13th December. Crest of Fire

Much the same as yesterday with a walk around RV taking up all of the morning. The Great Northern still present but I failed to find the Scoter.

My afternoon nap (another post 40 thingy) was disturbed by Pete Wragg informing me that he'd found a Firecrest a Pit-house West by the Chinese Bridge. Well you can never see too many Firecrests and it would have been rude not to pay it any attention. The resulting photos however were pretty crap dull conditions combined with hand held at 1/30th using 1600ISO was not ideal.


FISHERMEN ARE .....................

One of the reasons that I stopped visiting Pit-house West was the fact that locals had taken it upon themselves to start up their own F'ing fishery within the much needed reedy pools favoured by Reed Warblers and the wintering Bitterns and setting fire to the adjacent scrub used by breeding Linnets and Yellowhammers. I simply couldn't cope with the frustration of discarded beer cans, carrier bags, discarded tackle and blatant habitat destruction. It's not as though there's no where else to fish, less than a mile away there's a perfectly well run fishery - but no these 'former German striker' continue to f**k up this locally important wildlife site. They have no right to fish here - it is illegal, but then so is killing Cormorants!

Like the rest of RVCP Pit-house West is no longer managed by Rotherham Borough Council but by Oak Holdings a property development and consultancy group who's master plan is to build the YES PROJECT Of course those good old turd polishers* at Rotherham Town Hall all fell for these southern charmers and gave everything away complete with planning permission. But as my dad often says you can't polish a turd and if one single brick gets layed on this site I'll smear my bell end with Marmite and feed it to next doors dog**. Consequently and as a result of the new owners there is absolutely no management work undertaken at PHW, fences are broken down, gates removed and those 'former German strikers' get carte blanche to cut down, burn and generally trash any habitat that gets in the way of their maggot drowning sticks. Infact the only 'management' work that I have seen carried out in recent years is the clearing of trees from the paths so Oak Holdings could get there vehicles down to show prospective YES Project tenants around the site. In short Oak Holdings don't give two F'cks what happens to the wildlife on their site as long as they get their tenants for (which they won't) this white elephant - call me cynical (or whatever you like) but I suspect that Oak care not for this site and would be more than happy for the dereliction to continue, until I see a change here my opinion of these charlatans and of RMBC will not change.***

Rant over.

* Turd Polishers - see here

** My next door neighbour does not have a dog, but they do have a couple of pretty rough looking daughters.

*** This does not include the current manager and employees at RV.

12th December. Third Time Lucky

RV's seemingly the only local spot worthy of a visit at the moment so once again I found myself smiling nicely at the bloke on the gate in an attempt to gain access. For reasons known only to me I have neglected this place for the last couple of years to the point where I completely stopped going all together. Having watched fairly birdless sites for a while returning here truly has been a breath of fresh air and with my tail well and truly between my legs I return to my 'local patch'. As I stated in an earlier post the wildfowl numbers at present seem much higher than normal most notably close on 300 Pochard with most other common winter visitors present. Add to this the long staying Great Northern Diver, 2 Bitterns, Cetti's Warbler and the chance of some local 'rare' (Lesser Scaup is well over due) there are few sites locally where you can have a better days birding. A female Common Scoter was found on the Main Lake whilst counting Great Crested Grebe (38) and the Great Northern finally gave itself up for a decent photo albeit digiscoped with my rapidly failing eyesight - it's true that everything starts to pack up once you get to forty. Another visit (I just can't keep away) mid-afternoon produced nothing new but gave Jo the chance to get to grips with duck I.D and a new bird in the form of the Scoter.

6th December. Merg

First job this morning was to get the decorations out of the loft. Second job to get the hell out of the way whilst Jo and Beth played about with baubles and lights and stuff.

I called at the usual car viewable spots i.e Orgreave, Catcliffe and Blue Mans Bower and saw very little before deciding to have a rare wander round RV. Good numbers of duck this winter with at least 240 Pochard on the Reserve and around 30 Goosanders among the more notable counts. Also among the Goosanders was this fem/imm Red-breasted Merganser decent bird these days at the valley being almost as scarce as Smew.

5th December. Me No Leica Very Much

With some work and other duties to carry out this morning birding was going to be difficult but I did at least manage a visit to RV to take some more 'record' shots of the Great Northern Diver.



