The Winding Wheel and RSPB Chesterfield Local Group invite you to spend an evening with Mike Dilger, notable author, naturalist and television presenter. Mike is currently the wildlife reporter on BBC1’s The One Show and Inside. This evening’s talk will focus on garden birds and animals illustrated from Mike’s experiences in doing this.
The Winding Wheel, Chesterfield Wednesday 6th November at 7.30pm. More details online at HERE.
A little over a week ago we launched the new Ogston Bird Club website and in that short time we have had over 9,000 views. We also have a fair number of people following the site through e-mail.
Thanks to everyone for your support.
If you want to see older posts that no longer show on the page you’re reading, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the “Older Posts” wording. A really good feature on the new website is that posts automatically get stored in the site’s archives. We no longer have to delete them.
Although the new site has been only running for just over a week, posts from the last year have been added and are available should you want to view them.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to get in touch and let us know what you thought of the new website. It was really good to hear that you liked the changes that had been made.
Please remember the website is there to get information out to you, the club’s membership and if you would like to see any pages or items added, please let us know.
It has already been suggested that we have a “Bird Of The Month” page where a special or rare bird that had visited Ogston could be noted for members that had not been able to see it. This is now being looked into.
To get better coverage from the Ogston Bird Club website, a new “Follow Blog via Email” button has been added on the right of the page. If you enter your email address and then click “Follow”, you will be sent an automatic email letting you know new posts have been added to the Ogston Bird Club website.
Recently we outlined Derby City Council’s plans to build a cycle track on the city’s only bird reserve called The Sanctuary and that a coalition of five groups, including the Trust, RSPB and DOS had come together to oppose it.
We have now seen the Council’s ecological report which says: ““From an ecological perspective, the routing of an outdoor track anywhere within the boundary of the LNR is considered to have an adverse impact on the LNR and the biodiversity of the LNR”.
The story is beginning to be picked up nationally now since this Local Nature Reserve (LNR) would be the first in the UK to be developed by the local authority that created it.
BBC East Midlands Today have recorded a piece at the reserve, Bird Watching magazine also covered the issue and we hope to attract further national attention if we can.
If you would be willing to help with this campaign, get in touch via The Sanctuary or Derbyshire Wildlife Trust for advice about what to say and whom to contact in the council.
Images of a Southern Hawker taken by Vernon Barker at the Jim Mart Nature Reserve have been added to the Members Gallery
If it helps anyone, the new website has two search bars. One in the title bar at the top of the page that looks like a magnifying glass and the other on the right hand side near the main posts.
So if you need to find out the last time we had a partial leucistic House Martin at Ogston just type the words into either of the search boxes. The search bars should be a big help with the site.
Martin Kaye has just added the Trip Report for the club’s visit to Frampton Marsh. Find all the details of what seemed to be a great day out on the Trip Reports Page.
Eleven folk met up at Frampton at 10:00 a.m. and enjoyed a full day at the reserve in glorious sunshine. Sadly we didn’t manage to see the Buff Breasted Sandpiper (but then no one else at the reserve that day did either). We did however manage to clock up a tally of 62 bird species (and this with no one going down to the shore) with Ken James being victorious in the sweep stake. The highlights included the following: fabulously close up views of 4 Curlew Sandpipers (see digiscoped photo) which were often close to Dunlin allowing a comparison of these two birds which appear so closely
similar at this time of year. Other crowd pleasers included the Little Stint and the 4 spotted redshanks.
The reserve being of great size, also offers the possibilities of playing host to spectacular numbers of birds. Currently there are huge numbers of Wigeon, Black-Tailed Godwits (photo showing one in non-breeding plumage) and Brent Geese, the latter carrying out spectacular fly pasts periodically throughout the day.
Also on the numerous side come late afternoon were the Starlings, making one wonder whether Frampton might be heading for a bit of a mumuration this winter. Other birds of note included a kingfisher, a yellow wagtail, a couple of Marsh Harriers and a female sparrow hawk which did its damndest to bring down a Ruff but fortunately for the waders, failed in the attempt.
Besides the birds, the warmth brought out a lot of dragonflies which, while the majority were Common Darters, it was pleasing to see a Southern Hawker still around.
(Both photos taken using Panasonic Lumix TZ10)