Erik Paterson

October 22nd 2009 - 'A Lifer or Two!'

 Chilly morning today, but quite sunny.  I decided to go out and get a bit of field herping in, it's October though and i'm in Scotland - nothing cold blooded would be outside in it's right mind!  There was plenty of Bird life though so I decided to have a go at filming some of them, I was an amateur Ornithologist once afterall...

Bit rusty to start off with I must say, i'm used to staring at the ground looking for frogs, suddenly there were trees and skies and everything! lol

 So I headed down to Langland's Moss towards one of the 'Rotten Calders' many meanders and was about to set up my tripod when what do I hear?  The familiar sound of a Buzzard calling overhead, not all too common to see Buzzards on the outskirts of East Kilbride but I wasn't about to argue with it huh?  The chap landed on top of a telephone pole so I adjusted my position in the hopes to get a good bit of footage, and I did, about 5 seconds of it and he was off.  He and a second Buzzard did continue to hover around over the Langlands Industrial Estate so I managed to get some (very) shaky footage of that.

 Shortly after, I decided to move on in hopes to spot some of the smaller birds I often see in Spring & Summer, Warblers and Blue Tits etc.  Should have realized though that the Buzzards had scared a lot of the other birds in to hiding.  I continued to follow the path along where I came accross a bright red, hairy Caterpillar, quite a nice looking beast although I wouldn't touch him!

 Stopped by the Calder and played about with my tripod trying to get some shots of the area when I noticed 2 'Blackbirds' fighting in the trees, the backlight made it all look like silhouettes though.  Never mind, I decided to climb on up and try to get a better look when out from beside me flew 2 Great Spotted Woodpeckers, what a thrill, I had never seen a real life Woodpecker before let alone two, should have thought they would have been around the more dense woodland of Calderglen but I was still so happy, I quickly set up my tripod and tried to get photographs but these Birds are so much smaller than I had expected, and really very fast too, unfortunately, they dissapeared throughout the small group of trees and I never got any photographs.

 It was shortly after this that I got the call to go home, annoyingly as I was leaving not only did I spot a little Bullfinch but one of the Woodpeckers, I toyed with the idea of hanging around but by this time I was knackered from all the climbing etc so called it a day.  So there you go, my first blog post about the first time I saw a Woodpecker.

 Here is the Video from the Day

 - Erik