Larry Sweetland
Formerly 'Larry Wheatland'
I'm mostly writing a report of our current softcore dudely dawdle to store a record for my dotage, rather than to convey useful gen. It's certainly nothing like our last journey, Bristol to Kagu, here: http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=100901&highlight=bristol+kagu It's not even as impressive as it sounds, considering that the Ruppell's Vulture in question is one we're hoping to twitch in Portugal. It's also a great outlet for my verbal diarrhoiea, and If we're lucky we might get some handy hints or meetings along the way as a result of it. We've also already somehow bumped into a bird that, considering the circumstances, you probably wouldn't believe, if Nicky hadn't got some pics of it, so that at least might make for a funny story.
Basically, after a year and a half of appreciating the UK, it's time for another foreign jaunt. This time doing one of the things we most like, pottering about europe in a van. Oooh, I can hear a Stone Curlew calling outside right now. Anyway, the loose plan is to return to England in May having pottered around Iberia visiting a few friends, taking in the Freequency free festival, and generally enjoying the freedom of life on the road in this wonderful part of the world, where there's still heaps of space and birds, and hardly any height restriction barriers.
As far as birding targets go, I particularly want to see four species that would be lifers. Snowfinch is probably my biggest bogeybird, being the potential lifer that is closest to Bristol 365 days of the year, and a bird that I've looked for unsuccessfully a few times on other trips. Ruppell's Vulture has been increasingly recorded in recent years, and I'm hoping to twitch one that is currently hanging with the Griffons at a site in Portugal. Southwards then, hopefully, after the festival, to have a go at finding an early Western Olivaceous Warbler. Then a go at finding Dupont's Lark on our way north, a species for which I have decided my dodgy views while sitting on our old van's roof at Zeida in Morocco aren't really good enough. Obviously there are plenty more birds I'm looking forward to, even being surrounded by Serins, Black Redstarts and the like in the morning is already lifting my spirits. There is also always a chance of course that we could get madly distracted and end up looking for Balearic Warbler on Majorca or Rock Partridge in the Alps or something.
An added thing I'm going to sling into this report is butterfly and dragonfly sightings. I'm perhaps rather dangerously freshly armed with european field guides to these things for the first time, so I'm going to be idiot abroad here in a big way. You can expect stuff like “ is this a female Humdinger's Mountain Clouded Yellow?” “Er... no Larry, that's a male Linnet”
Figured I'd cover the whole journey from Bristol again, to convey the feel of the gradual change in the birds.
So off we set, in our little white home, an Iveco Daily, bless it. First up was Blue Tit, as we said our last Bristol good bye, followed by a host of expected classic english fare as we headed down to the Dorset coast where we would base ourselves for a week or so while our van underwent some necessary overdue surgery. The most scary operation involved putting in 2 windows and a skylight, to give us more light and air during our journey ahead.
So birdlist in order of appearance, in transit to Poole (this time including intros in this report) :-
1.Blue Tit
2.Carrion Crow
3.Lesser Black-backed Gull
4.Herring Gull
5.Blackbird
6.Black-headed Gull
7.Jackdaw
8.Kestrel
9.Woodpigeon
10.Starling
11.Collared Dove
12.Common Pheasant
13.Feral Rock Dove
14.Magpie
15.Rook
16.Buzzard
17.Great Tit
18.Raven
19.Sparrowhawk
20.Robin
21.House Sparrow
22.Lapwing
While based in Poole we cruised around on our bikes, fitting in some birding at Holes Bay and Hatch Pond. Holes Bay's a great spot in Poole Harbour, which produced a smart adult Yellow-legged Gull, a flock of 107 Avocets being put up by a Peregrine, hundreds of Black-tailed Godwits, and other goodies such as a Golden Plover, Knot (12), Red-breasted Merganser (2), Goldeneye, Little Egrets, good numbers of Pintail, Teal, Wigeon and Redshank etc. We also experienced the first grip off of the trip, bumping into a birder who'd seen a Spotted Redshank, which we failed to find. Hatch Pond produced superb views of Bittern on both of our visits, with 3 individuals being seen each evening, one of them doing it's creaky funny walk close enough to completely fill the scope. At one point it gave us thast odd prolonged stare from eyes under it's bill, that I've only seen in glossy mags before. Amazing. We also saw a Water Rail and watched some Snipe there.
