2010 - Review January - June

2010 has been an awfully quick year - here are a few of my highlights...

Above - African Penguins at Simonstown, South Africa during out New Year holiday to the Western Cape
Below - A UK tick - black-throated thrush, Newholm, North Yorkshire, January

February saw a visit to Cleveland for a very obliging ring-necked duck ~ the best and most close views I've had of the species in the UK. A great bacon sandwich was has had courtesy of CB afterwards!

March saw the arrival of a common crane at Eshott ~  a vocal bird and not popular with the territorial lapwing!

April was a month of wagtails - the possible black-headed at Cresswell was a stunner... even in the rain!

May was a busy month - the first week was spent abroad, with visits to Dubai and Mauritius.

The red-wattled lapwing was in Safa Park, Dubai - a park that had playing fields covered in hoopoe!

Mauritius was limited species-wise, we saw some really great birds ~ echo parakeet, Mauritius olive white-eye, white-tailed tropicbird.... but the enigmatic pink pigeon will never be forgotten...

May also saw the first of 10 planned annual birding weekends with the birders of my youth - Mark, John and Rob. 2010 saw us on Mull and Iona where corncrake was bird of the trip!

May produced another UK tick for me - oriental pratincole at Frampton Marsh. I saw this delightful bird with Phil on a sunny day-trip.

June was quieter than hoped-for, but a singing marsh warbler was nice...

The rest of 2010 will feature in the next post!

WAGtales

A text from Mark stating that he was able to head to Cresswell this afternoon was (again) too much of a temptation to resist... The black-headed wagtail was immediatley on view and it continues to be watched by a steady crowd of observers. Despite good light he never came as close as the other wagtails, so it was another black-less photo session. The other wagtails were more accomodating, with the "channel", white and yellow continuing to provide entertainment. Debate increases on which wagtail is the most appealing...

"Channel" Wagtail

White Wagtail

Yellow Wagtail

Click the images for a sharper version...

Wagtails continue to show at Cresswell...

Poor image of "channel" (blue-headed x yellow hybrid) wagtail at Cresswell, photographed at sunset... the only time it came within decent range!

 Part of a great wagtail afternoon, with the black-headed still present (until 17:00), minimum seven yellow, a mixed flock of 11+ white and pied. Good stuff.

BHW2

Another image of the black-headed wagtail from Cresswell on 18th April. Of all the "yellow" wagtails present, this bird managed to remain the furthest away...

Black-headed Wagtail...

A quite afternoon editing grasshopper warbler images was shattered by a pager message not long after 11:20 - there was a male black-headed wagtail at Cresswell!! Naturally I calmly headed north to try and see this county third (and first twitchable individual), and by about 11:45 I was watching this beauty feeding in the field just north of the causeway. A stunning bird accompanied by one white wagtail and up to six flavissima.

In the two hours or so that I spent with the bird the sunny sky was replaced by thick dark clouds and for the last hour it poured with cold rain. Luckily for us the wagtail continued to feed allowing some reasonable record images to be taken. As with all images here, click the pictures to see a bigger sharper version. A heap of images were taken, and when time permits I'll trawl through them and post (hopefully) better images.

I guess there will be some discussion on the racial id, and as it stands I have no contribution to make as I simply do not know the ins and outs of yellow wagtail taxonomy!! I'll let the debate commence and watch politley from the side...