Venus Pools & Polemere

Myself and Brian Pollard took a trip over the boarder to Shropshire today, to a couple of nature reserves that I hadn't visited before. The weather was great and the birds were equal to that. Around 40 species were seen, and highlights were:-

Venus Pools
1 drake Mandarin, 10+ Teal, 20+ Shoveler, 2 Wigeon, 200+ Greylags, 7 Great Crested Grebes, 1 Lillte Grebe, 200+ Black-headed Gulls, 2 Common Gulls, 3 Lesser Black-backed gulls, a handful of each Reed Bunting and Yellowhammer, 1 male Peregrine, 1 Male Goshawk, 2+ Sparrowhawks, 2 Grey Herons, 30+ Lapwings and 10+ Snipe.

Polemore

A family of 5 Whooper Swans, 1 redhead Goosander, 2 Little Grebes, 2 Wigeons, 10+ Teal, 75+ Greylags, 50+ Canada Geese and 1 Barnacle Goose.

Little Gems.......

A couple of very showy Goldcrests made my lunch a very enjoyable one today.

Birding in Cyprus

Myself and Char went on a very long overdue holiday to Cyprus last week, although it was a none birding holiday, I was quietly confident that I would manage a few decent birds, and hopefully some that I had never seen before!


Birding started off a little quiet around the hotel and surrounding area, with only just White and Yellow Wagtails being the highlight of the first day! However the second day way a lot better when a walk along the coastal path produced a Crested Lark, Alpine Swift this stunning juvenile Red-backed shrike, things were on the up!





Day 3 was a none eventful day on the birding front, but day 4 produced some more gems!! We had hired a car, and were on our way to the capital for some site seeing, when on the way I spotted a small lagoon on the side of the motorway, this proved to be an absolute wader magnet! Species I.D'd included Teminck's Stint, Kentish and Little Ringed Plover, Black-winged Stilt Spur-winged Plover (pictured below) and a few commoner ones too. Garganey, Hooded Crow and a Greater Flamingo were also present there. A Chukar was seen on a eveing walk not to far from the hotel.








Day 5, as we still had the car we took a trip up to the Troodos Mountains - the highest mountains on the island. I was hoping to see some large birds of prey soaring on the thermals, but sadly none were seen. However the forests were full of little birds including several Common Crossbills and Short-toed Treecreepers and a couple of Cyprus Wheatears, amongst several commoner species. Half a dozen or so Bee-eaters were seen on the way home.





Day 6 was a relaxing day, but a early morning walk along the beach produced 3 Zitting Cisticolas and a juvenile Red-rumped Swallow among a handful of Swallows and Sand Martins.





By the end of our holiday I had managed to I.D 40 species of bird including 7 world lifers!!

Lapland 'Hunting'........

I was given the very privileged opportunity yesterday evening to try and catch some Lapland Buntings. In recent weeks there has been a huge influx of these winter visitors to many coastal areas of Britain, in some cases more than 10 times the usual number of birds!! The plan was to 'drag net' (a technique used by ringers to catch ground roosting birds) the fields where the birds had been seen in the daytime, in the hope that some of them were still there roosting. After about an hour of methodically walking up and down the field trying to cover as mush of it as we possibly could, we had successfully caught 3 Lapland Buntings and 7 Skylarks (another ground roosting bird). Adding to the other 4 Lapland Buntings that Tony Cross and Kelvin Jones had caught on another 2 trips, meant that a total of 7 Lapland Buntings had been trapped and ringed at this one site!! Amazing really, as only 17 of these birds have been ringed in Britain over the last 4 years!!