We discovered on our first night in Poole that a Yellowthroat had just been found not that far from Bristol. Shame to miss out on something so unusual so close to home, but not quite enough to make me feel I wanted to double back, but if it had been, say, a Cerulean....
We also did a bit of birding around our friends' place in deepest west of Dorchester ,and briefly visited Radipole and Portland Bill., with them. Radipole produced blinding views of, that's right, a cracking male Hooded Merganser, a fair few Mediterranean Gulls, and a few not-that-cheery birders who told us that we'd missed an Iceland Gull by 45mins that they'd missed by 5mins. Seawatching off the bill produced a couple of Shags, a Gannet, some Kittiwakes, and luckily as it turned out, a Fulmar, as we failed to see one on the ferry to Spain. A brief stop off at Ferry Bridge raked in some Dark-bellied Brent Geese, lots of Red-breasted Mergansers and, best of all, a couple of Black-necked Grebes.
23.Great Spotted Woodpecker
24.Mallard
25.Mute Swan
26.Little Egret
27.Moorhen
28.Coal Tit
29.Chaffinch
30.Long-tailed Tit
31.Dunnock
32.Greenfinch
33.Nuthatch
34.Goldcrest
35.Song Thrush
36.Goldfinch
37.Jay
38.Redwing
39.Siskin
40.Cormorant
41.Stock Dove
42.Pintail
43.Shelduck
44.Teal
45.Gadwall
46.Wigeon
47.Canada Goose
48.Curlew
49.Avocet
50.Oystercatcher
51.Black-tailed Godwit
52.Shoveler
53.Mistle Thrush
54.Redshank
55.Dunlin
56.Great Black-backed Gull
57.Common Gull
58.Yellow-legged Gull
59.Goldeneye
60.Tufted Duck
61.Green Woodpecker
62.Treecreeper
63.Great Crested Grebe
64.Grey Heron
65.Grey Wagtail
66.Knot
67.Golden Plover
68.Blackcap
69.Pied Wagtail
70.Peregrine
71.Red-breasted Merganser
72.Bittern
73.Pochard
74.Coot
75.Water Rail
76.Cetti's Warbler
77.Hooded Merganser
78.Mediterranean Gull
79.Fieldfare
80.Snipe
81.Bullfinch
82.Reed Bunting
83.Skylark
84.Yellowhammer
85.Little Grebe
86.Shag
87.Kittiwake
88.Gannet
89.Rock Pipit
90.Turnstone
91.Fulmar
92.Meadow Pipit
93.Brent Goose
94.Black-necked Grebe
Basically, after a year and a half of appreciating the UK, it's time for another foreign jaunt. This time doing one of the things we most like, pottering about europe in a van. Oooh, I can hear a Stone Curlew calling outside right now. Anyway, the loose plan is to return to England in May having pottered around Iberia visiting a few friends, taking in the Freequency free festival, and generally enjoying the freedom of life on the road in this wonderful part of the world, where there's still heaps of space and birds, and hardly any height restriction barriers.
As far as birding targets go, I particularly want to see four species that would be lifers. Snowfinch is probably my biggest bogeybird, being the potential lifer that is closest to Bristol 365 days of the year, and a bird that I've looked for unsuccessfully a few times on other trips. Ruppell's Vulture has been increasingly recorded in recent years, and I'm hoping to twitch one that is currently hanging with the Griffons at a site in Portugal. Southwards then, hopefully, after the festival, to have a go at finding an early Western Olivaceous Warbler. Then a go at finding Dupont's Lark on our way north, a species for which I have decided my dodgy views while sitting on our old van's roof at Zeida in Morocco aren't really good enough. Obviously there are plenty more birds I'm looking forward to, even being surrounded by Serins, Black Redstarts and the like in the morning is already lifting my spirits. There is also always a chance of course that we could get madly distracted and end up looking for Balearic Warbler on Majorca or Rock Partridge in the Alps or something.
An added thing I'm going to sling into this report is butterfly and dragonfly sightings. I'm perhaps rather dangerously freshly armed with european field guides to these things for the first time, so I'm going to be idiot abroad here in a big way. You can expect stuff like “ is this a female Humdinger's Mountain Clouded Yellow?” “Er... no Larry, that's a male Linnet”
Figured I'd cover the whole journey from Bristol again, to convey the feel of the gradual change in the birds.
