I've written before about the vagaries of small island listing. Such behaviour is full of apparent injustices and absurdities for the unwary birder; how something commonplace twenty miles away can become an obsession within the boundaries of one's island. This week I was reduced to twitching a swan. Not a trumpeter or tundra swan which had got lost and crossed the atlantic. Not a beautiful flight of bewicks or whoopers pushed out of Russia by the cold. Not even a black swan on leave from a feral colony on the continent. No. I twitched a mute swan. Here is a record shot.
It's that white blob in the middle (I took this on my phone). More seriously the "twitch" involved a ten minute walk on my lunch break but this is genuinely only the third record of mute swan since I arrived in October 2009 - this is a properly rare bird here even though they are common in both the UK and the continent. Remarkable stuff and a change is, as they say, as good as a rest.
2 comments:
Tai,
I finally got your seeds in the mail today.
Sorry for the delay. I wanted to include a few zamia seeds too and kept forgetting to process them by removing most of the fruit covering and letting them dry for a day or so.
In the package are 5 coontie seeds and 20ish datil seeds.
I do apologize for taking so long.
Thanks FC - I'll let you know when they get here. Loving the thought of having my own little colony of Pure Florida Coontie!
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