Got the gull (showing down to 500m) half an hour or so later and obtained stunning pics, in the best the bill tip is rendered invisible and a Herring Gull partially obscures the primary projection (see below), nice. That, by the way, is four Gwentish ticks in five weeks,... giggidy-giggidy.
Having seen Nathan's Bittern pics (see them for yourself here) I then made the pig's ear of a decision to go to Hendre Lake where I saw the following: three oiks mit scrambler, 5000 dog turds, 50 dog walkers, half a dozen 12 year old girls complete with really quite impressive smoker's coughs (hack-hack-hack-gurgle, etc.), 5 oiks with push bikes (presumably a lower class of oik as compared to those with the scrambler), two police officers (aged approximately 15 and 17) and two or three Kingfishers. The Bittern was wise enough to keep its head down.
3 comments:
Had thought you were referring to Oystercatchers at first, but I've not seen any of those with a scrambler, or even a pushbike...
Dead here, or at least as dead as it can be in such a large county: last winter, we had lingering Buff-bellied Pipit, Lesser Yellowlegs etc, but, other than Cattle Egrets, the best in Cork have been a few scattered gulls, few staying for long. Hard weather movement has been surprisingly light, with only Redwings really being in evidence, and not that much more than usual either.
Given this is supposed to be the coldest winter in 20 years the weather movements haven't been too impressive here either. A couple of white-wingers and good numbers of thrushes but that is about the sum of it so far.
and yet the likes of Black-throated Thrushes, Yellow-browed Bunting* (is that still around?) etc prefer to suffer temperatures far lower than any experienced here, or in Wales...do they not know that it's so comparatively mild over here?
* the fact that both species mentioned would be Irish firsts, and lifers for me (despite having birded China in the case of the bunting), has nothing** to do with my sense of disgust
** by nothing, I do, of course, mean everything...
Post a Comment