I don't think anybody reads this... High quality INTERNET since 2008.

Filler material.

2012-01-28T22:29:00.001Z

I've had a particularly stressful couple of days. Without going into details it's involved leaving work early on Thursday and then spending a lot of time in a hospital (visiting), which I expect will continue for a while, too. In between all this, I found/made the time for half an hour or so at the Stone Barges this afternoon.

Post-industrial Essex is an odd type of nice, but it's definitely nice.

No owls, of course, and the pipits resolutely refused to land (is there a way to tell rock from water by call?), but one of the barges was crammed with a mix of redshank, black-tailed godwits, dunlin and a couple of lapwings. As more birds arrived on the tide a small group of dunlin put on a decent show in front of an impressive sunset. So nothing out of the ordinary, but particularly nice after the last couple of days.

This also put in a brief appearance. I'm not as hot on my seal ID as I thought I was - any suggestions? The Girl reckons it's common, as do I, but it was a big old beastie. Anyone who knows seals by bad silhouette pictures, feel free to leave answers on a postcard. Or comments section. I care not.

Had good numbers of waders at Grays the last couple of days too. Yesterday I counted over 100 redshank, around 20 lapwings and a few dunlin. Today, just as the tide started to rise there were 20-30 each of redshank and lapwings, a few dunlin and a ringed plover. The plover is flat-tick number 60.

Tomorrow, I've tentatively pencilled in a dawn owl spotting sesh at somewhere even scummier than Grays or Rainham. Let's see what, or if, it happens...

Nothing to report. Except a pipit. And they're boring.

2012-01-22T16:49:00.000Z

Went to the Rainham owl/dogging site but didn't see either. A kestrel on a lamp post was unimpressed at my presence but was the only thing of interest there. Had a quick look around the Stone Barges, which turned up a handful of pipits. At least one of these was definitely a water pipit but the wind was awful so this is the nearest thing to a focussed shot I have. And I'm not even sure it's the right pipit. These things are so much easier when they're walking round in real life, not sitting still in a shitty photo. Another try at the owls on the way back up was equally fruitless and I was reduced to watching one of those crows with the odd white bit in the wings.

Oh well. I guess not every weekend can be as birdy as the last, huh?

---

The Kittiwakes are still hanging around our section of the Thames. I had almost the whole group yesterday - at least 8 adults and both first winters - going up behind a dredger. As usual, they were all closely packed immediately behind the ship, only making the occasional foray back into the main body of the trailing gulls.

Peanut Challenge Surprise

2012-01-17T13:40:00.000Z

I don't usual blog about the work patch, because it's really, really boring. That's the whole point of the 2012 Peanut Challenge - Central London patches are crap and nobody likes them.

But today, in a relative way, it wasn't. I'd set out to find a great black-backed gull, the last easy bird I've not had, and presumably not as easy a bird as I'd thought, and instead I found 13 tufted ducks. Not only were these patch ticks, but also, er, year ticks. So 13 tufties. Except that that one is smaller and is a teal. Like, Oh Em Gee. A teal. On the work patch. This is better than the day I had a common sand, and that was nearly as good as the time I found a half eaten bag of mini-eggs I'd forgotten about at the back of the drawer just in time for the 3pm sugar/morale crash.

Proper, real migrants on the patch. Sort of. The tufted ducks may just have hopped over from St Katherine's Dock, but the teal... that could have come from as far afield as East India Dock, or even Barking Bay, and I think you'll agree that that definitely counts as a migration.

It's amazing what the word "competition" does. I don't even like peanuts and I'm motivated enough to do the patch every day. Not just the easy bits either, the whole thing, sometimes twice. It's clearly showing, as I've had five patch ticks since we began - great crested grebe, robin, moorhen, tufted duck and teal - and two of those were in one lunch time. Today's, in fact. And to think, it wouldn't have happened if I'd not forgotten to bring my lunch in. There's a lesson in there.

Well, probably not, but who cares? Teal!

Honestly, that's a line of 12 tufties with a teal at the right.

A shrike in Fakenham; thoughts about Welney

2012-01-16T20:55:00.000Z

After Saturday's ridiculous Norfolk coast jaunt we'd arranged to meet up with Hannah's old boss from the zoo at one of his regular places, Welney WWT. Driving from the coast to Welney would take us pretty much right past the great grey shrike at Fakenham, and it would be rude not to stop and look at it, no?

After some incredibly shit directions from people leaving the site we eventually found it, but it was distant. I'm always surprised at how small shrikes are. Not an awful lot to say about it really; it showed well enough in a "I'm a shrike and I'm not doing much" way. Paler than the Stow-Maries bird though, with more white. I think. Also both red-legged and grey partidges present, but not a lot else.

WWT Welney. Whooper and Bewick's Swans by the bucket load. But it's, well... I don't know. I don't get it.

Sure, the WWT might raise awareness and money for worthwhile conservation causes both at home and abroad. Their very existence for so long implies that they are successful, at raising money at least, and if this is put back into conservation I guess it can only be a good thing. Before get into this, a couple of points. One, if you happen to know more about this field than me - highly likely - please leave a comment, either putting me right or simple plain abuse. I don't mind, it's up to you. And two, before I start talking total shit, I feel I should mention that there are a lot of things I like about the WWT... but Welney isn't one of them.

Cue lots of ill-informed speculation from a poorly educated borderline retard with no background in conservation and only a scant knowledge of charities:

It doesn't feel so much a reserve as it does an open zoo. I bet in summer it's different - the breeding black-tailed godwits are no doubt fantastic to see and are as wild as any other bird that relies on a managed reserve for breeding habitat - but in winter, I can't help but feel somewhat uneasy about watching a whole population of whooper swans acting like the disgusting feral farmyard geese/ducks at the local park. I do appreciate that management of land and species is essential, especially in a country so intenstively used as ours, but these swans have lost some of their "wildness". Compare the whoopers up by the feeding station to the bewick's, quietly and warily sitting at the very end of the reserve - you watch them scrabbling and fighting for grain and while you know they've come from many hundreds of miles away you certainly don't feel it. It's pure spectacle. And yes, it's undeniably impressive in it's own way, but it's not wild.

This is one of my big speculations: I certainly can't believe that the average family visiting Welney and watching the swan feed leaves the site any "closer" to nature or with any more of a connection to - and hopefully therefore a drive to protect - our natural environment. They can gain a very similar (and considerably cheaper) experience at their local park with a loaf of bread. I think that it's the wildness that sets these swans apart from their mute cousins, and it's that same wildness that sets a "nature experience", for want of a better phrase, apart from a "local park experience". And following on from this, I think that it's these "nature experiences", getting people inspired by wildlife when, crucially, it's being wild, that might encourage people to learn more about and then help to protect nature. And surely that, getting people to value and care about nature, is as important as getting them to give you money? So far as I'm aware, conservation projects the world over work best when the people local to that being conserved value, and are engaged with, their natural environments.

Of course it's worth mentioning that I'm not necessarily against nature reserves feeding "their" birds. Feeding bitterns in prolonged hard winter spells is undeniably a good thing. Or, last winter, seeding the freshmarsh at Titchwell; it provided food and habitat for some threatened and seriously declining birds like twite. I just think that at Welney at least the WWT have gone too far towards providing a zoo-like visitor experience at the expense of the wildness, and therefore, if you follow my speculations, at the expense of a visitor's connection to the wildlife we have. The frustrating thing is that with a bit of thought I've no doubt that you could feed the swans and provide guaranteed, good close views while maintaining the all important wild feel that might make people learn and feel more.

Of course, it's very possible that I'm the only person who's left a bit cold by the swan feeds and thinks that they might not really be true wild birds. And I can't really argue that the feeding is a bad thing, or even back any of this stuff up with facts, numbers or information. But that's not stopped me before and I am left with a bad feeling by Welney.

I'll say it again. I might be totally wrong. Somebody with more than half a normal adult's intelligence might well be able to dismiss all my points. If you're that person, please do comment. I won't swear at you much. Just be aware that if you don't post, and I'm sure you won't, I'm going to chalk the inevitable lack of comments up to my being right, not a lack of blog readers or anything.

Gosh. I'm very thinky today.

Whatever. If, like me, you like seeing swans but don't like Welney then by all means, use the cafe (it's quite good) and while you're there enjoy the tree sparrows in the carpark and the corn buntings that dropped into the reeds to roost. Then drive round the fens and find your own swans. On any short drive in that area you can expect numerous groups several hundreds strong. It's cheaper, too. And you might even see a merlin chasing a skylark right over the car like we did. Oh, and we also saw a bunch of goosanders.

On the site itself, apart from the swans, we counted 34 white-fronted geese, a peregrine doing what they do best - nothing - and around 400 black-tailed godwits. And two snipe. Exciting.

Oh yeah, I promised stuff about white-fronts pooing. Next time.

Norfolk + winter + good weather = fantastic day.

2012-01-15T20:45:00.000Z

We drove up to Norfolk on Friday night, giving us Saturday in fantastic weather along the coast. I guess that almost guaranteed that something good would be at Grays - in this case 11 tundra bean geese - but I'm not sure I feel I missed out too much. To those that did, thanks for the calls/voicemails, by the way. We stayed in Burnham Deepdale again, but in the pub itself this time. Too cold for camping.

I opened the curtains on Saturday morning to skeins of pinkfeet overhead, brent geese on the channels and a raptor-induced wader panic out on the marsh. Raised bins and... rough-legged buzzard heading slowly west. Ridiculous start to the day.

As the sun burnt off the mist we headed to Holkham gap. There was no sign of the ross's goose, and not that many pinkfeet so we went straight onto the beach. We didn't really expect to find the shorelarks - it's a really big area for four small birds - and so it was a surprise to pick them up about 50 feet away to one side. I snapped off a few record shots and then sat low on the mud and waited. They came down to around 10 feet away, constantly calling quietly to each other. The larks didn't care about our presence at all but flushed the second that the first of many idiot dog owners let their darling hounds off the leash... one pair of walking penises encouraged and rewarded their pooch for chasing the sanderlings on the beach.

I have lots of pictures of these. I'll probably add them when I have nothing better to write about.

Seawatching was good - a few each of great northern and red-throated divers were about, as were groups of scoter and the occasional eider.

Back at Lady Anne's, the pinkfeet had increased in number but we still couldn't find anything good. Scanning the fields gave us a few grey partridges though, and a fantastic mixed flock came through the edge of the pines. A firecrest was in with it as well as several phyllosc warblers - at least three chiffchaffs and, really, really confusingly, a willow warbler. It showed everything you'd want structurally, general colouration, the legs, super. I'd have doubted it if it wasn't for the couple with us who also had it. Definitely not something I had expected to bump into and given the time of year probably the rarest bird of the day.

Not a great picture, but better than I'd expected. Especially as I hadn't expected a firecrest.

Next stop was Cley, for food and that sandpiper. It was out on Arnolds Marsh, so we set off up the east bank. Luckily, it was on pretty much the closest sandbar it could be on and we got good lengthy views. If the shorelarks were an amazing life-tick bird, the western sandpiper was... well, shite, really. It's a calidrid, so sure, it has a certain built-in cuteness which I can appreciate, and yes, it was also nice to be able to compare it to the semi-palmated sand I saw at East Tilbury not that long ago (see very informative paragraph at the bottom here). With it being so close and in good light I was even able to see some of the "important" features - something about some funny scapulars and a longer bill - but... whatever. I'm still not sure I could ID one for myself and, as the Girl said, "I don't think I've ever twitched such an underwhelming bird". Quite.

Er. Is this the bit where I'm meant to get excited? Oh.

Elsewhere on site we had a couple of whoopers and the sea had a few more divers, a couple of slavonian grebes and a razorbill. Walking back up the west bank - no sign of snow buntings - we added another barn owl, a ringtail hen harrier and bearded tits to our day list.

Not great, but it's all I've got.

Final stop of the day as it got dark was the roadside pull-off at Burnham Overy for more grey partridges, barn owls and another distant rough-leg.

And then good local ales, good whisky and good food. Amazing day.

I'll write about today another time. Probably. It involved a shrike at Fakenham, yes, that one, lots of the WWT's pet swans and white-fronted geese pooing.

Rainham Short-Eared Owls

2012-01-08T17:20:00.001Z

Not very many birds this weekend, though the ones that there were were a bit good. Hit up my favourite classy Sarf Essix birding location - a layby in an industrial estate just off the A13 - and was rewarded with three, maybe four short-eared owls hunting the scrub. Not classic photos as it was getting pretty dark, but still nice enough. Also present was a stonechat, flyover snipe and a few linnets.

Further round, in a quiet, secluded spot between a stack of containers and a closed-down industrial unit, a seedy looking guy was was just finishing taping black binliners over all the windows in the back of his estate. As we approached, he flashed his lights. I don't think he was birding.

It's been a while since I last saw someone dogging. Maybe I don't go birding in shit places enough any more.

2012 Crap Patch Peanut Challenge

2012-01-04T13:51:00.000Z

I've always thought that entering the annual patch list thing on the LondonBirders wiki was a bit pointless unless you have consistently free weekends, flexible work hours, or the good fortune to work within a pre-work/lunch-time stroll of, say, a Royal Park, or one of the big western/northern reserviors. But what about those of us for whom lunchtime birding that actually involves birds is just a pleasant dream? Perhaps it's time to have a work patch competition with a ~~slightly~~ significantly lower bar.

So, in an effort to find out once and for all which is the crappest of the two - a question that has no doubt regularly crossed the minds of many if not all birders - Mr Wanstead and I have embarked on a work patch list competition - the 2012 Crap Patch Peanut Challenge. His own patch of avian desert, Canary Wharf, against my little patch of avian desert, just south of Tower Bridge. Highest number of species seen wins, and the winner receives a packet of peanuts. Yes, the stakes are high, even if the patch totals won't be.

I have some distinct advantages:

1: Perhaps most advantagey, I spend five days a week in this office. He currently works from home, spending only one or two days a week in the office. This obviously translates into more patch-hours for me and is enough to make me feel less bitter about the fact that working from home, my really, really nice home with the river view, is just not an option. (That last bit might be a lie.)

2: I have "Knot House", "Raven Wharf" and a "Curlew Street" on my patch, all presumably named for the huge flocks of waders and corvids that use them. That should help.

3: While I'm the first to admit that I don't know a lot about the docklands (on my internal map there's a big gap around that way with "here be dragons and not many birds, don't go" written on it), I suspect my patch is marginally better than his. Mainly due to this:

Yes, I believe this is called "vegetation". It is something that sometimes happens where buildings aren't happening and I've heard that birds are fond of it. It is, by local standards, a fairly big piece of "vegetation" and this morning by taking a frankly ridiculous route I was able to walk right through it. For my efforts I was rewarded with a singing wren, which was at the time tick number 13. It's worth mentioning that since they've started building on half of Potter's Fields, the only and therefore best hedge on site has been removed. This, with the subsequent building work disturbance, has lead to far fewer birds in the area.

4: Mr Wanstead's all time total for Canary Wharf, over a number of years, is 35. My work patch total is 39, since April/May last year when we moved to this office. Admittedly a reasonable proportion of those were single sightings which are unlikely to happen again - jay, chiffchaff, swift, etc, but I think I have more "guaranteed" birds than him. However, his patch did once hold a blyth's reed warbler, and if he can find one of those, I'll let him count it as 5...

