Pretty birdies

The better part of valour

2011-09-17T18:26:00.000+01:00

This morning, I made a super-sophisticated phone-scoping adaptor out of super-secret parts and materials.

So this afternoon I took it out for some scientific trials.

Control photo. Phone camera unenhanced at normal zoom.

DSLR with lens at maximum 300mm

Phone taken using super-sophisticated phone scoping attachment device.

Basically, I have managed to convert my phone into an 8mp camera with 38x magnification. There's more depth of field in a puddle and the lens quality is on a par with a stretched piece of clingfilm, but for distant record shots this is going to be hard to beat.

The log book said someone had seen a Common Redstart over by the target numbers so I headed clockwise and stopped by the Marshland Discovery hide for a bit, where I took lots of bad shots of a Little Grebe with my new toy. I also got some video which I'll post when I can be bothered to wait half an hour for it to upload, but the Samsung does HD video so I'm hoping it might come out quite well.

Came out of the hide and looked up to see this:

It was looking worryingly like it was getting closer, so I beat a hasty retreat to the visitors' centre, got myself a cup of tea and waited to see if we were going to get wet. Five minutes later, the view from the window was a bit like this:

Hung around for a while watching the river with tea in hand, but nothing interesting turned up. I say that - no interesting birds turned up. These were quite interesting:

It's probably a good thing I don't live on the river, much as I'd love to. I like boats, I know what my nerdy tendencies are like and it wouldn't be too difficult to turn into a ship-spotter. Well, look who I'm blogging to, I don't exactly need to justify myself on that score. But I like to keep up some pretence of coolness, if only to myself.

Two Tree Island

2011-09-11T12:17:00.000+01:00

In the last week I've had two separate people tell me that they're going on photography trips over this weekend, one to Oxford and one, a little more exotic, to Florence. When I found that the rugby was over on Saturday (if you watched the game you'll know that it couldn't be over quick enough) and that I hadn't actually planned anything else for my day, I took inspiration from these tales of adventure, packed up the camera and, being an Essex boy, headed over to Two Tree Island. And the best thing about Two Tree Island it that as well as looking like this:

And having lots of these to take pictures of:

You also get a few of these to watch:

For those who don't know, Two Tree at low tide is a wader magnet. Waders are one of the many weak areas among my bird identification skills, so the Collins and the scope made the trip as well. I'm heading up to Norfolk for a long weekend in a few weeks time and I need to get in practice.

I didn't make it as far as the hide before the promise of rain turned me back, but there was a flock of about a hundred Oystercatcher feeding on the mudflats with half a dozen each of Redshank and Blackwits and a single Curlew mooching about.

Mystery bird of the day was very Grey and very Plover-shaped, but with a strong patch of golden colour on the lower part of the breast. The Collins didn't help much here as there's no indication that Golden Plovers turn Grey in winter, though I know for a fact that they do - it's just a question of how grey. The thing was planted firmly on the deck, so no flight views to clinch it. I do however have a bad phonescoped picture. The gold doesn't really show up - it's difficult to pick it out from the compression artefacts - but see what you can make of it:

I'm calling it as Golden, but feel free to argue - I'd quite like to be wrong on this one.

With actual birds in. Well, one bird.

2011-08-31T00:54:00.010+01:00

I'm off work for a few days, so I made constructive use of the time today to continue to work on my active and healthy lifestyle.

Birdwise all was fairly quiet. There was lots out there I'm sure, but it was all hiding in the long grass. I got very lucky and chanced on half a dozen or so Snipe that decided to break cover for the couple of seconds my scope was on their particular patch of reeds, but on the bird front really the reserve was very quiet. A solitary Black Tailed Godwit was conspicuous by its presence.

Wader passage.

Everything else.

Today was all about two things for me. First of all, my first chance at a phone scope with my shiny new Galaxy S II. Depressingly, this is actually far better than the attempt with my DSLR, even when mounted on a tripod using liveview to focus:

The best bit though was spending 10 minutes standing still while the bushes rustled and being rewarded with this:

Go on, ask what the difference between a Weasel and a Stoat is. Dare you.

There were a couple of Weasels showing their faces in the same spot today - the bridge between the forested area and the Ken Barret hide - and I'd encourage anyone to stop for 5 minutes and see if they come out to play. Fantastic stuff.

Leave of absence

2011-08-28T11:03:00.000+01:00

I'll keep this short. Those who follow my inanity on Twitter will already know.

You may have noticed that over the last few months I have been absent from the blogging scene, blaming things such as wedding planning for not watching any birds.

Two weeks ago I broke up with my fiancée. The wedding is no longer happening, and so that particular excuse is now invalid. However, I have gained a whole bunch of others in the process. It's been hard - it still is hard - but we're working through it.

Seeing as this is Blogger and not Livejournal I'm allowed to leave it there. If you bump into me round Rainham, just don't ask how the wedding planning is going.

There are two things that, in my mind, encapsulate the quality of the relationship over the years.

One is that, on the Sunday before I drove her back to her flat for the final time, the last thing we did together was to go for a walk around Rainham Marshes, where I saw a few things I'd never really managed to see properly before. All photos taken with the phone camera:

Common Lizards sunbathing on the boardwalk.

Cinnebar moth caterpillar.

Wasp Spider. Extremely cool.

The second thing is that on the Friday night, having gone through a week of emotional nightmare and turbulence, we poured a drink, curled up on the sofa and laughed our arses off at this:

It mentions ducks. It's a bit relevant to a bird blog.

I think that fact is a fitting tribute.

Comments are disabled.

On the banality of Birdforum and the ticking of Twitchers

2011-07-14T21:57:00.006+01:00

One of the very few advantages of not having any time for serious birding is that misidentified megas suddenly become much less important. I wouldn't have got there anyway, and having misidentified plenty in my time I find it difficult to get excited.

Birdforum apparently doesn't have that problem.

I think if I was talking to someone new who was thinking of getting into the hobby, I would have to advise them to avoid the place, because it's far more likely to drive them away than fuel their interest. My experience has been that the blogging community is, as a rule, a much friendlier place to start out. Which is a shame, because a good community forum would be invaluable to the hobby. Maybe with some kind of rule banning all traces of ego.

*le sigh*

Anyway, while I haven't been having huge amounts of success on the bird front lately, I did manage to tick Tom Mckinney near Spitalfield Market in his altar-ego as a Guitarist and musician (the two are not necessarily always the same thing).

You will also note that in the background there is a goat on a box. This is not relevant.

Since I have no recent pictures of birds, have some Electric Counterpoint instead. Special thanks should also go to Steve Reich for writing it, and foul language to Gibson for making the SG very nice but far too expensive.

Why video done badly is better than still photos done badly

2011-06-01T00:08:00.001+01:00

Lately I have been taking videos of birds on my phone. They don't work so well, but nevertheless I've been persisting. Photos taken on phone cameras are utterly useless for most bird photography, the world being very big and birds being very small and inclined to remain very far away, but the video mode allows an attempt at capturing sound and, equally importantly for Id purposes, jizz. When you're birding in Central London distance becomes less of an issue as, like the people, the birds have had to learn to accept a bit less personal space and in most cases are quite bold. Same applies when you're trying to hold the phone still over the eyepiece of a spotting scope in strong winds on a seawall; distance is reduced, clarity is the real problem. Video reduces the dependence on a sharp image. As promised a week or two ago, here's a video taken from the same session as that still of the all white gull:

Just as washed out and just as useless as a piece of art, but it's much easier to make the call that this is probably just a normal Black Headed Gull having seen it standing there being unexciting and not very different structurally.

Again with the below, the video itself is rubbish. The bird is a blurry brown splodge at the bottom of the screen, and you only know it's there because it hops up and down a couple of times in a way that leaves don't tend to, but listen to that alarm call and look at the way it flits about like a mad thing. You know it's a Wren:

Incidentally, and to prevent flaming in the comments, it was alarm calling at a cat sleeping on the pavement long before I got there, and the tree overhangs the path so nothing in its right mind nests there.

And occasionally, just occasionally, the video comes out looking quite respectable. In a still on this camera the Egyptian Goslings below would be just so many distant unexceptional balls of grainy blur, but throw in moving pictures and some essence of the fluffy balls of cuteness that they actually were is retained. Besides of which, seeing Egyptian Geese on the Thames is quite fun, not something I do every day and worthy of record.

So grainy, blurry, poorly-recorded videos of the world, I salute you! You are another useful tool in a birder's armoury.

And of course when you get bored of birds, you can use it to record awesome covers of popular songs in your local pub.

No this isn't my band. I only wish we'd come up with this arrangement first.

Be careful what you wish of the birding gods

2011-05-22T15:17:00.007+01:00

A salutary lesson for us all will follow.

A couple of free hours became a quick trip to Rainham Marshes to see what the wind had turned up. THE PLAN was a walk round the reserve to the Target Pools to look for gulls and waders, and then to dive out of the reserve at the sea wall gate to look for gulls and waders from the river path. And this is largely what happened.

The first thing to distract from THE PLAN was a presence of a new hide within spitting distance of the Visitor's centre. While it's very pretty I don't see that it adds anything you can't already get more effetively by looking out out of the visitor centre window. Still, when winter comes it'll be an excellent place from which to see endless hordes of Wigeon, and that's a reasonable end in itself.

For now, the air was full of Swifts and Martins and nothing else was visible.

A reasonable summation of the view from the new hide. Note the clear blue and cloudless sky, it will become relevant.

After this I did make it most of the way round to the Target Pools with very little distraction only to find that they were not, in fact, Target Pools. They were Target Dry-muds-covered-in-Cows. Disappointing, and entirely gull/wader-free. I took 15 minutes to sit in the newish Butts hide and look out in the opposite direction, but other than the omnipresent Swifts and Sand Martins there was very little to do except brush up on female Gadwall vs. juv Gadwall ID features and marvel at a single Lapwing staring into space.

MISTAKE: Thinking "Well that was a disappointment, where's all the water gone? This place is a bit rubbish without water."

A hundred yards short of the sea-wall exit the birding gods in their Wisdom declared "So the jumped up little tit wants water does he? We'll give him water." Out of nowhere came the most intense two minutes of rain I've seen in months, sweeping across the reserve from the direction of the river. I could have sworn that in places it was actually hail. This left me with a decision - Back to the Butts hide, onward to the Marshland Discovery hide, or take my chances by leaving the reserve - trapping myself outside on the sea-wall - and looking for a handy tree. I went for the tree.

"And lo I was repentant, seeing the error of my ways, and the birding gods are kind and forgiving gods and did stop the rain 10 seconds later, and did give their unworthy subject a Whitethroat as a sign of their forgiveness."
Gospel of a repentant birder Ch12:v86

Being soaked already (and having fortified myself before the circuit with a mug of tea and a bacon sandwich anyway) I stopped caring about rainclouds after that and did some gull sifting from the river walk. Lots of Black Headed gulls, and one Black Headed sized pure white gull, which was sitting with the BH flock, and which I'm fairly confident was just a leucistic Black Headed although it had me going for a good couple of minutes. The wind made phonescoping near-impossible, but I had a go at a video. I'll put that up in a separate post once I've edited it down to something approaching identifiable. In the meantime, here's a highly informative photo:

It's the one in the middle.

I am a Dorset convert - Day 2, Friday 13th May

2011-05-16T23:14:00.009+01:00

Friday was a good day. It involved cameras, Lepidoptera and Puffins.

We took a long walk along Nine Barrow Down to Corfe Castle, encountering many interesting and varied butterfly species, along with a very showy Stonechat (is there any other kind) and some fairly certain Raven silhouettes.

Day flying moth - Cinnabar.

Not sure what moth species this is yet, but it's out for question. I reckon some kind of Heath. Answers in the comments if you've got them please.

Adonis Blue - National scarcity, but locally abundant. This is a female.

My first ever Green Hairstreak! One of the few shots that didn't over-expose and wash out the colours.

Looked like a Raven. Sounded like a Raven. Probably was a Raven.

Poser.

Just when you thought photo opportunities didn't get any better, a Skylark took pity on my attempts at getting it in flight and landed on a bush on the downs. This is really quite unusual, and definitely warrants a blurry photo of its own.

Naturally, folllowing the 4 mile walk we rehydrated with a pint and refuelled with pub grub. If you go to the Greyhound Inn in Corfe be sure they get your order right, because of the 4 people in our group 3 were served the wrong main. On the plus side, the Jackdaws were entertaining, and we had an awesome Blackbird picking around the leftovers of the other diners.

Theeze are not the fudz u r looking for. Leeve them for uz.

Haz nom?

After heading back to Swanage via some non-bird related steam train adventures, Friday evening was boat trip evening, and yet another life tick. It was the very last bird we found, but eventually we bagged ourselves a Puffin.

While Day 3 was fun, not much bird-related was captured on film, though we did spend a fair few hours chasing a Wheatear around Portland Bill (which turned out to be about 4 Wheatears) but that was it for birds.

Bascally, what I've taken out of this weekend is that it's really worth doing a few trips out to see something different. I've been a jaded inland birder for most of this year, and seawatching has been a bit like balm. If I can fit it in around Wedding planning maybe Dungeness is on the cards in the next few weeks.

I am a Dorset convert - Day 1, Thursday 12th May

2011-05-15T23:19:00.012+01:00

Well where do I start?

As you may have read elsewhere, I've just spent 4ish days over in Dorset with P4rus and our respective wimminz. If I tell you those 4 days resulted in 5 gigs of photos, you will probably get scared. Don't worry, I have already deleted half of them. I will break the trip into a post for each day, because otherwise it will get ridiculous.

The weekend started on Wednesday evening at the Shepherds Bush Empire watching amazing folk music courtesy of Spiers and Boden + guests. This is not bird related, but is awesome and worth plugging.

Thursday morning/early afternoon was the long drive down to Swanage, and the first thing we did was take a quick walk along the coast at Durlston. First thing to note is that Swanage is GREEN, STUNNING and FULL OF LARGE HILLS.

This simple hour spent walking along some cliffs allowed me to fill some very embarrassing seabird related holes in my life-list.

Guillemots and Razorbill doing 'obviously different'.

Shag in flight. Think I may have misidentified one of these as a Cormorant once, but it's nice to be 100% and able to tick it at last.

It also gave the chance to take grainy pictures of other awesome cliff-dwelling birds:

What is is that makes Fulmars so much better than Gulls? It's a mystery. Awesome though.

In Essex the Peregrine's default state of being is apparently either 'Lazy' or 'Stuffed', so it was great to see one actually get off its feathery arse and fly around a bit. Now, having said that, here's a picture of that bird sitting on its arse.

After getting food we headed out for an evening jaunt around the heathland to see hear some Nightjars, which was fun, if less productive than hoped. Got another life tick though as the rear end of a Dartford Warbler disappeared into a Gorse bush. This is the standard view of Dartford Warbler and entirely tickable. Some speculate that they do not in fact have faces, and that those featured in bird guides are mere extrapolations based on experience and guesswork. I can't prove them wrong.

As always, once we'd given up and started driving back the bird of the evening appeared in the headlights and sat still for just long enough for a few attempts at extreme low-light photography. First Whinchat I've seen this year too.

Your choice of horribly underexposed or horribly overexposed and blurry. Never let it be said that this blog doesn't cater to all tastes.

The next day consisted of about half a million identical macro shots of butterflies. Most of this evening has been spent winnowing them to one or two shots per butterfly. All that and more to look forward to in day 2.

I aten't dead - part deux + new work patch

2011-04-19T21:46:00.012+01:00

Did I mention that blogging might be a bit sporadic over the next few months? Probably not. The reasons are threefold:

I am getting married in September. Organising this sucks up hours that would have been used for both blogging and birding.
I have started a new job, where I have to work a bit harder than I did at the old one and the patch isn't as productive (though it has thrown up a surprise or two).
I am trying to fit in some NEW and HEALTHY activities that burn a few more calories than your average after-work birdwatching walk. Birdwatching is difficult when you're running round the streets with earphones plugged in and trying not to die. It also makes photography tricky.

But I think we're overdue a quick tour of the new work patch.

I'm just in front of Old Spitalfield Market, and amazingly I have quite a few trees and bushes sitting right outside the back of my building. for the first few weeks I even had a window seat which gave some fantastic views of a couple of Blue Tits gathering food from under the leaves (must be nesting somewhere nearby). Nothing that's really big enough for drop-in warblers, but regular Wood Pigeons and Blackbirds and the odd vagrant tit turns up.

The view to the North.

And the view to the South. Yay you can see the giant phallus.

Pretty flowers.

The real treat was discovered during a fire alarm in the second week. My gather point when we evacuate is here:

Which, when it's not full of evacuees, looks like this:

Warning: Photo may have been offensively oversaturated to emphasise the sheer amount of green.

Look at it! Trees, loads of bushes, benches for sitting on while you enjoy the trees and bushes, amazing. I'd added Wren to the patch list without even trying within about 10 seconds of turning up. If I was a Blackcap flying over Liverpool Street I'd be thinking "WTF? That looks awesome!" and making a beeline for it.

