Joined October 2012
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1,564 Photos and videos
May 28
Brent RDNK still playing it cool behind the Co-op tonight. Quite a thought that a heavily upholstered black goose has has now experienced 30 degrees C in both the UK and Siberia.
28 May 2021
Nice to see my old mucker RDNK in with 420 Brents still waiting to head for Siberia, where they are in for a weather surprise. RDNK winters on the south coast and stages here on the Stour and AFAIK is unconnected with the Future Techno beat combo RDNK.
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May 13
Every cloud has a silver lining- here's about half of flock of 175-200 Swifts lumped by the rain and cold onto a farm res. in the Brecks this afternoon.
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May 4
Tackling the thorny question of when a footnote should go before the punctuation rather than after. Top answer is about birds, but not by a birder I suspect.
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Apr 20
greeted by a Ptarmigan on the veranda when we got back to the hut from today’s wadering in Iceland
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Apr 7
Dragged out owling by @stuttonsparrows in Constable country and ironically my thermal makes Stratford st Mary church look like it was painted by Turner instead.
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Mar 19
Time to call a halt on a paint of a juv Roughleg boinging up and down on thin thorn branch before I am tempted to tinker about with it. I miss these chaps more than any other mild winter no-show I can think of.
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Mar 19
The usual parade of the faithful on the godwit front- here's Woofer still with some moult to go. Well over 90% of the c-ringed godwits since beginning of Feb have prev. history on the river.
23 Feb 2025
Seasons are on the turn- about half the Knot flock has pushed off to Waddensee and the rest will be gone soon and first of the regular spring godwits is back- this one WfR aka "Woofer" ringed in Spain more than a decade ago and sometimes back here as early as end of December.
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Feb 22
A quick skid of ink over some Knot feeding back-to-the wind on Thursday. Might need to invest in a thinner brush.
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Feb 20
All very exciting- maybe the object which shifted my Knot flock off this bit of mud this morning came from further way than I appreciated at the time.
Photo of Unidentified Object taken in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico.🧐🤔
Skywatcher María De La Rosa took this extraordinary photograph of a strange object that defies everything we know about flying saucers.
Thank you María De La Rosa😃👍
Community note
The blurry photo matches a Hollywood clapperboard foil balloon, as seen in product images and 2017 discussions. The clear image is an AI upscale adding non-existent details. Post's UFO claim is inaccurate. amazon.com/Anagram-Balloo… youtube.com/watch?v=kQActg…
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Feb 15
I can't keep up with this weather- filthy now but here's an Avocet on the Stour at teatime yesterday in clear and calm looking more than a bit @richardallenart
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Feb 12
I've been trying to get this old Knot with faded flag read all season- finally brought to book in the last of the light this eve as it pottered about in the godwit roost behind the Co-op. Turns out it is my old mucker LUP ringed as a 3CY in 2009. So now in its 20th year .
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Feb 4
First trip off patch up the Suffolk coast for ooh i dunno how long this AM- here's at Chinese Water Deer and a Tundra Bean Goose sticking their heads up at same moment.
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Feb 2
Not sure if taking dodgy record shots is genetic, but just got some nifty pics from my non-birding daughter of Buller's Shearwaters knocking a heart-shaped hole into a baitball.
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Jan 28
flat calm once again on the Stour - GND in the reflection of the clocktower
24 Nov 2025
Flat calm first thing- GC Grebe looking like its been tie-pinned on a swatch of Paul Smith fabric
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Ed Keeble retweeted
A new species for me - a legless Bittern!
Never seen one flying before without its legs stuck out the back - can only assume it's a rare sub-species 😀
@RSPBMinsmere @RSPBEngland @Natures_Voice @BBCSpringwatch
ALT Bittern flying at RSPB Minsmere with legs tucked in
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Jan 4
Just to share the joy of a drake Smew on patch at Alton- the last one a few years ago had felt like a last chance to see already. Not the full set of white head plumes on this chap, but pearls of water on its back when it upped from dive.
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28 Dec 2025
Great joy to have R N Grebe in the mighty Stour area this afternoon (ta @ESBR_Essex) - here's a pencilling of its head shape when it rested between feeding sessions a metre from shore.
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19 Dec 2025
Still tiddling about with GND images from earlier in the month- a happy thing is that they have black stripes down the quills of their axillaries (armpit feath'rs) like the splayed slats of an Adirondack chair
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17 Dec 2025
Lovely Barn Owl asleep in the sun this morning with tsil fanned and primaries resting on the deck
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14 Dec 2025
A wild Sunday PM ride through BOU 58. Adrenalin levels still subsiding after changing Eurasian Hoopoe to Common Hoopoe in the mighty Stour area collective list. Now for the grand re-ordering- looks like Ruddy Duck grabs top spot on all our lists, even if re-badged as Cat C6.
29 Jul 2025
Been doing a bit of long overdue taxonomy catch-up. I've got my head around divers no longer being at the front of the bird book, but cuckoos between bustards and sandgrouse is going to take a bit of getting used to.
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