IATB is up....

At Wanderin' Weeta and it is a) brilliant and b) here.

Random local birds

There is nothing around right now so this is just a post of random record shots of local birds from earlier in the year......

We had a big passage of yellow wagtails.....

There are always plenty of Dunnocks....

And wrens are everywhere. Which is nice.

camouflage: FAIL!

Stop the jeep! I yelled. Brakes were slammed and various people started scanning desparately for the bear or leopard I'd obviously just spotted up in the distant rocks. I pointed out the tiny nightjar on the rock next to the jeep. It remained stock still, convinced its camouflage would see it safe and we took our photos and marvelled at its perfect plumage.

I think this is Jerdon's Nightjar, Caprimulgus atripennis, but I don't know much about nightjar. What I do know is that it was absolutely perfectly camouflaged and we got close enough to really check out that camouflage as well as the huge mouth, the weird whiskers and those big eyes.The next day my eagle eye spotted another perfectly camouflaged night jar blending in perfectly with it's surroundings.

Hey. I never said they were smart. Joking aside I've never seen a nightjar in the UK - they're one of those rarish birds you can see if you make the effort to go to the right locations and I never have. I've seen them in the Caribbean though, and in North and South America and now Asia and I'm a little jealous I don't get to see them more often. There's a wildness about these sorts of birds I rather like.

Wordless wednesday - Cry Freedom

The power of prophecy.

So Corey has a post up over at the newly supersized 10,000 Birds on the topic and its something I've tried before (with limited accuracy - did not see that emu coming! (no I didn't tick it!)) and I thought I'd try again. I'm talking about the skill of list growth prediction or as I like to think of it, birding soothsaying, the dark art of tick prophecy if you will. Simply put; what do I think will be the next ten ticks on my island list? Well a highly skilled birder who knows the area well could probably pick up a big chunk of what follows easily but I'm still getting used to what to look for where here; we have limited habitat as its a small island so birds are concentrated. Its also worth noting that some more common birds (passerines mainly) not on the list below don't feature as its unlikely I'll be in a position to pick them out before I find the below as a result of my lack of warbler skills and the time of year we're in.

1. Pintail - I should probably already have one of these on the list, there is at least one kicking around on the island right now and I've already had crippling views of a pintail x mallard hybrid so I reckon I'll pick up one of these sooner rather than later.
2. Hen Harrier - this is an eye to the skies job. Whilst not common it's a big conspicuous bird which travels through the island from time to time. I reckon I may see one at some point this year randomly overhead or hear about a twitchable one.
   
3. Short Eared Owl - we're rich in habitat for these and again, it's a big, recognisable bird on the wing so I should be in with a shout....
   
4. Goldcrest - a garden breeder up at my parents' and we have loads of these here too but skulking in deep cover. I must surely nail one down this winter having failed all last year.
   
5. Firecrest - as for goldcrest (but without the bit about my folks' house).
   
6. Brambling - Loads of chaffinch and greenfinch flocks around that I think I need to pay more attention too until I pick out a Brambling (or something else).
   
7. Mediterranean Gull - there are a few of these around amongst the black-headed gull flocks I occasionally check (thus far unsuccessfully) [similarly possible alternative tick: Yellow Legged Gull].
   
8. Woodcock - Woodcock are apparently rather common over winter. Again I think I just need to be in the right place at the right time.
   
9. Knot - (K)not sure how I haven't seen one of these already!
10. Great Crested Grebe - We have only one substantial body of freshwater here so my hope is to pick up a wintering bird on the sea. Nearly time to get the scope out on the coast [Similarly possible alternative tick: Slavonian Grebe].

and the outside long shot? Vagrant Lesser Yellowlegs - A regular vagrant to Britain that I can easily identify!

record shots: what a buzzkill

Time for more filthy record shots I'm afraid. I want to share pictures of as many of the species I've seen here as possible you see and sometimes things get ugly. Our field has just been resown with grass seed for next year's grazing and accordingly is generally full of gulls. On saturday afternoon though I pulled into the drive and saw nothing in the field. I was just pondering how odd that was when this guy popped up out of the dirt and flapped away.

