Happy New Year

There haven’t been any posts this year, mainly because I haven’t been taking many pictures.  There have been a lot of long walks, without a camera, which limits things.  Today we had a moderately long walk to Shoreham with a camera, seeing Purple Sandpiper and Kingfisher at the fort, Greenshank in the harbour and a Rock Pipit on the river.  Here’s a few pictures, along with a few Kites from the end of last year.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of my readers (both of you).

Here’s another shot of the shrike from yesterday in slightly better light.

Great Grey Shrike

A good walk spoiled?

With the weather looking good, possibly for the last day before Christmas, I took one of my remaining days off with the intention of a 20+ mile walk around the Cissbury and Chanctonbury Rings. 

My only concession to birding at Cissbury Ring was to walk at high speed around the perimeter checking the bushes for a Great Grey Shrike (there was one for a day a couple of weeks ago – surely long gone – but I’ve always fancied that there should be one up there one winter).  My plans were thrown into disarray when I actually found one.  It played the usual Shrike game of hide and seek , but ended up showing beautifully: what a shame I only had my compact camera, but it was meant to be a long walk.

The hour spent there meant that plans had to be changed, and the day turned into a shorter walk, returning to Cissbury in the afternoon, to meet up with Karen and my SLR.  The light was now awful and the bird utterly uncooperative, but it finally deigned to sit around for a couple of pictures.

(It ended up at 16.5 miles)

A short peregrination

I wasn’t up to much today, having just got back from a week working in Japan.

A short walk over to the reedbed just east of us failed to produce the hoped-for Jack Snipe, but 6 Snipes and a Woodcock were good, and this Peregrine flew into a pylon above us.

Madagascar Photos

The photos from my last few posts are now in one place in Madagascar 2019

There are more photos, and better quality and higher resolution copies of the ones posted here on my OneDrive.  It might be a bit slow: there’s a lot of big files there.

 

 

Maadagascar V

The last lot, this time from our trip up north to Ampijoroa.

A Coquerel’s Sifaka takes the low road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madagascar IV

Nearly there.  This batch is from our stay in Perinet.

Indris, singing in the rain.

Madagascar III

Another batch, this time from the spiny forest and wetlands near Ifaty

Madagascar II

Another batch, this time from Anja park, where the Ring-tailed Lemurs were, Zombitse, an excellent reserve with Verreaux’s Sifakas and around Toliara with a boat trip to Nosy Ve.

Madagascar 1

A wretched day, with horrible weather and a major disappointment in the World Cup final.  Still, at least it gives me some time to get back to the photos.  This lot is from our first location at Ranomafana.  I’ll put them all and more in better quality and resolution on my OneDrive and put a link up when they’re done.