Anyway, I've got some high hopes for this patch during spring time if I manage to get out and watch it for a decent amount of time. If we get a decent fall in London, I'm in with a fighting chance.

These things scare me slightly though.

Spring weather, no birds.

2011-03-20T22:52:00.006Z

Yesterday was too nice a day to spend the whole of it indoors, so I wandered over to Rainham for some spring migrant goodness. Fat chance. Lots of gulls (LOTS of gulls), lots of common British birds (nice views of a Dunnock in the Cordite store) and absolutely no Wheatears, Sand Martins or Little Ringed Plovers.

However, while traversing the Northern Boardwalk I laid eyes on my first ever Water Rail. It's on the life list because I've heard them before and they're pretty unmistakable, but yesterday I caught a glimpse of a brownish streaked back attached to a bright red bill climbing under a big pile of reeds. Tried to follow it, but no further showings. Still, w00t.

The birds were outclassed yesterday by the sheer pleasantness of the walk. How long has it been since it was warm enough to go for a stroll in thin sleeves on a Saturday and not worry about rain cutting short your exercise? Rainham was looking particularly stunning in the sun. And I got a tea and a sausage sandwich. Win.

Can you tell what it is yet?

2011-03-19T11:55:00.003Z

Just a quick one, because it's too nice a day to waste indoors, but my first ever tablet arrived in the post this morning and I had to have a quick play. First ever attempt at a sketch (taken from the picture on the calender in front of me):

That was fun. You'll probably be seeing a lot more of this...

New patch, less birds, more oddness

2011-03-17T19:36:00.005Z

I was never really expecting an area two minutes walk from London Liverpool Street to be an improvement on Tower Bridge, and it isn't. Five work days in and the office list stands at 2 - the ubiquitous feral pigeons and a single Herring Gull dive-bombing tourists. I have seen a small brown bird land in one of the small brown trees planted in the area. It was Sparrow/Robin/Dunnock/Goldfinch/[Insert Rare Warbler Here] sized and shaped, which probably tells you just how good a view I got as it hid behind branches and flitted from tree to tree. Looks like I'll be fighting for every morsel on this patch.

Tuesday was interesting though. Got a very unusual bird. Parus has been trying to convince me that it dazed itself by flying into a building which is why it's not flying and that it's alright to tick it. I have my own personal theory that Carluccios like their ingredients particularly fresh. Either way, it drew quite a crowd.

The passing orchestra was a stroke of luck

No apologies for the soundtrack. Not only is Night on the Bare Mountain an excellent piece of music, the alternative was some woman whinging about how they should call the RSPCA and how it's pathetic that they're trying to catch it themselves (incidentally they HAD called the RSPCA, as she would have known if she'd bothered to ask, and had been told if the bird wasn't injured they wouldn't turn up). It's this kind of randomness that makes Central London worth the hassle.

Oh, and this kind of randomness.

Flying visit

2011-03-13T22:43:00.005Z

Managed to drag my mum out for a quick three quarters of an hour round Rainham yesterday on the way back from the roundabout-fest which is Thurrock retail park - clockwise through the reeds and then up onto the seawall and back to the visitor's centre. On the one hand it was a bit disappointing as the visitor book was promising quite a bird-heavy day and I didn't have my scope. On the other hand, it was nice to have a reason to stop and look at things I'd normally just gloss over (pfft, not another Shoveler...) and I got to be the guide for once rather than the guided.

The one and only highlight, apart from a pleasant walk round a nice green space, was catching a Skylark descending from its song flight and into one of the fields. I like Skylarks.

So after several months away, that's two Rainham visits on consecutive weekends. Here's hoping for a third next week.

In non-bird news, I started a new job on Friday doing similar-but-not-quite-identical project related things for the same employer. I actually have to wear a suit, rather than the pseudo-smart business casual I got away with in the IT department. But it does mean I've moved away from Tower Bridge, and therefore have officially lost my work patch. Fortunately I hear a fellow birder may be picking up the reins in a few weeks time, so there should still be someone keeping an eye on all the passage waders terns passerines gulls, but you should probably expect local rarities to appear pretty much solidly for the intervening few weeks.

Was that seriously my first visit to Rainham this year?

2011-03-06T23:45:00.004Z

I think it was. Bloody hell. Well I've broken the seal now, so I'll be back every few weekends from here on.

Ended up going for a quickish spin round the reserve with, you guessed it, the fiancée this afternoon. Seem to be spending a lot of time with her lately. Can't think why. Good thing she likes long walks in the country.

Bumped unexpectedly into a sweary local birder who was getting cold outside the visitors' centre looking for some Goldeneye that turned out to be round the corner about half a mile upriver. He caught up with them eventually. In the meantime we settled in with tea, bacon/sausage sandwich and cake. Try the homemade blueberry cake, it is NOM.

Started by heading clockwise round to the new hide, with fiancée picking up a Water Vole on the way. A Kestrel got me all excited by being a distant and high-altitude bird of prey around the area the Hen Harrier was last seen yesterday, but once I actually got the bins on it it was not to be. We sat and picked through gulls and waders for a while. Loads of Black Headed, a few Common and some indeterminate young brown ones which I really will learn to tell apart some day. Waders were a bit more interesting. The usual hundreds of Lapwing, three or four sleepy Redshank, a single Ruff wandering up and down and a Knot doing much the same. True counts were made difficult by a regular and unexplained shuffling of the deck as everything went up and came back down again thirty seconds later. I suspect they knew everyone was looking for the Hen Harrier and wanted to keep us on our toes. A couple of hundred Wigeon were grazing on the grassland, but the smartest Wildfowl out there was a male Pintail dipping for food.

Managed to get round the north reedbeds without hearing a single Cetti's, and apart from another flock of 15 or so Redshank during a quick stop in the Ken Barrett hide there wasn't much else that was exceptional out there. We walked back past the forest feeder and I was surprised by both the Bumble Bee, which I thought was early, and the two Redwing, which I thought were late, so I'm not convinced that spring is here quite yet. Getting very close though.

Nice to get out there and give the scope a run out again. Even if I'd taken the camera you wouldn't have got much out of today, it was all a bit distant. So I'm going to shamelessly steal someone else's.

Credits go to http://snuzzy.com

Riverside Walk Revisited

2011-02-27T10:29:00.003Z

Fiancée was doing singing things all yesterday daytime, which left me a couple of hours to kill constructively over in Hampshire. Seeing as I hadn't been there for a while, I went for a slow wander down the Liss Riverside Walk.

There I learned just how rusty my birdsong gets after a long winter of no singing. Robins and Blackbirds were easy to pick out, as were Wrens, but the million and one calls of the Great Tit started catching me out again, and I didn't recognise Treecreeper until I'd actually eyeballed one (or four actually, great views). The walk is a bit of a Passerine haven, although it was closed off before reaching the bridge and the route around was too muddy for me to brave it in trainers.

No mystery warblers to report, so spring hasn't quite reached here yet, but with reports of Martins and Wheatears starting to emerge I'm keeping a close eye on the skies.

And a close ear on xeno-canto.

Happy Accidents

2011-02-13T09:55:00.002Z

Had a very happy accident with a photo this morning. I opened one of my Waxwing RAWs in UFRaw (GIMP plugin), which I'd previously been using for some HDR stuff, so the levels were all set to overexpose. Took me a second or two to realise that it wasn't a watercolour (and I'm the one that took it!).

Will have to try this with some of the others...

On why I'm not year listing this year

2011-01-23T23:42:00.003Z

This year marks my second in the world of birding. This blog was born on the 12/01/2009 and once again I've completely missed its birthday.

And for both of those years I've kept a list of things I saw in that space of time. I've never experienced birding without the year list. In one sense it's a positive force - I'm making sure I get out and nail those Fieldfares in January - but it's only so I'm not left chasing them in December. Shouldn't I be getting out and seeing Fieldfares because Fieldfares are awesome?

Today I went out for a walk round Harrow Lodge Park, my local patch, with the fiancée. We fed the ducks and then we walked back along the stream along the edge of the park because we wanted to see some Grey Wagtails. Not because I hadn't seen them yet this year (which I hadn't, but shhh), but because Grey Wagtails cheer us up. So do Pied Wagtails, for all that they're common as dirt. And family flocks of Long Tailed Tits. It's a concept that's been swirling round my head for a couple of weeks now, but it needed the simple pleasure of today's walk combined with a bit of reflection on a recent post by a widely read blogger to form it into a coherent thought.

This year I'm not going to year list.

I'll keep the life list ticking over, but I'm not going to count the year up because I've got a feeling that, somewhere along the way, I missed the point of the hobby and started collecting Pokemon instead of watching birds. It's a strangely liberating feeling, and suddenly Blackbirds are fun again even in mid-January.

And for those who are still reading, now I've got that off my chest, there was a very suspicious looking Greylag durng that trip to Harrow Lodge today. It was on the main lake and had a big white patch above its bill. I didn't have the camera so have no photo evidence, but if you're in that neck of the woods during daylight hours and you know your White Fronted Goose from any other medium sized brown wildfowl, give it a sneaky glance. I'll be taking the ID guide next time I'm over there.

Waxwings!

2011-01-16T23:09:00.005Z

Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!

Waxwings!

Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!

Waxwings!

Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!Waxwings!

Location of Waxwings: Sainsbury's car park, Hornchurch.
Number of Waxwings: c50
Number of birders on scene: c20
Number of people in Sainsbury's car park saying to me 'What are those birds?': c7 (and cheerfully educated 10 seconds later)
Number of people in Sainsbury's car park saying to me 'Are those Starlings?1!!1?': 1 (I mean, really?)

I think I have a new favourite bird.

First dip of 2011 - and no it wasn't that stupid gull

2011-01-15T17:54:00.003Z

Seems anybody who is anybody is either blogging about seeing a stupid white headed gull or linking to the Punkbirder article on why you shouldn't bother going to look at the stupid white headed gull. I will be doing the latter. Now let's say no more about it.

Instead I spent this morning catching up on some odd jobs I've been putting off for ages, like reworking the photo gallery on a website I maintain for my choir. This is because I would rather sit indoors all morning drinking tea and repeatedly hitting 'ctrl+c' 'ctrl+v' than spend the ungodly hours of dawn standing next to a rubbish tip in a freezing wind. But we're saying no more about that.

This afternoon my utter sloth was rewarded with an excited call from Parus, who'd found a flock of Waxwings in Sainsbury's car park 10 minutes walk from me. I grabbed the camera and rushed down there but all to no avail, that ten minutes was long enough for them to scarper without a trace.

So I'm still a member of the #notseenawaxwingclub club, but I'm getting closer. And as I've said before, if you're going to dip do it five minutes from home. That way you just get the crushing disappointment of not seeing the bird, rather than the crushing disappointment of not seeing the bird AND the frustration of having needlessly wasted a tenner's worth of petrol on a round tip trip to wherever AND the keening despair of having to drive all the way back home through the mass of weekend drivers in Rainham whichever location you've driven to. It's not like they're a first for Britain or anything.

On the other hand, if I hadn't gone to Hornchurch, and if I hadn't been forced to mooch about in the local area looking for the disappeared Waxwing flock, I'd have missed out on this amazing natural encounter round the back of the Queen's theatre. I wonder if it will breed successfully given the high volume of pedestrian traffic and the utter lack of brine shrimp?

Isn't this better than gulls?

I shall monitor its progress with interest in the name of ornithology. Maybe I could get a grant?

Local patch vs. garden

2010-12-19T22:43:00.000Z

Today, for the first time in what feels like months, I left the house and wandered round for a few hours with the sole purpose of seeing what birds I could spot. It was fun and cold. But mainly fun. Anyway, with the boiler currently out of action the house isn't much better.

However, before I even set foot out the front door I had two overdue garden ticks and one mega. A flock of a dozen or so Goldfinches paid a visit to the trees over the back, and a Green Woodpecker flew past over the roofs of the houses behind mine.

Then, tick of ticks, a long billed wadery type was flushed by my dad wandering out into the garden. It whirred away with a zig-zag flight path, but since I was watching through a window I couldn't hear if it was calling or not. Obviously my first reaction was to text "FUCKING WOODCOCK" to Parus because that's what you get in your garden when it snows, right? But on reflection I'm starting to doubt that ID. Zig zag flight? OK, that's a possible, but my general impression was of whiteness underneath and brown on top, and it did seem smaller than I'd expect of Woodcock. I'm wondering whether it wasn't a Snipe. Either way it's a garden mega, and it was definitely gaining height as it passed over the pond (ornamental Koi, inherited with the house, useless as habitat so I won't even suggest that as an enabler for Snipe) so presumably it started on the deck. I don't currently have a garden list so it's not crucial, but this will be on my mind for weeks...

All that excitement set me up well for a walk round the patch, so it was a disappointing first couple of hours. Harrow Lodge Park is a dog-walker haven, and usually the only bit worth spending 5 minutes on is the main lake just in case any interesting wildfowl had arrived. They hadn't. But I do like Pochards, so it's never time wasted.

There were scattered Redwings all over Dagenham Chase, and I cleaned up on the winter Turdus by nailing a Fieldfare. Overall though, the Chase was empty of anything your average jaded patch-watcher would consider 'of interest'. That is until I reached the Slack. This is the bit of swampy grassland dedicated to birds, and to be honest I don't know why it's always the last stop on my circuit. Probably because if I did it first I'd just turn around and go home again. As always, the best bits were found round this area. I shall recite them in reverse order of excitement:

I saw some Lapwings. If you spend any kind of time at Rainham Marshes Lapwings are common and boring.
I had the pleasant experience of standing under a bush while a Long-tailed Tit flock passed through.
I saw an actual definite Snipe, in flight and on the ground. Incidentally it was at about this time that I started having serious doubts about my garden wader.
And last and most exciting of all, I self-found my first Firecrest. It's only the second I've seen, so this was very special. Naturally it was too fidgety and buried too deep in a bush for any attempt at a photo.

The utter lack of central heating at home diminished the pleasure of the walk somewhat as drying off wasn't particularly quick or pleasant, but at least the kettle still works. So currently I'm sitting at my desk wearing 3 layers of jumpers, drinking posh Mandarin Orchid tea and listening to the Star Wars soundtrack (Episode IV: 'A New Hope', I may have to switch it off before the cheesy medal ceremony bit). Mr Lethbridge reliably informs us all that it's going to get down to -8 tonight. Oh good.

Lapwings being boring and monotonous

The Slack, the birdiest bit of Dagenham Chase

A sign doing superfluous

What could be better than birding?

2010-12-16T22:14:00.005Z

Still not managed to get out, but for one weekend back in November at least I had good reason.

She still seems happy with the decision, so it's probably safe to put it online now.

Dawwwwwwww

And with any luck, next weekend you will finally get a post about BIRDS. I've probably missed the boat on the waxwings, but there's still time for a Hoopoe to drop in at Rainham before new year...

Skillz

2010-11-17T19:05:00.002Z

It appears Tom McKinney is back and in good form. Excellent.

http://birdingblogs.com/author/tommckinney

I aitn't dead

2010-11-14T22:58:00.002Z

Just restin'. Pinin' for the Fjords as it were.

The camera has been going out with me, but I've been taking boring pictures of buildings and things. Bird watching service will resume when I get my weekends back.

In the meantime, people who just want some pretty pictures can find them by either following this link, or by clicking the shiny new widget on the right hand side of this page.

Debut at Minsmere

2010-10-18T20:11:00.008+01:00

Two and a half weeks ago I went to Minsmere for the first time. I would like to start by saying that Minsmere is an amazing reserve - it has a bit of everything. We started the day shortly after first light surrounded by Bearded Tits. They were everywhere, and quite happily sitting out in the open showing off. Another bird removed from my BVD list.

Seriously, how often does this happen?

To be honest, I could have driven home straight after that and the day would have been a win, but a bit of Seawatching produced a large flock of Common Scoter, and a lone bird flying heavily which Parus is now convinced was the wandering King Eider. It might have been as well, serves us right for not researching better.

Ring Ouzel hunting didn't go so well, and a continental Blackbird fresh out of Scandanavia has the crowds on edge for a good 20 minutes as it refused to provide conclusive views. Eventually, we were inevitably disappointed.

Lifer for the day appeared in the shape of a Hen Harrier, and a big flock of almost-lifers gave me a moment's excitement before I was informed that in Suffolk they're untickable. Drat. Pictures below:

Stopped off at Abberton on the way back, which was covered with small brown wadey things. Picked up a large flock of very obvious Spotted Redshanks, was pointed at a Pectoral Sandpiper and a few Curlew Sands and saw my first Spoonbill of the year very distantly in a brief and uncharacteristic pause between sleeping and more sleeping.

On an unrelated note, we have had patchlist++ with a very bold Chaffinch hopping about under people's feet and ignoring the pigeons round Tower Bridge. This brings me up to a whopping 33 for the year. That's four up on last year already (I've had to remove 'Stock Dove' from last year's list because, let's face it, it was a feral pigeon), and I've got the rest of the winter to find an interesting gull among the hordes. Looks like the patch target will be going up again for next year.