News on the twitter that Lethbridge had surged into the lead was quite a shock, and needed rectifying. Eleven great crested grebes?! Eleven! Such things are unheard of round this way. I'm just back in the office after giving the patch, such as it is, a good thrashing. We are now both on 16. Tomorrow I'm heading out with the express intention of finding a magpie - this is proper patching.

Honestly? I'm quietly confident of winning, which will be nice, if a little hollow given my advantages. But it should be fun anyway.

Perhaps, if he loses, he will be able to console himself with the fact that I actually don't really like peanuts that much. I enjoy opening them or feeding them to squirrels more than eating them.

Should maybe have mentioned that yesterday.

Rain. And, like every other birdblog out there, a bit about years and lists.

2012-01-02T23:12:00.003Z

To generalise somewhat, whether or not you have the time or inclination to yearlist and whether or not you yearlist properly (and yes, to yearlist is a verb, so far as I'm aware) it's always nice to get out on January 1st and make a good start to the birding year.

While I think the assumption about birders liking to start the year well is fair enough, the one about it always being nice to get out on January 1st for a spot of birding...?

Oh.

It had only just started to think about raining when we arrived at Rainham yesterday but it didn't look or feel dangerous, so we went out anyway. It started fairly well; a male peregrine was soaring over Aveley and amongst the panicking masses a small group of golden plovers headed south. Good January 1st birds. However, the rain kicked in properly when we were at precisely the furthest point of the site and as a result we got soaked and saw nothing else. Fantastic.

Today, we went out on Southend Pier. Not sure why. We didn't get soaked, but we also didn't see anything. I don't know if not getting soaked and seeing nothing is better than getting soaked and seeing nothing.

---

I've added a new page. It's a list that I'll keep over the course of the year. Almost - almost - a yearlist. But not. It's more a list of the year's species.

As I don't have the lifestyle or money to allow me to do a yearlist any justice I won't be doing one "properly", which is a shame, depending on who you talk to. It should be, as Mr Wanstead recently pointed out, fairly easy to hit the high 200s or even 300 in a year. But you have to be able to do some big trips. You'd have to do Scotland for a few days in May for all those northern specialities. Being able to drop everything and run in October is a must, as is some West Country seawatching between August and November, as and when the weather dictates. And, in between this and the daily drudgery of life, you have to be able to find and see everything else. You have to make all those trips out for those scarce breeders - monties harrier, golden oriole, stone curlew, etc. You certainly can't miss out on easy stuff like pied fly and wood warbler as they migrate through in Autumn, like I do, every sodding year.

In 2011 I racked up a little over 200 species, which is frankly shite, if you're trying. But there are a lot of really, really easy species missing simply because I wasn't able to make the necessary trips or twitches at the right times. And so, in 2012, rather than expecting that I'll be able to get out and see all the stuff I could easily see and consequently feeling frustrated by it I'll just be counting up what I see, in the order I see it. There won't really be time for anything else. I suspect I'll hit 200ish, again.

2013, though? Now there's a year I might start - and aim to finish - properly...

Owls. Everyone likes owls.

2011-12-30T19:08:00.001Z

Sheerness is shit. Minster is shit. Leysdown is ultra shit. No two ways about it, Sheppey is a dump. It is just shit. Apart from the big flat empty bit at the bottom with owls everywhere.

That bit is ok.

I went there today.

Capel Fleet was predictably good. First birds were an adult and two young bewicks swans with a group of mutes, followed by a flock of around 40 corn buntings. I have a lot of time for corn buntings, really underrated things. From the mound we had at least six marsh harriers - two each adult male, adult female and juv types - but there were probably a whole load more. Only one hen harrier, a distant ringtail, and a single common buzzard sat on a distant post. No smaller raptors apart from kestrels.

The Harty Ferry Inn was closed, which was a bit shit, cos I like it. Had a quick potter round the area though, and while scanning through a group of thrushes I heard a waxwing going over. I was unable to locate it though and never saw the thing, which rather takes the shine off what should be a decent find.

Star bird was a short-eared owl that hunted right up to the mound as we returned and then along the reeds and grass by the road as we drove up to the top. All told there were three, maybe four short-ears in the area. I know there are a lot of them around this year but you can never get tired of a good owl - always great fun to watch. I bet even the most bitter, cynical, miserable birders, the kind of walking scrotum that moans about how everything was better when nobody knew about the hobby and that no birds these days are worth getting out of bed for let alone walking down a street, secretly love short-eared owls. We all do.

The weather turned as we reached Shell Ness, so plans for a quick look on the sea were abandoned with only 11 common scoter and a great-crested grebe on the list. No snow buntings. Bastards. Had to turn to sanderlings to provide the small-cute-white-things-on-a-beach fix.

Probably the last post of the year. Is this the one where I'm meant to talk about lists a lot? Yeah? Shit.

Er.

Flat list is on 59. Target was 60. Not bad going since July.

That's it. I've not counted up the year list.

Oh go on, another owl picture can't hurt.

Fingringhoe, Abberton, er, Grays.

2011-12-28T18:01:00.003Z

Went to my favourite whorologically named mid-north Essex village today. Fingringhoe, located just along the road from Fistupslut, has been host to a glossy ibis for yonks. It wasn't playing ball today but a ringtail hen harrier more than made up for that.

The harrier was amazing. I mean, they always are - any bird that looks totally fucking awesome and pisses off the vast majority of posh land-owning nob types is pretty amazing in my book - but this one was really good.

We were scanning across a small scummy pond to the saltings beyond, hoping that the ibis would pop up when all the little grebes in front of us dropped under the surface as one. The harrier appeared as if from nowhere and bombed around the tiny area immediately in front of us for several minutes, at times coming so close that it didn't fit in the bins, let alone the 400mm lens. Eventually, the harrier noticed we were present, shat itself, and did an impressive about-turn so close we could almost smell it - I estimate about three or four metres from us. Then, brilliantly, it forgot about us, or decided it didn't care, came back, and settled in the grass for a while before resuming its hunt and moving off back onto the saltings. Probably one of the all time favourite birding moments, and certainly not one I'm going to beat in a while.

These last two are only here to show the under/upperwing a bit better. I had pegged this bird as an adult female, rather than a juv, based on the apparent lack of buff tones on the body and under the wings, and on the small(ish) lighter area on the upper inner wing. However, the streaking on the body appears to stop halfway and the upperwing (see pics 4 and 5) looks more juv, to my eyes at least, and I've now got it down as a juvenile bird. If I'm wrong - and I probably am - please do let me know!

Nothing else lived up to the harrier. Waders waded, (knot, dunlin, curlews, godwits, avoce...zzz) bullfinches squeaked pathetically, a kingfisher did the usual disappearing blue arse thing but in leiu of an ibis nothing trumped the hen-harrier-in-the-face experience.

Note amazing use of blurry post compositional device

A quick stop at Abberton on the way home provided a stomach-churning display of disgusting shitty waterfowl and precisely fuck all else.

---

I've been tweeting a lot about kittiwakes recently. I even blogged about them.

This is because I've seen a lot of them recently, mostly in Grays. They are exactly the kind of dross bird at a "traditional" seawatch site like Pendeen, Sheringham, Dunge, etc that is pure gold at a newer, less established site, like Grays. Even better, they are exactly the kind of bird I was getting all excited about when we moved into this flat back in July.

At the moment, I'd go so far as to say they are approaching predictable. There's a good chance - like, a properly good chance - of picking one up behind almost any vessel coming up the Thames on a rising tide. And again, predictably, you can often see them going back down, too. Literally as I write this, one just went upriver. On Boxing Day we took a quick walk further out at East Tilbury and with no effort at all picked up at least 8 birds, most coming downriver behind a Cobelfret vessel. It would probably be fair to assume there are a reasonable sized group hanging around in "our" section of the Thames. All but one have been adults.

Kittiwakes are brilliant.

Kittiwakes from the flat

2011-12-24T16:25:00.003Z

Only a couple of days ago I was chatting on twitter about not having seen a kittiwake at the flat. Someone had had 10 following a ship at East Tilbury, not too far as the kittiwake flies, but despite checking the ships that pass the flat, we've never had any. This morning, while I was nursing a christmas-eve-eve night out hangover, one of the regular ships, Sand Fulmar, went upriver on the rising tide. It was followed by an enormous group of mixed gulls. In this group, hugging fairly close to the ship itself, were at least 12 kittiwakes. Brilliant.

Yeah, merry christmas and all that.

Quick trip to Dorset. Lots more mediocre pictures.

2011-12-13T21:10:00.001Z

Well, this is a busy time of year, isn't it? My time has been eaten by christmas parties, the inevitable useless 24 hours post-party, decorating trees, shopping, rehearsing, gigging... and all squeezed in between visits to Dorset and pointing my camera at anything with feathers. And I'm this busy, without having a family or a massive house or whatever it is that proper adults have to use up their time.

We were down in Swanage again at the start of this week and were fairly lucky with the weather. By that I mean there were a few times when we could venture outdoors without being blown off a clifftop or instantly soaked by sideways rain. This does provide a partial excuse for the woefully poor pictures I took though, and while 50mph winds and horizontal rain are undoubtedly challenging conditions in which to take pictures, I'm aware that it's taking me longer to learn this lens than I'd expected. Still, nothing that practice won't sort out, I'm sure.

A couple of visits to Studland beach provided waders and truly excellent views of black-necked grebes along with mergansers, shags and a late sandwich tern. I don't often see black-necked grebes - the last one I saw was quite possibly at Studland or in Poole harbour last winter - so it was especially good to see the birds at Studland as they fished extremely close in to the beach which, due to the weather (high winds and rain) we had to ourselves. We counted maybe 6 birds present, but the reports at this time of year can top 50. Deeply unpleasant in some ways, yet one of the most fun half hour's birding I've done in a while.

Arne and Durlston had everything you'd expect bar the spoonbills at the former and peregrines at the latter; ravens, waders, auks, mergansers, bullfinches... all a very nice way to sink a few hours, despite Durlston's best efforts to piss me off by closing my favourite path. The path along the top of Tilly Whim and up to Anvil Point lighthouse (black redstarts, good views of auk colony, peregrines) was closed completely, meaning our walk was all but cliff-less as we were routed along a path that cuts back on yourself and goes directly up to the carpark. Visitors following this route - the only one that seems obviously available should they leave the new visitor centre and head perhaps inevitably straight to the clifftop - could easily visit and hardly see the site (or cliffs) at all, which is rather shitty. Hopefully this is temporary; maybe it was even weather related. Whatver. As I say, rather shitty. We ended up walking along the meadows at the top, which was pleasant, but not really the main attraction at Durlston. By comparison to the walk the newly renovated Durlston Castle, to which the visitors centre has been relocated, is truly excellent, if a little cheaply finished. Well worth a look-see.

You can do landscapes at 400mm. Sort of. Corfe Castle, from Coombe Heath - about 3 miles away.

Awful picture, but mixed wader flocks are awesome.

---

Spent half an hour watching the river on the falling tide today - final counts of 5 dunlin, lapwing, c30 redshank, 3 wigeon, 5 teal and a gadwall were pretty good for the time of day/tide. This isn't interesting to anyone, and I'm under no illusions about that, but I'll write what I like. Gadwall is number 57 on the flat list. Another "interesting" sighting on the river is the bridge that fell off of HMS Belfast a couple of weeks back. It went downriver on a barge yesterday and, last time I looked (before the tide), was currently moored off a bouy between Grays and Tilbury. Just so you know.

---

As we were packing up after a rehearsal last week we overheard someone in another room make what has to be one of the finest speeches ever made in the English language. A true masterpiece, dripping with class that paints such a vivid picture I feel almost duty bound to share it.

Because I am incredibly puerile with a mind like a drain, it has been playing almost on loop in my head and every time it goes around I have a little giggle when he gets to the bit where he uses "wank" as a noun.

"She's a lovely girl, but, I mean, you wouldn't, would you? You just wouldn't. Even with a paper bag. You wouldn'd, she's a proper munter. Munter. Anyway, she's well pissed because she caught him wanking the other day. She come back in, opened the door to find him, fag in mouth, can of beer in one hand, a wank in the other, porn on the laptop. She was pissed, I tell you. Proper pissed."

Christmas - Not seeing owls (again) - Treerats - Swanage (again)

2011-12-10T18:00:00.001Z

The Girl and I have stuck to the faintly ridiculous tradition of bringing a tree into the house and vomitting tacky shiny things upon it in order to celebrate that time ages ago, when an ambitious baby that went on to piss off a lot of Jews was born in a stable. Presumably because the parents decided this was safer than the maternity unit at Queens. I think. The tree symbolises... well, I'm not entirely sure what it all means, but tonight we're celebrating it anyway. Hooray! We're opening the sloe gin, turning on some little LED lights (apparently they flash) and sending out lots of cards with cutesey pictures of polar bears and penguins being festive. It's official - Christmas is happening and I'm oddly excited. I'm sure that baby would be happy.

I went looking for the regular little owls at a site just outside Orsett today but they weren't there, probably because I took the camera with me. Decent numbers of the usual Orsett-in-winter stuff though; woodpeckers, finches, winter thrushes, and parakeets.

Parakeets. This isn't some park in West London - Orsett Fen is decidedly east and decidedly rural - and the parakeets, despite spreading fast in the area and now being resident at this site at almost any time of day or year, are still a bit of a novelty. They're just a novelty that has more than worn off. I don't like them. I mean, sure, they're almost good looking things, but they're noisy, vulgar, and definitely not British. They just don't fit. Can anyone spell "eradication"? Hmm. This is all starting to sound a little bit like an avian BNP/EDL...This one, a particularly noisy bugger, was busy prospecting breeding sites.

Psittaciformes out! British nest holes for British birds!

Sticking with the failing to see owls theme, we went looking for the shorties at Rainham at dusk. Nothing doing, but we did take pictures of the moon that make it look like the sun. Ish. I think I need to experiment more to get decent moon pictures, and possibly a filtery thing. Anyway, shortly after taking this, twitter informed me there was a lunar eclipse going on. I didn't see it - much like the owls. Is it safe, therefore, in a moment of uncharacteristicly clear thinking, to draw a link between owls and lunar eclipses? I think we should be told.

I'm not working on Monday or Tuesday next week, so we're off to Swanage tomorrow morning. I shall be taking pictures of exciting birds at Durlston and Arne and finishing off each day by sipping on mulled cider and various ales at the Red Lion. It will be considerably better than commuting.

New lens: "An expensive big tube"

2011-12-05T08:48:00.000Z

My new lens arrived on Friday - a second hand Canon 400mm f5.6. Or, as the Girl put it, "an expensive big tube". I've since tried it out at Abberton and Rainham. That I'm not yet getting the best out of it is obvious, but even so the shots I have managed are far, far better than those that would have come from the old lens - as you'd hope, for the price difference.

The old lens was a 75-300mm. The problem was that beyond 200-220mm it started to get fuzzy. While you could take a reasonable image at 300mm - in good light - and then make it more acceptable by liberal application of PhotoShop and some zooming out and cropping, you may as well have zoomed out on the lens, taken it at 200mm and saved yourself the trouble. More often than not, you were in turd-polishing territory. And so, if you wanted a "decent" image rather than a record shot you'd find yourself not bothering if the subject was firmly in the 200-300mm range. Additionally, the autofocus was slow - a fast moving flock of finches, for instance, was almost impossible for the lens to keep up with.

