England 2015 #5

My last batch of photos from England..................


At the harbour in Saehouses there was a flock of Common Eider................a beautiful duck that compares to any we get in east Asia.

A bit difficult to get the exposure right though...................

A very entertaining bird especially with their Frankie Howerd like calling..............

Also on the coast nearby were Stonechat, Rock Pipit, Linnet and Common/Sandwich Tern fishing just offshore..............

We stayed one night in Newcastle, I had garduated uni there 25 years ago. A bit of a weird time walking around the city, a lot had changed. There were even more Kittiwakes nesting on buildings than I remember. I didn't have a decent camera with me, these were taken with a compact.

I visited various bird reserves across northern England but got hardly any decent photos. Birds always seemed to be further away than in Japan and the light was usually marginal, I'm sure good photos are possible of course but on a fleeting visit like mine I was grateful for the tame birds on the Farnes.

I saw Avocets in no less than five locations in Lancashire, Merseyside. Yorkshire and Humberside. This one was at Leighton Moss.............

Other noteworthy birds on my travels included Marsh Harrier, Little Egret, Cettis Warbler and lots of Gadwall.

In Preston I had one more afternoon with the Common Terns................

As I said a couple of posts ago, terns were the bird(s) of the trip by far............

Birds of interest near Preston included Lesser Whitethroat, a flock of Dunlin/Ringed Plover. Common Buzzard, Nuthatch, Sand Martin, Corn Bunting, Tree Sparrow and the usual common estuary stuff like Shelduck and Oystercatcher.

Thanks to my father for driving us around and also my old friends Jon, Simon and Alban.

It would have been nice to meet up with various bloggers who comment here sometimes and who live near Preston but alas I had absolutely no free time. My only visits to the Fylde where to see my 89 year old grandmother and I only made it up the Ribble twice. Hectic.

Food shopping in motorway service stations in England is amazing compared to Japan. Wow. Pub food is nice but way too heavy. Booths, even in Penwortham, is better than any supermarket in Japan. People drive too fast in England. The cellular phone network in England is terrible. In Seahouses I couldn't even get a signal, I only reliably hit 3G in central Newcastle and Liverpool....................

I could go on.