It's been a good winter for birds in my garden. I've been posting my garden sightings on my Port Meadow Birding blog since I increased the area which the blog covers but apart from that I'd not really given it much thought. However various people started asking about whether I'd had any more good birds in the garden recently and that got my thinking about it and I realised that I've had all of the winter visitors that one might possibly expect with one exception. Below is a summary of what I've seen over the winter so far. I apologise in advance for the poor quality of the photos but they are all shot through my home office window which looks out onto the garden and as the window is locked shut I can't easily clean the outside which is rather grubby.
I have a number of feeders up in the garden: nyger for the goldfinches, sunflower hearts for the finches and tits, peanuts for the tits, fat balls which the starlings enjoy and half apples impaled on spikes for the thrushes. All the feeders now have squirrel cages on as otherwise a pesky local comes and empties them pretty quickly. Goldfinches are daily visitors and in fact I often get a flock of about twenty of them roosting in the tall evergreen tree that we have in the middle of the garden. We regularly get redwings in the garden, especially at the start of the season when there are lots of holly berries still on our tree though the wood pigeons soon demolish these. During the cold spell we've had fieldfares come in as well and up to four blackbirds all fighting over the apples. One of the biggest surprises during the prolonged snowy period was a poor meadow pipit on the ground at the back of the garden briefly. A male blackcap came into the garden a while ago, took a liking to the apples in particular and has never left. He's even become quite aggressive, chasing other birds off the feeders (though not the greenfinches which are too big). Now that there's at least a hint of spring in the air he's started singing and it's been wonderful to hear his warblings so early in the year.
A rather blurry shot of my resident blackcap
The jackdaw "showing characteristics of the Nordic race", whom I have christened Norbert is still visiting the garden fairly regularly. I got an e-mail from someone local saying that his father had seen a jackdaw with a collar a couple of years ago in a nearby street. This and the fact that I think I saw Norbert about a year ago in the garden all points to the fact that he's not a vagrant from Scandinavia, forced over by the harsh December weather but either he came over some time ago and decided to settle or his collar is some genetic throw-back to past Nordic influences. Anyway it's always nice to see him when he turns up with his fellow jackdaw chums to raid the bird table.
Norbert at the fat balls
One of the birds that I got most excited about was a brambling which turned up for a couple of days. I find brambling a remarkably hard bird to see in the county: there isn't an obvious site for them and it's usually just occasional reports from random gardens or fields so when I spotted one hanging around the feeders I was very pleased. Unfortunately he didn't stick around.
my brambling visitor
I've had a couple of visits by siskins this winter, including a flock of three on the nyger seed recently. It's generally much easier to see siskins "on demand" in the county and there are sites where they can be more or less guaranteed but it's always a pleasure to see these dainty little finches.
The siskins at the nyger
The ultimate winter garden tick has to be waxwing. There have been a few waxwings kicking around my local area and I'd even had a flock of five fly over the garden trilling so they were on my garden list but the other day I spotted one actually sitting in our pear tree not 10 yards from my home office window. He was obviously feeding somewhere close by and then coming to rest in the garden and I saw him three times that day for reasonably extended periods of time though sadly he didn't return.
A couple of waxwing shots.
And the one winter visitor that I haven't had? The answer is redpoll. I'm still hoping for one on my nyger: I have had them in previous years and there's still time. With my new-found interest in redpolls I might even be able to spot a subtle mealy in amongst the lessers should one turn up and I've been reliably told that there's a good chance of a last gasp redpoll invasion in the county in March.
I thought that I knew redpolls: the brown ones are lessers, the frosty ones with a whitish rump are mealies and the really white ones with a very white rump are arctics. Turns out, that's far too simplistic. My knowledge of and confusion about redpolls has increased in leaps and bounds since yesterday. Here's how it happened....
On Monday evening Ian Lewington (our esteemed County Recorder for non-county readers) posted an entry on the very popular Oxon Birding Log saying that someone had got in touch with some photos of a very pale redpoll (blog entry here). He'd gone to see it and it was a cracking mealy but right at the top (arctic) end of the spectrum. Now I still needed mealy redpoll for my county list but when I read that it was appearing occasionally for a few minutes every few hours I wasn't over enthusiastic despite the potential county tick. I'd also been out birding for most of the previous afternoon and felt that I really needed to do some work so I didn't do anything about it on Tuesday. However on Wednesday after having done a good bout of work the previous day I felt that I probably could afford to waste a few hours staring at an empty nyger feeder in the cold. I had to stop pick up something from my accountant in that direction anyway so it was justification enough to set off. It was a bit of a trek out to Milcombe from Oxford and it was after 11am by the time I'd actually turned up.
