July, a birders nemesis, time to dig out
the moth trap, butterfly book, wild flower book, anything to get over the
tedium of Julys birding. That’s my view on July, with no wader habitat and east
coast sea watching being pretty poor I find the month to be very dull on patch.
And it appears that I’m not the only one who thinks this judging by the
highlights comments sent in such as ‘not July’, ‘nil’, ‘terrible month’ etc etc.
For every dull day in Hemsby though there
are great days elsewhere as waders arrive and the seawatching in the west hots
up. And its sea watching where we start and we head over to Galley Head, Cork.
Patch old timer Colin B had a sea watch to dream of on patch as he found not
one, not two but three Fea’s Petrels
in one afternoon! Incredible and you can read more about it here http://galleyheadbirding.blogspot.ie/2013/08/feas-fun.html,
including Cory’s, Great and Balearic Shearwaters and Long-tailed Skuas. Can’t
see a day like that happening on my patch!
This however, was beaten further north and
this time on the east coast. Mark Newell on the Isle of May has already been
mentioned in these pages regarding a cracking find of Sperm Whales off the
island but this time he gets the points. The long staying, wandering,
disappearing, Farnes Birdled Tern decided
to pop in past the Isle of May for a day, an amazing addition to the PWC list
and one a host of NE England patches had hoped to add and in fact probably had
flying over their patch, unfortunately never when they were there!
So, what else did July have to offer aside
from these two megas? As always there are some good patch birds, several patch
megas including John Bowlers Honey Buzzard, second for the island of Tiree,
while emptying his moth trap. Rob Fray had another good month by finding patch
megas Scaup and Red-necked Phalaropes and also catching up with the Gull-billed
Tern on patch.
So, that’s July over with and August is in
full swing, sea watching is proving popular, perhaps a tropicbird will make it
onto a patch and migration has started so best get out there..............
No comments:
Post a Comment