Out & About

Dropped in to Longham Lakes on Friday afternoon after work and going to the hospital,
It was a nice fine afternoon after the early dense cloud cover that made viewing the eclipse impossible from Ferndown.
Had a walk round the South Lake lots of Chiffchaffs about, a good number of Reed Buntings and Pied Wagtails. Also a good number of wildfowl still out on the lake with the female Scaup still up in the south west corner of the lake.

Saturday went to go to the lakes again with my son but their was some sort of event on and the car park was full with kids ans small canoes. So we made the decision to go up to Badburys Rings instead. This was a good move as even though their was not many birds about we did manage to see four Skylark, a Great Spotted Woodpecker and best of all drifting high over Oak Wood and traveling towards Blanford a vert smart Red Kite my first one I have seen in Dorset seen them in other part of the country.

Sunday had a walk along the river Allen just across the road from home and went up to the farm track this is a Dorset walk up to High Hall route number 7
Along the river I saw Mallard, Chiffchaff singing also seen, Long-taile Tits, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Wrens. Along the track and farm fields , More Blue Tits, Great Tits, Long-tailed Tits, Dunnock, drumming Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Stonchats, Buzzards and a migrant Chiffchaff that had the black sticky pollen around the base of its bill and face. They feed on pollen as they make there way up from Iberia.

All in all not a bad week-end and now up to 7 +1 bird photograph and on replacement of Reed Bunting for Ortolan Bunting as I think I would be very unlikely to see one of those.
This is the eight so far,.some of these I hope to improve.

Male Blackbird

Pied Wagtail

Grey Wagtail

Blue Tit

Reed Bunting

Great Tit

Long-tailed Tit

Dunnock

Longham again

Went back to the lake this afternoon the light was not great a very grey over cast day but the day was brightened up with seeing 50  Sand Martin flying about and among  a first Swallow of the summer for me.  The female Scaup is still there which was nice to see but I could not find the Black-necked Grebe. lot of Chiffchaff about along with Pied Wagtails and a couple of Grey Wagtails
which is bird number two off the list.

Grey Wagtail

The Grey Wagtail is my favourite wagtail and I always struggle to get sharp pictures of these as they are always moving and bobbing there tails and are at a distance and I find it hard to get close to because they fly a few yards a head.

Longham Lakes & a New Project

This afternoon my son and I went for a walk round the North lake as he wanted to go a different way but I wanted to go round the south lake as their as been reports of a couple of Black-necked Grebes. In summer plumage and I have not seen them like this before,  So I had a quick look round the island from the path between the lakes but no luck. Their was plenty of Reed Buntings and Pied Wagtails about and a few migrant chiffchaff moving and I had a report from a member of the public walking round the lake that there was some Willow Warblers about I thought this was a bit early for those as they do not usually turn up until late March early April.
Birds seen on the walk were Tufted Ducks, Great Crested Grebes, Coots, Pochard, Mallard, Greylag Goose, Canada Goose, Grey Heron, Little Egret, Reed Bunting, Chiffchaff, Long-tailed Tit,Great Tit,Blue Tit,Chaffinch,Kestrel and Sand Martin

Now for the new project. which is I hope to take a picture of a bird from my very first bird book which was a 11th birthday present from my late mother, and my brother & sister back in 1975 this book is where my journey started in to liking birds I got this idea from another blogger (http://greatbritishbirdhunt.blogspot.co.uk/) There are only 64 species in the book and nearly 20 of them I will not get pictures of as they are now very very scarce or are no longer a breedin bird species in Dorset or do not come here anymore when migrating from other parts of the world.

This is the book

Of course I have taken many attempts at taking pictures of our garden birds and I hope by doing this it is going to improve my picture taking and I am going to get the best out of my camera and lens. I will also be posting my pictures on a site called http://365project.org/ on this site back in 2012 I took and posted a picture every day. But this time I am sure I will not manage a bird picture a day.

Male Blackbird

First one of the list is this male Blackbird I am not to keen on the composition and the background is messy but this is all I could manage today.