On 02/05, I had a wonderful day, under mostly sunny skies, catching up with birding pals Dan and Gareth, in Dan's adopted neck of the woods - the Forest of Dean.
He took us round some fab habitat, largely in areas I'd not visited before and got to soak up some fab birds including several Wood Warbler (always my favourite), a Goshawk, calling Hawfinch, 2-3 Pied Flys, several Firecrest, Redstart, Tree Pipit & Mandarin.
Em & I took Luca on his first ever little holiday - just a short little break to the New Forest 10/05 - 12/05.
We spent quite a bit of time taking him out in the buggy for big walks and with bins / camera in tow, I saw an awesome array of birds! Highlights included Hawfinch, more Firecrest than you could shake a stick at, several Woodlark, Dartford Warbler, Redstart, a Goshawk, Tree Pipits, Hobby, Spot Fly, Stonechat, Crossbills, several Cuckoo and loads of Siskin. Pretty bloody awesome, although didn't bump into a single Wood Warbler - a sad sign of the times.
As I'm well and truly behind on the blog, I decided to just do a quick-ish round-up of my birding spring in one hit!
Good finds were rather thin on the ground for me, despite getting out here and there a fair bit. Still, I didn't come away completely empty-handed with the discovery of 2 Bar-Tailed Godwits at Grimsbury Res, briefly first thing on 22/04. An absolute site mega and a patch tick, so I was more than happy with that!
THREE Northants county ticks were an awesome return, with me profiting from all three staying long enough for me to catch up with them! The Dotterels near Piddington were my definite highlight, with me lucky enough to be back in my home village of Hackleton just a couple of miles away when their discovery was announced - jammy! They were also in a location I was very familiar and so made it that bit special and what amazing birds to boot.
The Borough Hill Wryneck frankly did my head in. I was super keen to see it, but it was frustratingly hard to find the time to get over there, without frankly peeing off the Mrs, dealing with a grizzly baby! When I could get over to see it, it was hammering it down with rain. I did at least see it, for all of 10 seconds, before a barking dog scared it off and that was that - pretty underwhelming.
I managed to head over again super early before work, a couple of days later, on what was a beautiful, sunny morning. Perfect I thought. No sign, it appeared to have gone, ah well. Nope...it was rediscovered some 30 mins later, in a different location and of course again went on to show really well for all. Birding can be incredible when all goes to plan, but when it doesn't, my god it can f**k you off haha!
The Thrapston Glossy Ibis was around for what seemed like forever in the late winter early spring period and so was the least stressful of the three to catch up with plodding around it's usual flooded horse paddock. Nice to finally catch up with a county GI after a string of annoyingly brief birds in the county!
Probably the highlight of my spring was a visit to Boddington Res on the evening of 28/04. Arctic Tern passage was at it's peak elsewhere and knowing Bodd is pretty reliable for Arctics, I managed to free up some time to get over there. A spring without any Arctic Terns just isn't the same for me and missing out on them in 2020 due to the pandemic was far from ideal!
On arrival despite there being no sign of any Arctics and even better bird was swooping up and down with several Common Tern, in the shape of a stunning Black Tern, a brilliant bonus!
My birding mate Dylan was also on site and so I took a brisk walk anti-clockwise to join him along the E shore. We were then treated to a complete deluge of Terns dropping out the sky - some 130! At least c55-60 were Arctics, the rest Commons. An absolutely awesome sight! We spent some time soaking up the spectacle, as well as enjoying closer views of the Black Tern too. On the way out we also heard reeling Grasshopper Warbler too, the absolute cherry on the cake! Brilliant visit and my Arctic tern fix fulfilled for another year!
This spring, I've given Hinton Airfield, near Brackley a go for spring passerines, having unearthed it for myself during spring 2020 lockdown.
I felt it offered potential for finding birds and it's certainly showed it can pull in things, with a good run of Wheatears throughout - max of 9 on 29/03. 1-2 Redstarts were nice, including a stunning male staying several days, even breaking into full song for at least 20 minutes on one occasion. Single Curlews were seen a couple of times, and several Yellow Wags showed well too. The real target bird was Ring Ouzel, but to no avail. My search for a local Rouzel goes on!
Elsewhere, Bicester produced a couple of local gems with a pair of long staying Garganey and a Wood Sandpiper - on Graven Hill flash. The Wood Sand very much kept it's distance for me, however the Garganeys showed well on more than one occasion.
