A dirty day’s twitching…
Today I went on the Sheffield Bird Study Group’s “Twitcher’s Fieldtrip”. Basically it was a bit of a mystery tour, with no fixed destination, and decisions based on where we go based purely on what birds are around. A concentration of decent stuff led us to Lincolnshire, where we started off at what must be one of the longest-named nature reserve in Britain, Saltfleetby

Carsington, Redmires, etc.
Last week I had a trip to Carsington Water, a great site in Derbyshire I’ve never visited before. The main aim of the day was great northern diver, which we got reasonable quickly, although sadly only distantly through the scope. A very distinctive bird though, its shape unmistakable even as a distant silhouette. After spending the afternoon yomping around the reservoir, with highlights including willow tit and buzzard, we went back to see if we could find the ring-billed gull in the rather impressive gull roost there. Sadly we didn’t, but I picked up a lifer in the form of one of the yellow-legged g

How to find… Waxwings!
OK, I’ve still not got much interesting to write about, so I thought I’d make myself useful and do the first of some semi-regular posts on how to find certain species. Now November’s with us it’s time to be wary that waxwings may descend upon us at any moment. Some years these Scandinavian berry-munchers arrive in Sheffield their hundreds (such as last year), or sometimes there’s virtually none (such as the year befo

A dose of flu…
Well, I was hoping to start November with some good hijinks from the weekend, as I fully intended to have a potter round Little Matlock Wood to get some mushrooms for my uni course on Saturday, and spend Sunday morning vis-migging at Redmires. Unfortunately the flu struck on Friday evening – I’m not being overdramatic enough to say it was the dreaded swine flu, but it was a nasty bout that wiped me out for the entire weekend, and very nicely made me just about all right again to go to work on Monday. So nothing interesting to report! All I can say is I took some comfort from being woken up by the rain lashing against the bedroom window at 7am on Sunday, whic

The last two weekends (including a lifer!)
  Sorry, I haven’t updated for a while, but here’s a few details of the last couple of weekends. Last Saturday I had a uni fieldtrip to Ringinglow looking for fungi (I’ll do a mycological post soon, honest!), and there were definite signs that autumn had well and truly arrived, in the form of two skeins of pink-footed geese, hundreds of redwings and a smattering of fieldfare aro