Ingrebourne and the start of winter

2010-09-25T17:14:00.004+01:00

I'll skip the usual 'my blog hasn't been updated for 3 weeks because of...' rigmarole. You don't care. You want to know what I've seen, not why I've failed to see it.

Had a wander round Ingrebourne this afternoon in the sporadic Essex sunshine. Took the camera, but mostly photographed clouds. Plenty of signs of viz mig and impending winter among the birds. Had several groups of Martins fattening themselves up for the long trip home, a flock of about 40 Goldfinches flying bush to bush, and about 30 Teal in eclipse on the lake. Learned a new flight call when a Skylark passed overhead (and I picked up the skylark on flight style, which makes me happy). Also got a nice close view of a male Great Spot, who sat happily in his tree while I got unbelievably close below him.

Apart from the usual Carrion Crows, the bird I saw most of today was Jays, all seemingly flying back and forth between the same 2 locations over and over again, and in one of the better views I got one of them very clearly had a large nut in its bill. Storing up food. It's really not far off now.

Most exciting bird today was a lone Snipe, which I called on flight pattern (basically crazy and all over the place) before it turned to give a decent profile view. It's difficult to get visible and definite signs that your birding is improving, and picking up birds on flight style is something I was never particularly good at so it's quite morale boosting to be doing it reliably at last.

Also, if anyone knows their Fungi, I could use a hand with this one.

Butser Hill

2010-09-07T21:25:00.003+01:00

Last weekend I went out with the girlfriend and walked up one of the highest points in Hampshire. It is called Butser Hill, and to be honest it really wasn't all that difficult a climb. Bear in mind this is coming from an Essex boy - Speed Bumps get contour lines round these parts.

Still, it means I could lug camera and tripod up there which was a bit of a luxury. Target bird was Buzzard, and while we saw one from a distance cruising round the summit on the thermals, by the time we reached the top it had scarpered.

Not to be put off, we laid out our picnic stuff and were rewarded with a Kestrel hovering and hunting all round us for a good half an hour. Is wasn't a very good Kestrel, given that we saw it go down at least seven or eight times and come back up empty handed, but its loss was my gain. Nothing is quite as addictive as a hovering Kestrel when you've got a DSLR on burst mode. Great views of a criminally underrated bird. I do wish the buzzard had stuck about for a photo though.

View of the A3 from the top of Buster

Apologies for the appalling amount of noise/compression artifacts on the pictures by the way. They're not like that on my hard drive - must be something Blogger's done during the upload.

Mothy goodness - ID help requested

2010-08-24T19:10:00.003+01:00

This was posing nicely on girlfriend's parents conservatory, and I haven't been able to find it in my moth book. The closest I can come up with is a very very faded, and possibly dead, Copper Underwing. As far as scale goes, it was big - about an inch and a half to two inches. That should help.

How to dip properly

2010-08-18T21:36:00.002+01:00

Learn, while inescapably at work, that there is a British scarcity at your local RSPB reserve.
Learn via text message upon arriving home that it is still there.
Pack all gear in the car, including camera as the bird is showing well and very close in places.
Drive the 5 minutes to a fellow birder's house to pick him up.
Get told the bird has been chased off by a Peregrine.
Drive the 5 minutes home.
Sit back in my still-warm armchair.

Much higher quality dipping, I think you'll agree, than wasting all that time driving to the reserve, sifting through a few thousand gulls for an hour hoping to see the bird and driving all the way back again.

I have reached new heights of birding efficiency.

How do you get good views at Rainham? Leave the camera at home

2010-08-14T15:25:00.005+01:00

Now, I'm enough of a scientist to acknowledge that there is more than one variable at work here. I'll also have to grudgingly admit that it's far more likely that losing the distraction of the camera makes me look at things in more detail, rather than the birds seeing that I'm carrying a camera and hiding. But it doesn't mean I have to like it. It was too wet for expensive camera equipment anyway, so nothing lost overall.

Anyway, my first birding trip in WEEKS was damp but successful. I got to play expert and scope up a Greater Spotted Woodpecker for a woman and her teenage son while wandering round the woodland, and I got to see another Great Spot on the feeders down there which is always a bit special.

The Averly Pools were very productive today, with a decent selection of waders and a goodly number of ducks. I saw a couple of Sandpipers chasing eachother round, and while I really wanted them to be Wood Sandpipers I'm fairly confident they were actually Commons. The clincher for me was the clear cut border between the breast and the white underside, and the white gap just in front of the wing. I did see a slightly larger Sandpiper that wasn't bothering with all the bobbing up and down which I have down as my first self-found Green, so I'm pleased with that.

Other waders scattered about included Ringed Plovers, Lapwings, a couple of Ruff and a couple of Redshank (which, embarrasingly, I didn't recognise. I need to get my wader eye back in). Some nice men also put me onto a Garganey (either female or male eclipse), which I'd never have picked out on my own. Think that may be a life tick as well.

Wandered round to the new hide, which was christened with a Marsh Harrier over Wennington Marsh. Fantastic view as it flew back and forth round the Barn Owl nest box, and I like the higher vantage point that the hide offers. It'll make a nice stopping place on that side of the reserve come winter as well, for wussing out when it gets too cold.

Only other things of note were the unusually large numbers of a) Little Egrets and b) Small Brown Warblers flitting off the boardwalk and into the reeds just a little bit faster than the eye could follow. There was word of a slightly large unidentified warbler being seen somewhere on the reserve this morning - as far as I'm concerned today that was all of them.

Oh, and I finally ticked Mr Lethbridge over a bacon sandwich and cup of tea in the cafe, who was just dragging one of his children off to watch the river in the rain. The child seemed worryingly happy with this state of affiars. I see he is brainwashing them well. And no, he didn't mention his toe once.

Not as irrelevant as it could possibly be

2010-07-26T21:15:00.003+01:00

Well it does mention Ravens. It is also awesome*.

For the next week or two my free time will mostly be spend attending, driving to or returning from weddings. Barring buzzards over the car and the odd roadkill pheasant this video is likely to be the closest I get to an actual bird. Please don't spoil it for me.

* I am a self confessed folkie and have no shame whatsoever.

Patching

2010-07-22T22:36:00.006+01:00

Was feeling a bit restless this evening, so I gave the long-neglected Harrow Lodge Park/Dagenham Chase patch a bit of a bashing. The most interesting birds out there today were a Song Thrush in the park collecting worms, and perhaps a Kestrel flying away from me over the Chase. Couldn't take 2 steps without tripping over a rabbit though, must have been a good summer for them.

Some nice clouds as the sun went down as well. Not bad for a phone camera.

Where have all the good gulls gone?

2010-07-19T19:11:00.003+01:00

Last week Tower Bridge was collecting black headed gulls after their spring hiatus, and by Friday we must have been up to 40 or so. Today, it was empty again. Very disappointing. I had a wander up and down the walkway but apart from some juv large gulls, 4 Coots and a Cormorant the river was empty. A text from Parus warning me that 3 Meds had been seen heading up-river from Crossness didn't lighten the depression, because today they would have been very easy to spot. Presumably they're all partying out down in East India dock somewhere. Gits.

So other than that, I'd just like to confirm that I am still alive and checking the patch, it's just that time of year. Also, I haven't seen any good moths since that Mullein Wave ages ago (June).

You never know, at some point I may even stick up a couple of photos from Norfolk. Depends how I manage tonight with my other nerdy obsessive hobby.

[fst0pped is Away: Installing Linux]

Filthy Twitchering (or Andrew's First Mega)

2010-07-07T15:44:00.009+01:00

I skived off left work early today to go to Rainham work from home for the afternoon, as I had to filthily twitch my first ever British Mega have a band rehearsal this evening, and it's hard to find time to eat if I get back from work at the normal time.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it

Me? I didn't take this howdareyousuggestsuchathing

Now I genuinely am working from home, so I'll leave you to it.

Norfolk June 2010: Pre-trip report post

2010-06-30T12:35:00.002+01:00

I've just got back from a 5 day trip to the North Norfolk coast, so this is just a kind of pre-post warning that there will be photos appearing once I've processed them. There are approximately a million, some of them without any birds in at all, so it's going to take a while. Managed to year tick the 3 expected Terns (though the guy running the boat trip got me overly excited straight out of the dock by calling a Common as an Arctic), and life ticked a Tawny Owl from Titchwell car park. I also think I may have nailed the difference between Sedge and Reed calls, though I thought that last year as well and turned out to be wrong. Anyway, more of this later. Much unpacking to do in the meantime.

On the plus side, as I set off from the girlfriend's today I glimpsed a Crow mobbing a Buzzard from the car. A year ago I wouldn't have seen that, and if I did I wouldn't have known what a Buzzard looked like without detailed inspection. This makes me happy.

They're back! And they're breeding...

2010-06-14T23:06:00.005+01:00

Today I saw one of these:

Which made me slightly suspicious, since usually when they're feeding they perch on top of the wall, or on one of the drainpipes.

Also, it is sitting in the window next to the one in which I saw Kestrel chicks last year. I haven't been checking this window. I've been checking last year's window. It seems I have missed a trick. Because today, when I saw the Kestrel sitting in this spot, I made a point of having a good old peer into the back and what did I find?

Bit embarrassing to have missed them - I mean they're not exactly inconspicuous - but DAWWWWWWWWWTHEY'RESOCUUUUTE. 2 years running. Great breeding record for the site.

On following my own advice, for once

2010-06-07T19:47:00.005+01:00

I wasn't going to mention it, because of that whole 'relevance' thing that I know we all care so much about, but I've started playing with Shuttercal, a photo-a-day style site; the idea being that taking one half decent photo a day will force encourage me to be on the lookout for good subjects and will generally help make my brain more naturally disposed to seeing these things.

The other thing it does is give me a reason to carry a half decent camera into work with me, and then take it out as I wander round my little corner of London during my lunch hour. Today, it paid off. Not only did the Grey Heron return for a second helping, the Kestrel made a brief cameo appearance for the first time in a couple of months. It's too late now to hope it'll stay and lay eggs again, but it's nice to know it hasn't forgotten me. So for your delectation, two minor Tower Bridge scarcities, courtesy of Mr Kodak. Mr Pentax will have to wait his turn.

In conclusion: I am learning from my mistakes and, following yesterday's lesson, I am carrying a camera with me whenever I go anywhere remotely interesting from now on. Mostly. Probably.

More LBJs than I can shake a camera at

2010-06-06T23:14:00.009+01:00

Went for a bacon sandwich birdwatching walk round Rainham this afternoon; just round to the Marshland centre and back, since I had the woman over for a trip into London last night and she'd only bought sandals. I have never seen so many Reed Warblers in my life. They were everywhere. Obliging, easy to see, sitting on the same tall exposed perches for 15-20 seconds at a time and generally being perfect for photography. Which was a real bugger, because I'd decided against taking the nice camera since we were only going for a quick walk. Instead, I had the trusty old Kodak Easyshare - fine for record shots, wasted on today's opportunities. With the Pentax, these would have been pin sharp. Gutted:

Still, saw lots, heard even more, and got a nice view of a Sedge for the first time this year (only heard them up to now) which just reminded me how distinctive that Supercilium is. Also had much cuteness in the form of a fluffy little Blue Tit chick, a small group of Cygnets being shepherded by mum, my first Rainham Water Vole of the year and a Little Grebe sitting on a nest. A couple of Redshanks from the Marshland Hide were probably the most interesting things out there birdwise, but they can't compete with fluff.

Speaking of cuteness, arn't baby Coots really ugly?

I'd love to have stayed longer, but it was getting late and the sound of thunder was definitely getting closer as we headed back to the centre. Also, one of the cows was giving me evils and I got slightly scared. Moral of the story: Always take the best camera you can carry, the walk is never 'too short to be worth it'. And yes, I've learned this lesson before, and yes I'm sure I'll do it all again.

'arf moi land you

Oh look, a bandwagon!

2010-06-05T12:14:00.003+01:00

It's that time of year folks. Found this little fellow on the bathroom door this morning, and blocked the landing for 5 minutes while I tried to get a decent shot. I attempted a couple from the hand, but the size of the moth + the low light forced me to resort to tripod. My family looked a bit confused; as, I suppose, they should.

I reckon it's a Mullein Wave, Scopula marginepunctata, which is apparently "Locally abundant in urban parts of the London area". Like here.

I'm not quite at the buying a moth trap and getting up at 5 in the morning stage yet, but don't be surprised to find Lepidoptera making a few more guest appearances before the slow season is out.

In bird news, I've had young brown Starlings all over the garden this morning, along with some young looking House Sparrows. This makes me happy.

Just Walking in the Rain

2010-05-31T11:12:00.004+01:00

So Lakenheath on Saturday. Despite the atrocious weather, I managed to add 3 life ticks and a fair few year ticks.

Started with a Stone Curlew at the super secret site not far from Lakenheath. It was much stripier in real life than I had been led to expect from bird books, but very cool. Got a decent scope view before the landowner arrived. Discretion being the better part of valour, we scarpered before he could get out of his car and chase us off the public highway on which we'd stopped.

The rain started properly while we were waling round Lakenheath, and the one bit of shelter was being patrolled by a Hornet so we didn't spend too long there. No flycatchers unfortunately, but we got plenty of Beardies and a very good view of a Great Spot Woodpecker. We braved the rain to head up to the top end of the reserve, and suddenly everything kicked off. The Crane, which had been popping its head up occasionally and taunting the walking party who'd travelled to see it, took off and flew 300 yards right across the front of the watchpoint about 2 minutes after we set up there. Then a Grasshopper Warbler started reeling in the scrub, but there was no time to go look for it because suddenly there was a Bittern in the air. It boomed in flight, and then there were 2 Bitterns. And then 3. By the end of it we had 5 Bitterns in flying about in the same scope view. And 2 Marsh Harriers. It was 5 minutes of tick frenzy.

So Lakenheath delivers again, despite the rain and consequent lack of Butterflies. I don't think I've ever spent a bad day there. So I'll leave you with a picture of 4 Bitterns in the same frame, because that's not something you see every day.

My camera was tucked up safely because of the rain, so by the time I'd got over the shock of seeing all those Bitterns they were too far away for decent photos. This was taken as 4 of them came back towards the watchpoint. It's still pretty damn special.

Non-patch tickery

2010-05-24T00:39:00.002+01:00

Very quick, becuase I've imbibed more alcohol that is strictly necessary for a Sunday evening. It's been an odd one.

In birding terms though, I've garnered a life tick! Picked up a Lesser Whitethroat over Ingrebourne Valley. Differentiated on sight due to dark leg colour. I don't run Ingrebourne as a patch but I think next year I might, I certainly get over there more than I do the Chase...

Other interesting stuff involves Damselflies, but I need sleep more than photos right now, so no doubt they'll appear in a couple of days.

As for the non-birdy stuff that made the weekend weird, read about it at Parus's blog, it's been a surreal weekend.

Patchy goodness

2010-05-18T21:55:00.003+01:00

What a day! A Patch Tick at Tower Bridge and a Year Tick at local non-patch Ingrebourne Valley.

First up, and most importantly, a Lunchtime walk round Tower Bridge gave me a Grey Heron in the St. Katherine Docks. Generally Grey Heron is probably to be expected, and I did fully expect to have one fly over at some point if I watched long enough, but this fellow was just standing on some orange ballast about 8 feet from the people walking past. In my experience Herons tend to get flighty if they so much as sniff a person within a hundred yards. This one was close enough that I could get something on my phone camera that actually resembled the bird! Look!

As Mr Lethbridge has repeatedly observed, patch ticks are the best ticks. This made my day.

Which is why a trip to Ingrebourne this evening with the inimitable Parus was going to need to be something pretty special to top it. And it produced. The plan was to go for Grasshopper Warblers, but the thing about plans over the Ingrebourne - the important thing about plans over the Ingrebourne - is that when Parus and I make them they never work. This is why when we left at 5 in the morning to see Barn Owls waaaaaay back before I even had a blog we got soaking wet and headed home Owlless. It probably also explains why on today's trip we didn't hear a peep of Grasshopper Warbler, but I added both Cuckoo and Barn Owl to my year list.

Gropper remains a life-tick-in-waiting, but any day where you see a Barn Owl is a good day.

Tower Sparrows

2010-05-17T21:29:00.004+01:00

Apologies to those followers of my Twitter feed who have already had the news, but this is exciting. For the first time this year, I finally caught sight of a FEMALE House Sparrow on the Tower Bridge patch. This was shortly followed by two separate Male House Sparrows independently picking up lumps of foodstuffs in their bills and flying high up the gatehouse wall with them before disappearing round the far side.

I've been holding my breath for the last few weeks waiting for something like this, and it hasn't disappointed. Evidence of breeding Sparrows in Central London is not to be sniffed at, and as I understand it Tower Bridge is a bit unusual in having such a (relatively) large Spring population. I am rather pleased.

Of course every silver lining has a cloud. No sign of 'my' Tower Kestrel this year, and this is leaving it a bit late even for Kestrels. I think perhaps I'll just have to accept they're not coming back to the same nesting site this time round. Hope they're doing well wherever they've ended up.