It's a common buzzard (Buteo buteo - same genus as the American Red Tail Hawk and similar bird, american readers) and the gulls did not like its presence one bit - hence their absence and subsequent mobbing of it.

Ironically, the buzzard was probably not in the field hoping to feast on gull but in fact probably grubbing around for worms. This species has a diverse diet but tends to prefer carrion and invertebrate prey to bigger animals (though it can take much bigger stuff if so minded).

I grabbed my camera off the car seat and started shooting and the above are the heavily cropped awful result. Buzzards are rare here, a couple of breeding pairs on the island maybe (and those are recent arrivals) so it was a nice garden tick and a nice record to have.

Cliffdwellers caught at last

There are two birds I've been hoping to see here on the island ever since I got here and by coincidence I got them both this weekend. Peregrine falcon and Raven both breed in tiny numbers (2 or 3 pairs) on our cliffs and not knowing where exactly they do this I had failed to catch up with them all year. Both are birds I totally expected to just fly over me one day and yet they kept not doing that which was a little irritating especially as I was seeing peregrine regularly in the caribbean and my dad seems to have been seeing them at will over the past couple of months. So yesterday when I was watching two marsh harriers floating over the reed beds at one of our reserves I was gratified to see something with more aggressive lines cruise past behind them.
[Note: brace yourself for bad record shots]

This one at least looks a bit peggish.

Filthy shots but at least I can say I've seen one here now. Then today as I walked a cliff path a pair of huge black birds flew past beneath me. I had a split second to react, recognise they were probably not carrion crows and go to guns for this [also appalling] record shot.

Now I can scrub these two off the to-do list and focus on other things like migrating passerines. Now I've seen them once of course I suspect they'll be overhead all the time now spooking those passerines but if so at least I'll have a shot at getting better shots.

More garden birds

I saw two rather surprising garden birds last weekend whilst monitoring my feeders and pottering about. Firstly a female wheatear landed on the shed roof.....

and then glancing over the fence into the neighbouring field I saw a belting great mistle thrush. Mistle thrush isn't the sort of bird one gets overly excited about in many parts of the UK but they're rare here (it was actually an island tick).

Exciting enough developments to shout about one would suggest.

Last year we saw a massive movement of fieldfares and redwings into fields like these which I'm hoping will be repeated this year but in the meantime, Mistle thrush gives me a clean sweep of all the Turdus species on the island list. Result.

Pied wagtail

It isn't just great tits and half-drowned robins I've got flying around the garden at the moment. A vast wave of pied wagtails seems to have hit the island over the last couple of weeks. I can see two flitting about the lawn as I write this and they are showing up on the beaches and car parks wherever I go. Which is nice because if you look closely they really are rather spectacular.

If the above patterning were on one of those American warblers we'd all be saying how lucky the americans are with their spectacular garden birds. I guess the grass is always greener underneath someone else's garden birds! More seriously though these really are beautiful birds and the cool thing is they are quite character-filled, relaxed and easy to watch. This isn't a beauty that tucks itself away in the bushes - it struts about in the open which is helpful.

Hopefully these guys will stick around all winter to brighten the dark days ahead.....

Early adopter

On the basis I don't want to get caught up by a p0rn aggregator like the last time I talked about this genus; here is a photo of a Parus major on a spherical feeder. You guys are smart enough to do the rest of the work yourselves.

This is one of a little flock of 3 or 4 great tits which have been the early adopters of my new feeding station. After a few reports of interesting finches I thought it was about time I put some food out in the hopes of maybe tempting some of these beauties into the garden. So I headed off to the local garden centre (of which more in another post) and came back with this beast.

It is a Tom Chambers Bird Station and I think its one of their older models. I basically got a big box with the pole and hooks, 3 seed feeders and a suet cage plus, fatball hooks, a tray feeder and water dish for £24. I thought that was pretty reasonable all things considered (the spherical feeder I bought separately as I thought it would give me some particularly photogenic shots). I can't comment on the feeders yet but they look simple, easy to clean and well put together so I'm quite pleased. It is worth noting though that I don't have squirrels to worry about here and if I did I may have chosen to go with a heavier duty option. For now, my nyjer remains untapped and the siskins and bramblings have yet to show but my early adopters are kings of the castle alone.

