Red Rumped Swallow

A fantastic find by Richard and a 3rd for Barton. A first for us in the UK. Never still, freezing cold and very overcast skies but Simon managed these excellent shots. 2 new birds on Karen's UK list this weekend taking her total to 318

Wheatear

A fall of wheatears at Spurn today was something quite special, they were everywhere. A red rumped swallow came on the pager at Barton upon Humber while we were at Spurn - typical!! Beat a retreat and headed back to Barton quite sharpish!

Ring Ouzels

  Found this along the path at Far Ings, Barton. Flushed by 2 photographers and then took a bit of re-locating.

This one was at Spurn, Yorks and gave better views. Brilliant to get a quality bird in both Yorkshire and Lincolnshire on the same day!

Bufflehead

Female Bufflehead at Covenham Reservoir, Lincolnshire. A first for us so dashed over after work. Very overcast skies and a bitterly cold wind made photography quite difficult. A good bird and nice to catch up with Mark Bibby. This takes Karen's world list to 1457 and her UK list to 317.

Black Tern

The first black tern of the year at Waters' Edge, Barton. Thanks Andrew!

More coot pics

Waters' Edge Country Park

Bath time....

After a fight one needs a bath..........

Fighting Coots

Far Ings, Barton.  4 coots having a right old scrap!

Kestrel

Birdwatching in the greyness after returning from India. We don't realise how dark and dingy this country is until you go to another country where the sun shines. Went to Alkborough on Sunday but the shrike had long gone. Found a few wheatears on the foreshore and this kestrel gave us a good show.

Hoopoe

A very distant shot of the hoopoe at the caravan site at Horsey Gap, Norfolk. What a fiasco this was. The caravan park is nothing more than a storage site yet they had a shaven headed, muscle bound chimp on as a security guard. All he did was drive his massive 4 x 4 round the site, straight towards the bird flushing it and then looking up proudly to the birders.  A disgrace to the human race.

Tiger Home, Ranthambore

We have just returned from a two week trip to India. We stayed at Tiger Home, Ranthambore, Rajastan with Hemraj Meena. Hemraj is one of the main tiger guides in Ranthambore and is also a bird guide. Tiger Home is a small, family run hotel with a friendly atmosphere. There are 8 bedrooms which are all spotless clean. The chef will cook anything you want from an Indian banquet to scrambled eggs on toast. Tiger Home is very reasonably priced. It is situated just a few miles away from the main gates to the tiger reserve. A perfect location that is just set back off the main road.

Before we decided to go on this trip to India, we saw a programme on TV called Tiger Dynasty. It was about 2 tigers that had been re-located from Ranthambore to a neighbouring area where tigers had once lived. Watching this story evolve and the tiger's struggle made us want to go and see these beautiful creatures. You can imagine our shock and delight when Hemraj said a BBC filmcrew were in the hotel with us as they were filming another documentary on the Ranthambore tigers. An even bigger delight was that the cameraman was Nalla Muthu who had made Tiger Dynasty. He is a lovely, gentle man who has given his whole life to tiger conservation and we felt honoured and priviledged to spend our holiday with him and his crew. Nalla can be found at www.tigercameraman.com/blog

We made some good friends during our stay with Hemraj. Some, we are sure, will be friends for life. We are hoping to return to Tiger Home some time later in the year. We can thoroughly recommend Tiger Home for your Ranthambore stay.  If you need and further details, please let us know. Tiger Home can be found at www.ranthamboreecotourism.com

We managed 170 birds while we were there, 24 of them being new. Bird of the trip just had to be the Indian Coursar. One of our 'wanted' birds that was so difficult to locate and also very difficult to get close to but we managed to see 6 birds in total. Brilliant! We also saw 4 tigers, one girl we saw many times. One of the main highlights though, had to be the leopard. She was simply stunning and so beautiful. A fabulous 2 weeks !

Tiger tiger burning bright.......

Apologies if you are tired of looking at our tiger pics, but there are alot more for you to look at! We could never tire of looking at such a beautiful creature. They were breathtakingly good and now we can't wait to see more of the world's big cats. We saw 4 of Ranthambore's tigers (all females), one girl we saw many times.  A very good holiday in India with 24 new birds added to the ever increasing list!