Monday 1 August 2011

Monday 1st August: Tregilliowe Farm & St. Ives

With things still very quiet at present I thought that I would take the opportunity to work on my Cornish list. I'd noticed that yellowhammer had been reported at Tregilliowe farm (near Crowlas) a while back so I made some enquiries with Dave Parker who gave me all the necessary details. Accordingly today I used my early morning pass to go and check it out. It turned out to be a very nice piece of habitat with classic yellowhammer farmland and hedgerows together with areas of heather and scrub. Almost as soon I was out the car I heard the familiar "little bit of bread and no cheese" song and after a bit of searching I managed to locate the bird. In total I found at least three of them together with a delightful family of green woodpeckers. There were some nice coniferous copses and small woods which I am told can be good for crossbill during irruptive years though the best I could manage was a mixed flock of tits, chaffinches and young warblers. Over by the woodland near the pools itself I heard a distant nuthatch (not such a common bird on the Penwith peninsula) and there was a whinnying little grebe on the pools itself.

Strictly a record shot of the yellowhammer. This was a good distance away and was taken at full zoom on the new camera.

One of the young green woodpeckers

On the way back I stopped in at Marazion (well it would be rude not to) where there were 10 sanderling and the usual juv. Med. gull on the beach and I heard one of the green sandpipers on the marsh.

That afternoon we took a trip to St. Ives for a look around. On such trips I always prefer to go to the island where there were a couple of adult Med. gulls flying around. I took the opportunity to have a go at some fully zoomed-in flight shots with the new camera. Whilst they aren't masterpieces the truth is that I would have been able to get any shots at all through digiscoping and my old P&S camera zoom just wouldn't have been up to it.

Some Med. gull flight shots. The latter one is heavily cropped but I'm quite pleased with it.
There are lots of juvenile gulls around at present

The moth du jour is a Drinker, identified as always by John Swann

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