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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Yorkshire Birding (21 Viewers)

4x waxwing at Hunsingore 12.00 today. Leave A168 and head for Cattal. There is a bungalow on the left just past the entrance to Hunsingore village. After bungalow is a small orchard with well rotting apples still on a tree. Waxwings are eating those. You can get close but they get spooked if noisey vehicles come past. I took 88 good pictures. They head into the tall trees across the next field but soon come back.
Stephie

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Guilt

I'm feeling guilty right now for feeding the birds as we have just seen a male Sparrowhawk take a Dunnock from my backyard. Poor little thing!:-C
 
managed to get out to redhouse estate finally today to have alook at those redpolls. great site. me and tim jones had 15+ mealy redpolls, 200+lessers, and similar no.s of goldfinch and siskin. all the flocks v.mobile, so these are the minimum counts of what we saw at one time, if they were all different flocks, could easily have been doublethat. nothing that looked anywhere near as arctic as in doc reed's photos sadly, but will be going back to look again. thanks for the directions doc reed.
 
It is nature, but when we actively encourage birds into our gardens and something like this happens, it makes us feel bad.
I came home to a Sparrowhawk sitting in the tree in the garden the other day.... I guess if it wasn`t for us feeding the birds they might starve given the bad weather we`ve had... I`m trying to be optimistic.

Thanks, I just love taking them... =)
 
managed to get out to redhouse estate finally today to have alook at those redpolls. great site. me and tim jones had 15+ mealy redpolls, 200+lessers, and similar no.s of goldfinch and siskin. all the flocks v.mobile, so these are the minimum counts of what we saw at one time, if they were all different flocks, could easily have been doublethat. nothing that looked anywhere near as arctic as in doc reed's photos sadly, but will be going back to look again. thanks for the directions doc reed.

I managed an hour today;estimate 350+ redpoll...but sadly all still feeding very high in silver birch...my niger hasn't even been eaten by the pheasants!Will post one interesting bird later.The siskins are manly in small copse next to pumping house,with goldfinches.But agree birds r moving to and fro beteween there and main woods. I definitely had several mealy today too..need to look more closely at the the one im thinking of posting..I think i may have moved on from lesser/mealy to mealy/arctic!
 
I managed an hour today;estimate 350+ redpoll...but sadly all still feeding very high in silver birch...my niger hasn't even been eaten by the pheasants!Will post one interesting bird later.The siskins are manly in small copse next to pumping house,with goldfinches.But agree birds r moving to and fro beteween there and main woods. I definitely had several mealy today too..need to look more closely at the the one im thinking of posting..I think i may have moved on from lesser/mealy to mealy/arctic!

I think our estimate of 200+ is an underestimate but its hard to get a true idea when they are so flighty.

Sounds like the same place we had majority of Siskin and Goldfinch near the small lake with the buildings behind?

Look forward to seeing your photos!
 
redpolls again!

this one was v pale..small beaked.Please dont ask for rump shots etc..they r just too high..another maybe?
The light was awful today..sorry if photos are crap!
Ken..just wondered if u fancied grilling this flock at weekend, free sat and sunday?
 

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this one was v pale..small beaked....<snip>.....
.....just wondered if u fancied grilling this flock......?

surely not much meat on their little bones ;)

Been following this thread for last few weeks, nice to see folk keen to get out & enjoy a bit of winter birding.
Only went birding once in Yorkshire this year, - by its a bloomin big place, saw Hobby, Woodlark & BWTeal, less than an hour away in the car.
Hope you manage to find an Arctic in amongst that lot - we're trying the same at home...


I was looking at those excellent digi-scoped shots & reading about the lad who'd had some feeding Jacks & thought you might appreciate this Jack image & short clip, taken by hand holding an iPhone to my scope:-


http://www.flickr.com/photos/16718162@N06/5244949106/in/photostream/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcBaN7BgN1c
 
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this one was v pale..small beaked.Please dont ask for rump shots etc..they r just too high..another maybe?
The light was awful today..sorry if photos are crap!
Ken..just wondered if u fancied grilling this flock at weekend, free sat and sunday?

That's a Mealy Doc, the under tail coverts are too well marked to consider Arctic.
 
yeh i had several birds that are very pale like that, and a bit less on the undertail, but those big flank streaks just put me off every time. think with the views available, its gonna have to be an absolute stunner to nail it. have you seen the pics of the one at the lodge rspb atm? nothing i saw looked as strong as that one. also, if you fancy a concerted effort at it, which might be a good way to do this, id be up for sunday mrng. also re niger, not sure ground feeding is the way forward with redpoll, but i would be happy to contribute some money towards a few niger feeders, but them at eye level or a little higher on the trees? thats how they have them at the lodge to get the birds down, by a drinking pool
 
this one was v pale..small beaked.Please dont ask for rump shots etc..they r just too high..another maybe?
The light was awful today..sorry if photos are crap!
Ken..just wondered if u fancied grilling this flock at weekend, free sat and sunday?

I would also agree that this bird is a mealy.

As you can see in the photos it has one central thick undertail covert streak and then 2 smaller ones either side. The Advanced Bird ID Guide by Duivendijk says

''Undertial-cov with evenly narrow dark shaft streak on longest undertail-cov (sometimes completly unstreaked) whereas in Common (Mealy) rarely unstreaked.''

Keep at it though, and I'm sure that you will nail an Arctic. Try to take notes on birds that you see to being good candidates for Arctic as well.
 
Had a day on the dark side with Keith. Started off at Sizergh Castle which failed to produce Hawfinch. That kind of set the tone for the rest of the day. Headed down to Leighton Moss which almost completely frozen over, including the salt-marsh pools; never seen that before. Finally broke my Waxwing duck for this year with 30+ in and around the orchard next to the visitor centre. Disappointingly there were no Beardies about. In fact the reed-bed seemed devoid of birds.

As delighted as I was with the Waxwings the highlight was a Bittern that flew right past the front of the Allen hide, cracking view.

Doc, would love to have a go at your Redpolls on Saturday (trains are rubbish on Sunday). Send a PM so we can work something out. In the mean time I will mug up :t:
 

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