I blame Gary for this...

I found myself lying in the South Bay at St. Mary's yesterday afternoon studying every single pipit on the beach, after regularly reading about Gary's pipits at Newton. Fascinating stuff, and as Paul M said, "nothing like a bit of 'littoralis' action in Mid-March!". I managed to get 2 'littoralis' Rock Pipits, 3 Rock Pipits and a Meadow Pipit on the seaweed all at 10ft range. Here are some photos:

 One of Two 'Scandinavian' Rock Pipits. Note the overall light (peachy) colouring, strong supercilium and much whiter outer tail feathers.

 A nice 'normal' Rock Pipit!

Smart Meadow Pipit showing as well.

Welcome to Winter!

This morning I revisited St. Mary's after a rush down after sixth form yesterday to catch up with my second black redstart for patch, only my 4th in Britain, and it was a very good decision! Met up with Alan Curry in the south bay around half 8 and immediately it put in an appearance, spending most of it's time on the cliff and seaweed darting backwards and forwards. After a while, I went off and left Alan to photograph it and checked out the rest of the patch, with very little around apart from the 'resident' great-spotted woodpecker. 

So after a while, I decided to go back to see the redstart again and this time, it showed like a dream. I found by just sitting a rock and allowing the bird to get used to me, it was very tame indeed, coming within 5 feet at one point, and posing for me in the morning sun. Morning well spent!

What a stunner!

Also spent some time photographing these guys on the rocks...

Black-Headed Med Gull and St. Mary's

Because my school finishes early on a Tuesday, I went to St. Mary's with my dad after school. As soon as we arrived we spotted a kestrel sitting in a tree and went to see it. It let me get amazingly close to it to get decent photos of it (it must be used to people). We had the weather, we had the birds but we didn't have the most important thing... the tide! It was right in so no chance of knot but we did get two lovely rock pipits on the rocks on the path to the causeway. Unfortunately not much else so we went to Brier Dene to check on the Med Gull. Success! It now has half a black-head and because I don't think it will be here much longer, we got plenty of photos. Med Gull

Rock Pipit Kestrel