Biking birder 2010 --- What has been your best birding moment of 2010? (1 Viewer)

Over this year I have visited more than 150 RSPB reserves and all 9 WWT reserves. I have cycled to each one and have almost circumnavigated the UK.

One re-occuring question asked by many people I meet has been:

What's the best bird you've seen this year?

Hard to answer, I usually come out with either a special bird or birding moment from the following

a female goshawk sitting in an oak tree on a drizzly low cloud day in north wales. She sat there looking straight at me before lifting off and slowly disappearing, circling over my head.

Birding moment? Sea fog lifting when standing on the RSPB viewing platform at the sea bird centre on Rathlin Island, revealing the source of the cacophony - tens of thousands of auks, kittiwakes, gannets and shags crowded on a huge nearby stack.

Cycling on Fair Isle and then walking with Jack to see a most perfect bird, a hornemann's arctic redpoll. A really beautiful 'snowball'.

After cycling the 25 miles from Lerwick to Sumburgh Head RSPB reserve, racing to get there before dark, finding myself alone with an arctic warbler flitting around the back of the lighthouse.

The afternoon walk around Rainham RSPB reserve with Howard Vaughan was a highlight as he's such a great bloke and the strange, monochrome female stonechat there was so beguilingly beautiful.

Now, what has been your birding highlight for 2010?

All the very best everyone,

Gary

Www.bikingbirder2010.blogspot.com


That's just a few that come to mind.

Flying out to Egypt, being driven by taxi pre-dawn to St Catherine's deep in the Sinai and finding a flock of Sinai rosefinch.

Finding the PG Tips on Out Skerries in October!

One of many highlights this year ! :t:

Hearing numerous Yellow Rails inside my city's limits!Even recorded one behind the casino.

Seeing a flock of common crane in a government farming project deep in the Libyan Sahara desert

I've got pictures too! on my blog www.birdingforalark.blogspot.com

Difficult to say as it's been a very interesting year: seeing my first Nuthatches at the start of the year? Being surrounded by Turnstones, Sanderlings and Purple Sandpipers at the Naze? Watching two duelling Nightingales at Two Tree Island? Seeing a 'swimming' Swallow at Cley (now that 'was' bizarre!)? Watching the Avocets at Cley courting, mating and defending their chicks? Finding Whinchats on my local meadow?

No, it has to be walking out to Wiveton Downs in the middle of the night and listening to the churring Nightjars in the dark. We didn't expect to find any so it was a complete delight to find them there, and especially to get to see one so close as we did!

It's close-run between that and one of the Collared Doves in my garden learning to trust me enough to fly over and perch on my hand for food though, she will sit quite happily there for ages and it really is a superb feeling to have that level of trust from a wild bird... I guess I must lean more towards the Johnny Kingdom type than the Chris Packham! :-O

Watching a Goldcrest drop exhausted on my leg in the middle of the North Sea while 1000's of other passerines calling or falling out of the misty skies all around, with Bramblings feeding voraciously on peanuts put out for them or thrushes evading capture on the high seas by skuas and gulls...brilliant .

Well done on extolling the virtues of cycling and birding too!!!

Sean

Best moments

My best moments have been
Gigrin Farm Red Kite Feeding Station - I was just blown away by seeing so many kites and buzzards up close and personal. An amazing experience, if not totally natural!
Second was finding my own waxwing flock by the River Wharfe at Ilkley. i was pleased enough to just see the, but even more happy that I'd found them myself.
Third and fourth has to be finding a kingfisher and goosander on a walk along the river Nidd. Although could some one please confirm this is a goosander please? Or is it a Merganser?
5th was watching the gannets soaring on the up-currents from the cliffs at Humnamby.
Then finding a tree creeper in Golden Acre park was a first.

Goosander or merganser?

Just realised I hadn't uploaded the photo of goosander or merganser!

Your birds are Goosanders.

Tom

My very favorite moment was when I successfully tracked down a female Masked Owl in a local forest.

Too many to pin one down as the best:

- My first Redpolls (probably Lesser) on the nyjer feeder at my parents' house.
- At Lake Earl near Crescent City, California I saw a bird fly across the water, I quickly managed to get a photo and was very pleased to see it was a Belted Kingfisher.
- My first Hummingbirds: a couple I couldn't ID in Portland, Oregon, then photographed an Allen's in Northern California, then one in San Francisco that seemed to even fox the Hummingbird experts on here!
- Snorkelling in Egypt by my hotel and then looking up to see a Common Kingfisher hovering a few feet away.
- Sitting down for lunch at the Egypt hotel, only for an Osprey to swoop just a few feet above our heads.
- Successfully finding and photographing my first Firecrest, on Wimbledon Common.
- My first Stonechats and Bearded Reedlings, at Rainham Marshes.


I think I'd go with the Belted Kingfisher, because it was an unexpected fluke moment and I just happened to have my camera up to my eye at the time.