The most immediate (and predictable) difference is that the new lens makes plausible shots that previously I'd not have even bothered to try. The extra reach is amazingly useful. The autofocus is fast, almost instant; it can lock on to things like fast moving finches, provided I can get the camera aimed in time. Which is itself slightly harder as the camera's spot focussing feels more sensitive. This is probably due to the extra reach, but I don't know yet. Whatever. It is, so far, a very satisfying tool. Hopefully, as I learn how to use the big tube properly, the images I post will get a bit better. Hopefully.

As a brief note, I've still not installed PhotoShop since my last restart, so these images have not really been enhanced at all beyond a crop and a resize. I'm having to make do with GIMP which, while free, doesn't seem to have the same power as PS does when it comes to stuff like area selection and noise reduction/sharpening/etc. From my experience, GIMP's area selection stuff is rubbish, and really, really slow and memory intensive. Of course, maybe this is just me not knowing how to find and use these tools properly because GIMP's interface is a steaming pile of poo, but I'm sure I could coax a bit more out of these with PS.

Of course, using it properly and getting decent photos is reliant on you being smart enough to have the lens with you at the right times. I'm sometimes not.

It was delivered to the office late on Friday morning and I'd deliberately taken my camera in to work intending to do some lunch time photography. I made a good start by leaving it in the office, ready and attached to camera, while I popped out to get lunch. I'm still not sure how I managed this. On the walk, a walk that I do almost every single day marvelling at it's utter birdlessness, a patch mega dropped, perhaps inevitably, onto a barge between HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge.

Common sandpiper. Shit. Ok, so I've seen hundreds of them - I've even seen them from my sofa, and once counted six from the flat. I don't often give them much time or attention, but this one was on the work patch, an area so devoid of avian life that I sometimes still get excited when I see a cormorant. In this context, a common sand is pure gold. And I'd left the camera.

Said barge with accompanying sandpiper was moored just out from City Hall, normally about two minutes walk from the office. I made it to the office and back in about two.

Needless to say, the bird had buggered off.

Hanningfield again

2011-11-27T17:06:00.001Z

I think we had originally planned to spend the whole day at Abberton and Mersea but life got in the way. Again. For the Girl this meant learning things like "voiceless bilabial fricatives" and the International Phonetic Alphabet, while for me it was cleaning the kitchen, a sneaky spot of Skyrim and then giggling uncontrollably at the word "bilabial", because I am secretly 14.

Eventually we decided to go to Hanningfield again. It was pretty good last weekend - far better than we had expected - so we went today buoyed by an over-optimistic and potentially very disappointing sense of site loyalty and expectation. It's the kind of enthusiasm you get when you've found something reasonable the week before so your mind convinces you can't possibly fail this time. It tends to help you forget how a place can be utterly devoid of all bird life, and in Hanningfield's case, when it's bad, it's very bad. The reason we stopped going is because of the number of trips we'd go and come back with nothing more than coots and black-headed gulls.

Thankfully, today was just as good as last Sunday.

There were in general far more birds than last weekend, and there were a lot then. I counted "at least double" the number of goldeneyes (that's a well scientific measurement that is) and at least 40 pintails - or put another way, at least 1000% more than last weekend. Raw STATISTICLE SCIENCE. While scanning and pretending to count the distant goose flock we picked up two slavonian grebes and further round the Girl's female common scoter from last Sunday was still present. Surprise of the afternoon was a juvenile eider, from the Point Hide. At least, I aged at as juvenile, with a big old eye-stripe - I don't see a lot of eiders so I don't know a lot about them. The quiet implication there is that I know a lot - or more, at least - about birds I do see a lot. To believe that would be stupid, so don't.

This might even have been an Essex tick. I don't stay on top of my Essex list - should really count it up one day - but I can't remember having seen one in the county before now.

I know that two "good days at Hanningfield" is a very small and useless sample, but maybe we're actually getting slightly ~~better~~ less shit at this birding thing. Maybe Hanningfield never was that shite (well, not always, anyway) and birds of a level that I currently think of as "good", like eider, scoter, fun grebes, etc are nearly always on offer. Perhaps we just missed them. So can I use this as evidence of progress in my birding ability?

Hmm. No. It's ~~probably~~ just coincidence.

-----

Yesterday is only worth mentioning because I ordered a new camera lens. After much research and some helpful discussions (thanks, if you read this) I opted for the canon 400mm f5.6, second-hand. Exciting. More exiting by some than a spot of owl hunting at Rainham at dusk, where I saw a few hundred each of black-tailed godwit, dunlin and redshank, but nothing I could even slightly string into an owl.

Hanningfield, for the first time in years.

2011-11-23T13:35:00.000Z

For a Sunday afternoon change of scene, the Girl suggested that we go to Hanningfield for some good old fashioned duck-watching. We enjoyed it far more than we had expected to. The light was great - low sun, turning everything pink or yellow - and the lake was covered in ducks. I enjoyed it so much that I even forgot feel slightly sick like people usually do when looking at manky aythyathas.

All the Hanningfield usuals were around though waders were thin on the ground, with only a single dunlin left to fly the "we're-considerably-better-than-ducks" flag. The best bird was a female common scoter that the Girl picked up, way out on the lake. Despite the distance, our distinct lack of birding ability and the funny light playing havoc with the colours we were able to confirm the ID as it wingstretched, dove and faffed about, presumably wondering why the sea is suddenly a lot smaller than it remembered. We were pretty chuffed with this - it's almost a reasonably decent find. The woods turned up some bits too, with calling bullfinch and firecrest.

A woman in the centre was unimpressed.

"Boring out there, today, isn't it?"

"Well, no actually, we saw more than we'd expected and found a common scoter - pretty good for here!"

"Oh. But, there's not much to see, is there? We've not seen anything."

"I don't know, we enjoyed it. Loads of ducks, plus we also had a bullfinch and a firecrest."

Here, I realised that her unimpressedness was possibly scepticism. She regarded us in a manner that was either suspicious or constipated and paused, before saying

"it's a bit unyooooosual, don't you think, to see a bullfinch, here, no? Hmm?"

I don't think she believed us, about any of it. Well fuck that. Feast your opticals on this masterful photo of the scoter, amazingly blown up to reveal all the details you could ever want:

Interpolation is for losers. Even when blown up to a million percent without any interpolation of any kind the artifacts are still the size of half the birds head. Still, I like it. It's like bird photography meets pixelly game sprites from some 90s RPG game. Now there's a good idea...

-----

It's been foggy recently. I'm sure you've noticed. In case you hadn't, here are some pictures.

And this was after the fog had lifted some - could hardly see the seawall when it was heaviest.

Fog at Rainham from the Serin Mound.

At Rainham, it stopped me seeing... well, anything, and at home it stopped me seeing the river. Of course, the main downside of fog on the river, at night time, on a high tide, is that ships have to use foghorns so they don't crash into each other. Foghorns are every bit as loud as you'd expect, and then some. Especially at 4am.

Cotswolds. Staring out of the window. Owls at Abberton.

2011-11-09T22:49:00.000Z

I can only imagine that you are all on tenterhooks, mounted somewhat uncomfortably on the very edges of your seats, and that your breath is baited. Yes, it has been a fair while and you're all eagerly awaiting the next e-turd to slip from my keyboard into the cyber-porcelain bowl of the birdernet. Your wait is over. So, what has been going on recently?

Yeah, this is one of those bullet-point summary posts. Just without the bullet points.

The girl has just had a reading week. I think that's like a post-grad half term break or something, for when they all get tired. Whatever it was, and I'm not entirely certain, I can be fairly sure that it took place the week before the one just gone and that we spent part of it in the Cotswold.

As an area it turned out to be pretty much exactly as expected - pretty, chocolate-box villages of honey coloured stone set in rolling green countryside. I've been through before but have never stopped for fear of meeting people called Hector or Hatty who enjoy playing polo and shooting foxes. I'm willing to accept that people like this exist outside the Cotswolds, it's just that I've always assumed that in the Cotswolds, once you've factored in the huge numbers of tourists, the proportion of those left that are "Hectors" is unpleasantly large. Somewhat unfortunately, this appeared to be the case. Most of the locals we met were massively posh and unwelcoming. Of course, it's possible that this correlation between posh and unwelcoming is nothing more than happenstance - obligatory xkcd - but I'm nowhere near a big enough man to accept that.

Birding wasn't the main aim here, or so I was told, but this was probably a good thing anyway as the areas we explored weren't exactly crawling with birds. Marsh tits and bullfinches were common, and we heard tawny owls and kingfishers. Birding excellence, I tell you. Pro stuff. Birds of prey were very thin on the ground - a few kestrels and buzzards and a single red kite were the only that we had, and all of those bar the red kite were at one site, Dovers Hill.

The pubbing was good. I think we tried every pub in Stow at least twice. I have decided that Donnington Brewery's B.B is one of my new favourite beers. Lagavulin remains the whisky of choice.

Sick day on Wednesday. There was much coughing, but every cloud, and all that. I spent the bits between the illness staring through a scope at the river, cos I'm really cool. A high tide roost of waders on Swanscombe Point comprised 40 redshank and 7 dunlin - good numbers for this stretch of the river. I also had a brent goose, that flew downriver, fairly high, as the tide receeded in the afternoon. Score. The local linnets were around, as were a female peregrine and a coconut. One of these floated up on the tide - I'll leave you to work out which.

Yesterday, I went up to Abberton, for the first time since... well, ages. Two, probably three short-eared owls performed adequately from the Layer Breton causeway. Rainham for an hour this morning produced a/the young male marsh harrier putting the willies up more golden plovers than I care to, or can, count. And that's all I'm going to write.

This came upriver yesterday. It was, as they often are, accompanied by a lot of gulls. Unfortunately, the name was not as prophetic as I'd hoped it might be...

Surprise knowledge insertion! I used the word "tenterhooks" and couldn't imagine where it came from. Google returned this site that is written in an authoritative enough style to convince me it knows what it's talking about, so it must be true. Additionally, "baited breath" should apparently be "bated breath". Both phrases make considerably more sense knowing their origins.

Raptorfest.

2011-10-30T17:09:00.002Z

I've often thought that the better birding trips lead to the shittest blogposts and the shittest titles. This is a case in point. Here, have an unrelated black headed gull - it's probably going to be the highlight of this post. It, like the other couple of hundred we checked, stubbornly refused to be a med gull.

The Girl and I made the excellent decision yesterday afternoon to head over to Sheppey. I occasionally read reports from the Capel Fleet raptor view-point, or blog posts about people going to Sheppey and coming away having seen almost every winter raptor you could think of. I usually go slightly green. We didn't expect, when we made the effort, that it would work out so well.

We'd seen several marsh harriers, kestrels and a few corn buntings from the car, and in a quick 15 minutes before lunch had seen short-eared owl, ringtail hen harrier and a sparrowhawk.

Down at the Harty Ferry Inn the tide was too high for any wader action, but a female peregrine was hanging low over the pub and another ringtail hen harrier hunted a cover-crop, coming to within metres of the car. Most of the afternoon was spent back on the mound and in the immediate area, before we headed east to the track that leads down to Shell Ness. Standing with a couple of other birders it became clear that there were two rough-legged buzzards present, which were hunting along the seawall across the marsh. The views were distant - hardly any plumage details - but even at the distance they stood out on structure and flightstyle alone. At one stage I had a rough-leg, hen harrier, merlin and a common buzzard in the same scope view. I have a wide-angle eyepiece, and they were distant, put it was still pretty ridiculous.

Because I didn't take one yesterday, here's a shitty picture of a hen harrier from Rainham, ages ago.

The final raptor count, across both sites, came to 2 rough-legged buzzards, 2 common buzzards, 5-6 hen harriers (all ringtail), numerous marsh harriers, 3 peregrines, numerous kestrels, 3 merlins, sparrowhawk, and singles of short-eared and barn owl. Beside the raptor overload other birds didn't get much of a look in, but the best of the rest was several thousand golden plovers, similar numbers of lapwings, 2 green sands, a few hundred curlew, and around 40 turnstone with a single ringed plover.

Very successful. Apart from the pictures, because there were so many birds around I pretty much didn't know what to point the camera at and because my puny 300mm lens would do nothing to a distant raptor. These are the best you're getting.

AMAZING.

A page of drawings. A drawings page.

2011-10-19T13:16:00.002+01:00

Yes, that's right. I have created a page of drawings. It's right there, at the top. Go on, click on it. Or click here. I don't really care how you get there, just go there and leave me abuse in the comments section.

I am drawing again, and I'm enjoying it. I'll periodically upload some of the ones that don't suck quite as much as the rest.

While I'm thinking about things that aren't as bad as the rest of all the things, here's a photo I took in Cornwall that upon reflection, months later, I still think isn't half bad. That's got to count for something, right?

Click to enlarge. As always.

Successful Shrike Hunting in Suffolk

2011-10-16T20:42:00.000+01:00

At about half past four on Thursday I refreshed the bird news page once again. Shit. 50 short-eared owls in-off at Titchwell, yellow-browed warblers in every patch of coastal scrub between Shoebury Ness and The Wash, and shrikes - shrikes everywhere. It was clear that a decent easterly blow had produced good birds right along the east cost. My mind was made up, and Friday duly booked off.

The plan, hastily formed, was to hit Minsmere for red-flanked bluetail and sausages, then either bash the scrub down to Sizewell and back or head wherever the news said was worth going. Apart from red-flanked bluetail, the main target bird was a shrike sp - we didn't care too much which one as shrikes are all amazing - and we weren't picky enough to insist on self-found, either.

The drive up was awful, with traffic almost everywhere between Grays and Colchester, but the benefit of arriving late is that the birds you've aimed to twitch are pre-found and nailed down, though hopefully not literally. Not much more than ten minutes after parking we were in position in some bushes north of the sluice, with the red-flanked bluetail picking about around our feet. Remember last life-tick, (well, the one before last, the sabine's gull) when I made out that it was pretty unusual for a life bird to be so obliging? Yeah, turns out that it might not be that unusual. This bird was awesome. It was doing big, predictable circuits of the scrub, coming nice and close each time, and the trick was to just stand and wait. Shortly after we arrived, Lee Evans himself did (ZOMG), complete with amazingly tacky dangly cross earring worn without the merest hint of irony, so we knew we were in the right place watching the right bird. Thank fuck for that. The bluetail alone would have made the trip worthwhile and while it wasn't (and presumably still isn't) a shrike, birds from this point on were all a bit of a bonus.

Having had our fill we retired to the cafe for a fill of sausages and bacon (picking up bearded tit on the way) before heading back to the sluice for some sea and scrub watching. Brent geese were moving south in groups anywhere up to 40 strong with a couple of arctic terns and common scoter for good measure but it was otherwise quite quiet. A single great skua with broken legs and damaged wings passed by slowly, mobbing gulls in attendance, with what was probably a second great and a couple of small skua sps that were too far out to ID with any confidence. Finally, our seawatch target appeared - a short-eared owl - heading slowly but strongly south. A small group gathered to watch the owl, and once it had dissapeared into the haze a man casually remarked that a couple of hundred metres down the coast a long-eared owl was sitting in a gorse bush, right next to the path. Long-eared owl is was my most annoying "bogey" bird so I didn't hold out much hope for this one, but on arriving at the bush the bird was obvious even without optics. And it was brilliant.

Buggered bonxie

Bird of the day? Yeah, bird of the day.

The scrub along the coast didn't produce more than a dusting of stonechats and goldcrests, so we opted to head up to Westleton Heath for the great grey shrike. A quick look at the scrape on the way in gave us waders - spotted redshank (learnt a new flight call there), knot, grey plover, godwits, dunlin, etc - and a handful of totally tickable red-breasted geese with the equally tickable barnacles. I wonder how I'd have felt about the red-breasteds if I'd seen them just offshore or sitting distantly on the levels with some brents, as they had been earlier, rather than knocking about the scrape with the barnacles?