Other sightings today - a few very smart looking adult Herring Gulls, a Blue/Great Tit (too far and fast to be sure which) and a solitary Coot, along with the usual Lessers and Starlings. There might have been more, but I really did spend an inordinate amount of time watching those Sparrows. Still grinning :-)

At last

2010-05-15T10:46:00.003+01:00

First bird ever to grace the Window Feeder this morning, and fortunately I was there to see it. I take back every bad word I have ever uttered about Starlings.

Fortunately for you lucky readers I also had time to very slowly reach for my phone, activate the camera, switch the camera off by mistake, reactivate the camera, forget where the video setting was, find the video setting, realise the camera was already set to video after all, depress the shutter release and just capture the bird's arse as it promptly turned around flew off.

Hopefully this means the floodgates are now open and my window will be filled with Siskins, Bullfinches, Marsh Tits and other such dross. Or a Sparrow. A Sparrow would be nice. Anyway, enough prevarication. Video!

One more for the Tower

2010-05-13T00:42:00.004+01:00

Yes I crossed the river and bagged that lovely singing Reed Warbler next to City Hall, despite interference from a woman chasing it up and down the hedge and a dogwalker with his dog off the lead. I even saw it distantly a few times, though not well enough to see any salient features. Not to worry, I got a very good earful of song and am confident about the ID. That's 32 for the Tower Bridge patch this year, and the first bird I've had to go sarf' of the the river for. Exciting.

Also saw the first Black Headed gull on patch since they all went coastwards. It was clearly young with brownish wing feathers and a terminal tail band, but didn't look like one of this year's hatchlings. Hopefully it won't be long before they're all back and I can get back to some proper patch birdwatching i.e. Med sifting.

Still loads of singing House Sparrows about, but strangely still no females on patch. I see dozens round Hornchurch way. Distinctly odd.

In which Rainham lives up to its name

2010-05-03T17:16:00.004+01:00

I think April has struck a month or so late.

Being British, I'll open this post with some talk about the weather. It's been random. I was sitting at the computer at about 10 this morning watching the sun outside and thinking 'I quite fancy doing Ingrebourne valley and trying to step on some Woodcocks'. Within 5 minutes the whole sky was clouded over, the wind was gusting at gale force speeds and there were hailstones bouncing off the window. 10 minutes later we were back to blue skies and sunshine again. Crazy.

So I compromised on Rainham. It has birds, it has tea (and bacon sandwiches), and it has some hides to scuttle into. I actually managed to get right round without being rained on thanks to watching the rainclouds and timing my dashes between shelters.

It also had Swifts. Lots of Swifts. I know it's a bad idea, but I couldn't resist a few attempts at Swift photography. And you know what? They really didn't turn out too badly.

This is as good as Swift photography gets ladies and gentlemen.

There was a supporting cast of Hirundines. While the wind and rain was battering everything the Swallows and Martins were almost stationary trying to fly into it, so I got some of the best views I've yet had of these birds in flight. I'm sure I caught a glipse of a white arse or two, but mostly the Martin population at Rainham seems to consist of Sand Martins. The Cordite store had a singing Blackcap which, unusually, put in an appearance and, joy of joys, was joined by a female! I've never seen a female Blackcap before, so that was a half-tick of sorts, and it sat still long enough for some decent scoping. Chiffchaffs were loud, and there were a couple of Cetti's tucked away somewhere just off the boardwalk near the cordite.

There were usual wildfowl on the lakes (Mallards, Coots, Gadwall, Shelduck etc.) and a couple of displaying Lapwing over the main pools. Mostly my time on the northern boardwalk was spent trying to ID small brown shapes flitting over the path from one reedbed to another. I know I saw a couple of Whitethroats, and I suspect I was listening to a lot of Reed Warblers though I'm buggered if I can hear a difference between them and Sedges. Needs practice. Good day out on the reserve though, and I really needed the walk after a very inactive weekend.

I finished up with a 10 minute riverwatch on the seawall and picked up a Whimbrel flying over the river and onto the reserve. No photos of this one because the clouds were looming, and the camera was safely tucked away. So have a Bee.

Rain rain go away

2010-05-02T12:34:00.003+01:00

Plans for an exciting bank holiday weekend's birding on a coastline somewhere have been scuppered somewhat by the rain. I'm still considering spending an afternoon tucked up in Rainham visitor's centre drinking tea and watching the river, but seeing as that will involve getting showered and dressed it won't be happening very soon.

Good news is I just had my first garden Swift (and inciedntally, my first Swift of the year) :-) It was flying over low while insect catching, and was generally awesome. I might just sit here and stare out of the window all day.

Why running and birding cannot be combined

2010-04-25T19:35:00.005+01:00

I, like many of you I suspect, made a New Year's resolution to be a bit more healthy, which I duly kept for all of 2 weeks. Lately I have been having a relapse and have tried to get out and run wheeze heavily a couple of times a week.

Weeknights this is fine. I head over to Hylands park which is a big open space with a big 0.4 mile loop of tarmac and virtually no birds of note. I can stumble round the loop with impunity.

Today, perhaps inspired by the marathon, I thought I'd try something a bit more scenic and do a REALLY LONG circuit through Harrow Lodge park, round some bits of Dagenham Chase and then back through the park again. The trouble is, Dagenham Chase has lots of birds, and I am incapable of just running past a bush if there's an interesting song coming from it. As a result I did a lot more walking than planned. Still, it was 6 miles or so under the belt and the distance covered is more important than the speed.

Birds added to the year list included Willow Warbler, Whitethroat and House Martin. Had what I THINK was a Reed Warbler. It was the other side of a thick bush, so I couldn't see a thing. My warbler ear, not strong to start with, has atophied over the winter so I stand no chance of splitting it from Sedge on song alone.

Aside from the ticks, I heard more Chiffchaffs over Harrow Lodge park than I could shake a heavy stick at and had a Carrion Crow confuse me greatly by flying past with something large and orange in its bill. This made it look like either a Chough or the worlds most monstrous Blackbird. Neither of those two is very likely round these parts, but I had to hunt it down just to make sure. A Crow it remained. I also scared up a Green Woodpecker every hundred paces round Eastbrookend Country park. Some of the best views I've ever had of them though - will have to take the camera over there and try for flight shots.

So some good, if unintentional, birding and a warm fuzzy feeling inside from exercising which will surely resolve into agonising cramps by tomorrow morning as I drag myself into work. Good stuff.

Target broken. New target needed

2010-04-19T19:02:00.002+01:00

It's been looming for a while now, but a lone Robin today put me at 31 for the year at Tower Bridge, grinding into the dust of insignificance the paltry end-of-year total of 30 from 2009. And I haven't even seen Mute Swan/Canada Goose yet. The only birds I saw last year that I'm not confident of picking up this year are Yellow-Legged Gull and Stock Dove.

Yellow Legged Gull I got a photo of and then ID'd once back at home with my field guides. I mainly called it as Yellow Legged because I was brand new to the hobby and wasn't aware of how difficult they actually were. Turned out I was lucky on that one, and the photo has stood up to Birdforuming.

As to Stock Dove, I'm fairly sure with hindsight that through ignorance and inexperience that was actually a Feral Pigeon with bluer than normal undersides to its primaries.

And we don't mention the Bankside Peregrine, reluctantly removed from the list for the final count-up. That really would be cheating.

So from here on it's all unexplored territory. Sadly, this is very exciting stuff.

Sheer bloody altruism

2010-04-16T19:04:00.004+01:00

Not that I want to make it even harder to win (and not that I'll be reaching the knockout stages anyway) but I was made aware of something today through the marvellous medium of Twitter about which I feel compelled to spread the word.

That thing is the International Garden Photographer Competition run by Kew gardens. I know that, like me, there are some great photographers owners of overly expensive cameras who read this blog who tend to hang around in places where there are flowers and might be interested in producing some plant porn for the nice botonists at Kew to get excited by. I'm almost certainly going to have a go, because it would be beyond cool to come in the final 100 and you never know until you try and it will help justify in my brain the silly money I paid for my DSLR if I try to win some cash with it.

So being the philanthropist I am, I have put the news out. Consider this fair notice. The competition runs until November, so plenty of time.

Exciting is a relative term

2010-04-12T22:36:00.003+01:00

Hung around the 'Blackcap Bush' (as it shall henceforth be known) for about 15 minutes today but no joy. Not even a Blackbird. Can't say I was expecting migrant warblers to throw themselves out in front of me, but a Wren might have been nice. Anyway, it wasn't to be.

HOWEVER, excitement also takes other forms. I saw a female Mallard with 5 ducklings trailing after her in St. Katherine Docks, and you need a heart of stone to watch ducklings without at least thinking 'Awwwwwww'. I may have vocalised it a bit. And as I was doing that, I heard some Dunnock song. Last time I heard Dunnock song on patch I didn't know what it was, and had to hunt the bird through half a dozen bushes to get an IDable view. This time not only could I identify it on call, I went to look for it and it was sitting out in the open on a tree about 3 feet away. I had to work hard for that patch tick last time, the little sods have stopped trying now. Ah well.

The best bit of my day though was walking back past the Tower of London and finding a flock of just over a dozen House Sparrows doing the equivalent of drinking, fighting and being generally rowdy round the bushes by the main entrance. It's a long time since I had that many on patch. Strangely they all seemed to be male. I'm pathetically hopeful that this might mean that the bushes are full of nesting females who arn't showing themselves, but we'll see about that over the next week or two. It's unlikely.

You would have had a Dunnock but it flew away with unbelievable prescience just as my finger hovered over the capture button, so instead, here's a Navy Cadets tallship that was moored up outside the dock. I like tallships.

Relevance ++

2010-04-10T09:32:00.002+01:00

There is new linkage on the nav bar to the right. I have started a Tumblr to try and take away some of the more extreme irrelevance from this ostensibly birdwatching blog.

You do not have to read it. That is, in fact, the beauty of it.

http://featheredupstart.tumblr.com/
"Too irrelevant for Pretty Birdies. Too long for Twitter."

Must admit, if I'd found Tumblr before Blogger I might well have done the whole thing on there. Once you get your head round it, it's much quicker to get things online.

Mystery Warbler - Tower Bridge patch

2010-04-08T18:23:00.004+01:00

If you don't want to read pointless ramblings and just want to help me identify a bird, please skip straight to the video at the bottom thank you so very much. Otherwise, read on.

I started my patch-watch round Tower Bridge today with 5 House Sparrows on the lawn next to the drawbridge. This delighted me, and would have kept me cheerful for the rest of the day.

However, better things were in store.

I was heading back to the office and about to pass under the subway that leads to Tower Hill tube station when I registered some birdsong from the big bush to the left that my conscious had been passing off as 'probably a Goldfinch or something'. It's an odd feeling that 'registering', I'm sure you've all had it - a bit like your hindbrain is prodding you in an irritating way and going 'no, listen, listen to me, you're not listening, listen...' It was quite right though, this was interesting song! Warbler song!

I've only done one spring as a birdwatcher so far. While my birdsong ID is generally moving forward, severe lack of exposure means I'm still poor at the various warblers. That's why I initially wondered if this was last year's Sedge come back. Then I actually listened to some Sedge song on my phone. No. Just No.

A bit of playing round with the warblers on my playlist and some guidance via text message from a more experienced birder narrowed it down to a possible 2 species for me. I was 75% Garden Warbler and 24% Whitethroat (the remaining 1% was taken up by self doubt insisting I'd just found a Goldfinch in an unusual place). The bird then proceeded to confuse the issue by making the briefest of brief darting flights from one bit of impenetrable bush to another and flying through shadows in such a way that it looked like it might be greyish with a black cap on its head, or might just have caught the light in a funny way. The little bastard was proving to be tricky. I'd ruled out Blackcap as the tone didn't seem right, not 'flutey' and Blackbirdy enough, but given my abject lack of experience, the song is similar enough that I was prepared to be wrong.

Fortunately I have a super whizzy touch screen phone (which, incidentally, is not made by a company with a stupid fruit-based name) and managed to get a half decent recording.

And so to the point. Opinions welcomed and encouraged. This is school time for Andrew.

Edit at 23:54: Having had 4 or 5 replies spread between londonbirders, twitter and youtube all agreeing 'Blackcap', it goes in the book as Blackcap. Excellent patch bird. Good stuff.

Kew Gardens and Rock and Roll

2010-04-07T17:35:00.005+01:00

Spent a(n extra) long weekend with the girlfriend over easter, half at hers half at mine. This meant we got out to Waggoners Wells in Hampshire on Friday afternoon and I got superb views of 2 Nuthatch which were duly added to the year list. Those tricky devils had a go at confusing me by skittering up tree trunks instead of legging it down them headfirst, but it wasn't enough. When will birds sort it out and learn to act according to their identifying jizz? I could have called them as Treecreepers and then where would we be!? One year tick less that's where.

Yesterday afternoon I was acting as Tour Guide in London, so we toddled over to Kew Gardens which the missus has always wanted to have a look round. I am honestly trying to learn a bit about trees and wildflowers as part of becoming a more rounded naturalist rather than a bird identification machine, but the sheer number of greenish things just made my brain melt and I ended up year-ticking some (admittedly rather green) Ring Necked Parakeets instead.

We finished up by heading across London to Shepherds Bush to twitch endemic Scottish bird Amy Macdonald. As you'd expect, she was very confiding with a stunning singing voice. Awesome gig by one of my favourite currently-touring artists. She is cute and talented and successful and, irritatingly, still much younger than me.

Actually the Empire itself is a great little venue, and if you fancy getting there early and proleing it up you can stand right up close to the stage with no trouble at all. Back there next month to see Metric (don't judge me) and there's plenty of other good stuff that I'm extremely tempted by. We complain occasionally, but I do love having London on the doorstep.

Go watch her, she is amazing

Dungeness (or Why Getting Up At 05:30 On A Sunday Morning Is Sometimes Justified)

2010-03-31T19:15:00.006+01:00

I was talked into getting up at stupid o' clock and driving the hour and a half to Dungeness on Sunday by the usual suspect, which I'm quite grateful for. Sunday at Dunge was FUN.

It's been a few weeks since I was able to get out and birdwatch properly what with the terrible weather, a hectic weekend of choral activity and a general unwillingness to get out of bed extra-early to make time, so the year list hasn't really been progressing and the blog has oft wondered way off topic. Sunday has been a pleasant shot in the arm and has got me all enthused about birds in faraway places again. Guided by the excellent Howard, we spent the best part of the day moving about between the carpark by the lighthouse, the ARC pits and the RSPB reserve itself. Each one held at least one life tick. I love trips like that.

So, keeping it short and to the point, the year list has flown from 70ish up to a whopping 107 in the course of one trip to the coast. Picked up my first migrants of the year with a singing Chiffchaff, Swallows, singing Sedge Warbler in the ARC carpark and 3 Wheatear by the lighthouse.

Best of all were a whole 6 life ticks, only one of which was a bit dodgy. Usually when I see a bird for the first time I get pathetic skulky views so it was a refreshing change to have these lifers throwing themselves in front of me. In reverse order of awesomeness:

Caspian Gull (yes they're not common but, even having seen one, I still don't really believe they exist)
Slavonian Grebe (3 of those)
Tree Sparrow (cute and fluffy, and only this far down because of the quality of the other birds on offer)
2 Black Redstart (one female perched in full view on a dog kennel, the other a beautifully marked male but slightly less confiding)
1 Firecrest (amazing, so much greener than I expected)
3 Penduline Tits (just. wow.)

I could go on and on, but just giving out a list of the 57 odd bird species I saw would be dull and pointless. Dungeness was brilliant, the birds were brilliant, and I'll be making the effort to get back there.

The rest of the story will be told as a kind of photo montage.

Caspian apparently. I have a Caspian blind-spot.

Breakfast. Most welcome after an early start and a longish drive. I give it 7/10.

Dipped the Rainham Slav a couple of times, and then it turned up dead, so I was glad to get this one.

You experienced naturalists out there may have noticed that this one isn't a bird. It is, however, still a life tick.

Again, I've dipped these at Rainham more times than I can remember. Don't be fooled by the photo, the views were excellent.

And finally, a new addition to the 'Evil Passer' series of photos. This was one mean looking Bunting.

Slowly slowly catchy er... wagtail

2010-03-26T18:04:00.004Z

Yes, this week I have added 2 birds to the Tower Bridge year list, and one of those was the always worthy Grey Wagtail. It was one of those 'played-for-and-got' type finds which are always so satisfying. I saw the huge amounts of exposed foreshore and thought 'Right, I'm having you'.

It took a bit of exploring down to the small park area East of the Bridge, somewhere I never usually go, but it's where large amounts of foreshore sits relatively undisturbed by tourists and I just had a feeling I'd see them there. Score. It's taken a few months but I'm now on 29 species for the year on this site - for the purposes of comparison I ended last year on 30 and kept 30 as this year's target. I think that may need to be revised upward.