The feeders were conveniently located in the corner of a garden which bordered a paddock through which a public footpath ran so it was easy to see them. There were three large and wells-stocked feeders to which a variety of birds were coming and going. I'd only been watching a short while when all the birds went up suddenly into the trees. I looked up expecting to see a sparrowhawk but instead I found the shape of a small fast falcon zooming off: a merlin - very nice! After a short while I was joined by a couple of birders who were also looking for the redpoll though they'd not know exactly where to look and had been touring the entire village. They reported that there were lots of feeders around in the village gardens which I suppose meant that the target bird could be going to some other feeder for hours at a time. Shortly after that I heard a redpoll trilling from behind us and soon after our first redpoll arrived on the feeders. It clearly wasn't the frosty mealy we were looking for but to pass the time I took some photos. Redpolls would come and go from the garden, often seeming to spend some time on the ground out of sight but there was never any sign of the "super-mealy". At one stage there were four redpolls at the feeders and I took a bit of video as a memento. There were some nice other birds around as well: a great spotted woodpecker turned up, and yellowhammer and a tree creeper both put in an appearance.
Some video of four redpolls at the feeder
Because there was always something to look at I found that I actually rather enjoyed the two hours I'd given myself before I packed up and left. With no sign of the bird I'd seen in the photos I'd clearly dipped but I'd been half expecting that anyway. I drove back home and spent the afternoon slaving over a hot computer before posting my video and photo on the Oxon Bird Log and the OOS site respectively, mainly just to add a bit of colour to the blog.
A redpoll photo that I took to pass the time
Later that evening I was browsing Martin Garner's excellent Birding Frontiers web-site: Martin is very hot on redpolls and has done a lot of posts on them recently. His latest posting was on "Brown Mealies" and this started to get me confused: surely that was a contradiction in terms, I thought. Anyway I started to look at my photo and wondered whether I could string what was evidently a pale bird but with no hint of frosting on its back, into a mealy. I decided that even I couldn't do that (especially since I'd posted the photos in public) and left it at that. Later on however it conspired that both Ian Lewington and Nic Hallam (for non-county birders: top birder who runs the Farmoor Birding blog and is a member of the BBRC ) thought that the top right-hand bird in my video was a mealy redpoll and also that the pale bird in my photo was another one! Ian even composed a composite photo comparing my photo bird with a photo he'd dug out of a Finnish mealy redpoll in breeding plumage and the match was pretty good. All this meant that I'd got my county tick after all but that I also needed to re-evaluate my understanding of redpolls.
Composite photo from Ian Lewington showing a Finnish mealy above and my bird below.
So where does this leave my redpoll identification skill? Firstly I have learnt that redpolls are the gulls of the passerine world: they are very tricky and varible and, like gulls, there are some birds that you just have to walk away from. It also seems to be more of a continuum or cline and it is somewhat arbitrary where you draw the line. Nevertheless here's my idiot's guide to redpolls as I understand them:
Lesser redpoll 1. The small brown ones. Basically buffy brown wash to them all over 2. Comparatively short winged and small (smaller than a goldfinch) 3. Rump streaked with buffy brown basal colour 4. When in breeding plumage the breast colour is reddish (not pinkish).
Mealy redpoll 1. The larger whiter ones. A whiter basal colouring, your classic one being "frosted" though they can be remarkably brown as my birds are 2. Comparatively long winged and larger (comparable to a goldfinch in size) 3. Streaked rump with white basal colour 4. When in breeding plumage the breast colour is pinkish (not reddish)
Arctic redpoll 1. Large and very white. 2. The bill is very small: it looks like it's been punched in the face 3. Pure white rump
The rump seems to be a pretty important part of the ID and a good rump can trump some otherwise slightly dodgy other criteria. Note that this is over-simplified: there are actually two types of common redpoll: mealy and Greenland and two types of arctic: Hornmanns & Coues. For now this is my level of understanding though I dare say I'll have to look into it further in due course. All I can say is that I now want to go back and spend more time looking at redpolls in all their great variety. I could get as addicted to them as I am to gulls!