Arriving home to the usual pile of junk mail I was briefly pleased to open a letter from Leica. What could it be? Had I won a competition? Had they sent out a product recall for the notchy focusing on my Ultravids? Had I bollocks. Had they bollocks. No this was an attempt, by them, to get me to fire up the credit card and plunge myself into some more debt. In what I can only describe as a 'begging letter' those generous soles at Leica were giving me and only me the chance -wait for it- to purchase a lovely pair of Ultravids for the princely sum of just seventeen hundred and fifty quid!! In return they would give me a 8X20 Monovid free of charge. Tight bastards. Not only do they hike up the price of their 10X42's (don't give me all that HD rubbish, that's the binocular equivalent of the Emperor's new clothes) by almost 100% - my 10X42's cost me £900 - they have the cheek to offer me just half a pair of binoculars. Do I look like a bloody cyclops? Well thanks but no thanks Mr (or Mrs) Leica I'll stick with the two pairs I already have. Leica seem to have lost the plot of late, their prices have shot through the roof cf. their near £3000 scope and almost £2000 bins' who in their right mind wants to spend that kind of money? Probably the same tits that take up birding and instantly get a twelve grand optics package i.e. Bins, Scope and huge up arse lens but forget that you can't buy fieldcraft and I.D skills, but that's a rant for another whisky/gin fuelled evening...

4th December. Shopping, a pie and some fudge.

A planned shopping trip to Leeds this morning held little promise of anything avian, so it was even more frustrating that the weather favoured birding much more than shopping! We even managed a bit of pie action from a pie shop in Morley. However the Huntsman pie was distinctly average and in no way warrants me plugging the shop - bet their shitting themselves now! Fortunately Jo's no hardcore shopper, so a quick dash through Ikea and we were on our way home. Pugneys was on the way back so with the Ferruginous Duck appearing to have shed any jewellery that it might have had not calling in would have been rude. However the 'fudge' (where the hell did that come from) duck wasn't in the mood for showing well and insisted on hiding behind the near island unlike the Bittern which was perfoming well in the reed bed.

Following on from yesterday afternoons Diver search I received a text this morning from Kev informing me of a Great Northern on the main lake at RV. Oh damn and blast (is that OK Colin) I was about 16 hours too early. On arrival it was showing fairly well but then the heavens opened so after a quick video session with a borrowed camera from the Rangers we left.

Once it had dried up I went back to try and get some more respectable photos as the first batch were a pile of excrement (again Colin).


Late afternoon I paid another visit to Pit-house West. The amount of rain that had fallen in such a short time was incredible and the levels on the Bittern Pool were around a couple of feet higher than normal. It was clear that the Bittern wouldn't be on the lower pools as they had turned into a temporary river. After wading across the slipway I picked up the Bittern sat in the open on the remaining bit of suitable feeding habitat. Despite it moving back in to the reeds it remained on view for about an hour. At one point it moved off to the right only to reappear from the left - two birds? The two bird theory was strengthened more when at dusk one bird ran strongly into the reeds only for a second (?) to fly up a few metres to the left and drop into roost.

28th November. Submarine Search

Spent the morning doing work stuff but even a blind man walking backwards couldn't fail to notice that a movement of Great Northern Divers was taking place with an impressive five birds at Grafham Water. By midday the overtime was put on hold and I was off out to search the local water bodies. Being able to view Orgreave and Treeton Dyke from the same spot (a recent discovery) It didn't take long to realise that there were no Divers to be had here. RVCP was the next spot and likewise also diverless. With this we decided on checking Pit-house West to see if any Bitterns were wintering. This time we were in luck as one bird showed briefly at dropping into roost at 4pm. Wandering back through the lower reed beds we hoped that we might get a snatch of Cetti's song but we didn't and therefore ended a reasonable afternoons birding and yet another dull blog post!

24th November. Pandora's Box

Hardcore stash!

