We always knew it was going to be a great weekend when three hobbies flew over our heads within the first two minutes, but the ‘Penguin Dance’ a mealy redpoll and some very sexy ducks would take the biscuit.
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Occasionally, just occasionally, Stephen and Graeme go looking for birds outside the county.
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Another great weekend with two keen novice birdwatchers. Stephen and Graeme introduce more beginners to the joys of birdwatching in Somerset.
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A morning walk in the ancient woodlands perched on the edge of the Mendip hills was going to get the pulse racing for more reason than the steepness of the gradient.
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It is all about being at the right place at the right time
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The snow has been and gone, the birds are back singing, and Scotland loses at rugby.. Normal Service has been resumed
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The thrills and spills of the 6 Nations may have been kicking off in Edinburgh, but it was the Somerset Levels where all the action was taking place.
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A cold and wintery few days were a challenge for Stephen and Graeme to come up with some birds for Phil and Debbie who had come to Somerset to see the starlings but ended up with an good deal more.
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We are really looking forward to welcoming some winter guests to Somerset Birdwatching Holidays later this week. While the weather forecast is looking somewhat chilly we have prepared a target birdlist of around 90 species.
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Tempting though it is to stay in bed on a damp, dark Saturday morning, when the alarm went off at 7.30 I was happy to get up, dressed and ready. Most Saturday mornings during the year Graeme and I go birding – and, although it is always easier to get up early in spring and summer, winter has its wonders too.
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Patch No. 2 is at the meeting of three rivers.
We are spoilt really. We have the estuaries of the River Parrett, the Huntspill River and the River Brue all meeting the Bristol Channel at Bridgewater Bay National Nature Reserve within a mile of each other. For an area so close to a major motorway and some sizeable towns, this is really quite an unexpected wild stretch of England’s coast.
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All keen birdwatchers have a ‘Patch’. A patch of ground where one goes regularly to watch birds. A place to study the change in seasons and how the birdlife shares the habitat throughout the year.
We are lucky, we have two ‘Patches’ - one in the heart of the Somerset Levels, a classic mixture of blocks of reed beds, water and mixed woodland. The other is coastal, a wild strip of tidal margin and river estuaries. It is at the meeting of two rivers; the Brue and the Parrett, as they flow into Bridgewater Bay National Nature Reserve on the southern side of the Bristol Channel.
We know them as ‘The Patch’ and ‘The Brue’.
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On a cold Saturday afternoon at the end of November Somerset Birdwatching Holidays were amongst a throng of over 200 people at the RSPB’s Ham Wall reserve in the heart of the Somerset Levels. It was a clear afternoon getting colder by the minute as the sun was setting just beyond the distinctive shape of Glastonbury Tor
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I love the way the seasons slowly blur into one another, so that one moment I’m watching swallows hawking for insects over our garden, and the next, as I cycle around the lanes behind my home, loose flocks of fieldfares and redwings burst out of the hawthorn hedgerows, signalling that autumn is well and truly here.
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I held a precious jewel this morning. It sat right in the palm of my hand, twinkling like a beautiful gemstone or an ornately decorated broch. However this jewel fell from a tree and bumped into my kitchen window with the softest of taps to then flop to the ground. At first I thought it a leaf until I noticed its beady wee black eye, needle sharp beak and flash of yellow across its crown. This miniscule bundle of olive feathers and grey fluff was a somewhat dazed Goldcrest.
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