Westleton Heath was unfortunately shrikeless. However, while we were watching half a dozen dartford warblers, a tweet from David Bradnum alerted us to an isabelline shrike just down the road at Dunwich Heath. The dartfords were quickly forgotten, despite their best efforts at holding our attention.

After some initial confusion that saw most people arriving at the twitch, us included, powering accross the heath on the wrong path, we finally got our shrike sp - and a damn good one at that:

Isabelline shrike, ssp isabellinus, so "daurian shrike".

Better photos of the day's rarities - the bluetail, long-eared owl and the shrike - are here.

I don't really know what else to write. Read the other post too. It's really shit and will reflect positively upon this one.

"Yup, it's definitely a shrike"

Local stuff. Stuff I've seen locally.

2011-10-16T18:32:00.003+01:00

Token good picture

Despite the best efforts of work and band schedules and rapidly decreasing daylight hours I've managed to see a few almost interesting birds locally in the last couple of weeks. Admittedly, these have mostly been peregrines, with the regular Rainham birds seen almost daily from the train and the pair I see from the flat showing themselves roughly every week. I've still not worked out whether these are the same birds as those at Rainham and I've yet to see them coming or going from their perch. The flat list itself has grown slowly, to 51. I added goldcrest, shittily, with a distant calling bird, and med gull, shittily, with a disgusting first-winter bird that took me a day or two to work out from bad notes. Decent seabirds produced by the recent long westerly blast included several arctic terns and best of all a shag.

The local linnet flock has grown to 12 and yellow-legged gulls are still frequent, but waders, surprisingly, have become much scarcer as the autumn has progressed. The oystercatchers that were a daily fixture when we moved in have all gone, passage waders like common sandpiper (max seen was 6), whimbrel (1) and sanderling (4) have all long since passed. We're left with the occasional curlew, redshank or dunlin - I'm still waiting for plovers ringed, golden and grey, lapwings and godwits, all of which must be possible. I've still yet to see any waders flying along the river as the tide rises. Future flat-list ticks have been hinted at - I've had a flock of 50 odd redwings and singles of shoveler, siskin and redpoll overhead on the walk to the station, but none have yet been in the "recording area". Like the arctic skua I'm going to get, or the short-eared or barn owl that's definitely going to grace Swanscombe Marsh one evening, it's just a matter of time. Similarly, dunnock, great tit and grey wagtail are just a matter of time. I'm sitting here now as the sun goes down, one eye to a scope... not that I'm likely to get dunnock or great tit on the river. We've had a couple of common seals, but as yet, no porpoises.

Note suppressed caspian tern on river in background

Definitely not a drowning dog

I've made a few quick visits to Rainham. It's so close now that a spare two hours can give me over an hour and a half on site, so there's no excuse not to go. However, newfound enthusiasm or not, these trips have been pretty dire - Rainham is having an appalling year - but there have been a few highlights. The girl and I have had brief views of bearded tits and up at the mound the other we had a bullfinch calling in the scrub below, a first for me at Rainham. On the tip we spent a great 20 minutes with a kestrel as it hunted spiders in the grass, unbothered by our presence, and we counted nearly 50 redshanks and a few curlews in the bay. Earlier today, there was a marsh harrier hunting and eating between Aveley Pools and the centre, a couple of common buzzards overhead and a small selection of waders - 3 each of snipe, black-tailed godwit and redshank and a couple of dunlin.

The best picture you'll ever see of a buzzard having a bad day

Stock doves are severely underrated birds.

As mentioned briefly before I made a flying visit to East Tilbury for the semi-palmated sandpiper and while I've not been in Orsett as much since moving to Grays, I've still had a couple of buzzards and, earlier today, the little owl in its usual haunt.

Semi-palmated sandpiper. Honest.

And there we have it. A shitty update that serves no purpose other than to show me that even without doing too much "proper" birding, I've still managed to see a few birds. Perhaps I should stop complaining. Will I?

Haha. Will I fuck.

Tonight, I'm drinking Bombardier, and it's disappointing. But then I'm comparing it to the last bottled ales I've had in - Doombar, Tribute, and various Otter Brewery beers. It tastes very chemically. Oh well.

Norfolk trip

2011-10-04T01:30:00.000+01:00

As usual, an picture click to enlarge...

Before I write about Norfolk the other weekend I should probably write about Cornwall, now a couple ofmonths back.

In brief:

Reed warbler in a stunted bush on a clifftop.
Cliffs.
No choughs on cliffs.
Badgers, very close to some cliffs
Got engaged, on some cliffs.

Ok, done.

Norfolk. The weekend started with a spot of filthytwitching at Grafham Water in Cambridgeshire. We eventually found somewherewithout tank-traps disguised as drainage ditches where we could park, but itwas a pretty long way from the dam. The tick fog meant we couldn’t see far outon the lake, but the walk over was pleasant enough with a huge mixed flockcontaining marsh tits, bullfinches and a treecreeper keeping us entertained.Siskins wheezed in the mist overhead, with good numbers of skylarks, yellowwagtails and pipits for company.

The sabine’s gull - a lifetick - was easily found and allowed for a close approach. Can’t remember thelast time a life bird was this obliging. We watched it for ages. We weren’t solucky with the grey phalarope and couldn’t find it at all. We did find a ringedplover and a sanderling and while these don’t really make up for the phalarope,the sabine’s easily did.

After a pointless check-inat Choseley barns and a record-time tent set-up (the usual place,Burnham Deepdale) we rather predictably hit Titchwell. I know you’re not meantto like Titch, but I do, and the tea was a lifesaver. It’s easy enough to seewhy you’re not meant to like it and you hear the arguments fairly frequently ifyou’ve ever read BirdForum or had the dubious fortune to meet a particular kindof elitist birder, but the selection of birds on offer and the ease with whicheven shit birders like me can see them is pretty special. There aren’t a greatmany places like it. That I know of. In Norfolk,10 minutes from the campsite.

Working out towards theseawall produced all the expected goodness - a selection of waders including 3little stints, curlew sands and the first snipe of the autumn, various ducks,and the first skein of pink-feet overhead.

As the afternoon wore on wewaited for the light to move round by having a quick seawatch. This was farmore productive (by our admittedly low standards) than either of us hadexpected. A female eider and a couple of summer plumaged red-throated diverssat not far off shore, terns fished everywhere and decentnumbers of gannets, mostly juvenile, hunted further out. Every now and thendecent-sized groups of waders passed along the shore-line, the expected Titchwell beach mix of dunlin, sanderlings, knot, bar-tailed godwits, grey plovers and turnstones.

Most interesting of allwere the four, possibly five skuas hanging around. There were at least threearctic skuas, and another, slightly larger bird, differentlycoloured (more greyish-brown then brownish-grey) and differently shaped (more barrel-chested than barrel-bellied). This, after several views and a fair bit of reading, (Collins and the European seabird flight ID thing) we were pretty happy to ID and pencilled it in as a pomarine skua – my secondlifer-tick of the trip. The bird's structure was perhaps most noticably different, though I could only say this with certainty on the couple of occasions the bird in question was up with or near adefinite arctic. At one point it briefly gave chase, allowingreasonable comparison views. We hung around for long enough to get a few bursts ofskuas as they moved up and down the coast, sometimes coming reasonably close in. These pictures I later found to be far harder to ID than the birds in the field (sea?). So I posted them to Birdforum’s ID section – better than you might think – which mostly confirmed what I’dthought. First set is most probably the pomarine skua and the second two are arctics. Of course, if you disagree, please do let meknow. I know little more than bugger all about skua ID.

As with all unfamiliar birds I suppose it's mainly down to experience - in, ooh, 30-40 pom's time I'm sure they'll be piss easy.

The last of the afternoon light, coming in low over the marshes from behind us, was particularly nice. If only I had a better camera lense to take advantage of such opportunities.

And then it was pub time.Brancaster Brewery ales (Oystercatcher is particularly good) and then various,mainly Western-Isles single malts. Awesome.

If I can find more decent pictures - unlikely - and I can think of something to write about - unlikely - and I can be bothered - unlikely - I'll maybe write more. As I say, it's pretty unlikely. I should do. Anyway, a second-day write up would be mainly about not seeing a great deal, stupid dog owners (again), pink-footed geese by the thousand and hunting barn owls. And about being within 15 minute's walk of an arctic warbler (plus associated twitch), twice in the day from different directions, and not knowing about it. Tits.

---

I should probably also mention the semipalmated sandpiper at East Tilbury last Saturday. I was lucky enough to be contemplating an exciting trip to Morrisons when the news came through. Morrisons trip was duly delayed, and I went to see it. Very nice.

Norfolk. Man pissing up wall.

2011-09-25T21:35:00.001+01:00

We went to Norfolk. It wasn't totally rammed with rarities but it was fun. Picked up two lifers, with the sabine's gull at Grafham Water and a pomarine skua off Titchwell, along with a handful of year ticks. Not that I'm counting, or anything. I'm totally not. In between birds we spent lots of time drinking various Brancaster Brewery ales and exciting single malts in the pub. I can recommend "The Wreck" and "Oystercatcher" beers, and Lagavulin 16 year old. I can also recommend scoping up Jupiter at the moment - moons clearly visible with bins (and, with a little imagination, the naked eye), and at high magnification, some stripes. Possibly. It was a bit of a strain, and I was several drinks down.

I don't have the time to post a whole post thing right now, so here's a picture of a pintail and a guy pissing up the seawall outside my flat.

It's good to be home.

No really, it is. I just wish this guy didn't exist.

Ranking system. Going to Norfolk. Almost nearly finding birds at Minsmere. Melanie Shitting Phillips.

2011-09-22T13:40:00.000+01:00

So, a quick recap. The winds at the moment are westerlies – theyhave been for weeks and look set to be so until at least 2013 – and the goodbirds in the southern UK at the moment are all south or south-west of Grays, Grays beingthe traditional point from which the whole country is measured.* The far south west isplaying host to a bum-clenchingly good set of birds and the grim far North isdripping with similarly buttock-affecting stuff. East Anglia is stubbornly refusingto be anything other than “A Bit Shite”. This isn’t a great ranking, but it is at least ahundred higher than “Melanie Phillips” on a scale of Stuff What Sucks.

The logical destination then, for a weekend away birding,would not be Norfolk.Right? Right.

We’re going to Norfolkanyway. Cos we’re really smart. Clearly the only reason that the RBA birdmap thingisn’t showing a whole row of squares and stars along that coast is that all thebirders in Norfolkare currently somewhere else. Possibly. I’m hopeful that an as-yet undetectedweather system will appear overnight, depositing loads of confused migrants inthe scrub right next to the pub garden but in lieu of that I’ll make do with a sabinesgull and grey phalerope at Grafham followed by copious amounts of barelyproductive seawatching at Cley.

Whatever happens, it’s happening tomorrow. And I’ll enjoy it,birdless or not.

*Little known truth –GMT originally stood for “Grays Mean Time” and was centred on a line somewherebetween Morrisons and the taxi-rank at the station, but it was moved toGreenwich when people realised how fucking awful Grays is. Funnily enough, onour first day in the new flat in Grays we watched a couple of ill-equipped track-marked menin jeans with mismatched dirty high-vis jackets hurriedly and ineptly trying tomanhandle a drain-cover from the road near the library. I’m not convinced they weren’t just trying to nick it and asfar as I’m concerned it just adds weight to the theory that GMT was moved whensome cheap bastards stole the copper 0-degrees line set into the pavement. Graysis officially ranked at “Oh God No”. While this isn’t quite up there with “ABit Shite” it is still rather a lot better than “Melanie Phillips”. Coincidentally,Grays sits at the same rank currently given to aythya ducks and being near Chris Moyles.

In an effort to make this post worth posting, here’s aflamingo that I saw at Minsmere a couple of weekends ago – Fiona, I believe, originallyfrom Marwell.

I've still not worked out the new picture embeddy thing on blogger. I still can't make it do what I want. Annoying.

I was there with the parents, an unexpected day-trip, but therewasn’t a lot to watch and we struggled to scrape together a meagre list withhighlights like common scoter, beardie and barwit. The clear highlight was sort of nearly finding a pectoral sandpiper. I first had it fromone of the identikit and actively scope-hostile hides that Minsmere loves so much, pootling around the scrape with a couple of ruffs and a redshank before it ran out of sight. My happiness at actuallyfinding a semi-good bird was soon tempered with the all-but inevitable Dunnock of Self Doubt and I’d almost convinced myself that I must have been wrong. There wereso few birds on site that there was no way I’d have found a pectoral, surely…

We were busy not seeing an apparent rose-coloured starling when a staff member’sradio went off saying there was a pec sand on the scrape. Pectoral sandpipers are way better than bashing round the north bushes looking for a bird we all know isn't there, so I went and looked. Andthere it was, being all pectoral and stuff. For about three seconds, before it flew out of sight. Little shit.

Screw it. I’mhaving that, even though the views were so brief as to rank the quality of the sightingat “Fucking Awful”. “Fucking Awful” is the rating given to being in a box witha swarm of irrational bees, or having some kind of horrible bum disease. “FuckingAwful” is still several ranks higher than “Melanie ‘pants-on-head-retarded’Phillips”.

Melanie Phillips is a wrongun, by the way. Just so you know.
So are dunnocks.

Productive weekend birding. I know, shocking.

2011-09-04T21:28:00.000+01:00

Last Monday the Girl emailed me at work with a list of birds she'd like to add to her life list by the end of the year. To reach a nice round number or something, she said she wanted another seven new species by the end of the year and that she'd like to make a start on this before the following Monday, when she starts her Masters degree. Sounded like we were in for a decent weekend's birding. The birds on her "do want" list were all good, possible things (and all cute enough to tempt her to travel a bit), but none were likely to turn up locally by the weekend - things like cattle egret, wryneck, phaleropes, shrikes, etc. We would have to - shock - twitch something.

After some consideration we opted to go to Dungeness, aiming mainly for the cattle egret and hoping for some self-found goodness. As if that was going to happen. Arriving to a heavy fog we decided that scoping out over fields for a distant egret wasn't possible, nor was much else, so we headed to the patch. Hopes that the fog might have bought in some migrants along the way were soon dashed and we didn't encounter a single bird until we found two black redstarts on the power station and a few wheatears nearby. We also picked up two heavily armed policemen, tracking us along the ridge, just inside the perimiter fence. This has never happened before, despite having spent hours peering at the reactors through bins, scopes and camera lenses...

The patch itself was barely visible in the fog, which kept rolling back and forth from the shore. We had a decent number of common and sandwich terns, with three black terns coming and going but not a lot else. As we sat watching the fog eventually moved out to sea, but there was nothing else to be had, so we left. The policemen had by this time left their van and come to meet us halfway back - they were very friendly as it turned out, and gave advice on the nearest decent cup of tea. Unfortunately, this advice was shite, as was the tea.

The fog almost gone, we went egretting. The cattle egret was (apparently uncharacteristically) a doddle. It showing well, if distantly, from the entrance track just past Boulderwall Farm and was pretty much the first bird we saw. This was a lifer for the Girl, on her list, and only the second I've seen in the UK.

