Friday 4 February 2011

Another visit to Brandon Marsh.

As the forecast for the next few days was stormy I thought I'd better do some birding so on Thursday morning I went across to Brandon Marsh.

Got there not long after 10.00AM and had two bits of luck as I walked down the main path.The first was that the weather was brightening up and the second was when I bumped into that Warwickshire birding legend Bob Duckhouse.It's always nice to meet up with Bob.

We decided to join up with the Bittern watchers in the East Marsh hide and spent a frustrating time there as the Bittern you could glimpse deep in the reeds wouldn't come out.However when a couple of birders who had come all the way from Oxford to get some shots of a Bittern and had been there since dawn decided to leave the hide and were packing up there stuff the Bittern walked across the channel.There was lots of swearing and pulling off lens caps and all they got were some shots of it disappearing into the reeds.How often does that happen!!!! I had better luck.




The only other bird of note that was about that I saw was the escapee NZ Scaup.




After lunch I joined up with another friend and for an hour we chased a Goldcrest feeding along the path between the Carlton and EM hides.I love Goldcrests but they are a bogey bird for me and I struggle to get a decent shot of one.Not only do they ping around like the ball on an electric pin-ball machine but they are always deep in the gloom of bushes etc.Here is my best shot or rather the least bad shot I took so you can imagine how bad the others were.




Just before I started to write this blog I put a new plastic bird table on a stump of a recently chopped down tree in my back garden.I've just checked to see if any birds were feeding on it and there weren't probably because the bird table had disappeared.It had blown away in the wind to God knows where.Another DIY successful enterprise !!!!!!





4 comments:

Kevin Groocock said...

I went to Brandon this morning and sat from 0730 until 1130 in East Marsh Hide and only managed the rear view of a Bittern fly out from the right side towards Carlton. My first this year but no pics. I think Fridays is a bad day for Bittern as I didn't see one last Friday either!

Its Time to Live said...

Enjoyed visiting and seeing all of your images. Great work.

boatbirder said...

Oh Max your such a hoot!! Only you could have their bird table blow away :)

Max Silverman said...

The Bitterns can be uncooperatve sometimes at BM.

I have now found the plastic bird table in my neighbour's garden but it's now useless.

Thank's "It's time to leave"