More than sixty years ago when I was learning about bird-watching from my father he used to mention this tiny bird which he called a Golden-Crested Wren. At the time my Observers Book of Birds made no mention of this bird and it was some years later when I had a more detailed bird-book that I discovered that the bird he praised so much was in fact a Goldcrest. It is our smallest bird and builds a delicate nest hanging under pine branches which it lines with feathers. It is a very rare moment to encounter Goldcrests lining their nests with feathers but a few weeks ago I was lucky and took some photos of this seldom seen event. Click here

After weeks of entries from Scotland and Spitsbergen it is good to get back to the local scene and the Pennines.
In the last decade Dippers are regularly breeding through into July, something that was unheard of in the past. It would be nice to think this late breeding was second broods but that may not necessarily be so. With flooding more regular these days it may well be that these late breeding attempts are in fact replacements for earlier lost nests. Click here
Over the garden on the 11th were a pair of Buzzards with two of this years young. Along the local canal was the first Kingfisher of late summer.

This weeks blog photo is of a female Hen Harrier returning to her nest with nesting material and is my favourite photo from my work this year and coincides with today’s National Hen Harrier day. I attended the Bowland meeting which re-iterated the appalling fact that only one pair of Hen Harriers this year nested on an English Grouse moor and reared just one young. Conservative estimates state that there should be at least 300 pairs nesting in England. The reason for the shortfall is that they have all been shot by gamekeepers to increase the number of Red Grouse available to be shot by the landowners clients who can pay as much as £5000 per gun for a days shooting.
DEFRA and ENGLISH NATURE have chosen to ignore this persecution and Mark Avery has started a National Petition to ban driven Grouse moors in an attempt to stop the persecution of Hen Harriers.
I would urge all readers of my blog to sign this petition on and check his web-site for more detailed information as to what is happening on our local Grouse moors. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/125003

The gallery this week contains the photos taken in Speyside last week and includes a young Mountain Hare. Click here

I have always wanted to film Ospreys catching fish in the Scottish lochs and a short visit to Speyside last week provided the perfect opportunity. The only problem is that you have to be in a hide overlooking the feeding loch before the Ospreys arrive and that meant before 5.00am!
It is absolute pot luck as to how many come to feed and of course you have no control over the weather. On both mornings the Ospreys performed magnificently with eight present on the first day and nine on the second in-between the time of 5am to 6am. Unfortunately the light was so poor that I was taking pictures at ISO6400 and subsequently most of those photos have been deleted! However, on both mornings two Ospreys fed after 7.00am when I was able to take better quality photos. Click here
During our visit to Speyside there were many other forms of wildlife to be seen and some of those will be shown in next weeks gallery.

The significance of our finding a female Polar Bear on the Spitsbergen ice with three cubs did not seem that remarkable until the ships captain’s address at the end of the cruise. He told us that in twenty three years of guiding his ship through the summer pack-ice he had never seen a female Polar Bear with three cubs!! It was certainly a once in a lifetime encounter for us and whilst we only had minutes to capture the event as our ship sailed past I managed to obtain enough photos to record the event. Apparently the female Polar Bear regularly gives birth to triplets in her underground winter den but three seldom survive the harsh conditions when they emerge in March into the Arctic environment. click here.

I have never classed myself as a whale fanatic but all that changed on the Spitsbergen cruise when we twice encountered Blue Whales – the largest creature ever seen on Earth! At more than thirty metres long and coming close to the boat it was an incredible experience to watch them blowing and breaching unconcerned by our presence.This weeks gallery includes photos of the Blue Whales and some of the birds that we encountered close to the front of a glacier. click here