On the reserve itself, like the at the point, it was pretty quiet in terms of smaller migrants but as the day progressed reasonable numbers of hirundines and yellow wagtails were moving overhead. The marshes were quiet too, but at Dengemarsh we had a raven calling nearby and after a few minutes the great white egret flopped almost predictably into view. A smart adult little gull fed among the terns for a short while before moving off. Just beyond that on Hookers we had a bittern, the day's fifth heron species, and a stoat carrying off a dead rabbit.

I like little gulls. I really like them. Have lots of pictures.

We left in the afternoon to spend the evening wedding planning. We did the same for much of today, and it was all very exciting until, while we were at the Girl's parent's house discussing Important Stuff And Things, I checked twitter. A red-backed shrike at Tilbury Fort. Bumlips.

Another bird on the Girl's Do Want list, and, funnily enough, on mine too. As we all know, you should always go and see shrikes - always - and luckily we were able to squeeze it in between wedding planning and sorting stuff out for the Girl's first day back at school.

We found the bird feeding from the rails by the gates to the fort, exactly where Mr Wanstead had said it would be when I phoned him in a state of barely contained excitement. Birding in Tilbury is very much a tick-and-run affair, possibly quite literally if you value your optics/wallet/life, so we couldn't and didn't stay for as long as I'd have liked to for such a good bird. After we ~~found~~ flushed it it moved to the grass between the moats and fed there allowing typically showy shrikey views. An excellent finish to an excellent weekend.

Even though the brown shrike at Staines a couple of winters ago was originally IDd as a red-backed, and so I can reasonably assume that they are a similar size, this bird felt really small by comparison. Maybe it was me, the conditions, or strange memories of the brown shrike, but it did.

Also, while I like Blogger's new interface, I don't like how it handles pictures. I can't get it as neat as it was before. Bum.

The grass is always greener in Grays.

2011-08-24T21:35:00.006+01:00

Warning - the pictures in the post are bad. Kinda Chris Moyles bad, but less fat and annoying. Just shit. Total, unadulterated, 100% pure shit.

Dorset again. Sigh. Another few days stolen away in Swanage, doing a heady mix of nothing, birding, and drinking in the Red Lion. The weather was pretty mixed, meaning the birding was squeezed in between rain storms and consisted mostly of bucket loads of migrants looking bedraggled and pissed off.

The first birding trip however, was an hour or so snatched just after a rainstorm had passed, along a footpath by the river Stour. While there were no migrants looking bedraggled or pissed off, it was some of the most enjoyable birding I've ever done, with good birds in a truly beautiful setting. Kingfishers zipped up and down the channel, giving the Girl her first proper views, a little owl called unseen for the duration, and yellow wagtails fed around the cattle. Excitement was provided by a pair of peregrines, one taking a lazy and unsucessful pass at a wood pigeon, and then by a huge late-summer mixed flock, containing two spotted flycatchers, bullfinch, redstart and various warblers.

The best outing was an afternoon at Durlston. Durlston has to be one of my favourite birding spots. It always provides something worth watching, whether it's the somewhat predictable peregrine down patrolling the cliffs, a merlin hunting the fields or the auks themselves, but this trip was something else. The night before had been clear, clouding over later, and we had woken to considerable rain. By the time we headed out just after lunch, the signs were good. The Magic Tree outside the flat was stuffed full of willow warblers and a huge, dense cloud of hirundines and swifts had gathered overhead. Just along the cliff at Durlston it was even better. There were birds on top of every bush. Warblers skulked in low gorse and holme oaks, whitethroats took cover in drystone walls and chats frantically chased flys from ever bush, rock or fencepost they could find. I lost count of the stonechats and wheatears present - I reckon there were at least 20 of each in the small area we walked, with around five whinchats and a male redstart for good measure. Later on in the walk we booted up a grasshopper warbler and a spotted flycatcher from a field boundary and a treecreeper called from a stunted hawthorne in the carpark. Sure, nothing rare, (though I think treecreeper is pretty good for Durlston and no, it wasn't short-toed) but fuck, migration is awesome.

So the birding was going well. Very well. And then, through the depressing mess that is Orange mobile internet and Dorset phone signal, reports of birds at home started to filter through. They weren't just "birds" though, there are often just "birds" in the area around the flat and I don't really care about missing them. No, these were good birds. Good birds, that were followed by very good birds, and finally "shit-fuck-titty-piss-that's-awesome" birds. Two razorbills and a guillemot, five species of tern. Avocets, and a host of other waders. The reports from Grays weren't nearly as gripping as those from Rainham but I don't doubt that a full day spent watching that tide would have yielded something worthwhile. I'll admit, my good mood was well and truly ruined.

The girl was bemused. We were in Dorset, running around amazing heathy forests like Morden Bog, picking up redstarts, stonechats, flycatchers and so on and yet I was checking my phone beneath every pine, wishing I was at home scanning the river in front of Tilbury docks for sandwich terns. Even sitting in the pub garden in the evening, enjoying a good pint listening to yellow wagtails stream overhead, I was checking the bird news for shitty Grays and Rainham. She was bemused at first, moving rapidly to unimpressed. She helpfully reminded me that had I been at home I'd probably have been at work anyway and was likely to be even more pissed off, so I should shut up and ignore it. Fair point, but honestly, if I'd been at work reading reports like those the other day, I'd probably have pulled a sicky and scoped out of the window all day*.

*for the benefit of work people that may happen, for some reason, to read this 1, stop, it's shite, and 2, not really. I'm very committed ~~and you're lucky to have me~~.

And that's how I learned that the grass, even when it's grass in Grays, is always greener on the other side of the phone screen, or something. I'm sure there's a moral or conclusion to be had there somewhere but it's hiding just out of sight between the swearwords and bad photos and I can't quite get my hands on it.

Finally, on a non birdy, yet totally awesome note, these were also at Durlston. Bottlenose Dolphins - they were awesome. There were around ten in all, two calves, very close to the cliff.

We have a video, and it's properly awesome, but I need to nick of off the Girl's camera and upload it to youtube before you can watch it. To make up for this, here's a picture of the Girl doing what she seems to do every time she gets near livestock.

Seriously, I have loads of photos like this. It's not just livestock though, she tries it with pretty much every animal. Our first trip to Blakeney Point was fun. Turns out that oystercatchers can run faster than she can.

Danbury, Orsett, Rainham

2011-07-31T17:31:00.009+01:00

It's been a busy day. We've done loads. I think it's because we actually got up early, then went out before 11am. Amazing.

Morning
We took an early morning trip up to Danbury Common to look for stuff. Any stuff would do, or so we thought. Unfortunately, the first stuff we found, well, I found, with my foot, was the largest, wettest dog shite either of us had ever seen. It was huge, like somebody had taken a small pack of great danes, fed them laxatives, pointed them at the path and squeezed really really hard. If I owned a bear and it created that turd, I'd be impressed. Massive. My foot, and this beautiful pile coincided with stunning pin-point accuracy. I cannot begin to describe the smell. Not a good start. Danbury Common probably has more dog shit per unit of ground then any other area in Essex; most of it had more shite than ground. God awful. Still, there was enough wildlife there to keep us going. It's a quiet time of year for a forest walk, but the butterflies were plentiful, with the highlights being a brimstone, small copper and a couple of things up in the oak canopy I'm pretty sure were purple hairstreaks.

A male yellowhammer sang constantly from the top of a tree in a small clearing and felt slightly out of place, while a small mixed flock of bits held a couple of garden warblers. Further out on the common we watched a recently fledged brood of willow warblers being fed by frantically mobile parents.

Afternoon
Most of the afternoon consisted of exciting wedding planning activities, and one of these took us over to Orsett. Yesterday, at the usual site, a little owl was busily engaged being really damn cute on the fence. Today, I took the camera, just in case. Good decision. It was slightly too far away for the pictures to be amazing, but it's still a little owl. Any day is a good day if there's an owl in it. Other wedding plan activities took us to Tilburys East and West (way nicer than Tilbury proper) and finally back to Grays. Not much doing on the river today, a dozen or so common terns and at least 8 yellow-legged gulls the best around.

Evening
In the new flat, we're just less than ten minutes drive from Rainham, so really there's no excuse not to go when something fun turns up. (And when the car park is open, of course.) While the roast was in the oven and the Girl was busy watching a film I spent an hour watching the wood sandpipers in front of the new hide, with a couple of green sandpipers thrown in for good measure. Happily, the stumpy stock dove is still alive and kicking too.

That's about it.
shitpost

Lists page, horrible HTML tables, birds.

2011-07-25T20:34:00.010+01:00

Someone made a comment on here the other day saying that not only is this page SAD but that it would benefit from the addition of some SAD LISTS. Firstly, I would like to reassert that this is actually a cool hobby for cool people. Secondly, Mr Wanstead, just for you, there is now a whole page of lists. Holy shit. It is tabbed, at the top.

I like to pretend that I don't like or care about listing. I also claim, sometimes, that I don't count them up. Thing is, secretly, I've been caring about, liking and counting up my lists since... well, ever. And maybe I wasn't so secret about it either. I quite like starting new lists, too. I could easily have a thousand lists. Birds seen on the bog (I think everone has this one), birds seen while commuting (added hobby and peregrine from the c2c today at Rainham), birds seen while listening to Gary Moore (just added common tern), etc.

Whatever, the lists I give a mouse sized shit about are up there for all to see. Just don't expect me to go in there, wrestle with shitty HTML tables and update them regularly. Or possibly even at all. I was arguing recently that HTML tables still had some relevance in Internet Websight design and that using them was no bad thing. Having just spent ages doing those lists, in horrible HTML table format, I now accept that I was wrong. God alone knows why I used a table for them, or why, half an hour in, I persisted with it. Utter ballsacks.

Right, birds.

I went to Rainham briefly yesterday late afternoon, spending around an hour heading up to the reedbed and back. There wasn't much about, barring handfuls of cute baby things - tits, chiffchaffs, blackcaps, whitethroats, ~~coots~~... A couple of hobbys chased the hirundines around half heartedly and kestrels and a sparrowhawk thought about hunting but couldn't really be bothered. It was that kind of afternoon all round really. Not much variety on offer, so I watched an adult male blackcap ferrying beakfuls of stuff to this fledgling for ages.

This is picture that I'm almost happy with. Sure, there are leaves in the way, the composition is rubbish, the ISO was wrong and there are probably a hundred other things on top of which I've not done the editing that I should have done to make the most of the image (damn GIMP), but I'm pleased. A bird that, only a few months back, would have been utterly unphotographable sitting as it was in the middle of a bush had become relatively photographable. Gotta love that spot-focus setting. And knowing how and when to use it, which I didn't a couple of months back... Again, practice seems to help. Shocking.

What a crappy post. I should have spent time working on my BUMSLAP list (Birds Uncovered Making Stupid Lists, Acronymised Puerily)

Grays Bird Obs

2011-07-22T08:20:00.007+01:00

So, with the closure of Romford Bird obs, moving in to a new Obs building, settling in, and the usual day-job it's been a fairly hectic few weeks. Productive in terms of birds, though. Birding from home has become a whole lot easier and far better. The scope is currently set up permanently in our middle room. If I want to seawatch, Essex Style, It's a simple case of opening the curtains and looking. While it's not up there with Pendeen or Sheringham (yet) it has its own charms, most notably that a shit bird at a "proper" seawatch location is a "FUCK WHAT THE FUCK" bird at Grays. The day a manxie flops upriver and gets eaten by a greater-back will be a very good day indeed. For me, anyway. Other fantastic house birds recently have been dunlin, common sand, a peregrine exactly where we'd predicted it would turn up, a kestrel, 3 linnets... It's been amazing.

The only downside so far is that having to spend so much time away from the obs at this silly people-helping nasty lefty liberal do-gooder "charity" job, is that when good things do get seen I'm often not there to see them. Cases in point were the juv night heron earlier in the week, or the 4 black terns at Rainham last night that would, inevitably, have gone right past my scope. If only I'd been there to look through it.

Fresh from hearing about the terns I left work last night for the pub, slightly peeved that another good bird had escaped me. Halfway across Tower Bridge a lesser black-back crossed the road, lower than they usually do, barely skimming the tourists' umbrellas. A smaller, darker shape shot after it - a female peregrine. It gave chase and they dropped to within a metre or two of the water, before tearing a chunk of feathers from the gull's back. The birds seperated and circled away, the peregrine coming to rest on the top of the bridge. Shortly afterwards, a second peregrine attempted the same thing, just narrowly missing. All the while, with oblivious people around me, I stood and watched, immediately and unreasonably optimistic about birds. I might never get another chance for night heron (seriously, what the fuck) from the house but black terns? EASY.

Obligatory unrelated spadger pic. This one was at The Lizard. By the time I make a "We has done Cornwall" post I'll have used up all the reasonable photos I took. Most of them were of sparrows and chaffinches anyway...

In the Hoop and Grapes, with the kind of optimism that only seeing peregrines then drinking four 4 pints of doombar can instill, plans were made for a pre-work seawatch.

"But there were 4 past Rainham last night! They must have gone past Grays! I simply can't fail to see them! It's just not possible!"

I knew the tide would be right (ish) and that there would be a mildly (but not really) promising N/NE wind (according to xcweather), around 530am. What could go wrong?

I woke nice and early, having been in bed around half ten, and stumbled through to the scope at about half past five. It was slow going at first - a few common terns were fishing mid-channel, a magpie finally made its way onto the list, the first three common gulls of the autumn were roosting with the black-heads and 5 oystercatchers on the jetty... But nothing that I could reasonably call a black tern. Another silly birding idea, born of misplaced and unrealistic optimism? Probably. It reached 6am, and I needed to call it quits. Just as I was trying to string another common into an arctic, another tern appeared, heading upriver. Smaller, darker, and twisting and turning in that special way... I watched it right up as far as I could, before it disappeared behind a ship coming down. Absolutely, 100% black tern. Done.

Brilliant.

---

I brought the camera in to work today. I was feeling lucky. Of course, there was no sign of the peregrines on the bridge. I was hoping to furnish this post with a nice relevant picture. This will have to do.

They looked a bit like this, just with less fur, more feathers, in a city, not Cornwall, chasing a gull. Use your imagination.

New flat...

2011-07-15T08:48:00.005+01:00

I suppose I can't blame the lack of recent posts on not having internets in the new flat yet, as I wasn't really posting much before I moved.

The new flat is great, and the view amazing. Being able to scope up oystercatchers and shelducks before work really is quite exciting. The flat-list currently stands at 28 and already has a couple of good bits on it. The second evening had a sandwich tern fishing mid-channel and the other morning, dangerously close to making me late for the train, a brent goose drifted upriver on the tide. We're still at the exciting stage where every evening spent scoping out across the river brings something new - last night's offering was a kestrel hunting the seawall on the other side - and I expect the list could hit 60-something without any real trouble.

The view from immediately outside the window... This is the best I'm willing to do with GIMP - I'm sure I could make it a little better but I don't want to. I cannot begin to adequately explain just how much I FUCKING HATE IT.

I still need to cough up a bit about Cornwall, so in the mean-time here's a spotted flycatcher we found nesting at Trerice. We saw loads of these - it's a bit wierd being somewhere where they're a common garden bird.

All change...

2011-07-04T22:42:00.003+01:00

Lots going on at the minute...

Shiny rocks on bits of metal make girls agree to silly things, like marrying me. Hah.

It has been exactly one month since I last updated this shitty excuse for a bird blog. The reason is that I've been doing exciting grown up things: the girl and I got engaged, we've just signed on a new flat, we had a great holiday in Cornwall and I finally ticked ring ouzel. Wow.

