After 15 years of writing this blog I've decided to call it a day.  Thanks for visiting and hope to see you in the field one day soon. Cheers Colin ..read more

Photo: Boreray and the stacs from Conachair St. Kilda 1987 In June 1987 I ignored a mates advice that as a young man in my mid-twenties I "shouldn't be going camping to St Kilda, I should be going on a lads holiday with him to Malta" and decided instead to head for the island on the edge of the world. Looking back on it, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Most of my photos from that period are on slides which I very rarely look at, but recently I've been thinking that I need to get copies of them before either the slides deteriorate or my ancient projector stops ..read more

An adult yellow-legged gull which has returned for its second winter at Darwen M65 services showed well at lunchtime today albeit in terrible light ..read more

So today I arrived at Roach Bridge  at 9:30am with no great expectations because we've had some heavy rain recently and river levels were likely to be high and I didn't expect the belted kingfisher to show. However, as soon as I arrived I checked BirdGuides and it had been reported at about 8:45am so that was positive at least. Unfortunately on speaking to birders on site it seemed to be another example of a birding information services copy and paste report, when the truth was that the bird hadn't actually been seen it had only been heard. Nobody on site had seen the bird. Fortunately ..read more

On my way home from Southport today I came back over Plex Moss to check out the geese. I'd spent the morning at Banks looking through very distant geese for a lesser white-front which is in the area, but no sign. I did however manage to see the snow goose flying about a mile away with a large flock of geese against a dark threatening sky before dropping down and being lost to view in long grass. Then I moved down to Marine drive at Marshide and followed the road south from the RSPB car park to the pier. There were thousands of geese in the saltmarsh here and the lesser white-front could e ..read more

The snow bunting flock at Southport continues to show well, with five birds now present. As is the norm with this species they're very confiding and look great among the shells on the tide line. In summer the males are a lot whiter which of course is good when you breed in amongst snow fields, but their winter attire is not bad camouflage either when they're on the tidal wrack. Even better camouflage when they're in amongst the shells. How many snow buntings in this photo ..read more

There's a wonderful flock of about 400 whooper swans feeding on dumped potatoes on an inland field at Banks.  Quite a few greylags are with the whoopers as well as these two swan geese ..read more

Brambling continue to show well on the feeders at the Janet Kear hide at Martin Mere, and at least one Siberian chiffchaff is at the sewage works. Three marsh harriers quartered the marsh but there were no sign avocets yet. Any day now I would expect the first to arrive ..read more

It was a bleak morning at Crossens / Banks but I was pleased to see these two magnificent Russian white-fronted geese with a small flock of pink-feet near the pumping station. There  was also another Russian white-front with about 100 pink-feet off the A585 Water Lane ..read more

I enjoy a good pish every now and again, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. My favourite victims are tits (especially long-tailed), crests and small warblers. For those who don't know, the ancient art of pishing involves simply making a funny noise to try to attract birds closer. I'm not sure why it works but probably just because the birds think I've finally flipped and want a closer look. I use four different methods with varying degrees of success. The least successful is a ticking noise similar to that which a robin makes, usually in an attempt to lure a sylvia warbler out of scru ..read more