Another photo of one of my mealies: note the pink on the breast (not red) the white basal colour for the head and neck and pale streaking (perhaps a hint of frosting) on what is still a rather brown back.
I realise that I've not posted anything on the blog for a while now and my one reader of this blog was complaining that he'd had to read the previous posting three times so desperate was he for something new so I thought I'd better write something. It's just that apart from my very enjoyable trip to Cornwall I've not gone on any major trips. I check my patch each day but that's written up on the Port Meadow Birding blog but apart from that I've only made a few excursions even within the county. Nevertheless I feel that I probably have enough collectively from the month to warrant another posting.
What shall I write about? Why gulls of course! Recently I confessed to being somewhat of a gull addict but it turns out that Badger (who only last year was trying to talk me out of my blossoming addiction) has got it far worse than I have. He now looks forward during the week to Saturday which he can spend at Appleford GP staring at the brown gulls on the rubbish tip. He even confessed to me that he takes his "Gulls fo Europe, Asia and North America" with him in the car so that he can look up the finer points on the spot! I've been mostly confining my efforts to the Port Meadow roost where at the start of the month I was rewarded with a fine adult Caspian gull.
Normally I try to get a videograb of the underside of the P10 primary but I didn't managed it on this occasion though it did give me a brief flash which looked spot on to me. The same bird (presumably) appeared at Farmoor in the roost the next day where it was photographed in detail by Nic Hallam, showing a perfect underwing.
With finding and adult cachinnans under my belt so early on in the year I was starting to feel much more confident about my gull ID. I even managed to avoid the classic hooded-common-gull-is-a-Franklin's trap when this beasty turned up on the Meadow a few nights later:
Fortunately I was close enough to see this gull for the common gull that it was!
However, I know from experience, whenever I start to feel too cocky, it always means that I'm about to be pulled up short. Usually it's something like making a real howler of a string in front of the county recorder but fortunately I managed to spot for myself that something wasn't right with this one.
A nice cachinnans look to this bird that I found on the meadow....
However the P10 underwing appears to be almost entirely black on one side!
Badger said that he learnt a valuable lesson from Nic Hallam (the "Gull Whisperer") who'd said that "there are some gulls that you've just got to back away from!" and this would appear to be one of them. Some hideous hybrid or an aberrant gull (but which one?). The advice is "Leave it! It's not worth it!".
By way of restoring one's sanity after that quasi Caspian mind f*ck here's a nice straight-forward yellow-legged gull to drool over:
Can't argue about the colour of those legs!
The "Cassaworry" (Badger's joke) came back haunt me some more and I was able to get some better photos
as well as some video footage
Still just as weird even in good light!
I have ventured away from the patch on a few occasions this last month. When my trip to Cornwall was postponed by a day because of work, I had to wait until America woke up before I could do what I needed to do. With a free morning naturally I chose to go gulling and went to Appleford to look for the two white-winged gulls that are currently there. I managed to see the glaucous gull though not the iceland.
A couple of videograbs of the juvenile glaucous gull at Appleford.
By way of light relief for those readers who aren't gull addicts I did also venture to Witney Lake (my first visit) for the Slavonian grebe which has taken up residence there.
Not a gull, but still a nice bird!
To round of the month I spent yesterday evening in the freezing cold with Badger at Radley to try and see the iceland gull which I've still not caught up with. They don't get a very large roost at Radley but there were so few birds that I was reduced to counting every one of them: 21 was the total though admittedly by dusk it had gone up to nearer 100 before some duck shooting on a neighbouring pit scared them all off. Needless to say, there was no sign of the iceland.
Tuesday 11th January Last time I was down in Cornwall I had arrived just in time to stop the builders installing our oil central-heating tank on a piece of land that we didn't own. We'd agreed a more appropriate site for the tank (on our land!) and they were going to build a little bunker for it so that it was tucked nicely out of sight. I'd assumed that this was all going according to plan but at the end of last week I got a phone call from one of our new neighbours (who was from Oxford and whom I actually already knew) complaining about the location of the new tank. It soon became obvious that I would have to go back down to Cornwall again to check up on what had been done on this front as well as to discuss general progress with the builders.