This is part of the view from the new flat. I think a "fuck yes" is in order. I can't wait until that Saturday in early December, when there's a howling easterly on a rising tide, it's 2 degrees outside, but feeling more like minus 10, and you guys are all lined up on the balcony at Rainham, freezing your nuts off. I'll be at home in the warm, scoping out from the sofa, with some tea, thinking of you. It's going to be amazing.

More seriously though, there is genuine potential here to turn up something good. Not just local-garden good, but actually good. Remember that grey phal last year? Yeah, that would probably be on the house list. So far, the house list is around 10 strong, but it does include redshank and little egret, both of which I could never hope for here in Romford.

And yet, despite all this I can't think of anything to write at the moment. I've half written three posts over the last month and haven't finished any of them. I'll probably write some more about Cornwall another time, but for now, here's a chaffinch.

As it turns out, taking good reasonable not totally shit photos is all about practice. Simply taking loads of shots, working out where to improve, how to make the camera do what you want it to do and then trying again (and again and again) seems to have an effect... who'd have thought it?

Herons at Rainham being cute and cuddly

2011-06-04T13:50:00.003+01:00

Herons are nice friendly birds that get on well with one another. In the following pictures these two herons are sharing an intimate moment of love and affection.

You can click to enlarge any of these in order to see the love that little bit closer. It's really quite touching.

Thoughts on photographing small mammals; conclusions drawn between mortality of subject and quality of photograph

2011-06-03T19:03:00.012+01:00

It's June, so there aren't very many birds to watch, take bad pictures of or write about. I have therefore turned my considerable intellect (haha) towards naturally-historical subjects that aren't birds, butterflies or odonatid ringpieces. Here are some thoughts on small mammals.

Usually when I see small mammals they're suffering from acute cases of dead. Take the following examples:

See? Looks like it's got dead.

And this one...

Yes, this one definitely has dead.

And this one too - can't write that off as a cold, it's definitely something more serious. Like dead.

Of course, the big in-the-field advantage to finding small mammals suffering from dead is that they usually stay quite still and therefore make excellent photographic subjects. I have loads of photos like the ones above to back this up. It follows that small mammals that aren't (yet) suffering from dead often make very bad photographic subjects, or at least very challenging ones. The biggest problem is that when they don't have dead they move, all the time, and sometimes really fast. And because they're small, they hide under things. No, photographing small mammals that don't have dead is very difficult and quite unrewarding. Take the following example:

Utter shite.

Now I appreciate that this is quite ground-breaking stuff and that lesser minds than my own might be blown by such a revelations but please, stick with it and at least make an effort: I would suggest that there is a direct correlation between an a small mammal's dead-ness and its suitability as a photographic subject. I even have photos of a red squirrel with teh p0x that's nearly dead and the photo is nearly good. That's damn good proof, right there. The obvious practical conclusion is that if you want to take good pictures of small mammals you have to kill them first.

I think the photo above is of a field vole, though I'm not sure, cos it's not got dead. I know next to nothing about small mammals once you get beyond my stunning insight regarding their photography, and I wasn't quick enough to administer a good stamping to help with making the ID.

The offending rodent was at Wakehurst Place in Sussex last Monday. Wakehurst is where that Millenium Seedbank thing is, and since the Girl did some university thing there once a few years back, we've always meant to go. Aside from the seedbank work and the gardens and landscape the birds were worth the trip on their own. We found two singing spotted flycatchers, bullfinch, all the usual warblers, nuthatch, and both spotted woodpeckers. The sheer number of common woodland birds was pleasingly reassuring.

Of course, we went there when it was still May. If you went there today you'd probably see nothing.

Obligatory bad photo of a common bird, in this case a coy spadger. This post is shite; try not to read it.

Hard drive "failures", strange gigs, not very many birds

2011-05-22T20:51:00.006+01:00

Collared dove at Rainham earlier today.

A mixed bag, this weekend. Busy, yet unrewarding.

Thursday night saw my computer pop up with everybody's favourite pant-staining warning message, something about a fatal or critical hard drive failure. So, not a good night. With a little help from a friend and liberal application of Puppy Linux we were able to browse the drive freely, recovering all of my data, but the Vista install was broken beyond repair. I read later about a new piece of malware that simulates a HD failure and while I don't know if that's what my system succumbed to it wasn't booting at all, which I class as slightly worse than "shitted up", at "proper fucked".

Friday night was a work night out, and so messy. They always are. It was a colleague's last day in work before getting married, payday, and the end of the first week at the new office so it all got particularly drunken. An indication of how good/bad (unsure) the night was was the worrying absence of my bank card the following morning. The wallet and other cards were all fine, just the important one was gone... great. Being fair to Lloyds, a bank who I tend to dislike, I'll give them credit where it's due for the excellent service on the phone when I called to stop the card - genuinely excellent.

Saturday was a day of recovery, shopping in Lakeside for a new suit and a copy of Windows 7. Inthe evening we played possibly the weirdest gig we've ever done. It was a quiz night fund-raisery thing, with a band between rounds. A very odd concept, leaving us concerned that not only did we not really want to play it but that the audience might not want us there. Still, it was strangely enjoyable once we'd got over the atrocious acoustics in the room by simply turning everything up to 11 and trying to drown out the echoes and reverb. I'm not sure that it worked very well, but by that point the audience and us had drunk enough for it to not really matter. The more I play through the new amp the more I like it - an excellend purchase.

Today was another slow start before we headed for an afternoon stroll at Rainham. Birds were thin on the ground, but we only got as far as the woodlands before having to head back. A cettis and two singing blackcaps were the best birds. I've spent most of the afternoon backing stuff up and installing Windows 7. It's up and running now, but I've lost so much software... I think the next few nights will be quite busy on this front.

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The new work patch is amazing, in that relative way that inner-London urban patches are. The list is up to 23, which compares very well with the 25 in total that the old one managed. I've not found blue-tit or magpie yet, both of which I expect I'll get without any real difficulty. Highlights during the first week were finding a home-made coke-bottle bird feeder just round the corner, a group of 6 sand-martins upriver on Friday, a cormorant trying and failing to eat a huge flatfish and what was probably a black-headed gull with white wings. It didn't feel entirely good for a med gull and Mr Occam and his razor tell my it's more likely to be a BH gull. It wasn't flying quite right and it didn't show the "blunt" wingtip that, to my eyes at least, med gulls show, but it was stunningly pale... Bah. It's always nice to have something tantalising that get's away at the start of a new patch though, gives you something to work towards. One of these days where the low tide coincides with an early morning stroll I'll get a common sand or a redshank on the foreshore, I'm certain of it.

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Time to get Steam and games re-downloading... this will take DAYS.

Dorset again, again, two

2011-05-16T20:29:00.008+01:00

Some more bits from the weekend.

Unrelated sparrow

The walk from Swanage, up onto the ridge and along to Corfe village is, simply put, amazing. The views from on top of the eponymous barrows on Nine Barrow Down are near 360 panoramas over Purbeck and Poole Harbour and in the weather we had, truly stunning. I have enough images from up there to stitch together into a big photoshoppy mess, but I can't be doing with that right now. Coming down off the top and into the village has to be one of the most "English" views I've ever seen, with the castle and village both straight out of a picture book.

Bird-wise it didn't throw up many surprises, but who cares when you're somewhere that amazing? There were at least 5 pairs of stonechats along the walk, several ravens overhead, ever-present buzzards, linnets and whitethroats and so on. Butterflies were good up there, with adonis blue being pretty much the most common species. Other firsts for me were green hairstreak and brown argus, with a single wall being the first I've seen in a while. We had hoped for small and chalkhill blues, but weren't able to find them. Coming down into Corfe we had a few yellowhammers, a group of three bullfinches, a peregrine overhead and a very pale common buzzard with nice obvious carpals which, with it's heavy moult and long winged appearance had me going for a moment...

Nearly good...

In the evening we took a boat trip along the coast to the various seabird colonies. This lone puffin was the best bird. They have a tenuous hold on the south coast, with an estimated 25 birds summering last year, the maximum seen at one time being 17. Breeding is only suspected, but not proved. However, the guillemot and razorbill numbers are rising which I suppose implies there's enough food locally for the puffins to use. The peregrine from the previous day was nowhere to be seen.

An afternoon visit to Portland Bill was pleasant, if slightly disappointing on the bird front. It had been pretty quiet for a few days when we visited, but it's always worth a poke around. Best birds were two spotted flycatchers in the Obs garden and two female wheatears on the Bill itself. The wheatears - both females - were noticably different, with one bird slightly larger and markedly peachier on the breast, the peach extending further back underneath the body. The image shows the colour difference but not the size difference. Interesting, huh?

No, this is not interesting at all.

These are filed under "hooray chromatic abberation!" and "good opportunities missed through poor skill and cheap gear".

I was going to be restrained and not post loads of shite pictures, but that resolution appears to have fallen by the wayside, along with the one that I made when I started this thing that I wouldn't just write endless "lol i went hear and seen this" posts. Sorry, but that appears to be what I'm doing right now with just about every post I make. Bugger.

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The big office move is tomorrow, which is just fine by me. The black redstarts, after their day of hot red-bottomed displaying, sexing and nest building haven't put in a single appearance. I've not seen or heard them anywhere in the area. Potters Field and exciting birds on the Thames await...

Dorset, again, again.

2011-05-15T20:04:00.006+01:00

And so concludes possibly the geekiest (long) weekend of my life. We, being the Girl, this guy, his fiance and me, started with Spiers and Boden on Wednesday night in Shephards Bush, excellent folky entertainment, before heading down to Dorset the following day. Three days of birding, walking, beering and steam-train-appreciating ensued, leaving me with a fair few year-ticks (I'm still not counting, just recording), aching legs, and just over two and a half gigs of photos to work through. Some of them aren't total bollocks, either. Most of them are though, so you can look forwards to that over the next couple of posts.

Thursday afternoon at Durlston gave us the usual cliffy suspects and a singing lesser whitethroat and the other usual warbly-chatty-titty things. Best bird there, possibly of the whole trip, was this tatty peregrine, hunting along the breakers. It really performed for us, and even as someone who doesn't really get the obsessive thing some people have for peregrines I don't see how anyone - birder or not - could have failed to find the spectacle impressive.

I'm genuinely quite pleased with these. I know that says a lot about my near-total lack of photography skills, but pleased I am.

After the customary fish and chips (and an obliging rock-pipit on the beach in the town centre) we headed out to Arne for and evening walk. Stopping on the way gave us a few yellowhammers and some stunning views of the countryside, this on the Swanage-Corfe road just outside Corfe.

We had Arne and the heath to ourselves, sharing it only with a few stonechats, a dartford warbler and enough cuckoos to give any dunnock or reed warbler the shits. These called almost constantly even after darkness fell. We eventually heard three or four nightjars churring though we were unable to see any of them, and as we pulled away a whinchat was flycatching in the headlight beams.

And that's all I'm writing for now. Have a stonechat, taken up on Nine Barrow Down. This one's a bit better than the whinchat.

Disappointment.

2011-05-07T19:29:00.006+01:00

Today was our annual Breckland bash, with the usual mixed success.

This is a dragonfly.

Lakenheath was muggy, hot and slightly disappointing. Loads of the usuals - a dozen marsh harriers displaying, cuckoos everywhere, 20-something hobbies, a few bitterns, and so on. The only real surprise was a nightingale. We didn't manage to see an oriole or even hear one singing; we had to make do with one calling. Twice. Rubbish.

These are marsh harriers. They are flying.

On to lunch at the stone curlew site (no stone curlews, single yellowhammer) and then to Santon Downham and surrounding area where we saw... nothing. No goshawks, no woodlarks, no tree pipits, no crossbills, no nothing, just garden warblers, blackcaps, garden warblers, more blackcaps, willow warblers, garden warblers and some more garden warblers. Seriously, they were everywhere.

And then I felt ill so we went home. Still a nice day out.

Have a whole load of shitty photos. I mean it, they're shitty, and there's a lot of them.

If you don't like shitty photos of common birds please don't look at the pictures above.

Today I saw more interesting birds in W1 than I did at Rainham.

2011-05-05T23:23:00.005+01:00

Rainham again tonight. Nothing doing, again. A pair of wheatears on the foreshore (I'm not enough of a twat to claim them as Greenland race) and an oystercatcher were head-turningly interesting but there was nothing else. Literally nothing, unless you count whitethroats and sedge warblers. Three weeks ago they'd have been interesting, but they've since been relegated, like almost all frequently-seen birds are, to that category that you don't actually look at unless they do something really interesting like get eaten, or turn up out of place, like in your garden. I guess, in most cases, familiarity does indeed breed contempt.

I saw a hare running about on the landfill site as I was leaving, one of those slam on the brakes and reverse up the road jobs. Hares are awesome, and this was my first at Rainham for a long time.

And now, some knowledge: did you know... ring ouzels are just partially leucistic blackbirds and therefore it's actually better not to see them? FACT.

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Yes, it's May. May is the month where I talk about black redstarts a lot, in between complaining about not going anywhere good. Granted, I tend to do both of those things quite frequently in every month, but this is my blog and I'll type whatever the fuck I want.

The black-redstart at work has been in fine territorial mode over the last couple of days, perhaps trying to appease me after his late arrival. He sang today pretty much non stop from around 9.30 to just after 2, with a brief pause to chase off an intruding male. This was all very distracting, so I'm going in early again tomorrow with the camera to get my fix in. I hope he's up earlier tomorrow than he usually is - there's no point lugging in the camera, again, for a bird that's not going to show.

Talking of the work list, it seems to know its days are numbered and is putting in a final flush of effort. In recent weeks it's thrown up ridiculously good stuff like goshawk, long-tailed tit and wheatear, and today it yielded a patch tick with four mallards and a patch second with a blackbird. The total, with just under two weeks to go, stands at a mighty 25.

Which, for a patch that consists entirely of a bland rooftop in central London and some of the most unproductive non-treelined streets in the city, isn't fucking bad at all. It's about 18 more than I'd expected when I started.

It's back!

2011-05-03T19:24:00.004+01:00

Today was a Tuesday, and therefore unimaginably shite. One of those days where you work non-stop, really really hard, and have nothing to show for it at the other end but an even bigger pile of work. It wasn't all bad though, as at around half nine in the morning, between emails 37 and 38 of around a million, the black redstart appeared, singing away just outside the office. Compared to black redstarts elsewhere in London he's been pretty lazy in making his entrance, but I'll forgive him his tardiness if he shows is little red bum for the camera tomorrow morning.

While you wait for that, here's a photo of a garganey at Rainham over the weekend.

Stunning, huh?

Normally I'd be pretty happy with a garganey at Rainham over the weekend, but in light of multiple black winged stilts and two cancelled Minsmere trips it was pretty disappointing. Other disappointments were hobbies, wheatears, wood sand, greenshank and a few other bits.

Skywatching...

2011-04-25T13:45:00.008+01:00

A quick spot of skywatching over lunch at Rainham produced at least 7 hobbies, the usual peregrines and an adult male marsh harrier through to the north, exceptionally high.

At home, a massive sparrowhawk passed over carrying lunch with it. Obvious ID or not, I'm almost tempted start yet another "goshawk-vs-sparrowhawk" thread on BirdForum just to see how many replies I can get... but I'm not that childish. Not all the time, anyway.

