandpipers or Mediterranean gull at Hampton so we called in there to have a look. Reliable as ever we soon found the Purple sandpipers they were with a dozen or so Turnstone in the section of Hampton beach where a freshwater stream empties out. Also there was a Dunlin which took us a little while to identify. To all three of us the initial views looked like the bird had a short, very pointed bill and not the longer and slightly down curved bill of a Dunlin, however, when a little closer we could see the bill more clearly and all agreed Dunlin.
Dunlin with Turnstone bathing in fresh water at Hampton

That just left the Med gull, there were 50 or 60 BH gulls and a few Common gulls out on the water and on the beach, I'd scanned them earlier but couldn't see the Med gull. Seconds after Geoff had said "So where's the Med gull?" or something similar, I spotted it on the water. Once seen it is fairly obviously different to the winter plumage BH gulls but until you see it everything looks like a possible candidate. It floated around for a few minutes and then put on a little display, flying about a bit before landing on the beach. In flight it appears very much whiter than the other gulls, and the lack of black on edge of the primaries is quite noticeable.

A very enjoyable day despite the lack of large numbers of waders at Oare.
 


Monday 16 February 2015

A Knot not a Dunlin

Trying to find some reasonable weather I headed to Thanet, which, according to the BBC weather website was due rather more sunny periods than around Sandwich. I stopped off at Ramsgate Western Undercliff but the tide was much higher than I'd expected and most of the beaches were under water. A dozen or so Turnstone were sitting out the high tide on one of the concrete groynes but other than those not much else stirred. For no apparent reason I decided to head for Foreness Point, Margate. Unsurprisingly the tide was high here as well but I walked along the lower promenade and found several Fulmar on the cliff face. As the cliffs aren't that high here it offered a good chance for some photos.


 The tide was receding slowly so I walked back up to the top, along past the water treatment work and looked out onto the sands of Botany Bay, a small flock of about 17 Ringed plover were gathered on the tide line so I decided to make my way down to them to see if I could get some shots.
Taken from the cliff top showing about half of the flock.
Just before heading off down to the beach I spotted this Black redstart, I only had time for one shot and was on the wrong settings really, I'd been using 1/3rd stop under exposure for the Fulmar but because the Black redstart was against a light background of the distant sand it could have done with using 1/3rd of a stop over exposure, I've lightened it on the computer.
I scrambled down onto the beach through the obviously often used little gully down the cliff and walked back towards the water treatment works and the Ringed plovers. Inevitably, before I got anywhere near them they were chased off the shore by an over exuberant dog, twice! I carried on partly in the hope that they would come back - they didn't, and that I might see the redstart again as it appeared to drop down to the beach from where I'd seen it, I didn't.
However, all was not in vain, the first mussel beds were just beginning to be uncovered by the receding tide and about a dozen Turnstone were pacing around the concrete blocks under the water treatment works, waiting to feed. I then spotted what I took to be a Dunlin amongst the Turnstone but it turned out to be a Knot, which was a photo first for me (may well have been a sighting tick as well, not really sure if I'd seen one before).

About the same size as the Turnstone and a straight bill, not slightly downturned.



Obviously larger than a Sanderling (Dunlin are about the same size as Sanderling).


I had to wait until I'd got home to confirm my identification, I'd not got a guide book with me, but I tried to take lots of photos of it with other birds to help the ID. I'd made this mistake in Guadeloupe, relying on the photo of the bird in isolation, where all relative comparisons are lost making ID much more difficult.
Sanderling looking for food.
Pleased with my 'discovery' and what I hoped were going to be some reasonably shots of the Knot and Fulmar, I headed up the gully to the cliff top and home for lunch but was distracted for a further 30 minutes by a pair of Stonechat. They did what most Stonechat seem to do, pose for a photo but fly off to a slightly more distant perch before you're ready, continuing to give you the run around for as long as you're prepared to play, I favoured food over another shot of a Stonechat.







