That's wonderful...toilets for birders? We don't do that here...one must take a "natural break" as they say in Tour de France. I'm starting to realize that birding is more popular in the UK than it is here in the USA. Or at least it seems that way.
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- Thread starter William Lewis
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William Lewis
Wishing birdwatching paid the bills.
I wouldn't read too much into it in a positive sense.
The sad fact is that there are so few wild areas - especially in the south east where I am - that "wild" areas with natural habitat are almost exclusively nature reserves and even these are/have to be heavily managed to keep them intact or more often recreated.
There are quite a lot of birders I think but all that good will tends to be channelled into a smaller area - hence the lovely hides and I do love a hide.
I'd rather have your vast expanses of wilderness and no nice hides though on balance!
will
William Lewis
Wishing birdwatching paid the bills.
Not much room for the Midlands. I'd go Leicester and up.
CharleyBird
Well-known member
😄Surely you jest
Draw a Northing through York and that's where proper Northern England starts.
Lets face it, anyone who disagrees is simply jealous.
One could, rather generously imho, include wannabees north of a line drawn from the Humber to the Mersey.
But why should we 😘
A line drawn from The Wash (Boston) across to the River Severn (Cheltenham) delineates the beginning of the greater London commuter belt, the great undulating South of England, land of the battling rush hour, and its people exhausted by driving over endless speed bumps at 20mph trying to find a parking space; bless 'em.
😋
William Lewis
Wishing birdwatching paid the bills.
William Lewis
Wishing birdwatching paid the bills.
Just enough already for the boys to play with some less expensive ones, my youngest picked the opticron 8x32 srga porro and the elder a visionary wetland 8x42 sp roof. I insisted they both choose rubber armoured ones..... The e2 and vintage carton 10x50's we're off the menu!
Ospreys are well worth seeing, they'll be in manton bay for a few months yet, Maya and blue 33 were incubating by the looks of it.
Will
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I've seen some comments disparaging the Rutland ospreys for being reintroduced, but frankly I've very much enjoyed seeing them - memorably during the 2019 Birdfair when one caught a fish within easy view of the big binocular tent. There must have been hundreds of binoculars trained on it. Later on I attended Simon King's presentation featuring slow-mo footage of a Scottish osprey plunging for and emerging with a trout, which he had gone to no little trouble to film somewhere up in remote Scotland. I was thinking how ironic it was that pretty much the same spectacle had taken place only an hour ago, only a few hundred yards away...
That'd be a great place to watch hobbies when they are there, which should be soon. I get the appeal of "vast expanses of wilderness", yet watching birds like that in the middle of the cultivated English countryside is something very special in its own right.
NB. sadly the new Birdfair location in the Oakham camping ground is very much inferior, in terms of the views it offers, to the old site that overlooked Rutland Water.
That'd be a great place to watch hobbies when they are there, which should be soon. I get the appeal of "vast expanses of wilderness", yet watching birds like that in the middle of the cultivated English countryside is something very special in its own right.
NB. sadly the new Birdfair location in the Oakham camping ground is very much inferior, in terms of the views it offers, to the old site that overlooked Rutland Water.
William Lewis
Wishing birdwatching paid the bills.
Local hide today, just having a quick wander up and down the ivel looking to see any evidence of kingfishers. Local populations seem to have been decimated by a week when the temperatures didn't get above -5 in late December with snow on the ground, still no sign of them but at least the sand martins have returned - the rewards of the risks of migration.
Bino's are vintage Carton 10x50's, single coated, I wouldn't call the view dim but there is a definite lack of contrast and a larger amount of c.a than you'd expect with moving eyepiece focusing, only compared to modern high quality optics though, in isolation they are very much adequate. J-b116 is the Japanese factory code - Hattori Koki Seisakujo. I picked them up for the princely sum of £36 then spent another £130 having them thoroughly serviced by Mr Kay at Optrep down on the south coast. Started raining now though so they're getting tucked back into my jacket for the small walk home.
Will
Bino's are vintage Carton 10x50's, single coated, I wouldn't call the view dim but there is a definite lack of contrast and a larger amount of c.a than you'd expect with moving eyepiece focusing, only compared to modern high quality optics though, in isolation they are very much adequate. J-b116 is the Japanese factory code - Hattori Koki Seisakujo. I picked them up for the princely sum of £36 then spent another £130 having them thoroughly serviced by Mr Kay at Optrep down on the south coast. Started raining now though so they're getting tucked back into my jacket for the small walk home.
Will
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tenex
reality-based
Did they just happen not to come by during the summer? (Seriously, I wonder sometimes about ground nests...)
Here’s my hide view at Slimbridge WWT. A bit cluttered, but I like having a few different optics on hand and like to stay in one place a while. The binoculars on this outing are SLC 15x56, FL 10x56 and Zeiss Pocket 8x25. All the gear goes in my ruck sack except the pocket which is in a case on my belt for quick access when walking. The shelf tripod head clamp is really handy, so much better than carrying a full tripod around.
William Lewis
Wishing birdwatching paid the bills.
I bet you don't miss much with that lot!
The scope’s a Kowa 773 with 25-60 eyepiece. The hide clamp is by Viking, not sure of model, but think they just have one. They sell it at Slimbridge and I bought it on a whim and find it really handy. I don’t take my tripod anymore. I particularly enjoy the SLC 15x56 mounted on the 501 Manfrotto head in the clamp with it’s smooth panning. I’ve got a couple of mounting plates, to keep one on the scope and one on the binoculars to switch between the two with minimal fuss.
Interesting to see it fit the manfrotto collumn, the manfrotto one isn’t cheap, so I’ve held off buying. Seems it comes with adapter sleeves, if the hole is big enough I can always 3D print my own adapter if the supplied ones don’t! I bought a number of generic manfrotto compatible plates and “permanently” mounted them to a number of bits of kit.
Peter
Peter
