Quick New Forest trip

My housemates have been busy obsessing over Pokemon Go, but I've resisted the temptation to download it myself and instead decided to pop down to the New Forest on Monday morning to 'catch' a couple of real-life organisms instead: Bog Orchid and Silver-studded Blue. Having not tried for them before, the former was a new orchid for me and it was several years since I'd seen the latter.

First stop was a small, boggy slack not too far from the A31. Among the many sundews (Drosera rotundifolia?) and other interesting plants I eventually got my eye in and started to pick out my first Bog Orchids. I'd heard that these things are notoriously difficult to see as they tend to be absolutely tiny but there were several well-grown and robust specimens that positively towered at around 15cm! The closer I looked, the more these dainty orchids became apparent - I counted at least 30 without too much effort. Photographing such a tiny plant among dense, grassy vegetation wasn't such an easy matter, and you have to be extremely careful here to avoid trampling the orchids and other plants. Thanks, as ever, to Sean Cole for his handy gen.

Bog Orchids are tiny and can be extremely difficult to see among the vegetation

An impressively sized and photogenic specimen - just a shame it was a little over

Another sizeable specimen and in better condition

Close-up of the above individual

There were several robust specimens 'towering' at over 10cm tall, but this was a more typical spike (with 20 pence piece for size comparison)

I then headed over to Ocknell Plain and spent about half an hour chasing the hundreds of Silver-studded Blues around, trying for nice photos. A hard species to do justice to once they've warmed up!

The only individual I found with its wings still closed on what was a very warm morning 

 A delightfully fresh male sunning itself

On my way back to London I called in at Alice Holt Forest, near Farnham, and spent a little over an hour walking up and down the ride at Straits Inclosure. It was a gloriously hot and sunny morning and therefore flummoxing to learn from all the butterfly-ers returning along the track that no-one had seen any Purple Emperors! Plenty of butterflies were on the wing, though, including several Marbled Whites and some beautiful Silver-washed Fritillaries. I hung around at the second observation tower for a while and was rewarded with a flyover Purple Emperor at 11:18 - it did a couple of loops, attacked a Brown Hawker and then disappeared in to the treetops. Despite my best efforts to lure it down, I didn't see it again - or any others for that matter.

Great Blue Heron

Had a brilliant day trip to the Isles of Scilly on Friday. There were quite a few nervous souls during the morning Scillonian crossing - many of those on the boat had dipped either on Wednesday, Thursday or both, and they were understandably apprehensive about connecting. As it turned out the Great Blue Heron played ball on Bryher throughout the day, favouring Big Pool and giving excellent views from the Hell Bay Hotel.

This was my first visit to Bryher and I can only echo what everyone else says - it's a bloody picturesque island that still looked great despite the bouts of early afternoon drizzle. The heron, on the other hand, didn't look so thrilled about life but soon perked up as the rain abated. A typically imposing individual with long snaky neck, the neck and underparts were washed with a rustiness not normally seen in Grey Heron. The thighs were quite a bit paler but tinged rufous on close views, while the neck and upperparts were a mix of dark greys and blues, and the crown obviously dark. A couple of shots below, more on my Flickr pages:

After almost an hour in its company half-a-dozen of us decided to charter the Falcon over to nearby Tresco to try the wintering American Black Duck. Tresco is another island that I'd not previously visited before and, like Bryher, is really very pleasant. There were a bunch of hirundines over Great Pool and it really looked ripe for a Red-rumped Swallow, but alas it was not to be. A 15-minute yomp round to Abbey Pool produced the Black Duck right away, showing near to one of the close islands and loosely associating with a couple of Mallards. It soon powered off towards the centre of the lake at the sight of a group of over-excited NGBers (for some of whom it was a tick) and with time at a premium, we bid farewell to this most glorious of dabblers and headed back to the quay.

Rather than slog around St Mary's for the final 45 minutes we retreated to the Mermaid for a celebratory pint before boarding on the Scillonian. It always impresses me how much you can fit in to these day trips to Scilly, and indeed see with a slice of luck. The crossing back produced a Basking Shark off the Cornish coast between St Levan and Mousehole and, bar a stop to dip the Hayle Ring-billed Gull, our next port of call was fish and chips in Indian Queens.

Pre-autumn catch up

Nothing much 'birdy' going in my world right now; Bird Fair was great yet frustrating at the same time - working on the stand, I rarely got time to venture off and have a look around myself (lunch breaks aside). Still, lots of fun catching up with a plethora of familiar faces and great to see so many young'uns on the NGB stand.

I've not exactly done much in the way of birding recently with butterflies, flowers, dragonflies - really anything other than birds - taking precedent. It's actually been a pretty decent start to the autumn on the east coast (albeit really lacking that big bird - so far) but, for various reasons, I've missed out on the action entirely.

It was nice to see absolutely loads of Autumn Lady's-tresses over the weekend 30-31 August, both at Greenham Common in Berkshire and at a New Forest site. A fitting way to round off what has been a great year for orchids for me, and I look forward to seeing the rest of the British species in 2015.

August also brought a couple of butterfly ticks - Adonis Blue and Brown Hairstreak. I hope to spend quite a bit more time and effort catching up with and photographing British butterflies next year.

Rather continuing the recent lack of British birding, my plan appears to be to spend much of the coming month out of the country. I'm in Peru from Thursday for nine days until 26 September, back in the country for just under a week and then off to the Azores for the 'usual' fortnight. Just looking at the charts for the coming week and I can't help thinking I'm going to miss something big from the east, but such is life!