One last point on bird feeders which may be obvious but may not. I've put this where I can see it from my couch (my station for websurfing, eating and watching tv). If you want to enjoy garden birds it helps if you can see your feeders for as much of the time as possible!

Bird karma part 2

So yesterday I mentioned storing up some good bird karma. Around the same time news broke of a Grey Pharalope on island which would be both an island and life tick for me. Irritatingly I couldn't get away on wednesday, thursday or friday until close of play friday when I decided to forgo post-work beers and charge off in search of the bird. Whereupon I got stuck behind not one but two learner drivers doing 5mph on public roads (I wish I were exagerating for comic effect but I promise you I'm not). Now we have narrow, winding roads so overtaking in such a scenario is difficult and all I could do was chug out to the site slowly as the sun drew ever nearer the horizon. Sure enough by the time I got there it was pretty dark and I was able to pick out a small bird surrounded by large birds (my knowledge of the site tells me they were curlew but I couldn't swear to it on the views). I was 95% sure I'd seen it but there was no way that was a tickable view and in any event, if you're going to "bird" like that then what is the point. You may as well sit at home watching Discovery Channel through some scrunched up cling-film (Ceram-wrap in Americano I believe?). So I was left to hope my robin-related karma was still good and the bird was still there when I did my regular saturday trip round the birding hotspots the next morning. So I was a pretty happy chap when I opened the hide window and immediately saw this:

Seriously it was unbelievably easy, the bird stuck out like a sore thumb considering it was in a field full of other birds including black-headed gulls which I'd anticipated would be a source of potential confusion at least until I got on the bird.

It flew a couple of times, wandered about and ate a couple of crane-flies. It also posed conveniently next to a mallard to illustrate it's tininess. I left happy and the world was restored to karmic neutrality*

*For the avoidance of doubt, I don't believe in karma but I do thoroughly enjoy the happy coincidences and serendipitous circumstances which make the natural world such a fascinating place to be.

Bird karma part 1

As those of you following the twitter feed may have noticed, I got home to find a robin doing laps of the pool/pond. No idea how he got there. Thinking this rather odd, I fished him out and deposited him poolside. Whereupon he looked like this:

Whilst I'm generally of the view that medical care for wild animals is, unless they are extremely rare, inappropriate I couldn't really bring myself to leave the little dude there looking like this:

So I coralled him into a box (he couldn't fly) and warmed him up for a while whilst consulting Wildbird-on-the-fly's Amy Hooper and the Birdchick. The gist of the twitter advice was warm him up and let him go and that was pretty much my own view of what to do too. So after an hour in his box by the radiator during which his eyes opened, I emptied him out of the box and away he flew. Which was nice and may have stored me up some good birding karma of which more later......

PS - on twitter I called him a baby robin; he's obviously in adult plumage but it kind of looked like he'd just moulted into it (possibly because it was soaked). I'm no robin-moult expert so it may well be this isn't a first year bird at all but actually a decrepit old fogey who crashed and burned.

Wordless wednesday - Oycs in motion

peacock-block

No time for a proper post I'm afraid guys so I will simply share the below and make one important point.

These guys are so much more impressive and amazing in their natural habitat than wandering about stately homes in the UK, ranches in the US or hotels in the Caribbean. I don't no why but believe me; it's true.

Wordless wednesday - blade

Sanderling

With a name like sanderling, you'd think this guy would favour a slightly different looking beach.

Wordless wednesday - nettles are good for something.....

Wordless wednesday -surprise Accipter

Don't get to see many of these here......

clearly its not wednesday yet. post launched prematurely.

Our little albatrosses.

OK so fulmars aren't albatrosses but they are tubenoses and are basically a petrel so they are closely related to the albatrosses. So why the name fulmar? Apparently it's norse for foul gull. So why foul gull? Well put it this way - a peregrine was recently found covered in goo and taken to be rehabbed amongst much muttering of animal cruelty and so forth. It turned out to be covered in fulmar vomit. Yep. They roll with the disgusting defensive mechanisms.

Lets gloss over that and remind ourselves that these buoyant little guys are remarkably beautiful on the wing - they almost float.

Wordless wednesday - grumbles

It just wouldn't turn round.......