The blog is up and running now that I have finally got my hands on a new bridge camera, the Canon SX50 HS! I first used it while in Bois De Bologne, Paris. It instantly proved successful with pictures from far a field (100M) of a Common Sandpiper, a beautiful bird!
Anyway, back to Cot Valley. I had been in the car for around 3 and a half hours and needed to do something that would brighten me up a bit so I decided that going down to the Cot would be a good idea. My main ambition was to see Manx Shearwaters that had been eluding me due to the short space of time that they have during migration...
The first bird while walking up to my post was a Peregrine that flew across the valley from right to left in a gliding action with one thing on its mind, food! Unfortunately the peregrine started hunting distantly and after a few seconds had managed to become completely out of view, typical! 2 Choughs though had caught my attention, with their Characteristic call and flared "fingertips" they approached me from behind going directly towards the Peregrine...
A quick action and I had managed to fumble my camera out and was on it for the perfect shot
Disaster, where's the Peregrine well in fact it was my own fault, my amatureish photographic skills had shone! Well you win some and you lose some as in time I was going to find out. Now I had climbed up the steep side of the valley with my scope, camera and pair of binoculars, I was tired and hungry for Shears...
Straight away after lining my scope up behind the Brisons (Two rocky out crops a mile out at sea) I hooked onto the Manxies. The range proved a bit annoying let alone the lighting never the less I carried on with my search. Out of the blue a large Manx Shearwater came into view with a darkish colour and graceful flying action I narrowed it down to a Great Shearwater another tick :)! I wasn't able to snap a photo of it though because of range and simply because I wanted to enjoy the bird for as long as I could.
All 10 minutes of sea watching was enough and I obviously was very pleased with my finds. Afterwards I turned round and spotted a lovely Kestrel was hawking the skies above where I was looking...
It managed to sit down again far away but still worthy of a scrappy photo! The excitement continued however because while I was walking back on the left hand side of the valley if looking towards the sea I encountered some small brown passerines that have come from Africa can you guess what it is yet?
Spotted Flycatchers, in this photo an Adult (closest) and Juvenile. I watched around 4 of them whizzing around this tree in the background. A fantastic sight of a bird (closest) that I may have seen in one of my earlier trips with my Granddad, The choughs' 29th 28th May 2014 ! Furthermore a few Willow Warblers were about including 5 that were in the same tree the Spotted Flycatchers had been in!
The walk back didn't have anything else that was key, but one of the best days out birdwatching in a while with two new birds to show for it!
Great blog post Alex , loving the photos mate , looking forward to seeing more in the future
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