So off we set, in our little white home, an Iveco Daily, bless it. First up was Blue Tit, as we said our last Bristol good bye, followed by a host of expected classic english fare as we headed down to the Dorset coast where we would base ourselves for a week or so while our van underwent some necessary overdue surgery. The most scary operation involved putting in 2 windows and a skylight, to give us more light and air during our journey ahead.
So birdlist in order of appearance, in transit to Poole (this time including intros in this report) :-
1.Blue Tit
2.Carrion Crow
3.Lesser Black-backed Gull
4.Herring Gull
5.Blackbird
6.Black-headed Gull
7.Jackdaw
8.Kestrel
9.Woodpigeon
10.Starling
11.Collared Dove
12.Common Pheasant
13.Feral Rock Dove
14.Magpie
15.Rook
16.Buzzard
17.Great Tit
18.Raven
19.Sparrowhawk
20.Robin
21.House Sparrow
22.Lapwing
While based in Poole we cruised around on our bikes, fitting in some birding at Holes Bay and Hatch Pond. Holes Bay's a great spot in Poole Harbour, which produced a smart adult Yellow-legged Gull, a flock of 107 Avocets being put up by a Peregrine, hundreds of Black-tailed Godwits, and other goodies such as a Golden Plover, Knot (12), Red-breasted Merganser (2), Goldeneye, Little Egrets, good numbers of Pintail, Teal, Wigeon and Redshank etc. We also experienced the first grip off of the trip, bumping into a birder who'd seen a Spotted Redshank, which we failed to find. Hatch Pond produced superb views of Bittern on both of our visits, with 3 individuals being seen each evening, one of them doing it's creaky funny walk close enough to completely fill the scope. At one point it gave us thast odd prolonged stare from eyes under it's bill, that I've only seen in glossy mags before. Amazing. We also saw a Water Rail and watched some Snipe there.
We discovered on our first night in Poole that a Yellowthroat had just been found not that far from Bristol. Shame to miss out on something so unusual so close to home, but not quite enough to make me feel I wanted to double back, but if it had been, say, a Cerulean....
We also did a bit of birding around our friends' place in deepest west of Dorchester ,and briefly visited Radipole and Portland Bill., with them. Radipole produced blinding views of, that's right, a cracking male Hooded Merganser, a fair few Mediterranean Gulls, and a few not-that-cheery birders who told us that we'd missed an Iceland Gull by 45mins that they'd missed by 5mins. Seawatching off the bill produced a couple of Shags, a Gannet, some Kittiwakes, and luckily as it turned out, a Fulmar, as we failed to see one on the ferry to Spain. A brief stop off at Ferry Bridge raked in some Dark-bellied Brent Geese, lots of Red-breasted Mergansers and, best of all, a couple of Black-necked Grebes.
23.Great Spotted Woodpecker
24.Mallard
25.Mute Swan
26.Little Egret
27.Moorhen
28.Coal Tit
29.Chaffinch
30.Long-tailed Tit
31.Dunnock
32.Greenfinch
33.Nuthatch
34.Goldcrest
35.Song Thrush
36.Goldfinch
37.Jay
38.Redwing
39.Siskin
40.Cormorant
41.Stock Dove
42.Pintail
43.Shelduck
44.Teal
45.Gadwall
46.Wigeon
47.Canada Goose
48.Curlew
49.Avocet
50.Oystercatcher
51.Black-tailed Godwit
52.Shoveler
53.Mistle Thrush
54.Redshank
55.Dunlin
56.Great Black-backed Gull
57.Common Gull
58.Yellow-legged Gull
59.Goldeneye
60.Tufted Duck
61.Green Woodpecker
62.Treecreeper
63.Great Crested Grebe
64.Grey Heron
65.Grey Wagtail
66.Knot
67.Golden Plover
68.Blackcap
69.Pied Wagtail
70.Peregrine
71.Red-breasted Merganser
72.Bittern
73.Pochard
74.Coot
75.Water Rail
76.Cetti's Warbler
77.Hooded Merganser
78.Mediterranean Gull
79.Fieldfare
80.Snipe
81.Bullfinch
82.Reed Bunting
83.Skylark
84.Yellowhammer
85.Little Grebe
86.Shag
87.Kittiwake
88.Gannet
89.Rock Pipit
90.Turnstone
91.Fulmar
92.Meadow Pipit
93.Brent Goose
94.Black-necked Grebe
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