Razorbills

Razorbills always appear to be really smart snappy dressers, either in flight or standing on their ledges, I had never before come across a double headed one as in the last picture!

Masters of the wind

Is there a finer British seabird - not for me, these magnificent birds use the wind so effectively that flapping is not something they need to do a lot of. The final picture was all I could fit in with my 300mm lens. Les and I are planning to go back up to Yorkshire later in the year and go out on the boat to the cliff bottom to get among the birds for a different experience.

Gannets

Les & I went up to Bempton Cliffs RSPB site for the first time in about 15 years and the gannet colony has increased in size tenfold in that time to circa 10,000 pairs and at this time of year they are busy nest building and parading along the cliffs giving anyone with a decent camera the chance of some spectacular pictures. In the eight hours we spent there I took about 850 pictures which I slowly waded through to finish up with eight that I thought gave a fair representation of what we saw. The bird in the top picture almost fell off the ledge in its attempt to reach down for some nesting material, others were landing on the cliff top and pulling up grass to use (picture 3). Others had done the traditional job of bringing back seaweed and old pieces of fishermens rope for theirs. Picture two is a bit of pair bonding after one returns from a trip out fishing and is often the precurser to mating. The last picture is of a sub adult which might well be an adult by next year.

Red kite

I went with Ken to the Pegsdon hills in the hope of finding some early summer migrants (none) but had the pleasure of this kite flying straight at us as we walked up the hill. two minutes later we were enveloped in fog, so our timing turned out to be really lucky.

Mistle thrush

A bright and sunny March day took me out for a walk around the blue lagoon, but  nothing came close enough to make me pick up my camera so I thought I would pop into the new Letchworth cemetery as I have got close to difficult birds there in the past and I was not dissappointed, the resident mistle thrushes walked over to my car (my good fortune) and proceeded to give me uninterrupted close up views for half an hour, quite unperturbed by the occasional click of my camera

Spring bursts forth

Les & I spent the day at two venues, Maulden woods and Arlesey moat nature reserve. The weather for March 11th was tremendous, the sun broke through quite early and stayed out until night fell. we had planned to go to Flitwick moor to look for the Lesser spotted woodpeckers that have been noted there but the local gun club was going full bore and that changed our minds for us so we decamped to Maulden and were rewarded with our first singing chiffchaff of the year, buzzards calling over head, muntjacs chasing each other, Brimstones were seemingly abundant with umpteen views of singles and one pair flitting about each other, a pair of Commas briefly chased each other before going about their business and a nuthatch was singing in the more open woodland. The goldcrest above was courting and the picture was taken just after he stopped showing his really bright orange crest unfortunately. We also watched from a distance two long tailed tits building a nest right next to the path (picture five) and I took a quick shot of it as we passed, and then stood back again to watch for a few more moments.
Next we went to Arlesey and spring was also in evidence here. There were hordes of frogs and toads some croaking quite loudly and others calling quite quietly, as shown above we witnessed a couple of 'orgies' in progress with the frogs wrapping themselves into masses of writhing bodies, we felt quite concerned about the poor females underneath all these males but at least one pair managed to secrete themselves away without any added attention as can be seen in picture three. We also saw at least two species of bumble bee like the one sunning itself on the daffodil and our first primrose in flower.  There was lots of song from other bird species and the goldfinches were trying hard to outdo each other vocally, a really enjoyable day.

SPARROWHAWK FEMALE

We were just about to get into the car after a visit to Rye meads RSPB when Les suggested checking out the hide in the car park and we were rewarded with this cracking female sparrowhawk flying into the adjacent tree, we had a good week end overall with the highlights being Brambling at Lemsford springs and three Jack snipe at Easr Hyde