Web sites

hello viewers of my blog, me and my brother have created two web sites one called "kings langley bird club" and the other "young birders of herts, beds and bucks" I hope you could help and spread this  around so that they can be put to proper use.

Tring Reservoirs

My school ended today at 12 because we were breaking up for the Christmas holidays. I had heard that there was a Snow Bunting at Tring so I decided to go and find it. I got the London Midland train from Kings Langley to Tring at 12:59 and arrived at Tring around 13:15. I set off for Startop's End Reservoir straight away. When I arrived I got off my bike and walked the rest of the way along the bank until I saw someone looking at the Snow Bunting. I went over to him and found it almost immediately feeding on the bank. I took out my brothers scope and placed it on the tripod and trained it on the Snow Bunting so that I could diggie scope it. The Snow Bunting was surprisingly close and I managed to obtain a few pictures with my iPod Touch. Unfortunately my iTouch has not got very many megapixals so the picture is not of the best quality.

I also managed to get some footage of it with my camcorder.

After watching the Snow Bunting for a while I began to get cold and decided to go onto Wilstone Reservoir. I arrived at Wilstone Reservoir and found someone I know and chatted to them for a while before going onto the hide and looking for the Bewick Swan's. On the way I stopped off at a hedge were I saw a flock of at least 20 Redwing and Fieldfare. I also saw a huge amount of wildfowl fly up when thy had been disturb by something which was a magnificent sit.  I managed to see the Bewick Swan's and identify them as 2 adults and 2 juv. Before I thought that there was 4 adults. From the hide I also saw 2 Golden Plover medaled in a group of Lapwings. I did not have much time to look for much more because I was getting cold and my train was leaving in the next 50 mins and I still wanted to look round the reservoir.By the time I got round the reservoir I realised that I only had 26 mins to get to the station. I cycled as fast as I could but it was so wet that if I cycled fast I would just do some wheel spin. Unfortunately I missed the first train and had to wait half an hour before I could got the second. I was very wet and and muddy by the time I got to Kings Langley so I went to my dads office (which is closer than my home) and left my bike there and went back home with my dad later on.

Posts

sorry that I have not posted anything recently for a while. But I have not really had time. Hopefully I can finish my post on Dungeness soon.
Thanks Ephraim

South Essex Marshes and Canvey Island (19/11/11)

Yesterday my dad took me to South Essex Marshes for a nice trip. The trip did not revolve around birding but it was a part of it we started at the RSPB reserve and got a key for the hide and went there for maybe half an hour. In the hide I saw a Green Sandpiper, a Buzzard and heard a Bearded Tit. Unfortunately I did not stay in the hide long enough to see one. We went back to the visitors centre and gave back the key before we went on a nice long walk around the marshes. At this point I did not do much birding but at one point I saw a Goosander. Otherwise I mainly just looked at the scenery and the archeology as the sit had many WW2 archeological sites around it. After maybe 2 or 3 hours we left to go the Canvey Island were we went to a beach. We walked along the beach but there was not much to be seen other than Common Gulls, Herring Gulls and Black-headed Gulls. I occasionally found a mud pit with Oystercatchers, Curlews and Redshanks wading in them. This was until we found an amazing place for waders I looked for no more than 10 seconds before finding some Sanderling all together there were c. 100+ on the beach I walked to a better viewing point to look at them more closely were I also saw some Ringed Plovers and Turnstone and then suddenly 3 Dark-bellied Brent Geese flew over me and landed. The marsh looked really good for other waders to but unfortunately I did not have a scope so I was unable to identify some waders which were very far away and another factor against me was the light because by now the sun was setting which meant I could only see silhouettes so we decided to go back to the car on the way a managed to obtain some pictures of the sun setting and I also saw a flock of waders fly past which I was unable to identify because of the light.

Behind RSSKL

Today I went for a walk with my brother behind the RSSKL. We were walking for about 2 minutes and then we saw a flock of 8+ Linnets they flow in front of us until they landed not more than 10m away. we tried finding them through the scope so as to look at there plumage. While we were watching them we also heard a Great Spotted Woodpecker and saw a skylark. We went on seeing a few birds fly over and then we saw a whole flock of up to 40 Redwings, Fieldfares, and Starlings. Later in the same field we also saw a flock of 14 Goldfinches which also landed and allowed us to take a closer look at them through the scope. We carried on and saw some Woodpigeons in fairly large flocks just sitting around not doing much. When we got to another field we suddenly heard a Meadow Pipit flying over we looked around but just could not find it later another one flow in our field of vision and we could tell it was Meadow Pipit by its call. In the same field we saw some more Woodpigeons and we wanted to count them so we set up the scope to get a accurate number. We carried on scanning and my brother found a Red Kite sitting in a dead tree there was also a Rook which sat next to it most of the time. The way back was not as eventful.