There has been some interesting bloggy discussion of late on the whole sparrowhawk/sparrow population thing, all of it by persons more informed and intelligent than I. While most it went right over my head it was still worth a read/watch. Personally, and I expect like most birders, I'm perfectly happy to see these things over my garden, whether or not one of them just took one of Doris's delightful titmice from her feeder and causing her to wee herself a little in surprise and spit her false teeth out into her gin in a fit of righteous indignation. Watching a sparrowhawk - or any other raptor - make a kill is always one of the most exciting things you can see while birding. From my entirely un-backed-up layman's viewpoint I don't think there are too many of them, but whatever the true facts are I agree with the point made that it should be up for discussion; the apparent state at the moment of outright refusal to even discuss it can only be harmful in the long run.

Songbird Survival, on the other hand, can fuck right off regardless. A more obvious front for hunting nutjobs and gun lobbyists I could not even conceive of.

Might head back down to Rainham later in the evening for the ring ouzel. Might not. Right now though, I'm off outside for some more hopeful raptor watching.

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Edit: Garden raptor skywatch paid off in the form of a single buzzard and a flyover goldfinch. Result!

No, seriously, result. For this garden, both species are pretty mega. Buzzard went over about two minutes after I started watching, amazingly high and amazingly fast, headed directly west into London and then who knows where.

Busy, yet lazy

2011-04-24T21:04:00.006+01:00

It's been quite a busy easter weekend, but it feels like we've also been exceeedingly lazy. Time off from the usual routines to go away on holiday is a truly beneficial thing. It helps in a whole host of ways beyond the obvious social/mental/familial things and this is something I deal with at work on a daily basis and I'm very fortunate in that I'm able to get away for breaks very regularly. However, having time off from work and using it just to stay at home and do nothing is something I've never really considered before. This weekend, it feels as though we've done just that, and it's been excellent.

Friday was spent being slow and particularly hungover. We'd planned initially to go to Minsmere but in light of the previous night's drinking found ourselves instead lurking around Orsett and Grays. Most of the day was spent with the Girl's family, sitting out on the meadow having one of those long slow outdoors type meals. Brief birdy highlight was an adult mediterranean gull circling low over Danehalls roundabout in Grays.

Orsett is nice.

On Saturday we planned again to go to Minsmere but considering that the band had a gig in the evening opted to stay (relatively) local and went up to Fingringhoe instead. I've only been to Fingringhoe once, many years ago, and don't really remember much more than seeing my first turtle dove, so it was pretty well all new to us. We had it almost to ourselves as most people seemed to get lost and were unable to find half the trails...

Arriving reasonably early in the morning with the perfect weather paid off as the birds were all in full song. We counted well over 20 singing nightingales and a full set of warblers. We also found two adders - full points to the Girl for not screaming and running away like I expected her to. One of the nightingales was fairly showy, flying to and fro across a path, favouring one particularly open bush. We were eventually able to get decent views as it sang and this masterpiece of a photo.

No such luck with the garden warblers, of which there were at least four singing. We stood less than a metre from one bush as it sang from inside and despite having watched it go in were unable to see it at all. There were still decent numbers of waders on the creek, with over 200 bar-tailed godwits present, and we found hundreds of sand-martins at a nearby gravel extraction site.

A quick look at Abberton on the way back gave us common and black terns, another five or six nightingales and a yellow wagtail.

In the evening we played at the Optimist in Upminster/Hornchurch for their St George's Day celebrations. It was very much an unknown quantity, with the pub not ever having bands on and us not knowing what kind of crowd we'd be playing to. In the end it was awesome and exactly the kind of show that I wanted to play when we first started - a great atmosphere, pub packed out with people who actually seemed to enjoy everything we played, and us all playing on top form. An excellent night out, though we had ringing ears in the morning and I'm still nursing the guitar-related blisters now.

Today I was perfectly happy to catch up on sleep until half ten, eat some bacon, then return to bed until midday before heading straight to the pub to meet/eat/drink through the afternoon. There's another whole day tomorrow...

Oh Driving License, why did we not meet earlier?

2011-04-18T20:58:00.004+01:00

I love driving. I love seeing birds. I love doing things in the evenings so life isn't one big repetitive cycle of sleeping and working. It logically follows that driving, to see some birds, in the evening after work, is pretty damn awesome. No, it's better than that. It's... well, I don't think the word has been invented. And if it has, I don't know it.

It doesn't have to be anywhere special, which is good, cos it never is. Just Rainham will do, usually the Mound carpark as it's the only one without gates. I don't even have to see many birds to keep me happy - singing whitethroats and skylarks are more than good enough to get me my fix - but it is undoubtedly better when there are birds.

Tonight started as usual, with a quick scan of the river. Nothing doing, but I'd been hoping for some little gulls. On the land though, a singing reed warbler and a reeling grasshopper warbler were both welcome year-ticks (damnit), and three wheatears looking sleepy on Wennington were pleasing finds. A female peregrine was doing the usual - sleeping and preening - and halfway along the track a male stonechat was being all territorial. Very enjoyable.

Talking of enjoyable, I was pulling up to the Cherry Tree, from the Abbs Cross Lane direction. I'm sure some of you know it. In front of me was a souped up Ford chavmobile with a bottle-blonde bint at the wheel, her Only-Way-Is-Essex lookalike roid-junkie in the seat beside her. In front of them was a learner. At the last minute, the bint seemed to notice the big L plates and pulled out into the right hand lane. It was clear she was going to do a Stupid and try and get in front of the learner. The lights changed, engine notes rose, cars started to move... and then, in one of those once-in-a-blue-moon moments, the bint stalled out and everybody, learner included sailed past. with massive grins. Brilliant.

Have a stonechat. Excuses for this one are low light, manual focus from a moving car with ISO set stupidly.

I bought a new guitar amp. It's very big, and very loud. If you're local, and are one of the few that read this that aren't in the band, come and watch me play through it badly at the Optimist in Upminster on St Georges Day. It's sure to be chav-tastic.

Irrelevant homeless encounters; not seeing birds at Rainham

2011-04-15T22:57:00.007+01:00

Today, while stumbling blindly around the internet like the drunk homeless guy I saw hanging around the cheap vodka in Sainsbury's at ten past eight this morning, I came across this. Well, I say "stumbled", but like the homeless guy in Sainsbury's I kind of knew where I was, having originally been linked to another page on the same blog through twitter. I just didn't know I was going to find anything that made me laugh as much as the concept of "brick roulette" . I thought I'd share it with you. (At this point I should also clear up that the cheap booze in Sainsbo's is en-route from the croissants to the checkout. I wasn't perusing the own-brand gin at eight-ten this morning any more than the hobo was taking a pan-au-chocolat to the self service.)

Not content with one homeless encounter I had a fun second about a minute later, when I crossed the road to find a man in a sleeping-bag on our office doorstep. I felt sorry for him - I feel sorry for all homeless people, really - and I didn't want to wake him up. However, I was at this point caught in the grip of a massive and terrible internal conflict; I also wanted to eat my croissant, inside, on a comfy chair. I simply had to get into the building. A plan was formulated.

I carefully looked down to plant my shoe in the small space formed by the crook of his neck and the door, the only way I could reach the keypad. Stabilising myself against the door, I reached over to the pad on the wall above his head. So far so good. The foot was planted, position was stable. I looked down again and, in doing so, noticed that he was in fact, wide awake. And staring at me with what can only be described as an expression of considerable peevishness. The kind of look you reserve for those occasions when you've just caught somebody squatting over your flowerbeds. Or just woken up in a potentially uncomfortable early-morning near-teabagging situation with a complete stranger.

The straddled groin-above-head moment continues for far longer than it should. I key in the number on the pad and - get it wrong. The door emits a pissed off buzzing sound. We wait, wordlessly, as the door finishes letting us know quite how much I've angered it. I look down again. Eye contact by now is well and truly established. He's not moved a muscle and is looking really quite pissed off. The door eventually stops buzzing and I key in the code again. It's right this time, the door buzzes its appreciation in a much happier way. I hurriedly step inside. His eyes follow me. The door takes an age to slowly swing shut on its fire-safety hinges. When it finally does I pull out my phone and aim it, considering a blog photo. I catch his eye again; that's a seriously unhappy glare... and I decide against the picture. In retrospect, not taking a picture was a mistake as it would be quite a nice one to blog with, but that's hindsight for you.

Which neatly and concisely brings me onto the birdy part of the day. I did Rainham again this evening. I was tired when I got in not having slept all that well all week, and consequently the prospect of dragging myself out to Two-Tree Island and back for a night heron didn't appeal all that much. Naturally, having been out to Rainham and seen very little, the prospect of driving to Two-Tree and back seemed far more appealing, but as I say, such is hindsight.

I missed out on grasshopper warbler again, but did find a skylark doing a very passable impression of one. The usual two peregrines were there but not at the same time and the most interesting bird I found was an all-black mallard with a white front on its neck. Quite pretty, for a yuck-duck, and not a pattern I've seen before. I did take a picture, but it's on my phone and I can't be arsed getting off.

Pffft, who cares about night herons anyway? Seen one already...

New work patch list is off the ground!

2011-04-14T19:41:00.004+01:00

I had a fun work-excursion today, down to a nice little street at the bottom end of Tower Bridge. The trip was, apparently, for me to help out by utilising my expensive camera, 1337 spacial awareness and awesome drawing skills to photograph, measure up and start to plan the layout of the charity's new office building. They, the proverbial managmenty they, asked me along. Well ok, our finance manager did.

How foolish of her! How was she to know I have a cheap camera and the spacial awareness and drawing skill of a blind man with no hands? How were she to know that I was going entirely for a peak at the new work patch?

Yes, of course, a new office means a new patch, and fuck me it's awesome. I mean, to someone used to Minsmere, birding around Potters Fields and City Hall compared to birding a proper green space managed for wildlife must be as disappointing as being told to watch the Godfather because it's, like, the best film ever and realising, after four hours of thinking "surely there's more to this than I'm seeing" that yes, you were right, it's a DISAPPOINTING AND UNREWARDING PILE OF SHITE. But yeah, compared to birding around Mortimer Street it's pretty amazing. So amazing, in fact, I picked up five whole different species of bird in our quick walks through. Yes, five. I think it took me weeks to reach that at the current place.

This amazing feat is rendered no less impessive when I tell you that the first four species were herring gull, crow, feral pigeon and goldfinch, and I think you'll agree that they're the kind of species that only super-pro-elite birdspotters can confidently ID on fly-past views and contact calls. My status as the best birder in the world was confirmed yet again when I picked up a mega-rare and utterly non-expected black redstart singing away somewhere near the office.

Talking of work birds, I had a possible maybe nearly ok goshawk over the office the other day. Actually there's no possibly. Or maybe or nearly. I know that's what it was, I just didn't believe it was possible at the time and reported it as such. But a goshawk it was, probably that escape from up in Hackney. It's not being ticked on either my work or year list, because I'm not sure on the bird's origins and I'm totally not keeping a year-list.

I've not got a new picture for you today, but I've not nearly squeezed all the bloggy value I can out of last weekend's Dorset photos, so heres a picture of a pallas's gull I had flying overhead outside the chippy on the seafront in Swanage.

At least that's what I think it is, and I won't hear a word otherwise.

Dorset again

2011-04-10T18:38:00.007+01:00

The Girl and I are just back from a much-needed weekend in Swanage. In all the times I've been there over the last 5/6 years I've never had weather like this weekend; perfect clear skies throughout, temperatures in the low twenties and a nice cooling breeze. We didn't see any birds that aren't normal in Dorset at this time of year. To be honest, we probably missed a bunch of stuff that's normal for the area at the time - ring ouzel and redstart spring to mind - but I find it hard to care much. It was just too... nice. A few wheatears, a whitethroat, dartford and willow warblers and big fuck off wedge-tailed corvids were new for the year, as were the assorted seabirds doing sex-things to each other down at the Durlston.

There were loads of other non-yearticky bits like bullfinches, pipits, stonechats, swallows, big birds of prey and a coal tit doing a very convincing marsh tit-like p'tchoo, but still nothing that wasn't normal. I honestly couldn't give two shits. We might not have seen "much", but what we did see we watched properly. Auks dance-displaying to each other before mating, a rock pipit hunting down bugs in between song flights, swallows coming in off the sea and immediately flycatching around the low scrub, two nuthatches fighting upside-down over a nest-hole... Great stuff.

I'm enjoying the camera. A lense with image stabilisation would be nice, but I'm poor and didn't buy one. I'll get round to it eventually.

I'm back in Dorset next month, with the Girl and other birding friends. Can't wait.

And just to clarify, as that's rather an ambiguous sentence up there that makes it sound like the seabirds were indulging in inter-species naughtiness, I can assure you that this certainly was not the case. If there was, you know, some dirty fulmar-on-barely-legal-guillimot backdoor action or a filthy kittiwake/greater-back combo double teaming a razorbill, we thankfully didn't see it.

Three posts in three days? Shit!

2011-03-28T20:35:00.007+01:00

As long as you're not a dribbling vegetable quietly pooing yourself in the corner you will have noticed that the clocks have gone forwards. This means one thing (for those fortunate enough not to be wheelchair-bound, anyway) and that's post work birding. Fuck yes, it's now worth leaving the house in the evenings to go somewhere that's not a pub. I know, right? Amazing! It's like I can have my cake and eat it: work, bird, drink - all in the same day. Not all of that metaphorical cake is metaphorically tasty - the work layer lurks at the bottom like the chutney in a metaphoric Pret-A-Manger sandwich - but I think you know what I'm trying to say: being able to drive is pretty useful.

I can get home at 6pm on the dot if I really move, meaning that I can be standing on the Serin Mound at a little after half past. Today I did just that, not that there was an awful lot doing on the Serin Mound mind you, just a handful of skylarks and boat load of mipits. So I went and looked at the river. Nothing much there either - 2 oystercatchers, 40 or so redshank and a summer-plumage dunlin. Still, those few birds are considerably better than a night in with Minecraft. Not that minecraft is bad or anything, I love it. It's my second favourite basicly graphic'd mining based indie game, behind Dorf Fortrass and just ahead of Cave-Explorer 2: Legend Of The Bum-Driller, which is high praise indeed. It's just not as good as being outside. In a couple of weeks I shall be watching warblers at the Ingrebourne after a shitty Tuesday at work, picking my way through bushes filled with used pants, stumbling over used condoms and counting little bags of Fufu's lovingly preserved shit hanging off the gate by the bridge and it's going to be god damn awesome.

As the sun and temperature dropped faster than a the pants of a furtive looking couple I once glimpsed bent over a car bonnet, I set off for home. I was content with having seen a handful of common birds, as this was a whole handful of common birds more than I'd seen all day and a whole handful of common birds more than I see im most weeks. And then, like a birdy-cosmo-karmic reward for actually getting out and going somewhere (or some such hippy shit), I jammed onto a short-eared owl, just south of the A13 junction. Brilliant.

Proper south-Essex birding. Parked in a layby, standing on a roadside at dusk in a dodgy industrial estate watching a quality bird doing what it does best: getting mobbed by a crow.

A genuine defence for these ones - it was really dark and a very long way away.

Most of this post is utter bum-wash.

In which I see actual proper real spring migrants

2011-03-27T18:48:00.008+01:00

(Just a heads up, this is a really fucking boring post; if it's internettal entertainment you're after you'd be better served by googling muddy dicks or something. Actually, don't do that, you'll regret it)

A quick trip to Rainham today on the way home from the stultifying banality that is Lakeside (no waxwings, if you're wondering). It was busy. The car-park was jammed and we nabbed the last space by driving up the aisle the wrong way - sorry to the guy coming up it the right way. There were three full coach loads of olds in the centre discussing Reggie's colostomy bag and those terrible muslamic invaders (at least that's what I assume they were talking about) and families with kids everywhere. Grudgingly, I suppose I might admit that it's a good thing people are using the site.