I realise that my blogging efforts have been nigh on woeful for the past year or so but life, work etc have just gotten in the way. I'll do my very best to rectify this in the near future and I hope to post daily from the Azores at least. Here's hoping for more of this ... though the Atlantic has been spectacularly quiet so far this autumn!

Past couple of days...

The past 48 hours have had their ups and downs but boy, have we seen some good birds. Yesterday started well with a group of Finns calling a [Common] Buzzard above Do Vinte. I saw the bird a few minutes later and it was clear that wasn't what it was - long-winged, very dark underparts - it had to be a dark morph Rough-legged Hawk! Sadly the bird quickly disappeared northwards and consequently I disappeared in to the depths of Poco d'Agua.

D'Agua was very still, and I amused myself with various juvenile Cory's Shearwaters in their burrows before being distracted by what I'm fairly sure was a Yellow Warbler. It didn't find the lower parts of the valley to its liking, though, and I lost it a few minutes later without getting a clear view. I moved on, working the entirety of the valley to the top and was soon alerted to the Hawk flying high above Pico. It was bloody high and seemed to be making an attempt to reach the caldeira, but failed on numerous attempts over the next thirty minutes. Eventually, after chasing it up and down the caldeira road trying to get some decent photos, I finally had some good views between Lapa and Da Ponte. I've got a reasonable series of shots of this fantastic bird, which is (I think) only the second dark morph - and therefore definite sanctijohannis - Rough-leg to be seen in Europe.

Juvenile Rough-legged Hawk, Corvo, 14th October 2013

On the way down there appeared to be some scrambled message about the Black-throated Blue being relocated in Cantinho, but this was dismissed by the original finder (and perhaps one or two others), so I headed down to the main road where I bumped in to Graeme, Chris, Tom and David. David and I hung back waiting for the hawk to reappear while the others started heading down to the village. A great stroke of luck came as we approached Lapa only to hear Graeme radio that they'd just found a Philadelphia Vireo just below the road there! The bird showed fantastically well for the next 45 minutes or so before it moved down in to the valley and we all headed back down to the village.

For once, a showy Philadelphia Vireo.

Sipping a coffee at the Bandits a little while later came the gut-wrenching news that the Black-throated Blue relocation was true after all. Five of us rushed up there in the taxi but by that point everyone else had left Cantinho, the light was going and unsurprisingly our search drew a blank. As such the day really ended on an unnecessarily sour note given that we'd seen some great birds during the day.


Fortunately, the sour grapes didn't last long this morning as the Black-throated Blue was seen very well on numerous occasions this morning, often feeding just metres away on the ground(!). A stunning bird, the blue was really brought to life on odd occasion sunlight penetrated low enough to the forest floor and illuminated the colours. Simply amazing - one of my dream birds.

 Monster Black-throated Blue, lurking in the dark depths of Cantinho.

Eventually hauled myself out of Cantinho early afternoon and slowly ambled back towards the village - distant views of the Rough-legged Hawk up towards the caldeira and a Peregrine passing offshore were the only distractions.

Back in the village, a quick search for the elusive Yellowthroat in pretty windy conditions proved fruitless. After a half-hour rest in the guesthouse, I hit the fields but news then broke that the Polish team had discovered an American Robin on the slopes of the caldeira! An uncontrollable and unnecessary urge to twitch overcame me so I met up with David and a few others to get a taxi up there. Just as the taxi arrived, the Mourning Dove was relocated in its favoured spot in the village so we quickly stopped off there to see it. Porning it, as they usually do, and seemingly unfazed by the cat sat five metres away - ominous stuff! We got up to the caldeira road only to find the robin hadn't been seen for some time, so we came back down to the village for seconds of the dove. The Peregrine flew over as it showed, and that concluded another fine day on Corvo...

Westerlies for the rest of the week. There should be more new birds before I leave on Friday, and probably afterwards too. Hopefully there won't be a repeat of last year's Caspian Plover/Prairie Warbler fiasco.

Last week at Collard Hill

It's been a breathless couple of weeks, and I haven't yet had chance to share a few photos from Collared Hill on 28th June. Large Blue proved really difficult and it was only within the last five minutes of our 5-hour visit that we finally scored.

Also seen were a few Wasp Orchid spikes along with a more typical Bee Orchid.

Small Blues etc.

As I'm sure I've said before, my dad is fortunate enough to live right on the edge of Kenfig NNR. Despite spending plenty of the time exploring the dunes over my numerous visits, I must admit I've always remained relatively ignorant of the rather impressive array of wildlife that inhabits the place. Following the carpet of Early Purple and Green-winged Orchids seen back in May, my surprise this time out came in the form of a couple of new butterflies.

The first was Small Blue, which seemed to be everywhere once you looked closely enough. A rather pathetic and weak-flying insect; their size seemed primarily responsible for their inconspicuous nature. Given the recent weather, it perhaps wasn't surprising that a lot of them looked as if they had been put through the washing machine; many were particularly tatty and colourless. In addition, they proved difficult little bastards to photograph in the hazy sunshine, although did calm down considerably as the sun went in and the temperature dropped slightly - naturally, I pounced:

Small Blue studies (click for larger)

While I was scrotting around trying to get some macro images of the Small Blues, I also had a couple of fly-by Dark Green Fritillaries. Another new species for me (butterfly amateur). Quite a lot of Marsh and Common Spotted Orchids also flowering, and also heard a couple of juvenile Long-eared Owls. Sod all else on the bird front, but much nicer than being in west London looking a parakeets.