Full Set

Amongst my 'responsibilities' is that of leading birdwatching walks for the North West Surrey RSPB Local Group. This morning, I took a small group round Bookham Common, supposedly for Nightingale and some scrub warblers. Sadly, as I mentioned in an earlier post, there appears to be only one nightingale and that didn't appear today. The warblers were all there, chiffchaff, garden warbler, blackcap and whitethroat but seeing them was another matter. Still, the ponds were good; tufted duck, moorhen, coot and these two, grey heron and little grebe.

Wandered off to Papercourt afterwards, as I tend to, in the hope of photographing reed warbler. Well that didn't happen with the warblers being illusive as ever. So Papercourt turned into more of wider wildlife experience with another roe deer photographed through a bit of vegetation, an azure blue damselfly, holly blue butterfly and an orange tip butterfly. Just to keep the bird theme going a bit, the last photo is a collared dove, taken today sitting on my neighbours television aerial (the dove, not me).

Funny what you find

I decided to work from home today. Had I not done so, I would have missed a truly fascinating, wonderful wildlife experience. Having realised the bird feeders were a bit low (the blue tit photo at the bottom rather proves that!), I wandered out to my garden shed to top up the feeders and found this beauty on the shed door.



'This' is a broad bodied chaser and had clearly been living in my pond through the winter (I had in fact watched an adult lay eggs the previous summer). Today, the dragon had emerged, made its way across the path and up my shed door. Having emerged from the casing, it needed time to dry its wings to the point where they were sufficiently hardened to fly. Fabulous creature! I decided to stand guard against disturbance and after a couple of hours of drying out, the dragon had moved away from its casing and eventually crawled to the top of the door and flew.

Hard Time Being A Common Tern

Back to wandering around my favourite bits of Surrey today with Graham. We started at Tices Meadow, a stunning, compact site near Farnham well watched by it's regulars, of which I am not one. A gorgeous drake garganey kicked things off nicely but two other birds stick in the memory. Firstly swift; I don't really know how many were arcing there way through the skies above Tices but my view seemed to be full of them, a truly brilliant sight. So why is life hard for common terns? I witnessed a bit of pair bonding, a male feeding a female a nice fish and both looked pretty pleased with themselves. Almost immediately however, the female was besieged (if you can be besieged by one bird) by a black headed gull, chasing the female relentlessly in an effort to get the tern to give up the fish. This time, the tern kept its meal but having to go through that all the time must be hard going.
On to Thursley where we were looking particularly for redstart, of which we found none! Other regulars were however present, including, cuckoo, dartford warblers, a single lesser redpoll and what might be Surrey's only breeding curlew, displaying and sending out that amazing, evocative call across the common. Regulars that I managed to photograph included woodlark and of the two photos I present here, one is just because I like the effect of the squiggly bits of powerline.

Tree pipit is another Thursley regular, not that this one was all that confiding. They do possess another of my favourite songs and when seen well, are just very handsome, neatly turned out birds.

We finished our trek, inevitably, at Papercourt, circumnavigating the water meadows with the highlight undoubtedly being two stunning hobbys, seen well both in the air and perched. Not seen well enough to photograph however!

Otherwise, warblers are always strong feature here and whitethroat, chiffchaff, blackcap, reed and sedge warblers all made there presence felt across the water meadows.

Garden Warblers are difficult to photograph and this one was not all that helpful but being set against the hawthorn(?) flowers helps.

Last time I gave you Beautiful Demoiselle, this time I give you banded demoiselle. I don't know what it is eating, happy to hear from anyone that does.

Pulborough Practice

Last Sunday saw me make my way to Pulborough with my friend Mary B on the basis that Mary has been at the wildlife photography thing for much longer than I and this was then, an opportunity to learn a few things and maybe take some nice photos at the same time. Having quizzed Mary a bit in the car on the way down, 6.30 saw us leave the Pulborough reserve car park and head down the slope into the reserve. Pulborough is excellent for many of the warblers with blackcap in particularly good voice (very difficult to photograph mind) accompanied by the occasional chiffchaff. What the place is really known for at this time of year is nightingales, up to five I would think all in amazing voice. I make no claims to this being a good photograph but it is at least proof that we did see one. It is also evidence as to just how difficult it is to get a good view. Something to come back for, preferably earlier in the year when there is less foliage on the trees.

From a birdy viewpoint, my favourite photos of the day, in as they say, no particular order, include this jackdaw, doing an excellent stalking velociraptor impression. Amazing silver snow hood.

Lapwings are very elegant, rather beautiful and as a breeding bird, a rather scarce wader. They do pretty well here and to hear that swooping call to go with the swooping display flight is brilliant. Just after this shot, we also had nice views of hobby; no day with a hobby in it is a bad day!

First dragons of the summer! I am not great at identifying dragonflies but unless someone tells me differently, this is a Beautiful Demoiselle and a Large Red Damselfly. Absolutely gorgeous and pretty obliging. The head of the demoiselle isn't actually in focus (annoying!) but the wings are stunning so worth including here.

It will be obvious from some of my comments that my photography skills still have some way to go and I fully intend to include some less than perfect shots along the way (as here!) as well as those that I am particularly pleased with.
In the meantime, Sunday was a reminder of just how good Pulborough can be in a variety of ways.

So did I in fact make it to the dawn chorus? Well yes! It was perhaps the coldest dawn chorus I have ever been to, my feet were actually hurting towards the end of the walk. The walk was ably led by Ruth from the Surrey Bird Club who clearly knew Bookham Common very well. The cold didn't help of course and summer migrants were a bit quiet but we did get garden warbler, blackcap, chiffchaff and whitethroat. Of nightingales, not a peep or a 'jug, jug' out of them or indeed him as there only seems to be one male who, with no opposition, wasn't stretching the vocals. The decline of this species here is sad and slightly puzzling as the habitat still looks good for them. A good reminder that Bookham has a good habitat mix with all that scrub, mature woodland and some nice ponds. I am back here at the end of May to lead an RSPB Local Group walk so looking forward to that.
Back to the car with, in my case, the express intention to drive somewhere, indeed anywhere just to get the cars heaters on my feet. That drive took me to Papercourt (of course) which will feature greatly in this diary. Croissant followed by coffee (apparently a favourite combination of my friend Mary!) and to begin the walk, a stroll past Prews Cottages and this Goldfinch. Now this isn't a perfect image by any stretch (it was also dead lucky) but couldn't help including it!




Papercourt Marshes is a Surrey Wildlife Trust reserve (I have a permit by the way!); a nice reedbed, bit of open water, few trees and some scrub - brilliant mix! For the first time this year, it was heaving with reed warblers, I estimated twelve singing males. Difficult to photograph as they stay down the reed stem for the most part but one day........ The place also had three garden warblers and maybe eight pairs of little grebe (still hiding). Also had some mistle thrush doing some kind of relay back and forth across the reedbed, looked a bit like they were unloading the weeks shopping. Also bumped into this guy, photograph taken through some vegetation as he would have bolted had I moved, he certainly knew I was there.




So if we had reed warbler, presumably the sedge warblers were in? Yep, Papercourt Lock is the place for these and maybe three were present (there will be more further out). One poor photo later, which I will not reproduce here and I moved on to reed bunting, a bit more accommodating as you can see. Anyone else find it impossible to spell 'accommodating' without spell check?



One a week maximum is my likely output from now on so don't panic! N