Naturally enough my thoughts had turned to birding whilst down there though the weather forecast was rather poor with just one decent day of weather predicted for Tuesday. I'd originally planned to go down on Monday, spend Tuesday morning seeing the builder and then birding like a demon for the rest of a day before going back home on a rainy Wednesday. Unfortunately a work-crisis chose that moment to rear it's ugly head which put my plans back a day. This meant that I would be travelling down on the one decent day for weather so I decided to leave nice and early in order to get as much fair-weather birding in as possible. I was particularly keen to try and see the over-wintering pacific diver which had been around for a reasonable amount of time now in Mounts Bay. In addition I'd looked to see if there was anything tempting to stop off at en route but the only thing that I could find was a drake lesser scaup at Drozmary Pool in Cornwall which was conveniently located right next to the A30 so that I would be passing right by it.
I set off at around 8:30 am and by midday I'd arrived at Drozmary Pool. Although I'd not visited this venue before, I'd done some research using Google maps so I knew where to park. Just as I arrived a couple of birders were returning to their car and it turned out that they'd spent some time looking for the bird without any luck and had even walked right round the pool in order to get on the right side of the sun so that they could check every last bird. My general policy in such situations is not to spend too much time re-checking if someone else has already looked so I just made a very quick scan of the birds present: a dozen or so pochard and tufties, a few teal and a single goldeneye. If it wasn't there then there were more pressing birds to be seen down at Penzance instead and I soon resumed my journey, arriving at my destination at around 1:30 pm. Given that it was quite sunny I thought that it would be best not to start off at Marazion or Long Rock as that would involve looking into the sun. Instead I started off at Sandy Cove in Newlyn and decided to work my way around the bay so that I would end up at Marazion at the end of the day.
There was not a great deal of wind in Mounts Bay and viewing conditions were pretty ideal. I spent some time scanning carefully as divers spend so much time underwater that it's very easy to miss them. The results of my efforts were: two great northern divers, 1 black-throated diver and a few guillemot. A local birder (C. Barnard I think from the CBWPS reports) turned up for a while and picked out a passing Med. gull. After a while I thought that I would take a brief stroll along the track just to stretch my legs after all the driving and as well as the usual resident rock pipits I managed to find a lovely firecrest working its way along the bushes at the base of the cliff for my troubles.
Next it was on to Battery Rocks by Jubilee Pool. I was just setting my scope up when I heard a familiar squeaking sound which turned out to some purple sandpipers working their way along the shoreline. There were also several turnstone working the rocks and a single great crested grebe which I later learnt is quite a rarity in this part of the country. Turning my attention to scanning the Bay I soon spotted several divers concentrated near Long Rock beach. Whilst they were a little distant, the sun was directly behind me and the sea was calm so viewing was pretty good. I soon determined that there were a couple of great northern divers and at last there was the pacific diver. I also spotted something very small diving away frantically at the edge of the surf which must surely be one of the smaller grebes though at that distance I couldn't tell which one so it was clearly time to move round there to get a closer look.
I was more interested in finding the pacific diver than doing any real photography today but I did quickly take a digiscoped snap of this greater black-backed gull...
...and I couldn't resist a shot of the squeaking purple sandpipers by Battery Rocks.
At Long Rock beach as well as the three divers, I found an eider duck showing well close in to the shore. I wandered along the beach and eventually managed to track down my grebe which turned out to the a Slavonian. I also had a rather confusing conversation with a passing dog walker which went along the lines of:
Dog walker: "is that the Scillonian?" (referring to the big ship out in the bay) Me: (mis-hearing it as "Slavonian") "yes, it's a Slavonian" Dog walker: "hang on it can't be, it's in the dock" Me: (surprised) "there's a Slavonian in the dock as well? I'd not heard about that one" Dog walker: "it's always there over the winter" Me: "I must go and take a look to see if I can find it" Dog walker: (puzzled) "it's always moored in the same place" At that point I twigged!
I took some record-shot quality video footage of the pacific diver. You can just make out its chin-strap and flash-free flanks.
I also shot some footage of the eider duck which was conveniently close.
My final stop was Marazion beach where, whilst waiting for the bittern to show, I chatted away to Dave Parker and another birder about Cornish birding past and present. It turned out I'd missed the only bittern flight that evening already but by the marsh I managed to see a couple of oystercatchers, a little egret, a buzzard, plenty of snipe and the ever-present rabbits. Over on the beach there were the usual sanderlings, yet another great northern diver offshore and a couple of stonechats.
