Lowestoft Lovlies!

There is nothing finer than the Ness Point Purple Sandpipers, especially later in the day, when the low afternoon sunshine illuminates the wet rock, giving wonderful tones of reds and browns making magnificent backdrops, as usual they are very confiding winter visitors, providing a little fieldcraft is used, ie keep low and quiet and they are not perturbed at all.

Fantastic farnes 2!

Well we did finally set sail and managed to land on at least two islands the sea was a little rough and the skies were grey!
  On approaching the islands we passed Brownsman where the N.T. wardens were busy counting and surveying I managed a couple of amusing images, now come on these guys work hard, you may want to check out their blog    farnephoto.blogspot.com   very informative with some great images, keep up the good work guys!

The National Trust wardens on Brownsman, hard at work......double hatted of course.

Now c'mon Ciaran... there's definately more than two!!

Atlantic Grey Seal

"Not more bloody tourists"

Pass me a paint brush then!

Beautiful green eye!

Hiya!

Now that's more than a mouthfull!

A pair of Shags

Sandwich Tern

Shoulda gone to specsavers!

Awwww!

Fantastic Farnes!

Apologies for the long time since I last posted, but due to work commitments and no lens (went in for repair due to my butter fingers)........Anyway that over with I have lots to tell you, well show you, as I have just returned from a trip to the Farne Islands with the Waveney Bird Club, seventeen of us ventured off on friday the 3rd of June to the picturesque village of Seahouses in Northumberland overlooking the magnificent islands. We arrived eventually on friday evening, as the vehicle hired had a speed limiter attached, amazing how many more birds you see whilst driving at 60mph rather than the usual 90mph sorry I mean 70mph of course. On arrival we were greeted with fabulous evening sunlight, so after dropping bags off in the hotel room, off to the beach to catch the Eider in the glorious light, unfortunatley the tide was out so they were quite distant, so went towards the golf course to the cliffs, thankyou Mr Cookson for the advice, anyway I shall not ramble on and let you see the images.

Eider Duck.

Drake Eider in the evening sunlight.

Another lovely drake although distant.

A Courting couple of Kittiwakes being checked out by their neighbours!

A rather raucous Fulmar.

A very handsome Rock Pipit.

A pair of Eider.

On the way back to the Chippy caught this House Martin building its nest.

As interested in us as we were with it!

Unfortunately due to taking advantage of the evening light Steve P and I had missed the chippy and had to make do with an Indian meal with a couple of beers.(What a shame eh?)

Saturday morning I was awoken around 4am by the very strong winds, so I went for a walk, the sea was very rough and I doubted wether we would even sail let alone land on any of the islands.
 However as the morning went on it did improve, so I decided to go and buy a loaf to entice the Eider a little closer.

I think the bread worked.

This little fella fed from the hand.

Yep..........the bread definately worked, just a pity about the light.

Spotted Flycatcher Nest Box Project

As there has been no decent light to photograph anything of late, thought I would let you know about the project my local bird club "The Waveney Bird Club" have embarked upon. As you may know or not know of the decline of the Spotted Flycatcher, numbers have fallen drastically over the past 3 decades by 87%, so our local club under the guidance of Steve Piotrowsky........yes the author of The Birds of Suffolk have coordinated with the Churches of South Norfolk and North Suffolk along with Hollesley Bay prison, to manufacture over 130 nest boxes to be erected in the churchyards in and around the Waveney valley.

   I am personally very fortunate to have them nest in my garden, but for many birders in East Anglia they are a distant memory and remain a difficult bird to see, please visit the website waveneybirdclub.com  for the whole story, I have added some images from my garden last year, they really are fantastic little characters.





A pair of Flycatchers!



Who ate all the flies??



Purple Patch at Lowestoft

   Last weekend I spent a rather disappointing morning at Minsmere, everything was very distant or against the light, I met up with Essex based wildlife photographer Dave Martin, who was having an equally bad day, he was asking if there was anything else around, all I could think of was the Iceland Gull at Lowestoft, then I thought Purple Sandpipers too, as they were very obliging last time I visited, but the light was horrendous.
   So off we went to Englands most easterly point, Ness Point at Lowestoft, on arrival, there were a few birders there but no sign of the Iceland Gull, it had been seen briefly ten minutes before we got there, and was seen to head off towards Hamilton dock, so I decided to go and look for the Purple Sandpipers, I lifted my binoculars to a familiar looking bird on the sea, no sooner had I focused on the bird it was up and away, the unmistakable white wing tips, heading straight towards us, the Iceland Gull, it then landed on the roof of the Birds Eye factory and had a couple of short flights over the factory, always returning to the same place, however after the third flight  it disappeared out of sight.

   So our next target birds were the Purple Sandpipers the afternoon sun was perfect, the light on the rocks was fabulous all we needed  now were the birds themselves, and they didn't disappoint, coming as close as fifteen feet at times, I had to move back to keep them in focus, in and out of the shadows, dodging waves and splashes, climbing the rocks like mini-mountaineers , and slipping down them too at times.
  All in all a wonderful time was spent with these Beautiful little waders and some fantastic images to boot!

Waxwing Lyrical!

Happy New Year All, As I mentioned in my previous post regarding the renamed Blackbird tree, well I can now safely say that is has now been re-christened "The Waxwing Tree" The series of branches set up by Minsmere's volunteers to look like an apple tree has finally been visited, witnessed, and photographed by myself (and many others) by WAXWINGS!!!!

JEDWARD!

Lovely Hair Do!

AAAGGGGHHHHHH!

All images from "The Waxwing Tree",  Minsmere