House sparrows of Marrakech to the Desert Sparrows of Merzouga

I've recently returned from a 2 weeks birding holiday in Morocco With Ed Taylor and Ben Andrew - it was a fantastic trip taking in the atlas mountains right down to Merzouga where the undeniable bird of the trip was seen...DESERT SPARROW:
I've got loads of photos to process so expect more in the near future... :-)

Garden Reed Bunts

Last winter saw a nice addition to the garden list in the form of a reed bunting. Their numbers grew over the winter to about 4 which really shows the importance of keeping the feeders topped up!

This winter has been even better. The previous record was smashed and at times I have up to 9 birds feeding at once in my small village garden.

quite happy with the bottom image - much cleaner than you normally achieve with the 7D!

Ice Ice Baby...

Iceland Gull from Lowestoft, nice bird;it's a good location for Med gulls too with quite a few seen; The other good bird for the day was the long staying lesser white fronted goose (a bit distant here with a taiga bean);

And I thought I was reasonably well travelled - perhaps not!

I've only been to 6.22% of countries....

need to work on that!

Langford River

A few photos from New Years Eve;





I had several sightings of kingfisher there too;

Also here are a few recent photos from the river in Arlesey;
Dan Trim

Hampshire

Had a great day in Hants last Sunday with 5 birding team members present!

We visited Hurst Beach first hoping to see the Lapland bunts and we weren’t disappointed. One showed really well in the stuble field there;

There were also good numbers of skylark and reed bunting in the field;

Rock pipits were feeding along the shore line and always make nice photographic subjects;

The highlight for me though was the good sized flock of dunlin that were feeding in the mud and bathing in the river there. I got down in the mud and managed to get a decent distant from them in some lovely light:

We also did some photography at Denny Wood but several merciless attacks from a horse meant nothing great was achieved. I am happy with the great spot one though;

I can’t wait to get out again with the new 500mm!!!

Dan

Woburn Waxwings

I was due to go xmas shopping with Loz and thought this was a great time to pop in and see the Woburn Waxwings on route!

On the way there it was a little gloomy and not really photography weather so I had a quick look at the birds then headed off to MK to shop till I drop (which is normally about 1 minute into the trip!)

On the way back there was some really nice light so we popped back to see them. After Lauren had spent 40 mins in topshop it only seemed fair!!!

here are the results;

and a token starlin shot:
definatly worth a return trip at some point if they hand about!