Once it was dark I headed over to the B&B where I was staying again (the cottage was still a bit of a building site). After a quick cup of tea with my hosts I nipped across the road to the Radjel Inn for a very nice chicken curry and a pint before heading back for a hot bath and an early night. It had been a long but very successful day. With the forecast for solid rain for the next couple of days I was glad that I'd managed to get in a good afternoon's birding around the Bay. As I drifted off to sleep I wondered, given the forecast, what birds to go for over the remaining two days.
Wednesday 12th January
I awoke not to the expected torrential rain but instead to find that Pendeen was shrouded in heavy fog. This weather is of course the worst for birding in that you just can't see anything at all at a distance. I had a couple of hours to kill before my meeting with the builders but it soon became apparent that the whole of the Pendeen side of the peninsula was fog bound so the only option was to head back over to the other side around Mounts Bay again. I briefly stopped off at Drift reservoir, hoping to catch up with the over-wintering Greenland white-fronted goose there but there was so much fog that one couldn't see more than thirty yards or so. In the end I went for a walk along Marazion beach just for something to do. Whilst I was getting my waterproofs on (for it was raining a little) a confiding rock pipit hopped right up to me, looking for food behind the shelter of the sea wall. It was certainly the closest I've ever been to a rock pipit. There was not much to report on the beach apart from a couple of stonechats.
I popped in at Pendeen watch just to take a look but youcouldn't see beyond the Wra so there wasn't much point in setting up the scope.
I went back for my meeting down at the Cottage with the builder which all seemed to go well and in fact we were finished in a little over an hour which gave me plenty of time to do some more birding in the afternoon. The only plan that I had was to try for the 8 Bewick's swans that were at Stithians reservoir. I'd been told by John Swann via e-mail that if I was interested in doing a Cornish list the last twitchable Bewick's had been ten years ago so they would be good birds to catch up with. I'd read that they usually came in quite late so I had a bit of time to kill before heading off in that direction. I popped in at Drift again but it was still too foggy to see so I did some brief stops around the bay where I found 11 common scoter and an eider at Sandy Cove and the usual purple sandpipers and turnstones at Battery Rocks. I had lunch in Long Rock beach car park where the pacific diver was still showing just off shore and then set off for Stithians.
I'd not been to Stithians reservoir before and although I managed to navigate to Rame (the nearest village) easily enough, in the fog I managed to get lost in the maze of small roads that lead from there to the bird hide. I ended up driving all the way around the reservoir before finally arriving at hide at a little after 3pm. I had hoped that it would be fog free inland but on the journey but it soon became apparent that there was quite thick fog in places and the hide was densely shrouded. By now my expectations of seeing any swans had vanished but I thought that I'd at least have a look out the hide whilst I was there. Sure enough one could see only a short distance from the hide where a few wigeon and teal were feeding. One couldn't see to the far side at all which is where I assumed the swans would be. Dejectedly I scanned all the angles at the thick whiteness. Through the last set of windows at the side of the hide I suddenly realised that through the foliage I could make out some large birds. These turned out to be some canada geese and then lo and behold next to them I saw some white shapes in the white fog, the swans no less! Amazed I took some video footage but combination of the fog and foliage meant that the resulting grab is of record shot quality only.
This is the view that I had!
Given the poor quality of the viewing I didn't stay too long but headed back through the fog towards Penzance. That evening I spent some time with my niece, who had recently moved to near Truro and who drove over to Penzance so that she could see the cottage and we could catch up on news.
Given how there were no photographic opportunities today I thought that I'd post this shot taken late afternoon yesterday at Long Rock where there was a nice reflective quality to the scene.
Thursday 13th January
The next day dawned still foggy in Pendeen so once again there was no point in doing anything on that side of the coast. I was due to return home today but thought that it would be rude of me not to put in at least a morning's birding before my long journey back. My plans were to have a look around Drift reservoir for the elusive white-fronted goose and then head over to the Hayle area for Carbis Bay and St. Gothian Sands NR where there was supposed to be a scaup hanging around. Through chatting to Dave Parker I'd discovered that the lesser scaup at Drozmary that I'd not seen on the way down was probably a returning bird from last year and that last time it used to commute between Drozmary Pool and nearby Colliford Lake though the latter was very difficult to view. What this meant was that there was a fighting chance that it might still be at Drozmary Pool and I therefore resolved to stop off there on the way back.
