What have you seen

Hey Blue,

They are pretty rare, never got a photo of one before.  This was about 50 feet away and doesn't seem to be too bothered by people standing around.  One guy said it landed about 10 feet from him and started to feed.

We are not bird watchers as such, but always enjoy watching birds from our caravan window.

We've been at the New England Bay site for 15 nights, and have seen the most fabulous bird on 2 occasions, which due to it's very bright coloured plumage, thought it must be a tropical bird which has escaped from somewhere!  

The warden has just told us that it is a Golden Pheasant, which he said is very rare.  It seems to 'live' in the gorse bushes.  We've tried to take a picture, but it's too quick hopping across our pitch!

We are on a site in the Aveyron area  and yesterday on a ride round the area we stopped near some wind turbines quite high up and there huge numbers of buzzards and kestrels flying and hovering about 200 metres from the turbines no bothered by the turbines going round or the noise, we then went to Lac de Paraloup which is a large lake and just about to get out of car and Oh said look above you and flying around was a Golden Eagle wow and very low but too quick for photo shot but also again a lot of buzzards but the eagle was my first time of seeing it in the wild stayed awhile just gliding about on the thermals so it made my day, have had a few warblers behind caravan but moving about a bit quick for me to see and check book, we have a tawny owl that starts hooting before it gets dark just started now, yesterday also saw a lesser spotted woodpecker again a first for me.

Enjoy your wildlife where ever you are.

Weather here could be better like UK changeable. 

Lynnruby - wouldn't have thought photoing a Golden Pheasant too difficult as they are a pretty big bird but do keep trying.  Plenty of birds around the lighthouse south of you.  

Great spot Redkite, we travelled to Scotland to see, amongst others, Golden Eagles, didn't see any.

As I said, we are not birdwatchers, so we don't spend our time looking for birds (with a camera at the ready!)  We just happened to spot the Golden Pheasant crossing our pitch a couple of times.

Leaving here tomorrow, so probably won't see him again.  Yes, there are plenty of birds around the Mull of Galloway.  We've been coming to this area for 3 decades, but this is the first time we've seen a Golden Pheasant!! 

I see that Yellow Browed Warblers are now about.  None reported here yet but some at Spurn point

Lots of Butterflies out today along the Llangollen Canal, Red Admirals, Painted Lady, Large and Green-veined Whites, Speckled Wood and a beautiful Comma. The Swallows are starting to gather on the wires & bare trees, time for them to set off to the South can't be too far away. 

Minsmere yesterday, plenty about but didn't see the Citrine Wagtail.

Juvenile Green finches on the feeders in the garden, haven't seen any for a couple of years so lets hop it indicates a change in the fortunes

OP

Not sure if your interest stretches beyond bird pics, but just looked at photos on flickr by Alan Chard who is local to me. He has taken some very good pics of butterflies and dragonflies using his 100/400 lens, some with a 1.4 converter.

I took some at minsmere last month of the wasps that lay eggs in bees, and they came out really well, unfortunately they were the ones I managed to delete from my records.

The lens will focus at about 5 foot which on full mag gives a good size image of a wasp.

Unfortunately my DSLR is in for repair so just using my bridge camera