In absence of a real Wagtail picture, here is an artists impression of the event:

I did feel a bit bad when a guy turned up 3 seconds after I'd scared them off by showing my face over the railing and stood in exactly the same spot, staring hard at the wall where, until 3 seconds earlier, the Wagtails had been sitting. I didn't have the heart to ask him what he was looking for, but I know I'm far from the only patch watcher in this area and I was well outside my usual boundaries.

Still, there's not much I won't do for a patch tick on this site. He'll get over it.

My non-local patch in pictures

2010-03-24T20:02:00.007Z

My girlfriend of 4 years lives about 2 hours drive from me, in a little flat in a little village in Hampshire. While there are many disadvantages to this arrangement, one of the big advantages is the Liss Riverside Railway Walk. I may have mentioned it before. For those new to this humble blog, it is a walk along the riverside which used to be an old military railway and is now a nature reserve. It is a very nice forested area with old railway paraphernalia strewn liberally around the main path. Now this isn't really very local to me at all, but I still end up visiting it much more often than the park just over the road. On Monday I worked from the girlfriend's flat, and spent my lunchtime wandering round the reserve with the Wide Angle lens on. Here is a short patch tour.

The first thing to note is that, while you will of course see birds, what you'll mainly do is HEAR birds. Hence these photographs will feature no birds at all. If I'd had the telephoto on me you'd probably have got a Robin, but it was wide angle all the way. I picked up Chaffinch, Greenfinch, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Robins, Wrens, Blackbirds and Wood Pigeons on Monday, and if I knew my birdsong a bit better I've no doubt there would have been Coal Tits and similar. This forest is full to the brim with small birds flitting about in treetops.

The other nice thing about this walk is that there is a small footpath that runs fromt he girlfriend's flat all the way to the train station, so when the weather is reasonable you can avoid roads all the way into town. On the way there's a big field where the Swallows and Martins like to hawk in summer, and generally butterflies everywhere a bit later in the year. The path itself is well designed and maintained, and takes you past a conifer plantation which looked very festive in the snow. I particularly like the tunnel effect on the below stretch.

For those that are into their vegetation there are lots of green flowery things, however I don't know what any of them are called so I'm going to put up a picture of some Holly.

I don't currently keep a list for this site, as the visits tend to be fairly sporadic. The walk is extremely pleasant though, and if you like steam railways (which my girlfriend does), full of interesting bits of railway history dotted about. I'll leave you with some of those to finish off. If you're ever in Liss and fancy flexing your birdsong muscles, give it a go.

My week wot I just had

2010-03-18T20:09:00.004Z

Here is a photo montage of my mostly non-birdy week. It will give some of the many reasons why I have been crap and seen no birds.

Dead rat in a drum cupboard at the rehearsal studio.

Stupid American school band scaring away all my passer.

They were just giving these away. Loads of them. Free. Unbelievable. I've been 'tender' most of today...

The closest I'll ever get to one of these at Tower Bridge.

Choir concerts all weekend - I'll be either stuck in rehearsals or driving between here and the Woman's so nothing of note will happen there. 2 more weeks of likely birdlessness to go. Ah well.

Right, off to the pub to play some music.

Stunned Pigeon

2010-03-12T19:10:00.006Z

This sorry little saga has already been played out on the Birdforum message boards and will be related word for word, so apologies to this of you who saw it there already, but it's the most interesting bird-related thing to happen to me for about a week.

Post 1:

Had a young Wood pigeon fly into next door's upstairs window this morning. I took a look over the fence and it was sat on the ground. Within 10/15 minutes it had gathered its wings and seemed to be sitting quite happily recovering its senses.

I've been keeping half an eye on it and a couple of hours later it's still there. Although it seems to have shuffled into a corner it's shown no sign of moving any significant distance.

Picture should be attached. Looks like its stripped away some of the feathers round the base of the bill (at least, I presume it's the crash that caused this) but I can't see any other signs of injury.

No one's currently in next door but thet have youngish kids who'll be getting back around 4. We get on well so me climbing over the fence to fetch the thing won't cause too much excitement, but I don't want to go handle it unnecessarily.

Any thoughts? My usual policy would be to let it lie until its well enough to move, but its wedged itself right in under the back door where if it doesn't get brained by the door opening, someone's quite likely to tread on it by mistake.

If anyone wants to tell me my ID skills are rubbish and it's actually a young Stock Dove they are most welcome to do so, as that would be a garden tick.

Post 2:

Ah well, after about 3/4 hours of pigeon inactivity I ended up hopping the fence and trying to get a closer look. It didn't like me coming near it and ran away, limping and slightly trailing a wing. I feared the worst and tried to get a box over it but it didn't like that either, so I ended up chasing it round the corner of next door's garden for 5 minutes. It tried to take flight a couple of times during the chase and managed it on the third attempt - by the time it was up it seemed to be flying strongly.

It's either exercised out whatever was wrong, or come down in one of the cat-infested gardens over the back. Given that it was sat there for 3 hours I'm not too hopeful, but there was no way it was getting in that box.

Still, at least I got some exercise. Climbing that fence is about the most athletic thing I've done in years...

I've no doubt it's a fox's dinner by now, but I did what I could.

In other, non-bird, news, it is probably best when playing Dwarf Fortress to build your flood defences BEFORE curiously chanelling out a path from the raging whitewater river to the nearest hillside to see if you can flood the whole lower portion of the map. I now have a horrible feeling you can.

Where A is the breach in the river, B is the entrance to the Dwarf mine and C is the slowly progressing flood defence. This could be bad.

Will they finish the wall in time? Will my Dwarves be consigned to a watery mass grave? Will anyone apart from Parus even know what the hell I'm talking about, much less care? Not likely.

Ingrebourne fun 25/02

2010-03-01T19:18:00.004Z

Continuing the theme of desperate catchup, here is a quick post about last Thursday's trip to Ingrebourne Valley with the usual birdwatching company. I won't even attempt to list all species, as the count over a bacon sandwich in Rainham cafe afterwards reached a minimum 50 with a few to spare. Having already seen the White Fronts and Red Crested Pochard the previous week, the highlights for me were stunning views of my 2nd ever Bullfinch (and first in Essex), tripping over a Woodcock about 50 metres from the car and the biggest flock of Fieldfare I've ever seen - well over a hundred. Picking up 13 Snipe feeding on one of the fields was also rather cool, while some of my favourite birds - Skylarks - were in full song and, because we flushed them about 20 metres from the car, relatively low in the air.

Ingrebourne itself was a bit difficult to navigate with a lot of the usual paths cut off by floodwater, but we managed. I've been over there a few times now and should go more often. It's a great bit of patch and only about 15/20 minutes drive from me. It also doesn't require a scope and is remote yet civilised enough that carrying the camera round my neck doesn't feel like wearing a big 'mug me' sign.

Skylark doing climbing and singing [I can't do proper captions since reading Thing's blog. I even find myself saying it in real life now. He has much to answer for.]

My first Green Woodpecker of the year, with some Fieldfares

Of course, it wouldn't be an Essex patch if it was all nice and fluffy.

We thought we'd finish off by going to the Optimist for some food but the wait was about half an hour so we went to Rainham instead where we ate the aforementioned bacon sandwiches and drank cups of tea and were too wussy to go out in the rain and look for Pendulines. They wouldn't have showed anyway. They didn't need to. This was a good day's birding without them.

Like London buses

2010-02-27T02:07:00.007Z

Things have been conspiring to keep me from birding and blogging lately. The big overnight systems implementation at work that everyone's been working towards for the last 6 months happened on Monday in a painful, stuttering way. The new system is in and working (YES), but I didn't leave the office until 4am, and the preparation has eaten up large chunks of my Tower Bridge time. For the last 3 days I've taken some well earned annual leave and spent 2 long days in the field on Wednesday and Thursday. I was going to write them up this afternoon, but I got sent on a wild goose waxwing chase round Romford, which is probably worth a post in itself. So there you are, no drivel for almost a week and suddenly a probable 3 posts at once. Or at least, 3 posts in short succession. It's quarter past 2, I'm not writing them all tonight.

It also means this post will, from hereon, be mercifully short.

Wednesday was designated as 'Patch Day'. Took a walk round Harrow Lodge park which added Song Thrush to the year total, and saw about 20 Pochard on the main lake along with the regular wildfowl. Don't know what's happened to the local Grey Wags. Their usual spot on the river was full of Labrador when I got there on Wednesday so odds of seeing anything were slim, but that's several trips this year and no sign yet.

After Harrow Lodge I crossed over into Dagenham Chase, wandered through Black Poplar wood and took a long walk round the back by Upper Rainham Road. I spent an unhealthy amount of time taking pictures of one of the Black Poplar trees with the long lens because a) I wanted to play with abstract patterns in the bark, b) they are really rather rare trees and Black Poplar wood in Dagenham Chase holds 6 of the 600 females remaining in the UK and c) it was starting to spit with rain and under the trees seemed to be the place to stay. The poplars will probably be the subject of another post at some point because they're an interesting local feature, and other than the ever present Magpies and some common wildfowl on the Slack the Chase was fairly birdless. A cooperative male Kestrel did get me my photo of the day though. What the Chase mainly had was mud, interspersed with great big puddles of water. I had to navigate a whole slew of these to go round the bird sanctuary in the middle on the offchance that the lone Greylag sitting with a Canada flock was something slightly more interesting but when I got close up, a Greylag it remained.

Still, after a couple of claustrophobic weeks, it was very nice to be back out in the open air for a decent length of time. And I got to give the camera an outing while the enthusiasm is still running high as well. Here's a few of the better ones to finish with:

Picture of the day: Not as sharp as the pros, but shot from the hand and the first one of these I've ever tried that's even come close to working. Stunning example of male Kestrelhood as well.

My first trip to Hanningfield

2010-02-21T15:42:00.004Z

Despite having been to Abberton Res twice, I've managed to avoid going to Hanningfield. Today I put that right.

Parus and I were very kindly chauffered by his better half, and we set off at a reasonable hour for a Sunday morning hoping to pick up some interesting Grebes and Divers. As ever, what we actually got was cold and wet. Hanningfield was very quiet, with a couple of large flocks of Teal and Wigeon the only real winter-waterfowl action. I did manage to see my first Goldeneye of the year with about 6 of them out there, 3 of the males displaying like mad to the females, and a smart looking male Pintail being followed around by two females (which kept falling through the ice - it made me chuckle). I had the camera with me and got a couple of record shots of both species, but with light levels as low as they were, the iso had to be whacked right up so there's a fair bit of noise.

Suffice to say, it wasn't really suitable recompense for how cold and wet we were getting, so we headed back to Essex and had a pub lunch (which was very pleasant).

Once the hot food had worked its magic we felt up to a quick jaunt to Ingrebourne where the gods of birding, obviously greatly pleased at our persistence, threw the 3 White Fronted Geese and Red Crested Pochard at us practically from the car park and saw to it that our visit was uninterrupted by inclement weather. That's 2 life ticks for me, and it was nice to see that 2 minutes after we got back into the car the sky started chucking hailstones at us. Timed to perfection. No pictures of Ingrebourne from me, but something might turn up over at Parus's blog when he gets his arse in gear.

The photography conditions were far from perfect, but this year I'm determined to get off of Automatic and to properly learn the aperture and shutter control modes, so I made a concerted effort. Actually, I'm quite pleased with the results. The birds are at least identifiable. The Goldeneye picture has been rescued slightly in GIMP as they are distant and it helps. The other two have just been cropped.

Very pleased with those Teal given the light levels. Maybe I've learned something.

Drawing on the right side of the brain

2010-02-17T22:12:00.005Z

No birds at all over the last couple of days as I've been ill and working from home. Instead, today, a post which is part science and part book review. Completely non-bird related, so if you're here purely for London birds look away now. Otherwise read on, you might find the following interesting...

I'll declare my interest straight out. I studied language and language acquisition as part of my degree, and the separate halves of the brain were always fascinating. When I was looking to get into sketching and painting some of the birds I saw I picked up a book called The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. The concept is inspired: We have 2 halves of the brain and we know them to perform different functions. The left side is (usually) the logical, analytical side which deals with language; the right side has no linguistic capability but deals with more 'intuitive', parallel, spatial processing. We also know from experiment that the left, or linguistic, side tends to dominate, so when we try to draw we tend to use the left side, which is not properly suited to the task. This is why inexperienced drawers will draw a face by making eye shapes, and a nose shape, and generally constructing it from the little kit of shapes in their heads instead of drawing what they're looking at. I can vouch for this - faces drawn by me look much the same as they did when I was 7.

2 other important facts. The right side of your brain controls your left hand and vice versa. Also, in cases of severe epilepsy, a cure used to be severance of the Corpus Cerebellum, the large nerve cluster through which the two halves of the brain communicate. With that severed, the two halves continue to function perfectly normally but in complete isolation. People treated in this way have since been the subject of intense experimentation because, being as scientifically ethical as we are, we're unlikely to get others.

Having set the scene, what I mostly wanted to share was this extract from the book which made me laugh and think at the same time:

A few examples of the specially designed tests devised for use with the split-brain patients might illustrate the separate reality perceived by each hemisphere and the special modes of processing employed. In one test, two different pictures were flashed for an instant on a screen, with a split-brain patient's eyes fixed on a mid-point so that scanning both images was prevented. Each hemisphere, then, received different pictures. A picture of a spoon on the left side of the screen went to the right brain; a picture of a knife on the right side of the screen went to the verbal left brain. When questioned, the patient gave different responses. If asked to name what had been flashed on the screen, the confidently articulate left hemisphere caused the patient to say "knife." Then the patient was asked to reach behind a curtain with his left hand (right hemisphere) and pick out what had been flashed on the screen. The patient then picked out a spoon from a group of objects that included a spoon and a knife. If the experimenter asked the patient to identify what he held in his hand behind the curtain, the patient might look confused for a moment and then say, "A knife." The right hemisphere, knowing that the answer was wrong but not having sufficient words to correct the articulate left hemisphere, continued the dialogue by causing the patient to mutely shake his head. At that, the verbal left hemisphere wondered aloud, "Why am I shaking my head?"

In another test that demonstrated the right brain to be better at spacial problems, a male patient was given several wooden shapes to arrange to match a certain design. His attempts with his right hand (verbal left hemisphere) failed again and again. His left hand kept trying to help. The right hand would knock the left hand away; and finally the man had to sit on his left hand to keep it away from the puzzle. When the scientists finally suggested that he should use both hands, the spatially 'smart' left hand (right hemisphere) had to shove the spatially 'dumb' right hand away to keep it from interfering.

As I said at the start, the concept of the book is inspired; the idea that when drawing we want to reach a state where the usually dominant but spatially inadequate left brain is suppressed and the right brain takes over the processing. It's an almost trance-like state where perception of time disappears, and which most people will have experienced before (I get it when writing HTML/SQL, or driving long distances). I'm still only on the first few chapters and did my first exercises today which look awful, so I'm looking forward to comparing them with the results at the end of the book.

Why I love my patch this year

2010-02-15T17:28:00.003Z

Had a fairly crap weekend all told, so it wasn't a huge surprise when Tower Bridge produced the goods YET AGAIN. Unfortunately this suggests that the wires are getting crossed between my birdwatching karma and my general life karma. There's a dilemma I could do without.

Anyway, 2 Greenfinches in the newly dubbed 'Passerine Tree' outside the Tower of London, with a couple of nearby Goldfinches for good measure. I had them down as probable juveniles due to the generally dull plumage, and this was reinforced by a glance through the field guides once I got home. There was a lightish patch on the folded wings where the wingbar would normally be on at least one of them, along with some definite streaking on the underside (which was what made me look twice initially, or else it would probably be on the record as 'female sparrow'). Once it'd raised its head there was no mistaking that chunky bill. I watched the first one for a good 10/15 minutes, and as I was about to give up it took a short flight further into the tree and landed with the other. Patch tick, w00t!

No doubt this electrifying news will be outshadowed (what an odd word that is...) by the Dusky Warbler found in Walthamstow on Sunday and confirmed today. Such is life in the dog-eat-dog world of birding.

Not quite a patch tick

2010-02-13T14:20:00.002Z

Quick one today, no pictures unfortunately.

I took a little detour yesterday. I was wandering round the eastern end of St Katherine Dock and saw a covered walkway heading off into some kind of housing estate, so I decided to do some exploring. Found a nice little green space surrounded by small flats and full of mature trees with nothing in it. I then pressed on and not 50 yards further down the road there were two Jays flitting around in the trees. And a Robin.

So one patch tick and one patch-year tick sitting tantalisingly out of patch-ticking range. I was very good. I didn't wave my arms and run at them, trying to scare them over to the patch. I won't say it didn't cross my mind.

I can either be incredibly pleased to see these birds so close and know that they will potentially end up on the patch, or I can be incredibly frustrated that they're so near and yet so far. I haven't decided which yet. Still, a Jay is a welcome bit of colour in the area - St Katherine's is now firmly back on my regular rounds.

A disappointing Rainham

2010-02-08T21:07:00.004Z

I'm feeling distincly uninspired after Saturday at Rainham, so this post will be mercifully short.

