Last post of 2011

27 December 2011

This will be the last post from this year.  Starting from next week I shall begin again and hopefully I will be able to keep up with things and go birding more often and post on here  more often too.  I'm not sure how to change the title though - if we can that is so it will continue with its current title.

So then, yesterday Jan and I had a run down to Slimbridge for a day's birding.  I like Slimbridge, always have done.  The key to Slimbridge is to decided what can and can't be 'ticked' isn't it?  So a nice shot of a drake smew ... 

can't be ticked but the mandarin duck ... 

can.  The redbreast geese ... 

can't but all the pinkfeet, greylags, barnacle and canadas can.  At least the goldfinch ...

coots ... 

moorhens ... 

and tuffy ducks ... 

can.  Altogether we had about 40 species for the day but it was good to be able to get out in the fresh air, even if the bittern didn't show at all yesterday.

I still can't get to grips with digi-scoping.  I tried it again yesterday and just couldn't get it to work properly.  At least I did get some images, bad as they were!  The images seen here were all taken on my Sony Alpha 350 DSLR with either my Sony 70-300mm or Tamron 55-200mm.  Neither lens is top of the range but they produce some good results, well, good enough for me.  I met and spoke to guy with a C.... (sorry, I don't like swear - even on here ;-))) ) with a 600mm lens on it.  It was huge!  He claimed to be an amateur; I wish I could afford a lens like that for my amateur shots!    

We used our mobility scooters to get around and that brings me to a point I'd like to raise.  Slimbridge is more or less fully accessible to disabled visitors with the exception of the upper levels of some of the hides.  Sadly that is where some of the best views can be had.  I'm fortunate that I'm able to be climb stairs in them.  Other's are not so lucky.  We were helped by a number of people when it came to opening and closing gates - a real pain in the you-know-where if you don't get any help.  But not all sites are so well laid out are they?  

Take Brandon Marsh for example.  There's a track that runs around part of the site and leads to one hide which is great.  Sadly though the path to other, arguably the better hides is far too narrow and muddy to allow wheelchair of scooter access.  I don't blame Warwickshire Wildlife Trust for this though.  The site is part of a worked out gravel extraction site and because of that the Trust is limited on what they can do.

Titchwell and Minsmere are fine with ample wide pathways allowing access to most areas of the reserves.  Cley however is not so well covered.  That's OK though, after all Norfolk Wildlife trust also has to work with what they have.  Where I got a tad uppity though was when I asked at the visitor centre if we can get our scooters all around the site, we were told we could.  So imagine our disappointment when we reached the beach car park on our scooters to find that the path to the North Scrape Hide is actually all shingle and the scooter just wouldn't move at all because of it.  At the other end of the site we also found it hard going on our scooters.  

This is where things can and should be improved.  Staff training should be at a level where they would know where access is good, bad or impossible.  At least then if you are advised properly you can make your choice and deal with it. 

Have any of you read any of Stewart Winter's books?  Last night I finished reading The Birdman Abroad.  It's the story of the far off travels of the Sunday Express environment editor.  I had already read his Tales of a Tabloid Twitcher some time ago and enjoyed that so was looking forward to reading his second offering.  The second book starts back in 1970 and his mother putting her foot down with a firm hand and insisting that they Winter's go aboard for a holiday while the World Cup was on.  This was not to be a misery over not watching football although I would have agreed if she had done so, but no, it was to protect them all from her hubby's anti-Germany rants.  Young Stewart still managed to get himself in trouble over it anyway.  But it was while he was away that his budding interest in birding really took a hold on him.  He saw a hoopoe, a magic bird I have yet to see! 

From there he goes on to visit places all over the world, many of them on the paper's penny too - bloody good job if you can swing it!  He tells of his meeting with a cottonmouth snake and a 1 foot long rattler in Arizona; of being stung by a bullet ant in Panama; of joining the World Birding Series in New Jersey.  Winter claims to have seen over 600 species of bird in the States - that's more than there is on the full UK list.  But the one story that struck home to me was the last one, the story of the albatrosses.  It seems that 19 of 21 species of albatrosses are on the at risk of extinction list.  He travelled to the Falklands with John Craven and a BBC film crew who were doing a film for Countryfile.  It was there he came face to face with an albatross chick, a bundle of white fluff with big staring trusting eyes.  As I read it I thought, "You lucky sod!"  But luck      has to be on the side of the albatross now so that we don't lose such a magnificent bird. You do see them occasionally here in the UK.  I remember reading in a magazine of one being seen down at Dungeness.  The writer was saying he pointed out the bird to the only other person in the hide at the time - and he just shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "So what?"  I couldn't believe it when I read that!  If it had been me I would still crowing about it to anyone who showed any interest at all. 

Tonight I shall start on David Lindo's The Urban Birder.  Should be good. 

I also have another blogg if you interested ...

http://bitzersdorktownnews.blogspot.com/2011/12/birding-and-hate-crimes.html?spref=fb    Actually, its still there even if you're not ;-)))

You might also be interested in my first novel, The Mission.  It's the story of a birder gone bad ... or mad ... you can make your own minds up.  That can be found at ...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mission-Ron-G-Clark/dp/1461133092/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321289980&sr=1-1