With Red Grouse and Black-necked Grebes already in the bag there was just one more Yorkshire tick that I needed – a steam train ride to Whitby! Rather fortuitously the North York Moors Railway offers just such a route (funny that) and on a gloriously sunny morning we arrived at Read more…
Described by the RSPB themselves as “Yorkshire’s worst kept secret”, the presence of breeding Black-necked Grebes at the charity’s St Aidan’s reserve has been well known and publicised since 2018. The intervening years have seen some truly stunning images of these rare birds shared across social media bumping them even Read more…
Red Grouse, Ilkley Moor and me – surely the title for a future feature film involving one man and his struggles to photograph these daft as a brush gamebirds in an ever changing variety of unsuitable weather/seasonal conditions. At least that’s the way it feels to me having spent the Read more…
For most birders that first outing of the new year is always extra special. It doesn’t matter what one might see from Robins and House Sparrows through to Golden Eagles or Firecrests, all species carry with them an additional excitement factor of being “first for the year”. When else for Read more…
The second half of our Dorset break began with yet more unseasonably warm, sunny weather. So warm in fact that as we strolled along the seafront in Lyme Regis strange and long forgotten thoughts began to surface in my mind. Admittedly they had a job to push through the overriding Read more…
We’ve had a busy old summer this year exploring Scotland in our self-built campervan and as brilliant as it’s been, when it came to our winter break we fancied something a whole lot less complicated. Waking up in a different place each morning was an amazing experience but with the Read more…
After the frankly ludicrous heatwave over Easter it was back to reality with a bump come May, a week of which we spent camping along the Northumberland coast at Seahouses. Our main objective for this trip was to get across to the Farne Islands where breeding birds promised to wow Read more…
This year, even with three months still left to go, has been one of my most enjoyable to date. Almost every weekend has seen us out and about both locally and further afield including over a month spent exploring the wilds of Scotland. Along the way we’ve experienced just about Read more…
I summed up my first Birdfair experience pretty well in a previous post but wanted to focus in a little more detail today on the various talks we attended across the weekend. For me these were the real highlights of the event, a chance to listen to and learn from Read more…
Quite why it’s taken me until Birdfair’s thirtieth year to put in an appearance I’ll never know but, in the words of those great philosophers i.e. our mothers, better late than never. For those who may be unfamiliar with the event it’s essentially Glastonbury for birders with hundreds of talks Read more…