Isle of Wight 2018

We enjoyed a holiday on the Isle of Wight recently.

A good crossing to the IOW on the car ferry after an overnight stop at Wickham.

There were Terns seen diving on the way across, too distant to ID.

We were based at St. Helen's for a couple of weeks.

Before the crossing we had an overnight stop at Rooksbury caravan site where a surprise awaited me on an evening walk about.

A 'mystery' raptor flew in a straight line intent on getting 'home' this evening.

It called several times as it flew past – fairly high.

The 'song' was 'per – chew' repeated, at intervals,  several times.

Perhaps a Hobby? 

No bins, no camera, just me, the evening and me spectacles - isn't it always the case?

The Isle of Wight has many Raven.

Some appearing where you would never imgine Ravens being seen.

Also , Buzzards were common place but never giving good photos!

Medeterranean Gulls were plentyful and a few Great Back-backed Gulls were seen.

However the lack of bird life was evident, reflecting the month of July and the very, very hot weather.

Every day the sun shone, even when the forecast reported a chance of a shower, no rain came along.

St Helens is famous for the Duver and area of salt marsh type ground near Bembridge Harbour.

This must be a great place in winter, but in the heat of summer I had to content myself with Geat Spotted and Green Woodpecker in the trees and just a few Redshank,Little Egret and Oystercatcher with the Gulls on the salt marsh areas.

A Greenshank was seen at Hersey Nature reserve nr Ryde.

I've seen Marsh Harrier here, before on Braden Marshes but not this visit.

However a Great Egret did a fly by on the day we walked this area.

Smaller song birds were scarse with a few Whitethroat a Reed Warbler and an un Id warbler at Yarmouth.

I thought I'd got the Un Id warbler's song on Video, to check out later, but I'd managed to cock-up the video and ended up with 4 seconds of nothing.

A trip to Yarmouth, late on, revealed 50 plus waders – mostly Black-tailed Godwit.(I hope!).

A couple of Curlew here also.

A late evening visit to the Duver was interesting with the water present for a change.

Distant Waders looked settled down for the night.

Difficult to ID at distance Dulin I think, perhaps one exception, that I cannot ID.

The return car ferry journey did reveal a few Terns – very distant as per – probably Common Tern but as I probably see Terns once a year I'm not in a great position to judge!!

I've put some photos together on the pages to the right of this blog.

Hope you find something interesting among them.

Thanks for accessing the blog.

Hopefully I've ID the birds correctly and not missed anything of note.
Feel free to tell me if I've dropped a clanger anywhere.

John.