Beds birding

Thursday evening:

Tempsford twitchers l-r: Darren, Lloyd, Mark and Richard

Thursday morning:

The brown blob in the middle is the Stone-curlew

It's been a strange week in Bedfordshire, as far as I can tell. On Monday night we went to see a flock of 24 Black-tailed Godwits at Fenlake Meadows in Bedford. I've been spoiled as far as Blackwits go by the Nene Washes, but it was funny to see them with towerblocks and houses in the background.

On Thursday, we got a call about a Stone-curlew at Tempsford airfield, for which we made a quick diversion from work. That was pretty amazing. It was decidedly distant but it'll probably be the only one I ever see in the county.

That evening we were back at Tempsford. We went round to Station Road to see the Redstart which had been found by someone looking for the Stone-curlew but who'd got lost! We got good but brief views of a beautiful male bird, something we're usually deprived of in the east...

(If you want to see a nice Redstart photo, head over to Weedon's World)

Next stop Fenlake Meadows again, where a Grey Plover was showing well with the godwits. I was really surprised to see it hadn't cleared off before we got there, but there it was. It's a shame it wasn't in breeding plumage, but you can't have everything. It still looked pretty nice in the evening light, and beggars can't be choosers.

We were going to go to Broom to see if the Whimbrel was still there, but opted for the pub instead so we didn't dirty our 100% record for that evening.

So, maybe I should stop moaning about how crap Bedfordshire birding is.

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640 +- Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece