It has been a long time since I last posted, and since then I have finished my GCSEs, had my sixteenth birthday and enjoyed two weeks in Cornwall. Unlike last year, this year's trip to Cornwall brought no new birds, but I saw large numbers of choughs and literally tens of thousands of Manx shearwaters. The highlight was definitely the bottlenose dolphins, pods of which I saw four times during the trip, including one group of 30 at Pendeen Watch.
Then, this morning, I had an incredible surprise. I first spotted what I thought to simply be a common buzzard, but decided to look at it through my binoculars any way, hoping that somehow it would turn out be something more rare, but certainly expecting nothing. Then, to my shock, I realised that the bird was no common buzzard, but a honey-buzzard! It is my first new British species seen from our garden in Hilfield ever, and certainly the rarest. Presumably it is the high pressure which caused it to drift over from wherever its breeding grounds are. What a bird to see from the garden!
Honey-buzzard, Hilfield, 14th July 2013
On top of that, I realised I had not made a blog post about my visit to Acres Down on the 17th June. Almost as soon as we arrived, a goshawk- my first in Britain and a strikingly large and broad species- flew over our heads and a short time later, we discovered a male redstart feeding its youngster, allowing superb views of this magnificent bird, combining to create a superb half an hour detour on the way back to Hilfield.
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