My first port of call was Drift reservoir where it was still rather foggy. However the white-fronted goose had been reported the previous day despite the thick fog so it must be possible to view it. Having not ever walked around any part of it I thought that at least it would be useful as a paid up member of the CBWPS to get to know it a bit better. I made my way around to the bird hide without seeing anything particularly unusual so I took a few minutes to shelter from the sporadic rain within the hide. Whilst in there I heard some geese and saw a few birds come in to land over the brow of the hill opposite on the north side of the reservoir. This at least explained why I'd not been able to see the birds: they were clearly feeding in a field that you couldn't see from the usual viewing points. I wondered whether there might be a line of sight to them from the west corner of the reservoir so walked around there to a wooded area where I managed to see a firecrest and a green sandpiper flew over calling. Unfortunately however there was no sign of the geese so I retraced my steps back to the car. At least I'd got a bit of a walk in which would stand me in good stead given that I was due to spend some time in the car that day on the journey back.
Next it was on to Carbis Bay. Although I'd only recently discovered this spot for myself, I was already starting to appreciate it: it's very sheltered from most wind directions, one can bird from the car if the weather is too bad and the bay seems to act as a trap for bait fish so there are often lots of birds close in to view. Some balearic shearwaters had been reported in the last few days but there were none there that day. There were however at least 20 red-head goosander, 75+ kittiwakes and 30+ razorbills as well as hoards of cormorants and shags and a couple of seals. There was a concentration of gulls in one corner which were presumably getting excited over a close-in shoal of fish.
It was still pretty misty but I managed a distant videograb of some of the goosander which came out onto the beach for a while.
Next it was on to St. Gothian Sands NR which I'd not birded before though I'd been to visit the beach en famille on holiday. It was rather windy here with driving rain so conditions were far from ideal: the main problem was continually getting rain on the optics. Fortunately the scaup was hanging around quite close in and I managed some video footage of it preening. Apart from the scaup there were a couple of shelduck a few gadwall and little grebes and plenty of pochard and tufted duck. I also disturbed a flock of 4 meadow pipits which flew away calling plaintively. There was a flock of large gulls on the far side of the central island though I didn't bother giving them a grilling.
The adult female scaup at St. Gothian Sands NR, Gwithian
With the greater scaup in the bag it was time to set off along the A30 to see if I could do the scaup double and see the lesser scaup as well. This time I had Drozmary to myself though what with the wind and rain this was understandable! Down by the waterside I scanned carefully across the lake finding similar birds to last time though there was a male goldeneye present which wasn't there on my last visit. Towards the end of my scan I came to a flock of diving tufted ducks so I had to scan slowly through these least I missed anything whilst it was underwater. Fortunately I soon picked out the drake lesser scaup diving away in the distance. It was very difficult to take any video footage of the bird as it spent so much time underwater though fortunately it didn't actually swim any great distance while submerged so in the end I adopted the tactic of focusing on the area where I'd last seen it and then zooming in with the camera once it came up. With some editing to remove the long periods of empty water I managed to come up with a short period of record-shot footage but at least you can tell what it is.
Drozmary Lesser Scaup record-shot video.
With the scaup double safely in the bag it was time to head back home after a successful though rather inclement three days. I'd managed to add a few birds to my fledgling Cornish county list though my present total is too embarrassingly small to mention in public. I've also realised that I've only once been to Cornwall in the summer so there are some really common warblers that I've not yet seen down there. With any luck this year I'll be able to rectify this. With the builders nearing the end of their work it will soon be time for us to get down there to start the decorating which will mean more time birding in my favourite part of the country
In true Gnome style I'm only now starting to think about a retrospective on the year when everyone else has done theirs and is busy notching up new ticks for 2011. I've been looking through the blog entries for the last year: even if no one else reads this blog I always enjoy looking back on what I've done and find that reading the entry brings back the excitment (or disappointment) of the occasion quite vividly. After having done the county year list in 2009, I wasn't going to make any special listing efforts for 2010 and instead enjoyed a rather laid back birding year. In fact I even stopped posting my list totals on the blog part way through the year. My priority was to add to my rather meagre life list total so when I did venture out of the county it was usually to tick off a convenient long-staying and nearby rarity. I think that birders (ignoring RSPB'ers and garden bird watchers) end up settling somewhere on a line between hardcore twitcher (prepared to travel any distance for a new tick) and dedicated patch worker (who never travels anywhere). I'm very much at the patchworker end of the scale though this last year saw me doing quite a few twitches that were within reasonable striking distance. I've more or less settled on a rule of thumb that I'm prepared to travel for a couple of hours for something, preferably something long-staying so that it's a reasonably sure-thing. This way one minimises the possibility of dipping.
