A nice little bird took a fancy to me... sorry Liz!!!

After reading a great post on Brian Rafferty's blog regarding Otters on Waterhead Pier in Ambleside, I asked my boss if it would be possible to take Tuesday off to head off early and hopefully get some shots of these amazing animals.  Luckily I have a good boss who instantly said yes get yourself off there and after a quick call to Liz to see if she and Briony wanted to join me, the plan was set in motion.

Past two days of SUN and horny wildlife.

Well it may only just be Spring but after the past two days (Wednesday and Thursday) anyone would have believed we were in Summer.  Yes it may of only been 14-15 Celsius but for the people that don't know me that's the perfect temperature for me before I start to bake!!  So on both days I decided to make a little time in going just a short distance from home and from work and got some nice little sightings.

Linnet, Twite, Linnet, Twite...what will it be.

Well after a slow week at work (it's still slow even though it's now Thursday) and not much going on around the Preston area, the local wildlife had decided to come to me.  So much so that even walking out into the works car part at 4pm to get in my car and drive home to see my 2 girls, I caught sight of a flock of  finch sized birds.  Problem now is identifying them, you see with a bird of such size maybe Robin sized or slightly smaller it's not particularly easy to ID when the light is fading.  So with camera and binoculars in hand I creeped over to the trees were they had settled in.

The first post of many.... and WAXWINGS galore!!

Well here it is, the first post of hopefully many and one that I am quite happy about, all due to the fact that I have been into wildlife for god, must be nearly 30 years and last week I finally saw my first Waxwings. And not just a few but at least 150+, all thanks to some great info over at Birdforum.net and a mate at work telling me he had planted eyes on them. This then resulted in breaking the law by driving over the speed limit to fit them in before my lunch break ended at work.

Was happy as a pig in the brown stuff, when I saw Eric waving me over to a flock of around 50 Waxwings going hell for leather on a Rowan tree, taking their fill and then flying up high to another tree to digest. I fired off a few shots with the camera and 300mm lens and possibly got 1 or 2 shots to use (maybe below maybe not!). Was surprised not to see the usual masses of hardcore birders firing off endless shots with ridiculously large camera lenses but from what I read they were all there earlier than me LOL.

All in all for a 10 minute viewing it was a great chance to see these beautiful birds and hope to see them a lot more often over Autumn/Winter. In fact read my later posts and you will see that I have seen them quite a few more times, plus missed them closer to home!!!