Friday, May 01, 2009

Alpine Swift ticks all the boxes






not an early or particularly auspicious start this morning with a lot of cloud around the patch so I set off for a long walk armed with just the 300 2.8 and 2x converter, reducing walking weight; leaving Waters' Edge a strangely long winged and languid swift was hawking over the tilery but was always into the sun; although I was pretty certain it was an Alpine it took ten minutes to get a decent view of the underparts; then it came in as a new bird for the local patch (total 251) Scunny area (280) a new species for Lincs (345) and a new bird for my self found Britain and Ireland list currently 324 species; it showed well until 12:30 when it started to drift off high and although it reappeared briefly at 13:15 it then went really high and drifted off towards the Humber Bridge as the air warmed up and the insects climbed -- so a great day and after 41 years of searching through 1000's of swifts the Alpine eventually presented itself to me without any effort -- sods law

3 comments:

Clare Gillatt said...

Bet you wish your photos were as good as my one!

Dave said...

Tremendous photos on your blog!
Are you hand holding the 300mm or using a support?
Dave

Dale Forbes said...

nice Alpine Swift photos, Graham. Almost competing with those from last year.

Have you heard of any Pallid Swifts in your area? There have been a few recent sightings in Britain and I am on the lookout for them here. I have just written about them on my blog if you are interested.

Dale
http://alpinebirds.blogspot.com