The weather at Elmley on the North Kent Marshes is grey and uninviting; we miss a short-eared owl and peregrine in the gloom, but an obliging female kestrel and passing male marsh harrier make the day.
Tag: Kestrel
To the summit of Col de Fajou
Sunday 25th June The weather is perfectly clear all day and in the mid afternoon I climb the Col de Fajou; it is more of a large, whaleback of a hill than a mountain but still a few hours up to the base of the cliffs and then a dog leg round to the summit…
Cooling Marshes
In winter, the grazing marshes below Cooling have a wild beauty especially under a late afternoon sun that splices the broken clouds. This autumn, a large flock of some 600 lapwings sit out the day on the fields but are constantly restless and at low tide shift to the narrow strip of firm ground created…
Spoonbills and sandwiches
August 30th At Shellness, the flocks of waders and waterfowl are enjoying the easy pace of the balmy summer. Swallows move along the beach in small flocks; a wheatear forages on the shingle. There is a late summer silence at high tide mainly because the Brent geese have not arrived. Sandwich terns are roosting…
Hinterland
The weather is uniform grey again in West Wales and the coast desolate and uninviting. This stretch of coast south of Aberystwyth was where the sad-eyed detective from the television series ‘Hinterland’ had his isolated mobile home. Beneath the long grass slope, the lively, lime green shoe-box looks out of place in front of the…
Ringing Breeding Birds in Wales
Friday evening near Llyn Brenig in the Sitka spruce forests of North Wales. The warm, humid air that brought storms has been replaced by a chill northwesterly and clearing skies. In the clear-felled forest, the nightjars ‘churr’ at dusk and we try to lure a male to a large mist net with a recording of the…