We were up and out over Wennington before first light in the hope of getting some Owls for our respective lists. What we mostly got was cold and disillusioned. I picked up quite a few for the year list, but with the exception of the Bean geese that still seem to be hanging around, nothing I wouldn't have got on any other visit. And they were found right at the end of the day's birding. Moral of the story: Don't get up early on Saturdays, it is silly and pointless.

I mean, seriously, we scanned tens of thousands of gulls over the course of the day, and not a single white winger. Not even a Med. At least you can't say we didn't put the effort in.

Still, that's what patch birding's all about. I've had some very good luck at Tower Bridge and Harrow Lodge lately, so I was due some bad. I'm just feeling grumpy because it's Monday evening. It doesn't help that the best photos on my camera from the day out were taken by someone else :-P

Anyway, consolations came in the shape of a flyover Buzzard that dipped and turned above us to perfectly display its underwing plumage. I love it when they do that. The Bean Geese, obviously, which were a life tick for me. And lots of Skylarks doing proper full throated singing overhead, that's always worth a listen. And the Bacon Sandwich was good.

And we beat the Welsh, huzzah!

Have some of the aforementioned photos:

Full photo credits go to Parus for both these rather good pictures.

Eh?

2010-02-05T13:56:00.007Z

The other day when I happened to look at my fatbirder ranking I found that I'd jumped from lurking somewhere down in the 800s to the heady heights of 399. I mentioned this to Parus a couple of nights ago and he said "Have you checked you stats?". I replied that I hadn't. "Check 'em" he said.

So I've checked them. I had a bit of a "What the f...!?" moment.

Once I'd managed to shift my brain out of "Stunned Herring" gear I clicked across to Recent Came From to see if it held any explanation.

A CLUE! There are about eight pages of this

Well you don't exactly need to be Sherlock Holmes. So naturally, I followed the Came From link.

Linky here: http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/42834

Obviously a lot of Mint using people have followed this expecting some kind of technical insight and have been mildly disappointed with a birdwatching blog. But it has sent me rocketing up the fatbirder rankings. And it means my Recent Visitor Map has gone completely crazy!

No real point to this post other than to give outlet to my utter confusion. And to prove that stat tracking can be awesome and not sad. Go get Statcounter, you know you want to.

If this is Karma I'm getting scared

2010-02-02T19:17:00.003Z

Yet another stonking walk round Tower Bridge, and I must be due some ridiculously bad birding luck. Today can be summed up in one small snatch of video:

That small bird in frame is a Dunnock (PATCH TICK), and those pathetic squeaking noises you can hear are my phone's microphone being rubbish and unable to capture its subsong properly. I heard it before I saw it but didn't recognise the song, so spent 10 minutes hunting the little bugger through the bushes. It was worth it though.

Then as if that wasn't special enough, just listen to the last 3 or 4 seconds of video again. A Wren! On my patch! Or at least close enough for me to hear it, so it counts. I only got a very brief glimpse of Wren last year as it hopped out of a bush outside the Tower and then hopped straight back in, so I was dubious about picking it up again this year. No worries. My passer list is only lacking Robin and Grey Wag before I'm level with last year. I only went to St Katherine's for Tufties.

Add to this the Kestrel I saw a couple of weeks ago perched on a window sill on the West face of the Tower and the Tufties I picked up yesterday and you have:

Year list at the Tower so far: 23 (Total for 2009: 30)
Tower life list: 33

3 All time patch ticks already this year, and I'm still missing a couple of 'easy' year ticks (Canada/Greylag Geese, Mute Swans). It's got to start slowing up soon.

Chichester Cathedral

2010-01-30T20:26:00.003Z

Had a wander round Chichester but didn't get down to the harbour (might have set a record for time spent in Lakeland thought, "Oh it's got 3 floors? How nice..."). Loads of very noisy Herring gulls flying around the town and we managed to tempt out a wary but hungry Robin with shortbread crumbs in Cloisters. He can only have been a foot or two away, on the wall next to the table. He'd scoop up the small crumbs with one eye on me and the missus, and then grab a big bit and dash off into the bush next to us.

No pictures of birds, but I did have the old Kodak with me so did the touristy thing and snapped a couple of the cathedral. Forgot how easy it is to overexpose stuff on the old point and shoot things, but GIMP to the rescue:

Nothing quite like monochrome for eking out a bit more contrast.

Anyone actually manage to do the garden birdwatch today?

The wonder of Linux Mint - non birdy

2010-01-30T11:23:00.006Z

Finally got my new ebay-bought laptop up and running after a multitude of problems, and I'd like to say a few words to my fellow nerdy sorts, and any of those who dabble in other operating systems.

|-|3110 G|_|Y5!!!

This post is a little ode to Linux Mint, a popular fork of Ubuntu. I'd just like to add my voice to the growing number of testimonials. It rocks. It rocks so hard. I've tried a few linux distros in the past (hopped between them near-constantly in fact) and always ended up coming back to PCLinuxOS because, for the most part, everything just worked, but Mint is even better. For the first time ever I've got working graphics drivers on a Linux installation! Neither Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS have ever achieved this, and I tried them both on this laptop before Mint turned up.

So thank you Mint for getting me mobile. I've always wondered what the point of having a laptop was if you already had a desktop, but sitting here in the girlfriend's flat in Hampshire typing away on my laptop, with all my email set up and all my bookmarks already there on Firefox, I can definitely see the appeal.

To Mint. Long may it last.

And it's pretty.

And just so the post isn't completely irrelevant, I won't be taking part in the big garden birdwatch today because the girlfriend doesn't have a garden, but the plan is to head over to Chichester and maybe take a wander down to the harbour, so I'll be keeping my eyes open. Here's hoping for lots of lovely gulls to sift through.

Mystery Raptor - guesses please

2010-01-25T19:33:00.005Z

Turned up at Tower Bridge today to be greeted by this rather worrying sight:

Fortunately some investigation turned up just a bit of harmless pollarding, but since that large mature tree was cut down at the riverside I've been edgy.

Pollarded.

No exciting birds on the river today, we're back to just Black Headed gulls and Starlings for the moment, with the odd Common or LBB thrown in as sweetener, but on my way back to the underpass some unusual calling drew my eyes to a treetop. The calling bird turned out to be just a Blue Tit (never thought I'd be saying just a Blue Tit, how this patch has moved on since this time last year...), but as I was looking upwards I caught sight of an unusual silhouette high in the sky. Got the compacts out and lo and behold, there was some kind of raptor being mobbed by a Crow.

Now, excuses in advance. I'm not good on raptors and have precious little raptor experience to draw on, but this doesn't look particularly falco to me. Wide wings and short body, and big flat wingtips. Also, it's much further up than I'd expect to see a Kestrel and is soaring in a very Buzzard-like fashion. The video was taken by holding the phone up to the compacts, which are little 8x jobs, so that should give you some idea of just how high this was. It also explains the camera shake and the general poorness of the quality.

So. Since the bird is being mobbed by this Carrion Crow we know they're at roughly the same altitude and have a useful reference point for size. As far as I'm concerned we have 3 birds which might appear over central London, barring escapes from zoos and collections, that fit the size profile in the below:

Kestrel
Peregrine
Sparrowhawk

I'm ruling out the first two based on apparent wing shape and feel and will be calling this as a Sparrowhawk, but am more than happy to be argued with because, as I mentioned previously, I am useless with raptors and regularly confuse Sparrowhawks and Kestrels. I also know for a fact that we have a semi-regular Kestrel at the Tower of London who in fact nested there last year.

Apologies for all the waffle, but I just have a sneaking suspicion I might be about to make a fool of myself AGAIN with a raptor on this patch (if not quite as dramatically as last time). Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you... THE VIDEO:

And this will be going on Birdforum without the lengthy exposition.

Pre-rehearsal birding

2010-01-24T21:47:00.003Z

Had a band rehearsal during the best part of the day today, so I had a quick walk round Harrow Lodge seeing as I neglected it for Rainham yesterday. Good thing too, managed a few patch ticks picking out Common and Herring gulls from the big playing field out front. Still no Grey Wags down by the river this year, but a rather special appearance from our friendly Kingfisher

I saw the usual flash of blue, and was pleasantly surprised when it pulled up, spread its wings and settled on a bush not 20 yards away from me on the riverbank. This was my first ever 'perching' view of Kingfisher and it's long overdue. The little stunner just sat there while I gawped, and even stayed still long enough for an attempt at digi-binning, a delicate operation at the best of times. And a year tick into the bargain. Awesome.

Definitely a record shot. I don't care though, the view was stunning

And as a little added bonus, I pulled up at the rehearsal studio at half one and was joined just minutes later by fellow band members who pointed me at a hole in the hedge to a field in which they'd seen a Yellow-Legged Gull on the way up. It was helpfully standing next to a Black Headed, so the difference in size and colouring was nice and obvious.

And the rehearsal wasn't shite. So there.

In which I go to Rainham for the first time in 2010 and get very cold

2010-01-23T17:18:00.006Z

Let us begin with a piece of advice. If you are going birdwatching in winter and carrying a tripod around, bring gloves. Gloves are wonderful. I don't know what possessed me to leave home without them today but I regretted it. First thing I did on getting back to the Rainham visitor's centre was to buy a cup of tea so's I could wrap my hands around it.

Today was the opener for the Rainham 2010 list, and I'm a little disappointed with a day total of a meagre 39. Well, I say day; 2 hour total would be more accurate. I was planning on finishing up with a wander down the sea wall, but once I'd worked some life and warmth back into my fingers the idea wasn't very appealing. I also deliberately left the camera at home today, as I wanted to go out as a birdwatcher, not a photographer. This is why there are few photos, but lots of video.

So a quick summary. Things I didn't see:

Brent Geese
Pink Footed Geese
Bean Geese

This is a shame, because I spent the whole time between ordering and finishing my Bacon & Brie panini + cup of tea trying to memorise a useful difference between Pinkfoot/Bean and Greylag. Credit where it's due though, there were a couple of hundred Greylag to sift through scattered around the reserve.

Since I've not been to Rainham for AAAAGES, I was pleasantly surprised to find that you can actually see things from the Ken Barrett hide now. The old earth bank has been taken down and distributed liberally around the top pools. I prefer it, and judging by the billion odd Lapwing covering the place today the birds don't seem to mind at all. And sifting through the Lapwing I was rewarded with 4 smart looking Golden Plover, great birds.

View from the gate next to the Ken Barrett hide - much clearer.

Other top birds from the walkaround:

8 Snipe huddled on one of the mud banks, again hiding among the endless Lapwings.
Noisy Cetti's from the boardwalk just past the 'woodland' area.
All the usual gulls out on and around the target pools (BH, Common, LBB, GBB, Herring).

Some moving pictures below, courtesy of Nokia and Nikon:

There are Snipe there really, honest. About 8 of them. Somewhere.

Going on size, shape, bill and the fact it dives completely under the water I'm calling this as a Pochard. Any objections? There were other very obvious Pochards about so it's not the end of the world if I'm wrong.

Back in the centre at the end of the walk, we had what you'd probably call a Comic Moment. There was a call from Phil at the Stone Barges saying '5 Whooper Swan flying up river'. Cue a mad rush for the window as everyone lines up scopes and bins and starts misidentifying large gulls as Swans. After 5 minutes we're all turning to eachother and saying 'but where have they got to' when someone with WORKING EYES pointed out the front window at the big pool in front of the visitor's centre and said 'there they are'. 5 large swans clear as day swimming about right under our noses. Great views as well. Have some more poor quality video:

Whooper Swans doing camouflage

Worth a trip to get me off the mark, and I'm still missing loads of 'easy' birds, including all the Tits and that pesky Kingfisher. Maybe bring some warmer clothing next time though...

Bye bye habitat

2010-01-19T18:52:00.004Z

Wandered over to the Tower of London yesterday lunchtime to find my patch closed, and this rather worrying sight sitting just inside the gates:

O noes!

We don't have much habitat round by Tower Bridge to attract the more nervous passerines, and the big trees make up most of what we do have, so it was with great anxiety that I walked through the gates today. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw most of the trees still up, but one was not so fortunate. Cut down in his prime. Mourn him, we shall not see his like again.

This will be some kind of quaint hand carved bench by the end of the month, mark my words.

So what Monday lacked in passer, it made up for in Larus. 5 Common gulls skulking around on the west side of the Riverboat pier, along with the obligatory Black-headeds. Today was back to normal, with confirmed sightings of a Blue Tit, a Great Tit and 2 Goldfinches, though my gut tells me there were half a dozen or so of those flitting about and hiding behind branches and the like. Gull action was supplemented by a sleeping LBB on the covered walkway.

Regular Tit/Finch sightings by the Tower? I have a horrible germ of hope beginning to grow re: the Tower Bridge patch this year. It is evil and must be crushed - that way madness lies.

Nerd Humour

2010-01-17T21:39:00.002Z

This has had me chuckling most of the weekend.

What with being in the closing chapters playing through Knights of the Old Republic 2 and watching "A New Hope" with the missus on Saturday, I'm currently living more in the Star Wars universe than my own.

No birds at all this weekend. Peeing down with rain all through Saturday in Hampshire, and no chance of getting the girlfriend out with me in that even if I'd been inclined to go myself. Looks like another week of scraping the barrel at Tower Bridge before I can reward myself with some proper birding. A Rainham visit is long overdue.

Tower Bridge in awesome shocker

2010-01-15T00:50:00.003Z

Great start to the year at Tower Bridge. I've already seen almost all the paesserines I picked up last year, and we seem to have a regular small flock of Goldfinches frequenting the same tree by the Tower of London. Fantastic.

Bird of the year so far? Patch tick:

It's a youngun but it's very much a Great Crested Grebe. Could even see the stripes fading from its head and neck. Expertly digibinned using a mobile phone and a pair of Minox compacts. Only the best for my readers. The year list for the site currently stands as follows:

Mallard
Great Crested Grebe
Cormorant
Coot
Black-headed Gull
Common Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Herring Gull
Rock Dove
Woodpigeon
Pied Wagtail
Blackbird
Blue Tit
Great Tit
Carrion Crow
Starling
House Sparrow
Goldfinch

What other wonders might this patch hold before the year is out?

The patch list begins

2010-01-11T18:58:00.006Z

But not very well. A couple of birdwatching circuits round Harrow Lodge on Saturday turned into a huge dog walk through the park and right over the back of Dagenham chase. It was a good walk, but dogs arn't too conducive to birds. However, I managed to add almost all the usual lake wildfowl to the list, including a few Pochard which are a bit more unusual, which is a pretty good start. Next time I'm over there it'll be for a proper sift through the gulls. That was going to be Sunday's job but I got... distracted. How can they make the plot so good and the actual code so bad? Curse Lucasarts and their insistence on rushing the job to coincide with the films.

So the Harrow Lodge list is now on 16, which is a pathetic total and should be doubled without too much effort. The only vaguely interesting thing I saw was a Jay next to the main lake. If these turn up in the park they're usually tucked away in the trees over the river, and usually I see them over Rainham Road in Dagenham chase. Anyway, the wildfowl were all packed down the unfrozen end of the lake.

We have a LOT of Swans, all of them Mute.

Harrow Lodge was followed by Dagenham Chase, where not much else happened. Very quiet over there, though I did get to add Fieldfare to the list (like pretty much everyone else on the blogosphere over last weekend). I even got a photo but it's appalling. The camera was out for pictures of the dogs rather the birds so I was using the wide angle lens, and even if I'd thought the bird would sit still long enough for a lens change, it was snowing pretty hard.

So instead of birds over Dagenham chase, have some dogs. They're cuter anyway.

Extended Christmas

2010-01-08T18:03:00.004Z

I have received a late present from the missus. I always like late presents.

It is full of dried Meal Worms, though the water section froze pretty soon after this was taken. Of course the dream would always be for some kind of Bento of my own, but at the moment I'd just be satisfied with a bird. Any bird. It's only been 3 days so far, and I know it can take a while. Maybe the cold weather will work in my favour here.

Catchup and lists

2010-01-05T18:57:00.005Z

Yesterday was spent variously at a funeral and in some pubs, and I was in no fit state to type when I got back, let alone trust myself to write things on the internet. For the week before that I was housesitting with the missus somewhere remote outside Basingstoke, and didn't have computer access. To top it all off, PG Tips has gone up to 65p a cardboard cup in the work canteen. Sheer folly. All this means that time for both blogging and birding has been limited, so I'm taking the chance to do some catching up. This post will be disjointed. At least, more so than usual.

First of all, I am doing it properly this year and keeping my lists on BUBO. I'm up to a stunning 33 on the year list. Considering I've not actually been out birdwatching yet this year, that's not bad. Being forced to count things up has given me a couple of other surprise statistics - my Tower Bridge list is up to 30 which is higher than I thought, and my life list is at 147. My life list and my 2009 year list are essentially the same thing, since I only took up the hobby about a year ago (think the only difference is Shag, which I didn't see last year but have seen in the Isle of Wight). Targets for this year will therefore be as follows:

Tower Bridge: 30
My work patch, well trodden and well watched though I'll be taking the north bank (no hedgerows and grassland, but several mature trees) while most London Birders seem to be working the south bank. The target is low because I'm restricted at Tower Bridge by what decides to turn up. I haven't counted the Peregrine, which I feel a bit bad about since it was in Bankside when I saw it (though I was by Tower Bridge), but last year's list does include things like Wren, Robin and Grey Wagtail which I've only seen there once and will be lucky to see again (especially the Grey Wag). On the other hand, I didn't see a Tern, and one day there will be a Med Gull among the millions of Black Headeds that frequent the area. Maintaining 30 is a reasonable goal.

