A beautifully sunny morning saw me out on Swinemoor once again, although a little wind made things slightly chilly. As I walked past the hawthorn hedges a group of Redwings flew out along with 6 Fieldfares, 3 Chaffinches, 1 Blue Tit and a pair of Tree Sparrows. Out on the floods a group of aroun [...]
Archive for October, 2007
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Black-headed Gull Preening
October 28th, 2007 
nick Yesterday’s trip to Hornsea Mere gave me plenty of time to play around with my digital camera and one thing I tried was taking some pictures through my binoculars. The lens was at full zoom and I steadied the binoculars on the car’s wing mirror. I tried to get a photo of a Black-headed Gull [...]
British Birding: Did you know that ducks like bread?
October 27th, 2007 nick Furthering our ongoing research into ducks and their affinity to bread, my wife and I went back to Hornsea Mere armed with bread, seed and chocolate donuts. First of all we tried throwing bread, which was very predictably well recived by Ducks, Geese and Swans alike. Coots also seem partial to bread, although they don’t [...]
British Birding: Coot versus Moorhen
October 26th, 2007 nick A dim but very calm day today and the numbers of winter visitors are beginning to build up at Eske. On my walk to the lake this morning I saw just 2 Meadow Pipits and a group of about 100 Common Gulls on the way up. However, at the lake hundreds of Redwings and Fieldfares [...]
Earth in the Balance
October 23rd, 2007 nick A few days ago I wrote a short book review on Al Gore’s book “Earth in the Balance” on bookreviewblog. For anyone who is interested in environmental ideas this is an excellent source of information. Gore does a great job of taking a holistic view of environmental problems and this book was published in 1992, [...]
British Birding: Another lap of Swinemoor
October 22nd, 2007 nick Another chilly trip to Swinemoor this morning turned up some more nice birds. The, by now, customary Redwings greeted me as I walked through a copse of hawthorns, accompanied by a few a Long-tailed Tits and Chaffinches. Out on the floods the numbers of gulls are still building up with around 150 Black-headed Gulls and [...]
Flowering Plants in October
October 17th, 2007 nick A very sunny day was made surprisingly cold by a brisk north westerly wind, but I managed to find some sheltered, warm spots at the lake at Eske this morning. Although bird activity was not at its most spectacular today I noticed that there were still quite a few flowers around. I decided to see [...]
A Short Walk
October 16th, 2007 nick I took another short walk around Swinemoor again this morning to see if any interesting waders were still to be found. The first birds I came across was a party of 5 Redwings which flew away from their feeding spot on the hawthorn bushes. On the floods the numbers of Black-headed Gulls had increased to [...]
Ornithological Research into Wildfowl
October 15th, 2007 nick On Saturday morning my wife and I went to Hornsea Mere to feed the ducks – I’m afraid that statement alone says a lot about our so-called “research”. The ducks, geese and swans at Hornsea must be some of the best fed birds in the country, but whenever we turn up with some bread they [...]
Yamoogle search engine for carbon offsetting
October 15th, 2007 nick For those who are into carbon offsetting there is a new search engine on the web which donates all its profits to recognised carbon offsetting projects. Yamoogle.com Carbon offsetting is a dubious science and most certainly should not be a substitute to becoming less wasteful and less polluting at a personal level. However, if it [...]