In February and again in March I went to Norfolk (my first time birding there actually) where I managed to see some of the local specialities
Norfolk rough-legged buzzard, seen on a very successful trip with Badger...
Shore larks were another bird I managed to catch up with in Norfolk
In April we went on another family holiday down to Cornwall which was to prove rather momentous in that we ended up buying a house down there. This has given me the chance to do a lot more birding down there which has been really great.
Woodchat shrike was the highlight of the April family holiday in Cornwall
In June I went to Wales to do the welsh warbler double: the Marmora's warbler and the Iberian chiffchaff
Unfortunately the Marmora's warbler is rather obscured for this photo...
I also went to Berry Fen for the drake blue-winged teal.
From July onwards I started going down to Cornwall to work on the house. Some trips were more successful bird-wise than others but there was always something to see down there
According to a recent Cornish bird report there were a total of 34 different wrynecks in the county last autumn!
This dotterel was very obliging at Davidstow airfield...
...and this melodius warbler was part of a fantastic double coming a couple of minutes after I joint self-found a greenish warbler...
...another Cornish rarity in the form of the Heligan green heron...
...and a very photogenic snow bunting at Sandy Cove, Newlyn.
Apart from Cornwall there was the Dowdeswell Wilson's phalarope which conveniently appeared just up the road near Cheltenham...
...and a circuitous route to Cornwall enabled me to stop off at Lodmoor for the long-billed dowitcher
Locally, it was a great year for my patch at Port Meadow but as I have written up a review of the Port Meadow year here I won't go into detail. I also managed to add a total of ten county life ticks during the year but once again space excludes much detail here.
The best county bird for me by far must of course be the juvenile lesser yellowlegs that I found on my patch.
The lesser yellowlegs has to get my personal bird of the year award
Looking forward So in terms of looking forward, what is my strategy for 2011? Well so far I've not ventured out of the county birding and I've not even gone birding anywhere else within the county apart from the patch. It may well be a case of concentrating on Port Meadow, Cornwall (getting my Cornish list up to a slightly more respectable number) and the odd strategic twitch for high percentage nearby rarities but perhaps over time that will change. All I can say is that I hope that I enjoy it as much as I did birding in 2010.
The combination of the Christmas festivities and the weather has meant that I've not been out much recently. I've trudged across the snow to the frozen river Thames to check the largely birdless desert that is currently my Port Meadow patch but apart from that I've not really ventured out much. Because of the harsh weather I've been feeding the birds religiously and as a consequence have been getting many more visitors to the garden. The most interesting displaced bird was probably a meadow pipit actually down on the ground (as opposed to flying over which I've had before). A couple of male blackcaps and a fieldfare have also put in an appearance so there's always been something to look at. About a week ago I spotted a jackdaw that came down to my makeshift table which is a large flower pot tray nailed to the top of the trellis so as to be out of the way of the cats. What was noticeable about it was that it seemed to have a well marked pale neck collar. Having studied my Collins bird guide I knew that this could mean a Nordic jackdaw but the bird flew off before I could get any sort of shot. I tried to re-locate it and spent some time poking my head out of the velux windows at the top of the house in order to survey the local jackdaw population. After a while I spotted the bird on the chimney pots a couple of houses down. With a bit of acrobatics, I leant out of the velux with a hand-held scope and digiscope camera combination and managed to come up with a shot.
A nice close-up taken using hand-held digiscoping equipment whilst dangling out of the Velux window looking at the neighbour's roof!
I sent the shot to Ian Lewington (our esteemed county recorder) who was intrigued but said that one had to be careful because at that angle the base of the neck area can be somewhat exaggerated and would it be possible for me to get some eye-level shots instead. I wondered just whether I was actually going to see the bird again at all let alone get some more shots but as luck would have it it's visited the garden at least once on each subsequent day and today it actually stayed put on the bird table for quite some time so that I was able to get off a good load of shots and to see the bird from various different angles. I also took some photos of a normal jackdaw which pitched up a few minutes later by way of comparison under the same lighting conditions.