Harrow Lodge Park: 70
I'd like to try my hand at an actual local patch, and Harrow Lodge Park is by far the closest and largest body of green to my house. It's 5 minutes walk away, and having a target might push me to get over there a bit more regularly. Also, no one else seems to watch this area so I will be doing VALUABLE SCIENCE by getting out over there. I believe there was a Ferruginous Duck on the lake in 2007 - fingers crossed for exciting wildfowl in 2010. If 70 starts looking too easy I'll rethink it, but I've got no previous figures for this site to compare with.

Year List: 180
This will necessarily involve increasing my life list. However, there are loads of Geese I haven't seen, plenty of Gulls, some scarce waders and things like Penduline Tit which I missed last year but are fairly regular in the area. Shouldn't be hard, especially not if I get another couple of Norfolk trips in this year, and some decent Seawatching with someone who knows their stuff.

Moving on, I got a very quick dusk walk on New Year's day and decided to take the camera out with me. Saw a number of good birds - a mixed flock of Long Tailed and Coal Tits, with one particular Coal Tit hanging off a lower branch and generally displaying fantastically. There was also a skittish Treecreeper which I recognised on Jizz, but didn't get a decent look at. My girlfriend did and her ID concurred with mine so it's on the list, but I still haven't had a satisfying view of this bird. One to watch. There was also a large Chaffinch flock, and a dozen or so Yellowhammers hanging around in the treetops. The setting sun completely washed out any colours other than yellow - fortunately this wasn't an issue. Pictures attached.

Yellowhammer doing very yellow

Cameras and dusk light were made for each other. Winter trees make stunning silhouettes. One for the desktop.

I think that's it for now. Next chance to get out will likely be Saturday, so I'll either be over Rainham or making a start on the Harrow Lodge list. Now I've seen one Redwing in the garden the buggers have turned up everywhere, so I'm blindly hoping one might get lost and fly into Tower Bridge, where it will lie stunned long enough for me to get there and see it. We can all dream. Having said that, looking at the weather report I very much doubt I'll bother trying to get into work tomorrow. Time to break out the laptop and enjoy an open window and tea for free.

New year means new luck

2010-01-03T18:09:00.003Z

Off to a storming start in 2010 with 2 lifers over the last 3 days. Had a Red Kite on New Year's day just outside Basingstoke where it actually landed in a tree in the girlfriend's sister's garden! But it was properly wary and disappeared soon afterwards, so not an escape. Probably one of the introduced birds, but they breed here so I'm having it.

Then today, a Bullfinch in the Girlfriend's folks' driveway seen from the living room window. First glance was at a distance through some branches so I noted it down as a Robin based on the bright red breast, but something kept nagging me about it. A minute later it turned around to reveal a big white patch on its rump. ID was confirmed, and realising it had been clocked and hiding was now pointless, it moved a bit closer and sat on the fringes of a bush giving superb views.

And I hadn't even been out birding properly yet. My year list so far is 20. That means 10% of all bird species seen this year are life ticks. Not a statistic I'll hold onto for long, but a happy one to start the year.

Some photos from a brief walk on New Year's day will appear shortly.

OMGOMG

2009-12-27T10:36:00.004Z

OMGOMGOMG, THERE'S ONLY A JAY IN MY NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN!!!!!11!!1

*deep breaths*

Fortunately the attack of brain freezing excitement wore off before it flew away. Here are some surprisingly stable pictures.

Jay doing entirely the wrong place (but it feels so right)

Looking a bit washed out through the glass, but I don't care at all. This is probably one of the least expected garden ticks ever. Just, awesome.

On the first day of Christmas my Garden gave to meeee,
Some Redwings in my neighbour's tree.
On the second day of Christmas my Garden gave to meeee,
One awesome Jay
And some Redwings in my neighbour's tree.

Fingers crossed tomorrow I'll get to add another verse...

Redwings!

2009-12-26T10:54:00.004Z

Flock of Redwings landed in the trees surrounding my garden about 2 minutes ago. Garden tick! Brilliant. One of them hung on for ages.

Other notables for the garden this morning: A Blue Tit, a few Blackbirds, some House Sparrows on the feeders and a large flock of Strarlings alternating between feeding on the grass and fighting over the fat cake.

Also, just picked up the bins and saw a Robin attacking and chasing off a female house Sparrow from next door's apple tree while a male House Sparrow sat there and watched uninterestedly. You can tell they're local.

Sketchy things

2009-12-20T12:43:00.003Z

Inspired by the recent spate of bird drawings being published by the likes of Messrs Lethbridge and Simpson, I dug my pencils out from the bottom of the drawer for the first time in years and decided to have a go. I've never had the patience for the kind of precision needed to do pencil drawings such as you might find in the aforementioned blogs, but I used to enjoy knocking together a quick sketch.

There's a sound argument that drawing a bird helps with identification as it makes you look more closely at the features and proportions. I can't say I've ever had ID problems with the below, but I can see how it would work with the many LBJs, where you're looking at primary projections and similar.

And so, armed only with scrap paper, some pencils and Google image search, I have sketched the following:

For a first attempt in years I'm quite happy with it. Proportions are good, pose is alright, and I wasn't allowed to use a rubber as otherwise I'd never have finished it so stray pencil lines can be safely ignored. I always used to try and draw an outline first and then fill it in. Having read a couple of books I realise now that this is stupid, so I used the proper 'draw two ovals and join them up' technique. Much better.

The plan is to get to a stage where I can start playing with watercolouring them. There should be some more appearing at some point.

Mystery Gull contest

2009-12-16T18:00:00.005Z

I was just having a look through the weekend's photos from when I happened across this little fellow captured on the slack over Dagenham Chase:

Originally I took the photo because I wanted a closer look at the Gull on the left. That reddish breast isn't an artifact of the photograph, it was obvious through binculars and more than passing strange. Hoever, notwithstanding the possibility of some kind of weird drug fuelled fling resulting in a Black Headed Gull x Robin hybrid, I'm forced to conclude that it's probably just been sitting in a puddle of red stuff - probably on a tip somewhere.

However the gull to his right is much more interesting, because he doesn't look Black Headed at all. My money's on Common, any takers? A patch tick hangs in the balance.

The photo has already been cropped down to a fraction of its size and then blown up to about 200% in GIMP so it doesn't get any better than this I'm afraid.

When you're on a roll...

2009-12-13T17:24:00.009Z

Decided to see what I could drum up locally today, since driving to Rainham would have wasted valuable daylight hours and I hadn't been out around Harrow Lodge for a while. Also took the good digital camera on the assumption that the park would be too cold for the usual yobs hanging round the main lake. I was hoping my luck would still be in following the intervention of the Birding gods at Tower Bridge (turned out I was right; 2 patch ticks - score!).

First up was a regular for the patch, but always a pleasure. Grey Wagtails frequent the river that runs down the left hand side of the main field, but I've never managed to get a picture in the past, so having one posing about 8 feet away was too good an opportunity to miss:

Walking a bit further down added some Grey Squirrels, a couple of Robins, a noisy flock of Long Tailed Tits (maybe a dozen that I saw) with at least one Blue and one Great in amongst the crowd and a suspected Wren, which disappeared almost the instant I laid eyes on it. Since this is typical Wren behaviour I'm happy to keep it on record as a 'probable', if not a definite. A little further round the river, as I turned a bend I picked up patch tick no. 1 - a streak of electric blue flying away from me a high speed. Only saw it for a second but it didn't matter, it could only be a Kingfisher. Sent an excited text to Parus, who has done the circuit with me before and has long predicted that Kingfisher would turn up on that river, and kept walking only to see the same streak heading back towards me about a minute later. Fumbled with the camera and managed to capture the following stunning photographs as it disappeared from sight round the bend behind me.

Seriously, it's a good thing this blog is anonymous or Pentax would be knocking on my door demanding that I give their camera back

Just the usual wildfowl on the main lake along with some Black Headed gulls, though it gave me a chance to play with some close-ups of Swans and Cygnets and to see what I could make of the half dozen gulls sitting in a neat row on the railing over the bridge.

Rounding the far end of the lake I sent up a few gulls sitting on the grass and picked up some large windows on the wingtips of one of them. Wasn't big enough for a Herring so patch tick no. 2, Common Gull it is. There are probably loads over there, but I don't get a lot of experience with them so I'm still working on picking them out of a crowd.

After Harrow Lodge I crossed the road into the chase and took an extended walk round. Saw a finch flock of about a dozen Chaffinches, but couldn't pick anything else out from the brief views I was getting. Looking out over the slack didn't turn up any waders or any unexpected wildfowl (saw a m/f pair of Teal and a few Wigeon), though the Herons were out in force (I counted at least 6). What I mostly did over the chase was run around after a particular Kestrel trying (and failing) to get decent photos. It was about half three by this point and a giant raincloud was looming so light levels were appalling. It wasn't all bad for photography though.

Long lens, narrow aperture, low light. Wasn't anywhere near this dark over there at the time. All I've done it crop it and tidy the levels, the light and colour are identical to the original.

All in all then, and excellent day's birding and a good time playing with the Pentax. Really feel like I'm starting to see improvements in my photography, which is good because it justifies the silly money I paid for my camera. Still got a half formed plan to take it to the Tower during one lunchtime and try it on the tame Starlings. Imagine there'll be plenty of time for that in the week before christmas.

General deviance

2009-12-13T01:46:00.003Z

I have finally started doing something with the Deviantart account I started up oh so long ago.

http://fst0pped.deviantart.com/

My recent Robin pictures seem to be particularly popular. I have to recommend this site for people looking to store their photos online for other people to see. It's well laid out, easily navigated and there's always the vague hope that someone might buy something.

I am now searching for some kind of widget that will let me connect my Deviantart account to this blog. Be on the lookout for strange and exciting new boxes on the right hand side.

Now I need to sleep. Going to try and get out for a nice long walk tomorrow, either over the Chase or over Rainham. Will see what the weather's like and what time I get up.

The magic that is "Keyword Analysis"

2009-12-08T19:32:00.005Z

Not much exciting birdwise at the Tower today, though for some reason someone seems to have added some lights to the Crossbill habitat. Perhaps so you can see the birds in the dark? Anyway, quiet days on the bird front means un-bird related posts. You can probably stop reading now.

One of my favourite things about the stat tracking software on my blog is the "Keyword Analysis". Most of the time this is mainly useful to see who's hit your blog while searching for porn but occasionally other amusing combinations of words turn up. It certainly gives you some insight into the mentality of these people. I've circled my favourite:

I'm not Lee Evans biggest fan - I can safely say I disapprove of his apparent birdwatching philosophy - and at times in the past his name has cropped up in a post, but I don't believe I've ever called him an idiot on these pages.

I also particularly like 'london bees riverboat'.

If you keep a blog (or any website) and you haven't yet discovered this feature, I thoroughly recommend it. Particularly if you occasionally like to slip potential porn keywords into posts to catch unwary trawlers (only for the most hardcore (and I mean seriously anal) bloggers) red handed. Go find the statcounter link somewhere at the bottom of the right hand menu and give it a click. It's a whole new world.

And as a cool little added bonus, you also get one of these.

Pulborough Brooks

2009-12-06T22:23:00.007Z

On Saturday the woman and I took a trip to Pulborough Brooks RSPB reserve. She'd been there before but years ago and I never had, and since it's less than an hour from her flat we planned to give it ago. Saturday morning was miserable but not yet wet, so we took the plunge.

The first thing we saw on getting out of the car was the friendliest little Robin I've ever come across. The trip was worth it for him alone, and I'm now sorted for Christmas cards for the next 3 years. This was one of those rare occasions when the bird turned up while the camera was in its case and WAS STILL THERE when I finally had it ready and pointed it at the branch where the bird was perched. It turned out this Robin was a right little poser.

There are far more where these came from, he was too good to resist, but they are among the sharpest.

On the feeder outside the centre were dozens of Blue and Great tits, along with Chaffinches, a couple of Coal Tits and the woman picked out a Nuthatch, though I missed it. Doesn't surprise me particularly (the fact there was a Nuthatch or the fact that I missed it), the feeders were an utter madhouse. No pictures here because we went inside to get some food, the plan being to 'take some photos later'. Best laid schemes of Mice and Men and all that. More of this later.

So we sat in the canteen and picked up cups of tea and a very tasty Pork and Apple casserole. This was seriously good winter warmer food and much needed, but by the time we got out onto the reserve the best that could be said for the weather was 'moist', and it went downhill from there.

I didn't get a picture (too much rain to change lenses) but normally looking out from the Visitor's centre at Pulborough Brooks you're treated to a view much like the one from Rainham Visitor's centre when all is working properly. The view on Saturday had more of a North Sea feel to it. The whole valley was flooded. The downside of this was that there were NO birds out there. Wetlands were completely covered, so all that was left were ducks and Wildfowl, and even among those I didn't pick up any unusual winter ducks (my kingdom for an Eider...) and all the Swans were Mute. The one plus was that the high water had driven all the Fallow Deer up to the grass just in front of the centre.

The camera was put away fairly soon after starting the walk due to excessive rain, but not before I'd got a couple of record shots of Redwing and Jay (first 'seen' Redwing of the winter, but not the year). All my optics are feeling particularly ill-treated and are now due some TLC.

My favourite Thrush - not sure why. Maybe because I didn't realise they existed before I became a 'Birdwatcher'. A bit of the magic of 'suddenly seeing nature afresh' still hangs around it.

I did get some not-completely-crap Pintail video from the Nettley hide, which can be seen below:

Note how I finally get the thing in focus just as the buggers swim off. Very inconsiderate.

And that, really, was that. Pulborough Brooks looks like it would be a great little reserve in fairer weather (i.e. when 2 of the hides weren't flooded and the valley not full of water), and while I may not have seen the best of the birds, I got a pretty good feel for the layout of the place. Would definitely like to go again, maybe in January/Feburary time while there's still a chance of some cool winter ducks for the 2010 list. They also have resident Bullfinches, which are getting to be a bit of a Bogey for me, so all the more incentive to do a decent day's birding down there. The 'tea-room' at least is a model of what the canteen on every reserve should be like. It didn't have the varied and much appreciated selection of homemade cake provided by, say, Rainham Marshes, but the hot meals more than made up for it.

It was wet, and in places it was cold, but as I sit here with a glass of single malt (Bowmans if you're interested, Islay malt, deliciously peaty), I reflect that wet and cold is temporary while awesome Robin photos will hopefully last a lifetime.

The Birding gods are mighty

2009-12-03T18:45:00.005Z

Following my plea to the Birding gods, and not wishing to anger them by asking for something and then not bothering to look, I took a stroll down to Tower Bridge today not really expecting anything much.

And surprisingly, the Birding gods delivered. Nothing truly spectacular perhaps, but there were undeniably birds at the Tower, and some of them were undeniably not on the list of commons I was ranting about before.

Got off to a good start when I arrived at the riverside just in time to see and hear a Pied Wagtail heading full pelt in the other direction, and a quick scan of the usual flock of Black Headeds on the riverboat walkway showed up a Lesser Black Back settled down for a snooze. Feeling heartened, and deciding that the Birding gods are no respecters of weakness and are most likely to help those who help themselves, I took a wander round a long neglected part of my patch - St Katherine's docks.

Crossing the lock gate I heard a machine gun chattering in one of the trees and quickly hunted down the noisy Magpie. Believe it or not, that is a Patch Tick for Tower Bridge, taking me to a grand total of 28. Plea to Birding gods = well and truly answered. I will sacrifice Lee Evans to them in thanks if ever the opportunity presents itself.

On the docks themselves were a very pleasing pair of adult Tufted Ducks (m/f), 2 male Mallards and a Cormorant going fishing. The fine art gallery had also acquired a couple more nudie paintings that I could pretend not to be looking at as I walked past.

The highlight, however, was sitting in front of the Tower itself. The ways of the Birding gods are truly ineffable.

These industrious workers have clearly been tasked with creating some kind of Crossbill habitat right on my very patch! No other explanation could possibly make sense.

I can hardly wait!

Quiet times in the City

2009-12-01T22:28:00.003Z

You don't hear much about it these days, but I'm still working the Tower Bridge patch of the Thames as often as I can at lunchtimes. Despite stupidly high water levels over the last couple of days, nothing of interest has turned up. Nothing. Not a bloody sausage. The regular host of several hundred Black Headed Gulls haven't harboured any Meds (or even Commons), and rarely even a Lesser Black Back these days just to break up the sea of pale grey.

