Paul's Blog - All comments and views are my own,

We have been house hunting today in Wales, with little success, as for the next few days I am away on an European Protected Species (EPS) surveying course in Exeter so no blog until Wednesday I guess.

This morning was looking like a good time to do a spot of birding, ok I go birding every week!!! I went down to Slimbridge WWT, and was in the hides by 08:10hrs, when I went to the Robbie Garnett hide there was nothing to note within seconds a chap in the hide asked "is that a phalarope", a quick scan saw the unmistakable spinning action of a small bird on the water, a female Red Necked Phalarope, I managed a few seconds of video and a dodgy photo before the bird was chased off, now how do I upload the video onto my blog? Mmmm no idea so instead here's a dodgy photo, you can view the video on my Facebook page. Later in the morning I joined one of the twice daily Landrover safaris to parts of Slimbridge that usually only the staff visit, we had great views of Hobbies and  breeding Redshank, plus a female Common Blue butterfly but very few dragonflies as it was cool and windy.

Today I went out to Lackham College near Chippenham to help one of the North Wiltshire Ringing Group team to ring seven Nuthatch nestlings, it was great to see these birds using a nest box within 30ft of the kitchen window, sorry no photo? I forgot to take one. I did a spot of "weeding" this afternoon in the gravel court yard area of the garden and I pulled out this.. . nature is amazing, a Hazel seedling still with the seed nut attached.

CES 3 Today saw the team at the Swindon Lagoons nature reserve for the third of this years Constant Effort Site ringing session. We arrived on site for 04:30hrs, having set and secured most of the nets on Saturday evening, with clear skies it was already light and the birds were getting into the dawn chorus. As at the same session last year it was fairly quiet, with 41  new birds ringed another 33 or so "retraps", including a Sedge Warbler which had been ringed by a ringer outside our group. There were two juvenile Robins ringed they really are stunning birds, the adults we are all familiar with  their red breasts but these youngsters are special   It wasn't all birds as we had two moth traps set, quite a collection of commoner species but three Poplar Hawk moths stole the show The site is pretty good for damselflies and dragonflies, this normally evasive Azure Blue gave itself up easily today, the distinguishing feature of this speci

This morning the weather was definitely more spring like, just as well as the second visits to the nest boxes that I am monitoring in the Upper Thames Valley was due. I checked 39 boxes over two sites and found that there was a single Tree Sparrow ready to be ringed along with 9 Blue Tits and 7 Great Tits, there are  9 boxes holding very small chicks or eggs so they will need visiting in about 10 days time. Sadly one box of 7 Blue Tits failed with all the young dead in the nest, the box was very wet inside which didn't help. The weather really improved during the day and there were Blackcaps, Whitethroats, Yellowhammers all in full song. I have left it too late to ring the Great Tits in the box in my garden, they are almost ready to fledge.

A blustery morning saw me at Slimbridge WWT,  34 Avocets on site including a colour ringed bird prospecting for nest site on the Rushy pen, apparently this bird was seen in the Cardiff area over the weekend. Of note on a fast rising tide were 45 Dunlin, 19 Ringed Plover 3 Curlew. My main purpose of the visit was to collect the digi-scoping kit, for my HTC One mobile phone, which I had ordered in, I am impressed by its simplicity and also at first attempt the difference it makes compared to hand holding the phone to the telescope eye piece. As they say practise makes perfect!

With the weather being quite pants for most of the day not a lot to report, I have however been working on a design for business cards. I'm fairly happy with the design and the photo is one I took yesterday, so that was quite timely.   I would have got to this stage quicker had I used this photograph and not the other one I took, which upon closer scrutiny had the eye quite out of focus!!!!! (wish I'd seen that sooner).