
A very very quiet time at the moment: for various reasons I haven’t been out much and even when I do there aren’t many birds around. 2022 has been a bit of a slow year across the board.
Here are a few common local birds from the last few days.


I’ve been walking around the neighbourhood this week looking for Waxwings with no success. But I did see this juvenile/first-winter Goshawk nab a pigeon.
Annoyingly my R5 froze as it flew off (this happens occasionally: very frustrating for such an expensive camera). Maybe it made no difference as the AF on my ancient 100-400L M1 is very sluggish on the R5.
F***ing twigs.
Also around were Eastern Buzzard, Winter Wren, 10 or so Dusky Thrush, a male Goosander and this Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker in the local park.
Still really mild. We were out east today: a few interesting things around but not great for photography. The above Peregrine posed nicely and there were also several White-tailed Eagle around, a lone Mountain Hawk-Eagle and 000’s of Black-legged Kittiwakes offshore.
Here’s a common local species: you can see it’s a male by the red flash on its head.
A Great Spotted Woodpecker in the local park earlier this week.
Not much abut in town: Red-flanked Bluetail, a few Dusky Thrush, some Asian House Martin.
Well I say there’s not much about but some people saw 2 Oriental White Storks a few days ago somewhere in town. It was even in the local newspaper. I haven’t had the chance to look for them and no doubt they’ve gone now.