Porthgwarra 9th July

Just got back from a day's seawatching with Bradders and the Monkey, with large movements of Cory's seen in the week we took a chance of finding our own.

Arriving at 05:30 we had drove from London over night so very tired but very excited, within five minutes we scored with a Cory's Shearwater that bradders picked up just beyond the Runnel stone, excellent start but it wasn't for another 8 hours that i picked up a second bird at a similar distance.

Well pleased we gave up at 16:00 as the weather got pretty warm and clear we headed for some well earned beverages!!

Days totals:

2 Cory's Shearwater
12 Sooty
12 Balearic
c500 Manx
12+ Storm Petrel
10+ Puffin
7 Pomarine Skua
5 Arctic
Bonxie
2 Med Gull (1ad, 1juv)
25+ Kittiwake
2 Raven
juv Great spotted Woodpecker
Basking Shark
c10 Common Dolphins

Left for home Sunday morning via Exeter and succesfuly located the 1st summer Bonaparte's Gull on the Exe estuary at Lympstone, cracking little bird and only my third in Britan but a lifer for the Monkey.

Hornchurch CP

Me and Jack visit the Ingrebourne Valley last night and help the locals find some birds, a single Greenshank and 6 Green sandpipers are seen from the viewing area and already Teal and Lapwing numbers are increasing, and a nice surprise of 3 juvenile Garganey that flew into view and fed amongst several Gadwall.

Also good numbers of Purple Hairstreak butterfly's on the wing.

Barking Bay (sunday morning)

A single Sandwich Tern was the highlight of sunday morning which flew down river at 07:15, nice day to go out with the camera for some random pics tho.

local thameside peregrine, this is a male

bigger female

comma

black tailed skimmer

brown argus

Roesel's bush cricket

shaggy inkcap (i think)

Fledging in full swing

An early doors visit Rainham RSPB, still one of my all time favourite haunts seemed unsurprisingly quiet as spring migration has almost come to an end.

adult reed warbler

reed (ive just came out the nest)

adult sedge

recently fledged sedge

Was nice too see plenty of Reed and Sedge warblers feeding young and plenty of male birds singing for there second sessions, as well as a Gropper reeling near the serin mound.

juv Stock Dove

A pair of Curlew in aveley bay were the only waders of note, and a couple of cuckoo and a male Peregrine was seen.

this shrew obviously couldn't handle the excitement!!

Have a break have a kit-kat.

Visited some Thameside Peregrines this morning before moving onto the Patch and was not alone, this little beast was following me around and even tried to leg it with my camera bag!!

So we shared breakfast ( a kit-kat) before going on our separate ways.

Barking Bay held 9 Common Scoter for twenty minutes before flying back down river, the Common Tern colony is now in full swing with many fledglings seen as well as a brood of shelduck no older than a couple of days.

Common Scoter

Roller- upper hollelsey, Suffolk.

Week night twitches are most welcome during the late spring/early summer and last nights was no exception when a stunning adult ROLLER was discovered on upper hollelsey common in Suffolk, having never twitched one before in over twenty years this was the perfect opportunity to add to my British and world list.

Myself, Bradders and the Monkey all meet up after work and it wasn't long before we were heading up the A12 and made great time on what is normally a nightmare of a road during rush hour.

Out the car and there it was, what a SUPERB, STUNNING bird and we was never tired of watching it as it hawked bee's and caught what looked like a worm as it patrolled the MOD base perimeter fence at a distance of probably 200-300 metres, bit distant for the camera but stunning scope views.

Several high fives later with Shaunboy and Dirty Dick it was off for a celebratory fish supper where the roll continued in discovering a superb male Stag Beetle which seem to take a fancy to me before flying off to a near bye garden.

Vange RSPB

An early morning stroll around Vange wick RSPB produced an Immature Spoonbill and a drake Garganey but no sign of yesterdays red-backed shrike.