Saturday 14 February 2015

Glaucous gull

I decided to head to Dover to see if there was anything interesting in the harbour and to try my hand at gulls in flight (I've said before that flight shots are difficult with the SX50 but with something like gulls, where there are lots of 'willing' subjects, and as they are reasonably predictable in their flight path, they provide good practice). Just before setting out I checked a few of the blogs I follow intermittently, one of which was the blog by Tony Morris http://stmargaretsphotodiary.blogspot.co.uk/ as he is quite local to me. From this I learnt that there was a Glaucous gull at Dover, and a very useful description of where to look for it. I read it, made a mental note and set off. I stopped on the way and invested a massive 45 pence on some value sliced white bread and headed for Dover. When I'd read Tony's blog I had a picture in my mind as to where he was describing to give views down onto some of the roof tops of offices that the gull favoured as a roost. When I got there and went to the place I'd pictured I realised I'd got it totally wrong. I was up high on the cliff above the P&O offices which was a very long way from where I needed to be. To compound my error, there was a tailback of lorries waiting to enter Dover for the port about 1 mile long. 
Having eventually made my way to the seafront I walked around the inner harbour, sometimes a good place for a divers, grebes, cormorant or shag, but today it was devoid of any bird life at all save a couple of feral pigeons and a herring gull.
A walk along Prince of Wales pier revealed a small cluster of birders looking towards the disused hovercraft pad. The Glaucous gull was way over towards the back but quite distinguishable from the other gulls by it's overall cream appearance and size. Within seconds of me arriving it took off, flew towards us and circled once before landing near the Cruise terminal. I managed a couple of shots but thought that was going to be it for me.
Glaucous gull on the right ~400metres away.
Everyone else departed at this point but I still had an unused sliced white loaf. I reckoned that if I could see the gull, it, and the others, would see me throwing food out. I walked a little further along the pier and threw slices of bread into the harbour - Frisbee like- to get as much distance as I could. Gulls came from all quarters, including the Glaucous gull and I was able to get quite a few shots.

Above and below - having a bit of a wash and brush up.


Gull ID parade L to R Juv Herring gull, adult HG and Glaucous gull.
So despite the shaky start it proved a very successful morning with a new tick for me - and photos to prove it.


Friday 13 February 2015

Daylight at last

After two days of heavy cloud and looking constantly like 0600 hrs, Friday started a little brighter which was good, I was beginning to get photography withdrawal symptoms. I had popped out on Wednesday afternoon for the Goldeneye on the Scrape at Sandwich Bay but that's another story if I have time.
I sat in the relative warmth of the Scrape hide and with nothing much to point the camera at I started trying to take shots of Lapwing coming in to land on the island - without much success. I am happy to sing the praises of the Canon SX50 from the rooftops but it is not good for flight shots (nor in a couple of other situations but I don't want to dis it too much here!)
This was the best of the bunch. Even though I know how difficult it can be I was a little disappointed considering how many I took, <1% success rate! 
There are nearly always plenty of duck, mostly Teal and Gadwall, on the Scrape and despite my best efforts to resist, I took some more shots of them - I'm not sure how many photos you have to take of something before you finally decide 'enough is enough'?
Male Gadwall

Male Teal
A small flock of Curlew (about 15 in all) flew around and I thought, hoped even, that they were going to land in front of the us but long before reaching the hide they flew off and landed somewhere out to the west of the Scrape. I took a few of shots and had slightly more success than I'd had with the lapwing - percentage wise. Still a long way short of what most of the people I follow on Flickr get with a DSLR and telephoto in terms of quality though. The Little grebe put in an appearance long enough for a few snaps.
I took a walk from the hide along to Dickson's Corner, the male Stonechat and some Meadow pipits were in the field with the gorse bushes and the Black redstart was still at the sailing club, and as uncooperative as ever. It is definitely camera shy, watched from a good distance it feeds happily among the boats and trailers, but point a camera at it and it soon seems to disappear. I did take a few shots but they were poor, this is also poor but about the best I've managed, from a few days ago.
I had to go to Deal to get some shopping so cruised slowly along Golf Road, I find the car a very useful hide and have had reasonable success photographing Curlew, Stock dove and Grey partridge along here from the car. The Curlew are usually very nervous and don't hang around long but today I spotted one that had ventured quite close to the road AND there was no traffic in either direction, so I pulled up slowly, opposite it, window down already and I managed to get a few shots before it decided it didn't like what I was doing and walked off.


This is probably the closest I've managed to get, the two images are resized to post them but essentially uncropped, just a little to centralise them.

There were also large numbers of Fieldfare here, feeding in the grass, and I've now convinced myself that situations like this are not well handled by the camera. I took a lot of really nice shots of the Fieldfare but on getting home and loading them on the computer they are nearly all out of focus. It appears that the camera struggles to focus on the subject when there is a lot of other material (grass in this case) all around - it looks sharp enough in the viewfinder but the results are very poor. This happened a few weeks ago with Lapwing in the same situation. I'll have to get lower so that the bird is showing above the background?
Fieldfare with worm - I saw quite a few catch worms which must say something about the worm population!

As for the Goldeneye - I'd seen the report on the SBBOT website, but it was such a grey overcast day I didn't think I'd get a photo, but after a bit of procrastination I took the camera out into the garden to see what light levels were like. ISO 800 gave me shutter speeds of 1/80 or at best 1/100 second, just about ok and with the light off the water....
I went to see it, just as I parked the car outside the Scrape someone in a microlight or to be more precise, a powered parachute, flew over my head and out behind the hide. The effect was more impressive than a circling squadron of Peregrine falcons, the sky was full of birds, including I'm guessing the Goldeneye. Roly, who had been in the hide, stuck his head out of the door to see what on earth had happened and, expletives deleted, said that the Goldeneye had been there but departed with everything else - as far as I'm aware it didn't come back. So for the sake of a few minutes deliberating with the camera in the garden I'd missed it.