As for Passerines... well, maybe a demonstration is the best way of getting this across:

It's a shame, because earlier this month things were looking up. Last week a Male House Sparrow showed up and stood on a bush singing for almost 15 minutes - very loud, very healthy looking. He was the first for over a month and no sign of him since. He was accompanied by a very smart Male Blackbird creeping about next to the hedgerows scavenging for crumbs. In fact, the week before that a small flock of 8 or so Goldfinches turned up and started hanging about at the very top of one of the mature trees. That's a first at the Tower for me, and quite a good inner London bird to boot. Again, vanished without a trace into the ether.

I'm still fighting through the miserable weather to get there, but am getting close to a "don't know why I bother" phase. I know, youngsters these days, no commitment. I'm working from home tomorrow, but I'd like to put in a small plea to the birding gods - if you could see your way clear to throwing something interesting at the Tower between 12-14:00 hours on Thursday it would be much appreciated. I'm not fussy, it doesn't need to be Firecrests. Maybe a Wren. Or a Robin. I've seen them both before, I know it can happen. Just please, anything but Pigeons, Starlings, Coots, Carrion Crows and bloody Black Headed Gulls!

Weather permitting, the plan is a trip out from the girlfriend's to Pulborough Brooks this Saturday. That should keep me going for a few more weeks.

Norfolk, November 2009 - Day 3

2009-11-26T17:12:00.006Z

Expectation is the enemy. If you know what you're expecting to see, you're already halfway toward a duff ID. From what I hear, most birders learn this lesson constantly throughout their careers, and that's why I don't feel quite so bad as I might.

But this story has a happy ending.

It all started on Monday morning. This was leaving Norfolk day, so we walked into Sheringham town centre to get food for the trip home. Naturally enough I didn't take my camera because food shopping rarely presents good photo opportunities, and this inevitably meant that when we walked along the 20 yards of coastline available to us on the way in it was covered in Turnstones. Because I have a remarkably tolerant girlfriend (who incidentally reads this blog) I ran back to the B&B for my camera. She held fort on the sea wall and, upon my return, reported with some small amount of smugness that while I'd been gone a couple of the birds had decided to chase eachother round the path and ended up about 2 feet from her. Mildly irritating, but since I'd spent the entire run back picturing silhouetted Turnstones disappearing over the horizon I couldn't find it in me to be too disppointed.

So ensued a bit of a mammoth Turnstone photography session - they're just so photogenic and so well behaved. One of my favorite coastal birds for all that they're common as dirt:

Broke my normal blog-rule about not doing any post-production (other than cropping) on this one. Just tweaking the levels a bit makes it look so much sharper.

The trouble with Turnstones though is that they do like to poke around in drain outlets and other such accumulations of crap and litter, and it does rather spoil the ambiance when the bird is sitting next to a dead coke bottle. Fortunately, sharp eyed girlfriend came to the rescue. "Oh look, there's one on the rocks over there, do you want to try and get some pictures of that?"

FIRST CLUE IGNORED. It was sitting all on its own on a bloody great rock and not poking about in sewage with the others as Turnstones are wont to do.

"Oh cool" I replied, "Yeah definitely". And it was very well behaved and I was very pleased, and got some very nice pictures including a rather cool flight shot, and which I didn't really look at very closely. SECOND CLUE IGNORED. We finished up the food shopping and drove home, picking up a Buzzard over the car on the way.

Once back, I called a friend and expressed a desire for beer - a desire with the full weight of 7 hours in the car behind it - so we went to the pub and dissected our respective weekend's birding. On the way back he stopped by the house and I gave him the camera to peruse.

"Are you sure that's a Turnstone?" he said. Well I was until I was asked. "It looks more like a Purple Sandpiper" he said. "Look, the bill's clearly longer than a Turnstone's and there's white edging round all those feathers on its back". So down came the bird books, and a Purple Sandpiper it was. Lesson Learned - look at the damn bird in future. Prime example of why going out with a camera should never be confused with going out birdwatching.

So I feel a bit stupid because the bill alone was a huge giveaway, but I doubt it'll be the worst ID I ever make. And the photos are good. And I had fun with the Turnstones. And I had beer in a pub. A successful day all round.

It wouldn't be right though if I finished the trip report without mentioning the B&B where we stayed. It was a little place in Sheringham called the Alverstone, and it was extremely nice. Perhaps not one for the more dedicated birdwatchers out to catch all the rarities they can - breakfast was served at 09:00 each morning which is well after first light even at this time of year - but comfy and welcoming. Full cooked breakfast on request, though I stuck with scrambled eggs on toast after the first morning, and only just off the A149 so easy access all the way up and down the coast. Took about 15 minutes to get to Cley, and half an hour to Blakeney. If you're looking for a holiday, I recommend.

Norfolk, November 2009 - Day 2 of 3

2009-11-25T18:39:00.006Z

This was the day when the missus and I used up our allocated share of 'weather-luck' for the rest of the year. The forecast was, frankly, horrible, and a quick chat with the lady in the Beans Boats ticket office (i.e. cottage front room) revealed that they'd actually stopped taking bookings and advised people not to turn up as they didn't think they'd be able to run the trip - it was all touch and go until Sunday morning. As it happened, the day was bright and sunny until about 2 minutes after we stepped off the boat. Now THAT's timing.

"Every year the Seals travelled from miles around to Blakeney Point and gathered on the beaches to witness the human spectacle as, for some inexplicable reason, the humans all packed themselves tightly onto floating trees and sailed round in little circles."

The Seal trip was considerably shorter this time round - there was no stopover on the point itself and the seals were gathered on a beach much closer to Morston than they were when we were here in May time. However, they did have one thing going for them that they didn't have in the spring. SEAL PUPS. I think I can let the pictures speak for themselves...

Not a pup

Aww

Awwwwwww

Awwwwwwwwwwwww

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

We saw some birds as well, but who cares, right? Redshank and Brent Geese can't compare with this.

And besides, the most exciting bird of the trip was yet to come...

Norfolk, November 2009 - Day 1 of 3

2009-11-24T13:46:00.013Z

This trip report will be delivered in 3 parts. The first (this one) and the third will contain all the things that will likely be of interest to the birdwatching community who are the mainstay of this blog. The second will contain little except sickeningly cute photos of sickeningly cute Seal pups.

The birdwatching portion of this trip is a tale of both mirth and woe, full of false IDs and birding ineptitude. This is because the Missus and I were going it alone on this visit and lacked the knowledgable second opinions of our previous trip last May.

Note: This was not a 'birdwatching holiday' as such, just a relaxing weekend away where we incidentally did some birdwatching. This trip was nowhere near as big or as manic as the May one.

We started the Saturday at Cley, where I just about managed to hand over the £4 entry fee without wincing. Checked the board quickly - nothing in the book for the day thus far - and ventured onto the reserve. I've lost my map, but we headed out to what I believe are the middle hides and spent some time looking out across the scrape. If you like Wigeon, Teal and Shelduck this is the place to be.

They covered the lake and surroundings, and are just generally very photogenic.

However, man cannot live on wildfowl alone, and before long we had another visitor turn up.

And wonder of wonders, it actually sat down in front of us long enough for a decent scoping and some poor quality video.

Also out on the marshes were a small selection of Waders - 8 or 9 Bar-Tailed Godwits and a few Redshank dotted about - one which we're fairly certain was a Spotted Redshank. The boardwalk on the way back produced the first of the woeful IDs. We went for Whinchat, based on the pictures in the poor quality excuses-for-field-guides that are my main source of information (I want my Collins goddammit). After consultation with Parus (i.e. him saying 'no it's not'), I've revised my opinion and now consider it to be very much a Stonechat. A quick search on Google images confirms this -the supercilium is nowhere near as prominent as you see in the Whinchat pictures scattered about. I'll know for next time. Still, we showed the picture to the lady in the visitor's centre and told her it was a Whinchat and she didn't hesitate to write it on the board as one. That'll annoy the locals. See what you think anyway:

Regular Redshank

Not a Whinchat

We ate some soup in the visitor's centre and I picked up a Bird Song CD, which I've been meaning to do for ages. In the meantime someone had written "60 Snow Bunting (Shore)" in the visitor's book, so we made a dash to the front to see what we could see. No Snow Buntings, but a Flock of about 1500 Golden Plover made the effort worthwhile, and scoping back over the marshes bagged us about 400 Lapwing and a Pintail on the scrapes.

Looking the other way, out onto the sea, was about as fruitless as seawatching gets. We saw a single Greater Black Backed gull, a couple of Cormorants and a Common Seal. No Gannets, no Fulmar, nada. We did chase a pipit type thing into some long grass, but I'm not hot enough on those particular kind of LBJs to ID them from the brief glimpses we got. To be honest, long glimpses would give me almost as much trouble. It will be forever unknown.

In the afternoon we headed over to Holkham bay to try and find some of those Shore Larks, and possibly a Snow Bunting or two. We were disappointed on both counts, though some friendly Seawatchers put us onto 4 Gannet doing their plummeting thing, along with a flock of c60 Common Scoter fishing in the same area. Walking down the beach to the area where the Shore Larks were reported to be, we happened across a few LBJs among the sea of tiny Heather stalks which, with the help of the esteemed Parus, have been narrowed down to Twite. I've checked the call since our conversation and it matches what we heard on the day. Here's an appalling picture. Notice how I got lost among the sea of brown and focused on a piece of string, instead of the actual bird in the bottom left.

And so ended day with a couple of pints and some food in the Robin Hood, Sheringham (highly recommended, lovely pub and Old Speckled Hen as a regular ale).

That's enough for now I think - tune in tomorrow (maybe) for part 2 on Blakeney point, in which there may be some seals.

Abberton on Sunday

2009-11-18T23:14:00.005Z

I've had two trips to Abberton now, and both of them have been brilliant.

Spoonbill doing Spoonbilling

I got ticks, I saw good birds that weren't ticks, and I got chauffered to a very nice pub in Maldon called the Blue Boar. Good birds, good food/drink and good company, what more can you ask from a day out?

Of course, tick birds for me are as scum underfoot to others - one of the few advantages of being new to the hobby are that life ticks are easy to come by, and every trip holds genuine hope. Take the above; first Spoonbill ever. Awesome. Other ticks for this trip included Goosander, Goldeneye and Spotted Redshank.

This was alongside the 120ish Golden Plover, 300ish Black Tailed Godwit, c40 Teal, 2 Pintail, 60ish Gadwall and single Ruff. Lots of other, more ordinary, stuff seen, but we did miss the Bewicks Swans and Smew seen the previous day. Smew is a winter target of mine, so I'll be following that particular story closely.

On the way back we stopped in Heybridge basin, which was good for 3 things: Tea, Golden Plovers and House Sparrow photos. Didn't get a picture of the Tea, but you're in luck with the rest.

Wotcher

The Plover were particularly impressive. There must have bee a flock of at least 3-4000 - photos just don't do it justice. Really got to see the golden colour in the twilight though, which was very very cool. A genuinely good day out even without the birdwatching, and one I'll be looking to repeat when I can.

Off to Norfolk with the missus this weekend, so there will be some birdwatching done but it won't be a crazy runaround like last May, just a relaxing long weekend during which I might happen across a reserve or two. I'll save the pressure birding for next year.

Corvid on the feeders?

2009-11-14T09:05:00.004Z

Those of you hanging around London right now will know that it's pissing down here - high wind, torrential rain etc. Not conducive to birdwatching. But I've got my curtain open on the offchance as my room looks down onto the feeders, and if there's one thing that might drag birds out into the horrible weather it's food.

That's why I saw the Magpie perched on my fence flying over to a fat cake, which hangs in a cage, desperately hovering in midair while it tried to tear off a beakful, and then flying back to the fence to sit and stare at the feeder before trying again. Rinse and repeat 4 or 5 times before it finally gave up and flew away. With winds like this I am amazed that it even got close.

First time I've seen a Corvid trying for any of the feeders which are far too small for them to perch and feed. I can only assume it was getting desperate.

Fame. Ish.

2009-11-10T23:11:00.000Z

Anyone here buy Bird Watching magazine? Have a look on page 13 will you...

Placeholding

2009-11-09T18:05:00.006Z

Busy busy, got about 15 minutes to write this before I spend another 48 hours away from the computer.

First off, Coal Tit in girlfriend's dad's garden on Saturday - awesome. Not the best view, but easily the best I've had so far. Didn't get to see the white patch on the back of the neck, which I'd like to get a decent look at in case the suspected Coal Tit ever comes back to my garden, but easily enough to identify it. Also had a second opinion in the form of the missus who was out there with me, and she has seen them before. Only about the second I've ever seen and I also got to catch an earful of song, so very happy with that.

Secondly, I took a LONG walk this lunchtime, went a considerable way down Cable Street and ended up in Shadwell area. There's a small allotment here, the front of which is full of trees, bushes, dead leaves and bird boxes. And Grey Squirrels. Saw at least 3 of those, along with 3 Blackbirds and a Blue Tit feeding off of berries in a tree overhanging the pavement. The best bit though was hearing a familiar high pitched nattering sound, and catching sight of a Goldfinch through the branches. Inner London tick right there - think I'll start keeping a generalised patchlist for the Tower Hamlets area. I've seen a couple of birds out and about now that arn;t close enough to count as Tower ticks, and it's definitely worth keeping a record.

Still struggling with phone video. I have purchased a USB cable and transferred the stuff across, but finding something that will let me play/edit it is another matter. It will be sorted, but have had a distinct lack of time on the computer this weekend.

Last but not least, I forked out some money for some bird listing software, because updating my HTML lists was too time consuming and I'd essentially stopped doing it. I also know now, after working with them for the last year and a bit, that relational databases are where it's at. Wasn't at all impressed at first, and I still think Jeff's Birding Database seems on a par in terms of functionality, but JBD doesn't let me add new locations properly. Having played with Tick List Pro I'm getting used to it now. It's not great, but so far it's better than the alternatives. Will post a better review when I've managed to get a decent number of records into it. Still time consuming to add them, but at least I'm just updating in one place, and I can include some extra detail.

The importance of not being an idiot - part deux

2009-10-31T23:06:00.003Z

So you lose your charger. You find your charger. You charge the batteries of your very expensive camera. You go to Rainham Marshes 2 days later and take the camera with you, hoping for some hot .jpg action. What have you forgotten?

To put the fucking battery back in the camera of course, you silly sod.

Not impressed.

Trip report to follow once I work out how to get some poor quality Snipe video off my phone and onto my computer.

The importance of not being an idiot

2009-10-28T18:13:00.005Z

Until about 5 minutes ago I thought I'd lost the charger for my Pentax battery, thus rendering a very expensive camera very useless. I have been persistent in this belief for about the last 2 weeks, and most peeved. The worst of it is that it has in fact been right under my nose the whole time, but every time I've looked at it my eyes have slid right off it, as though distracted by some kind of SEP field, and I've thought 'right that's the Kodak charger, where's the Pentax?'.

I just checked a drawer on the OTHER side of the room that I've looked through at least half a dozen times and found the Kodak charger in there. And apparently for 2 weeks I've not noticed that mysteriously there seems to be two of it.

So I can take pictures again, yay! And I was very kindly bought an ND filter for my birthday - pointless for bird photography, but should be fun to play with on the landscapes.

To celebrate, here are a couple from the archives, taken with the old Kodak on Ludshott Common in Hampshire in April 2007.

Houseplant update

2009-10-19T19:38:00.006+01:00

No real bird related news. In the last week or two the only out-of-the-ordinary (i.e. not a Corvid, Black Headed/Lesser or Greater black backed gull, Pigeon or Starling) birds I've seen are a Wren and a couple of Robins. Winter both giveths and takeths away - if you can get out on a weekend the birds are fantastic, but there are no more birding walks before/after work because it's all gone dark.

So here are some pictures of my 2 houseplants, just to make my girlfriend jealous. You may remember that I was entrusted with a spider plant as an anniversary present some months back. That plant now, quite satisfyingly, outstrips the original by a long way and is a source of near inexhaustible bragging rights.

Spider Plant doing HUGE

It was joined shortly afterward by a friend, but the Umbrella tree experiment was a bit of a failure. It desperately needed repotting within a couple of weeks and got far too big for my desk, so it's been taken into protective custody downstairs with all the other monsters.

I still wanted a little desk plant, nothing too showy, so I took the missus along to B&Q to see what we could see. A quick look along the sale plants and we found a fairly unhappy looking Begonia. I took her word for it that it would recover perfectly given a bit of TLC and here is the result:

As you can see, my surfaces are covered in the clutter of the hopeless gadget-o-holic. And my desk faces South.

Apologies for the appalling image quality - the light bulb in my room is vastly underpowered.

I'm feeling quite green fingered these days. Will I get out next weekend and actually see some birds? I bloody well hope so.

I'll leave you with a question: Can juvenile Black Headed gulls have yellow bills/legs? Saw 2 gulls at the Tower of London today which were Black Headed in size and shape - they also had the browny juvenile plumage and the black dot behind the eye. The bill and legs though were bright yellow. As far as I'm aware Common Gulls don't have the black eye spot, and if there'd just been one of them I'd have shrugged it off as a probable BH mutation, but two of them standing next to eachother? I leave it to the wisdom of others.