I suddenly had the urge this afternoon to get the loft ladders out and have a good root around. Not to locate an old porno stash, as no doubt some of you are thinking, the Porn Fairy took those a long time ago. Butt to dig out my old collection of notebooks. Whilst reading some of them I realised that finding an old stash of GILF mags would have been less embarrassing! The first 'proper' notebook in there was dated from May 1985. This was the notebook that I entered for the YOC's Young Ornithologist of the year competition, which was won by my good friend Mr Fray - there's a photo somewhere in an old BB' of Mr R' sporting a very ordinary haircut and being leered over by a very suspicious looking Peter Holden.* Anyhow back to those notebooks. The contents are hilarious, though I'm not sure if I'm comfortable reproducing them on here but here goes...

There's a reason these were hidden in the loft, I just can't put my finger on it!! On the plus side how many 15 year old birders take notes these days? Come to think of it are there any 15 year old birders out there**

* By suspicious I wasn't implying anything illegal.
** I am just curious as to the future of birding.

20th Nov. North Lincs

Taking advantage of all three of us being either off work or off school and taking a look at the weekends weather forecast we decided to bring our Seal trip a couple of days forward. Arriving at Donna Nook just after 10 it appeared that everyone else had done the same with the car park almost full. Of course seals are a little more predictable than birds and a couple of hundred plus young were spread out among the beach.


Now I know that I like to point the camera at almost anything that eats, shits and breaths but the amount of cameras at these wildlife spectacles is frankly getting out of hand. I'm not talking about hoards of little old ladies rattling off a couple of shots on the digital equivalent of a box brownie, I'm talking about 'wildlife enthusiasts' carrying serious amounts of quality gear. Don't get me wrong I am by no means jealous of their back breaking equipment, I'm more than happy with my 4 year old D50 and ancient sigma 50-500mm but one photographer was stood a couple of yards from a group of seals toting three Canon bodies each with a high spec Canon Lens i.e. 500mm, 300mm and a 100-400 zoom just in case. For Christ's sake why? They were 6 feet away. The point I was in the process of making is the fact that these lens carrying fiends were everywhere and up just about every orifice that the seals offered, to the point where they were hanging over the fence to get the money shot. This is the first time that I've seen such inappropriate behaviour here, usually the wardens would usually intervene perhaps today they were just looking the wrong way.

Further along the coast things weren't much better when a lone 'photographer' was watched kicking the Shorelarks at Theddlethorpe from pillar to post instead of settling down and letting them come to him. Even more amazing was his total lack of common sense. Whilst I was sat down photographing them he marched towards them flushed them then marched straight off to flush them again! I was going to post another blame and shame photo (as last November in Lincs) but I know who he is (it wasn't any of the well known Lincs birders/photographers though) and next time I might be quite so patient!


Following a fish and chip break in Mablethorpe (still as shit as it was in the old days when my gran used to take me) we headed to Barton for Far Ings. Eventually finding the right spot I was amazed to find the Red-necked Phalarope almost feeding at the feet of the already present birders. There was no danger of disturbing this bird but despite it being just a few feet away my photos were on the disappointing side in fact they were a right pile of wank!



We finished the day off at nearby Worlaby Carrs where at least 4 Barn Owls provided the entertainment until near dark.

7th November. More Cetti's

Continuing from yesterday we decided to walk the majority of the Rother Valley, that is from Whiston through to RVCP. It was in the back of my mind that there's quite a few likely Cetti's spots along the river and if the invasion was as anticipated then at least a couple of sites should come good. Whiston Meadows was not one of the likely sites but held a flock of 34 Wigeon and several Snipe. Bolehill Flash however was one of the likely sites having a good mix of phragmites, rush and damp willow. Sure enough just as we were about to leave a male Cetti's gave us a quick loud blast only a few feet away. Several more short burts of song and a few sharp calls I still hadn't seen it. A quick blast from the ipod did nothing to encourage it out but amazingly drew the attention of another male about 25 yards behind us, frustratingly neither bird showed so we headed off towards Catcliffe Flash via the Railway Pond. Unfortunately we didn't spend enough time here and by the time I got to Treeton Roy was ringing me to let me know he'd found one there! Further sites i.e. Treeton, Woodhouse Washlands and a brief look at Pit-house West failed to produce, but news of another male at Blackburn Meadows suggested that there's no doubt lots more to be found yet.

An evening visit to Pit-house West failed to produce any Cetti's and no Bitterns but at least three Water Rails.