Friday 10 December 2010

Back to normal birding - The Bluethroat challenge

The sun has been shining again over the last few days and today was not an exception, with the temperature peaking at 24 degrees celsius which is about 75 fahrenheit. So with it being warm and subsequently having great light I decided to try and get some nice Bluethroat or Raptor shots at El Hondo. Unfortunetley neither went to plan. The Bluethroats were all being very skulky and the Raptors were all soaring at about 1000 feet!! I did manage one reasonable Bluethroat picture (below) but hopefully will be able to get something better if the sun decides to stay with us for a few more days. Click on the picture to enlarge them.

During the 5 hours on site a number of note worthy sightings were made, these include - Booted Eagle (7), Greater Spotted Eagle (1 - 3rd winter), Hen Harrier (1 Male), Common Crane (7), Glossy Ibis (14), Great Egret (1), Wood Sandpiper (1), Purple Swamphen (4), White-headed Duck (1 Male), Marbled Teal (2), Red-crested Pochard (37) and 48 Pintail.



Bluethroat

Ruddy Darter



The bright warm weather has also brought all the insects back out and Dragonflies were everywhere including what I presume to be a Ruddy Darter pictured above, I have only just began to venture into the world of Dragonfly identification so hopefully I have got this one correct! Not only were the Bluethroats not "playing the game" but neither were this shepards goats, he was shouting at them to move out of the road and trying his best but in the end gave up and continued towards the next field on the grazing list!



Local Farmer - El Hondo

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