This is a normal jackdaw...
normal jackdaw: note how at certain angles there can be a hint of a collar surrounding the base of the neck, caused by the light catching the end of the neck feathers.
The rest of the shots are all of the candidate bird. Note that there's no doubt about the fact that the pale area is more than just catching the light at a certain angle.
Although you can't see it from these photos I can confirm that the neck pattern is the same on the other side so that it's not just some aberrant feathers on one side but rather a consistent pattern on both sides of the neck.
If I've interpreted my Collins correctly, the jackdaw (corvus monedula) that we get normally get in the UK is c. m.spermologus. In Finland, Russia and E. Europe it's c. m.soemmerringii which has a distinct pale half collar going all the way around the back of the neck. Scandinavian birds (known as Nordic jackdaws) c. m. monedula are described as somewhat intermediate which would fit this bird as it has a distinct collar but it doesn't go all the way around the back of the neck, being confined to the sides of the neck. Ian Lewington helpfully sent me a link to some Nordic jackdaw shots which shows the wide variation within this sub-species and my bird certainly would fall within the range shown and some of the plates there show the identical side collar markings. After chatting with Ian Lewington it seems that it can certainly at least be claimed as a bird "showing the characteristics of Nordic jackdaw". A very nice garden find!
With the weather having not been very conducive to birding recently I was feeling a little bit cabin feverish and needed to get out. As regular readers may know, I'm not doing a county year list this year but I still keep an eye on what birds I still haven't seen in the county this year (marked in red on my spreadsheet) and when there's nothing better to do I go off and see some of them. Therefore for my trip today I thought that I'd head west into the murky depths of the county near Standlake. There were three "red birds" on offer in this area: some Bewick's swans at Shifford, a red-breasted merganser at Pit 60 and the tree sparrows at Tadpole Bridge which it would be rude of me not to drop in on whilst I was in the area.
I was just heading along the A40 when I got a text from Badger saying that there were now 8 swans at Shifford. I told him I was on the way so he waited for me. Sure enough there were 7 adults and a juvenile all grazing away with some mute swans at a reasonably close distance to the road. I took some obligatory record shots and chatted with Badger for a while before we went our separate ways and I headed off to Pit 60.
The light was abysmal this morning so these digiscoped shots were taking at ISO 800. They've not come out too badly, thanks in part to the great noise reduction capabilities of Paint Shop Pro which is the editing software that I use. I understand that Photoshop's noise filter isn't that great and people often resort to using third party software for noise.
Pit 60 is a former gravel pit (part of the Lower Windrush complex) that has been made into a nature reserve with a couple of hides. The walk down the lane was longer that I was expecting (a few bullfinches being the main birds of note) but whilst en route I met up with Mr. Pit 60 himself, Antony Collieu, who lives in the village and checks out the pit frequently. He said that it had been a very quiet year for the patch with nothing of particular note having been found there this year apart from a recent weather-displaced bittern and the merganser though unfortunately the latter had flown off a couple of days ago with a bunch of goosander. Despite my target bird having gone I thought that it would be interesting to take a quick look so we visited both the hides. All the birds were at the southern end standing on the edge of the ice around a large ice-free area and the only bird of note was a single distant red-head goosander. I thanked Antony for his kindness in showing me around and headed back to the car.
A record shot of the site
My last stop was Tadpole Bridge for the tree sparrows. In the back of the car park there are a couple of feeders installed and I positioned myself so that I could watch them from within the car. Four tree sparrows soon came down but left before I could take any photos and I spent a fruitless further quarter of an hour waiting for them to return. I decided that I had to get back but as I turned the car around low and behold there were several of the little beasties sitting in the hedge behind me quite happily. I recalled that Badger had said that exactly the same thing had happened to him when he visited so for future reference it's worth checking the hedge out first! I took a few point & shoot camera record shots for the blog though there was no light to speak of. I'd suggest partaking of a little something at the pub by way of gratitude for using their car park and for supporting the tree sparrow project. Whilst on the subject, it's worth acknowledging the amazing work that the volunteers do for the tree sparrow project in the county: this little bird has gone from strength to strength since they started and is gradually spreading further and further along the Thames. Thanks guys!
Two lovely tree sparrows, taken with my point & shoot camera
A rather blurry shot of my resident blackcap
Norbert at the fat balls
my brambling visitor
A couple of waxwing shots.