Ahh well, that's birding for you.





Wednesday 11 February 2015

Hampton, Part 2

I didn't intend to publish the Hampton blog, it wasn't finished, I'd intended to save it as a draft and come back to it, now it will have to be 2 parts.
After leaving Reculver on a still rising tide, I headed straight to Hampton. There wasn't much beach remaining below the pile of boulders alongside Hampton Pier Road which was for me a good thing, it meant that the Purple sandpipers would probably be on the beach adjacent to the playing field. A lot of gulls mainly Black-headed and some Common were on the sea and several on still exposed rocks, I scoured them with my binoculars to try to spot the Mediterranean gull which has apparently been there since December. Fortunately it was sat one of the rocks quite close to the road. I took quite a few shots to make sure I got something, then approached a little nearer and adjusted the exposure, the sun on the birds chest was so bright most of the detail was burnt out, I never got it quite right but did manage a few reasonable shots.
Mediterranean gull.
I missed a trick here as the gull on the rock behind was a Black-headed gull and if I'd taken a shot to include both it would have served as a good comparison. 
Common gull - click photo to enlarge.
Having bagged both the Med and Common gulls I moved on to the beach. There were numerous Turnstone a Redshank and two Purple sandpipers. As the tide was still coming in (and in contrast with Friday it was quite a calm sea) I got myself on to a clean-ish bit of beach - there is a lot of debris on the shore and laid down with the camera set for the conditions. The Purps weren't long before they were toing and froing along the surf line picking up anything edible in the washed up weed. Nothing like as bad as Sanderling or Ringed plover they are still very mobile little birds and consequently they can be a little difficult to focus on but I was working on my usual principle of take lots, one may be OK.

One species I hadn't expected on the beach was a Stock dove. I'd managed a couple of quite distant shots along Golf Road at Sandwich Bay but the doves there seem very nervous and usually the wrong side of a barbed wire fence so it isn't easy to close the gap. There was one on the boulder breakwater which was quite confiding.
Stock dove

Redshank and Turnstone
 As I was leaving I saw the Med gull on the pub roof, it didn't make a good photo. I threw a bit of food out for the gulls and was quickly surrounded by them, the Med gull did fly around but I couldn't get a pic, I did get quite a nice one of a Black-headed gull with the remains of Herne Bay pier in the background. 
All together, a very good afternoon.


Tuesday 10 February 2015

Hampton - Herne Bay, not Richmond upon Thames

At the western end of Herne Bay is the pier of the former hamlet/village of Hampton which was washed away. From the BBC Domesday reloaded website:-

"In 1866 the Hampton Oyster Company was opened by the Mayor of London. This was to rival the Whitstable Companies. A pier was built so that boats connected with the trade could load and unload. The Company was quite profitable for about 15 years but then the operations were moved to Faversham. It is thought that the building of the pier caused erosion of the land on its westward side and 30 acres containing the old buildings were worn away." 
I visited there on Friday 6th Feb, mainly to see if I could photograph the Purple sandpipers that have been seen there, also a Mediterranean gull. It was bitterly cold with a strong N or NE wind blowing, but it was also bright and sunny. The cold wind was an advantage to me as there were relatively few people out and about. This proved very a very productive trip but as always, I thought I could do better so I returned on Monday 9th. 
I don't expect miracles with weather forecasting but some semblance of accuracy would be good. On Sunday evening I checked the forecast on the BBC website for Monday- thick cloud all day. The radio forecast on Monday morning said that there would be some sunny intervals but the website still showed unbroken cloud throughout the day, I'd resigned myself to staying in. By about 10:30 there were gaps in the clouds and intermittent spells of sunshine. I decided to go out and a return to Hampton beckoned. High tide wasn't until 15:30 ish so I stopped at Reculver to see what was around. A walk westward from the towers along the beach produced large numbers of Brent geese a few Grey plover and quite a few Ringed plover.




The Grey and Ringed plovers were as unapproachable as ever and the geese - several hundred - flew off long before I got anywhere near them. I found a suitable seaweed covered rock and sat down, camera poised and waited for the tide to do its work. I sat on the rock for over half an hour watching the Ringed plover move ever closer as the tide slowly pushed them up the shore. They were obviously aware of me but were far less skittish moving closer to me than they were with me moving closer to them. They often ignored me and I watched with interest as they started displaying to each other. As I was mainly watching through the camera, so I couldn't easily see the whole scene but the birds, presumably males, would crouch low, chest and head down, wings up but not out and tail fanned to the max, peeping and piping loudly. Every now and again the display would end in a flurry of wings and what appeared to be a brief squabble. I was never sure if the display was courtship not always well received or an act of aggression towards another rival.



The shots above show a typical scenario, I don't know if it is possible to sex the Ringed plover from plumage but I'm assuming these are males, if anyone knows, please get in touch.