Sunday 4 January 2009

Dipped

We went to smoggy-land to to twitch the glaucous winged gull today - we didn't see it.... I hate twitching!

We did the birdrace yesterday and as usual we didn't do too well, but we didn't embarrass ourselves, I think we were 5th out of 7 teams with 101 as our total. We missed some easy stuff including shoveler, red grouse and reed bunting, we also dipped the Hauxley white-fronts and bean goose and just got pink-footed goose, our last bird of the day! We did see some good birds including marsh tit, kingfisher, ruff and dipper.

The winners with 113 (I think) was 'The Casuals' (Muriel and Tom Cadwallender, John Richardson and Neil Anderson) - well done to them! We helped them celebrate their win with some food and wine afterwards.

All in all, a good day, I do enjoy the winter bird race, it's quite a sociable event, with teams meeting during the day and at the end in the pub to declare their totals. If you've never done a winter bird race - give it a go.....it's far better than twitching!

4 comments:

Blyth Birder said...

I had Shoveller on Ellington Pond the other day.

Blyth Birder said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ghost of Stringer said...

1st rule of twitching... if you want to see something, just drop everything and go !

1st rule of twitching gulls at a landfill site... go in the week when the landfill is working !!

Seriously tho, I did learn a long time ago that if something good turns up and you really want to see it, its always best to go for it there and then.... maximise your chances.... early bird catches the worm and all that....

I've missed a few good birds by fannying about...

My worst was a male collared flycatcher that was just 2 hours away.... news came through at 9.30, I thought I'd leave it till the afternoon.... I arrived at 3.30 it was last seen at 2.30 !! BOLLOX !!

Won't do that again...

The Wessex Reiver said...

Unrelated to this posting Iain but thank you for the e-mail and note re your Tenerife trip in September. Hopefully can get to grips with some of the endemics out there, and maybe a report on the blog if I'm able (or if the person who's organising this doesn't get bored - wimmin just don't understand:)