Goa Trip Photos Online

Images taken during my Goa trip in Feb 2011 are now online here.

Here's a couple of my favourites:

Purple-rumped Sunbird

Bay-backed Shrike

All photos were taken with a Canon 7D + Canon 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 IS USM Zoom and processed from RAW files in Adobe Lightroom 3.

Goan Surprise!

I'm busy working through my photos (mainly deleting) from my Goa trip and I just came across a bird I took a distant shot of - it's a bird I've always missed in Goa before and is like rocking horse shit over there - a Wryneck!

Wryneck

Beauties

Last night I had six moths of three species; Hebrew Character, Clouded Drab and Agonopterix heracliana. All good moths, but the Pine Beauty trapped by Tom Tams was a real belter.

Clouded Drab

Clouded Drab

Pine Beauty

Garden springs to life

Frogs thrashing around in the pond, a Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly on the decking and a Dotted Border in the moth trap this morning. 11 deg C last night - quite a contrast to last year when it was -5 deg C!

Goa Tip Report

Cattle Egret at Morjim Beach

Just got back from Goa, working through photos and tallying species count which was somewhere around 220. A great place for birds but plastic rubbish is everywhere!

More to follow........

Here we Goa again!

This should be the view from my balcony in 24 hours :)

Has it sprung?

Well if it hasn't, it soon will judging by the audible increase in bird song, breeding plumage and nest site inspections.

Stock Dove taking up residence in Marden Quarry

Tufted Duck with a belting 'Mohican'

Bolam Lake

An unproductive trip to Harwood Forest was made up for a visit to Bolam Lake on the way back. The birds here are so tame in the winter months as visitors leave seed around the visitors centre.

Robin

Coal Tit

Redpolls at Rainton Meadows

The Coues's Artic Redpoll was still at Rainton today, in fact it's thought that there have been up to 5 individuals here this winter. While we did connect with one individual there were many pale mealies that could have been mistaken without proper scrutiny. Tom Tams, who came with me, managed a shot of the Artic but I missed it amongst the flock of a hundred or more finches.

Redpolls

Pond spring clean

Tynemouth Boating Lake

Inspired by the restoration work being carried out at Tynemouth boating lake I decided that after 4 years of letting my garden pond 'mature' it was time to give it a clean; remove silt, re-pot plants etc. To keep the task simple I thought a pump of some sort could be used to pump the silt out of the deeper part of the pond so I went in search of one at a local garden centre. I was shown a pond vacuum - only £250!!

Needless to say I didn't part with a penny and instead combined a pond pump, some hose and a large water butt and pumped the pond empty. Had I gone down the pump/hoover route it would have turned out to be a big mistake as in the bottom of the pond were no less than 10 frogs - just the right size to get stuck in a hoover! I wonder what happens to frogs dredged from Tynemouth Boating Lake?!

Pond is now sorted ready for spring and frog spawn (25th march last year).