Av it!

An early morning start at Broom paid instant dividends in the form of these beauts!

The birds were only twitchable for around 15 minutes before flying south. But not before birding royalty in the shape of Lee Evans got them on his '14 Beds List.

I must say I'm please with my grainy photo too, as this is a phonescoping 1st attempt and is at least in keeping with the ethos of this blog. Later on Spotted Fly, Nightingale and Cuckoo also seen/heard this morning. The zero-carbon gods are certainly smiling today................................

Q.!

Thought I was running out of time for this one and what a rubbish year it is for Quails too.  But my bike to work period started on Wednesday and hit the jackpot with a quailfest at Tempsford.  Great bird and carbon free too.  Excellent!

Hard work for easy ticks

Three SFYT's in two days, involving 20+ miles walking over 14.5 hours; a thorough drenching yesterday evening whilst failing to find a SEO five miles from home and again this afternoon on my way back to Potton from the Ivel Valley. What do I have to show for it? Three ticks: Sand Martin, House Martin and Little Ringed Plover.You'd think something rare would have had the decency to put in an appearance for me. Goddam it, I couldn't even find a Wheatear - not for want of trying.

Ah well, on the bright side, I've collected about 300 records via Birdtrack and I'm keeping myself in shape. Worryingly however, I notice that Matt is technically leading the Zero Carbon Cup. Of the birds he's found in the county this year, he has 'zero-carboned' 95.74% of them. My zero-carbon percentage is a paltry 95.57%.

I can't win. ;-)

DOM

Utter s*ite

Well, compared with AG, my weekend was a washout for SFYTs. A damn good look around the best wildfowl site in the county failed to produce anything new yesterday. And 30 miles cycling today may have bumped up the zero carbon tally but provided zilch for the main list. I resorted to watching a bird scarer because it looked a bit like a harrier.