Jostling for space on the bus-stop we had our first little ringed plover, probably the first "proper" migrant I've had this year. LRPs are excellent. No sight or sound of an early willow warbler or blackcap in the woodlands, but we did have a handful of singing chiffchaffs, again, year-ticks. Round at the woodland feeders the Girl and I stopped to try the camera in decent light for a change:

No, not going to win prizes, but fun to take.

Another/the same immature male marsh harrier was up over the Targets and at one point made a brief foray reserve-wards, scaring everything up over towards us as we sat in the old hide. By the time we'd walked back up to the centre everyone was watching a pair of garganey that had dropped in when the harrier flushed the lot. Not seen a garganey for a very long time - completely missed them last year as I'm really not very good with this bird-spottering thing - so this was pretty damn awesome. The only other birds of interest we saw were 15 or so snipe and a couple of redshank.

And here's a blue tit from home.

I should rename this blog "Incessant moaning and mediocre pictures of common birds" or something.

They're trying their luck in the box at the bottom of the garden but I reckon like the great tits last year they'll abandon due to excessive catting. Shame. There are also two song thrushes on territory locally (up from zero last year and one the previous) and I've had a male chaffinch a few times, locally a pretty scarce bird. One set up here last year, maybe the same bird, but didn't attract a mate and soon moved on. We'll see.

Great Grey Shrike, Stow Maries Airfield

2011-03-26T23:07:00.004Z

We did a gig at the Crown last night. It was good, and I woke clear-headed the next day, which makes a change from usual post-gig mornings. After a slow and pancake-based morning during which the Girl worked at becoming steadily less hungover we went up to Stow Maries Airfield for the great grey shrike.

Good move. It gave us the run around, but eventually showed well, mid to late afternoon. We'd all but given up, managing just a couple of bramblings when the bird appeared, flycatching and ground feeding from wires by the entrance track. We watched for a few minutes until it went missing behind a farm complex. We gave chase unsuccessfully and returned to the car to find it had reappeared where it had first been with a flock of around 40 corn buntings. It was wary - we couldn't approach without it moving away and it watched us closely at all times, but it showed excellently through the scope. Closer views were possible from the car; if you parked up at the right place and waited I reckon it would come very close indeed. The distance, light and wariness made decent photos impossible. I know, excuses excuses.

Anyway. Shrikes are awesome, and this one was no exception.

(And a life tick)

More boring introspection (and some corn buntings)

2011-03-19T22:40:00.011Z

I don't think I've fallen out with birding itself, merely fallen out with enjoying birding.

Today we spent a couple of hours walking along the sea/river wall from Burnham-On-Crouch. The weather was stunning, but the birds thin on the ground. Around 10 corn buntings. including a few singers/sub-singers, a goose that was probably a pink-foot (one of that family, anyway) and 150 linnets were the highlights. Turns out that the girl's hearing is quite fantastic, as she was picking up corn buntings contact-clicking at a ridiculous distance.

Years ago, when I was first starting out, I couldn't handle birding near other people. I felt stupid. It just wasn't normal and I imagined that people laughed. Utter shite, of course, but I felt it nonetheless. One morning along West Kirby shore it suddenly ceased to matter. I've no idea what happened, I just walked along the edge of the marsh one day, past groups of dog walkers and joggers and for some reason I didn't care.

That not caring lasted up until the last few months ago and despite today's relative birdlessness I should have loved it. Yet at the first sign of other people 'it' had gone, a feeling that has of late increasingly been the case. I don't understand. Maybe it's not only the 'should-be-doing-something-else guilt' that's making me dislike birding at the moment. I don't know, but I'm not enjoying it.

Whatever. An hour's drive later and we were in the pub with friends watching probably the most disappointing game of rugby ever and drinking huge quantities of beer, and suddenly caring whether I cared about birding or not didn't matter as much.

Corn bunting today (top) and a bunch at Rainhamcestershire a while back, whenever it was.

---

We had a Barn owl last night, over the car on the way to the girl's house. Properly good record for the area and most exciting, particularly the part where it nearly brained itself a roadsign.

---

I'm enjoying proper folk music at the moment. Bellowhead a few months back was great, and I'm looking forwards to the related Spiers and Bowden in May, but really, I'd love to see Faustus:

Yes, I’m moaning again.

2011-03-18T13:07:00.005Z

Birding is stupid and obsessive.

Oh no! Large portions of this post seem to have been eaten by internet weevils!

You don't get a proper picture today.

---

If I was a black redstart, and I’d rocked up to W1 today, I’d have turned right around and fucked back off to Spain or wherever. Not that there are any black redstarts back here yet. Or that it’s appropriate that I’m looking out of the window for them while I’m at work.

I hate Saturday night TV.

2011-03-12T19:55:00.007Z

Have you ever watched that comic relief dance thing on the BBC? The one where they get a few semi-famous people to cross-dress and jump around to an OMG CRAZY song choice in front of some annoying judges while the half-witted audience claps in time to the music with shit eating grins plastered ear-to-ear across their faces?

Well don't.

Utter horsecock. Maybe I'm just being a grumpy shite but I don't care how good the cause is, cos it's such a bad show that even if I had intended to cough up some of my hard earned money (earned working for charity, if that makes a difference (it doesn't)) I'd have turned off well before the phone-in numbers came on screen. Total, unmitigated arse-gravy.

Today, somewhere near Brentwood that wasn't Thorndon or that Wealdy place, I saw a singing siskin, a couple of nuthatches and a few coal tits.

One day I'll take a reasonable photo of an interesting species.

A non-wintering black-redstart was seen in central London a couple of days back. One of these unreasonably sunny weekdays they'll be back at work. That will be a good day.

Still bleak and unlovable, but a little bit more enjoyable

2011-03-06T17:10:00.007Z

Target Pools

Seeing how much I really enjoyed Rainham yesterday I visited again this afternoon, for more of the same. I suppose I only really went as I knew that if I didn't leave the house I'd feel like I'd wasted the day, but 24-curlews-on-a-pond later I was definitely more in the mood.

A few more pintails, around 50 redshank and a handful of snipe were the best on offer on Aveley, and up at the Targets the knot and ruff were still in with the golden plovers. We gave it a good long look for the hen harrier but had no luck, instead finding an immature male marsh harrier - still a good bird for Rainham. Up on the sea wall we found five corn buntings on a stunted bush, a long, long overdue patch first for me, and the three male goldeneyes were still roosting in the bay.

I don't really know what the difference was. The site and weather were the same as yesterday, grey and a little bit horrible, and for the most part I saw literally the same birds in exactly the same places. But I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more, and I don't really know why. Not complaining.

Goldeneyes sleeping in a "we're locally scarce so adon't have to perform well to hold your attention" way.

Bleak and unlovable.

2011-03-06T00:47:00.005Z

Another weekend, more greyness.

See? Grey. This is actually a goldfinch.

Sometimes Rainham can be seriously depressing, sucking all the life and joy out of things that are usually lively and joyful. Today was one such day, so uniformly cold, grey and windy that I couldn't shake the bleakness of the place and found it hard to enjoy. This is pretty unusual, but sometimes I think I'm in the mood for something, or somewhere, and only realise when I'm there (and a considerable walk from the car) that I'm really not.

The ringtail hen harrier was still present at the back; in an unusual display of what could almost be called ability we picked it up from the old hide as it quartered the silts. Yes, that was pretty much a brag. A pintail and his slightly less pin-tailed mallard lookalike partner was hiding amongst the dross on Aveley and a reasonable count of waders included around 60 redshank, 18 curlews and single dunlin, ruff and knot. By the seawall turnstile there was a female stonechat, the first I've had here in a while. A series of harsh winters seems to have seriously knocked this species back - the heady days of 2007/8, counting 30+ on a single trip are long gone.

This fox didn't look to happy. Maybe the sheer misery of life in the barren wastelands of southern Havering has caused it to contract some kind of ague.

I think if it hadn't been yet another day of this consistently grey weather and the fact that all these birds were set against an unremittingly grey backdrop of post industrial depression, all burnt out warehouses, broken wind turbines and roads, I might have actually been pleased with a haul like that. On paper, it's not at all bad for Rainham. But then, I wasn't on paper so much as on the ground, in the middle of one of the least lovable landscapes this side of the Thames. I guess sometimes it's not just about the birds you see if you don't enjoy seeing them.

A short crappy post about a trip to Paris

2011-03-02T22:24:00.010Z

In the immortal words of Girls Aloud, I can't speak French. I've just been to Paris, which contrary to popular belief isn't in south Lincolnshire. It's actually in France, where they mostly speak French, thus rendering communication over the course of the weekend a bit of a struggle. Still, by the end of the trip I'd progressed to being quite adept (lie) at useful everyday tasks like ordering food/beer and proclaiming loudly that we had reached the second floor (lifts make excellent teachers, albeit teachers with a very limited syllabus). A typical conversation in a patisserie/croissanterie went as follows:

"Je voudrais les croissants!"
"Les croissants? Combien de croissants?"
"TOUS LES CROISSANTS, VITE!"

I may have made some or all of that up, I can't remember, but it's probably close enough. It turns out that French is really really easy. You just add "le" and "un" everywhere, talk in a slightly gay sing-song accent and they reply in English. Should have taken it as an A-level or something, total doss subject.

Le spug

The new camera performed admirably. I mostly took poncy night time shots from bridges. If I'd had a tripod with me they'd have been rather better, but I'm impressed with the results nonetheless. I've not tinkered with it at all, other than to crop it down to a reasonable size. Looking back, it's maybe a touch too light, but I'm still learning, innit.

There were a fair few birds in central Paris, especially compared to central London. Sparrows are still common, though I hear they're in massive decline, and all your standard "garden birds" could be found just about anywhere. There were a couple of surprises, such as a kestrel flying down the Seine by Notre Dame. Also, a quick walk around the Jardin Du Luxembourg produced 4-5 funny-sounding treecreepers, but not a lot else. A quick trawl of xeno-canto confirms them as short-toed treecreepers, which would be an excellent life bird if only Paris was near Sleaford. A Sunday afternoon market on Ile de Cite had an extensive selection of caged birds, from a Cuban grassquit, two female siskins and a (possibly wild-caught) bullfinch at the more exotic end down to zebra finchs and horrible goldfinch/canary/serin/chaffinch hybrid things at the more every-day cagebird end.

Here's another picture from a bridge at night time.

The big lighthouse at the back is actually a copy of a one constructed in Blackpool in order to keep ships away, because Blackpool is proper shite. Noone knows why they built one in Paris, cos really, it's not shite at all. We climbed the big lighthouse (a lot of stairs, but considerably cheaper than the lift). There was an ice rink halfway up that played Tom Jones songs really loudly. Lame.

Click to enlarge.

Parisian Protips:

If you visit the Louvre, try to be 25, you'll get in free. If you're over 25, it's probably worth getting extensive and costly surgery to look younger and then acquiring a fake EU nation passport to prove your new-found youth. Well, it's that or 10 euros.
Try to avoid the galleries with the Mona Lisa in, cos it's crap and surrounded by funny looking foreigners with camera phones who'd rather take a badly lit blurry picture of a painting than actually look at it.
Also, visit on a Wednesday or a Friday, when they open late. We had the Egypt/Greece/Middle-East/Levant galleries to ourselves, and they really were excellent. Kind of "puts-the-BM-to-shame" excellent.
Don't visit Le Luxembourg on Boulevard Saint-Michel/Rue de Medicis. The waitress there was rubbish, and got our order wrong. Three times. On purpose. When questioned she shrugged in a "yeah, what?" way and charged us for it anyway.
It's really very easy to walk out of Le Luxembourg without leaving a full payment. You could probably nick a fork or two while you're at it.
Visit the Pantheon. They have a Foucault's Pendulum, and it's awesome. There are a lot of dead people there, too.
Paris really does have a lot of deaf-dumb people. You should give them all lots of money, they're deaf and dumb, for fucks sake. What are you, totally heartless?
Stay at the Holiday Inn on Rue Danton. Sure, it's a Holiday Inn, but it's genuinely good and in a perfect location.
And finally, if you're the podgy shit of a businessman who started on me in St Pancras on Friday, has anyone ever told you you have a severe anger management problem and a near-total lack of social skills? See, I meant to tell you on Friday when you attacked me, but in the heat of the moment I forgot and actually said things like "fuck you" and "seriously, fuck you". My bad. I never think of the right thing to say at the time.

That's all for now.

Apparently, "bollocks" doesn't translate as "le sac de testes", which both surprises and disappoints me.

Another poorly written post

2011-02-20T21:28:00.007Z

The big stress at work recently, and it has been big, is that the lease on our current office is ending. We were pencilled in to move later this week, on Thursday, but have been granted a temporary reprieve. I'm pretty disappointed - the new office patch has far more potential than the current one - but there is a considerable upside to staying put another couple of months. We're probably going to be in the current office long enough to see the return of the black redstarts.

I don't know when they return, or even if all of them leave London over winter. I heard something calling the other day that might well have been a black redstart, but couldn't be sure. A quick trawl through the LondonBirders wiki suggests that they're seen regularly from early to mid March, which is earlier than I'd expected. The move to a new office is still likely to happen, and it looks most likely to be after the black redstarts return and start singing away from the rooftops outside my window. This pleases me greatly. Despite the fact that I'm pretty likely to get black redstart on the new list, I'll be genuinely sad to lose the daily close up views of these birds that I'm simply not going to get.

---

Today, the girl and I headed up to Braxted for the hawfinches. It was shite. We aborted quite quickly - parking and weather got the better of us - and headed down to Maldon for lunch. Lunch was shite. So we headed to Abberton, which was shite.

Snow goose. Don't question this.

Our hearts weren't really in it after such disappointing start and it didn't get better, with that fucking disgusting red-crested pochard x mallard hybrid thing swimming way too close for comfort. Something should probably eat that soon. A male smew doing a speed-of-light flypast, a female red-crested pochard and a couple of corn buntings on a fence all tried their best to be interesting but it was too little too late. And too cold and wet.

I'm still going to upload crap photos, new camera or not.

Weekends are far too short.

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On Friday night we bumped into Chris Moyles and associated sycophants in a pub in Primrose Hill (ooh get us). Perhaps more accurately he bumped into me (or the back of my head anyway) as he sidled his gut past the stool I sat on. And he trod on my foot at the bar. I don't like Chris Moyles or his breakfast show. I only mention this as last time I complained about a BBC presenter (Nicky Campbell, on Twitter) he got in contact and we had a quick chat about sea eagles. No, seriously.

Chris, if you're reading this, fuck off.

New camera; same old picture quality

2011-02-13T18:06:00.010Z

Hello again, internet.

A confession: I'm very bad with money. Very bad. Almost as bad as I am at making regular blog posts. Quite frequently I am totally unaware of how much I have (or haven't) got. On a recent trip to the bank to sort out my accounts I was told I had a savings account I'd completely forgotten existed. It contained rather a lot of money - that was a productive lunch time if you work it out in terms of Pounds gained per hour. I'm fortunate at the moment that I have very low overheads, so the money has been slowly building up. Three weeks ago, after a rare review of the financial situation where I realised I had more than I thought I did, I decided to splash out on a DSLR.

I opted in the end for a Canon EOS 500D. It's a budget model, I know that, but not quite entry level. The 550D is a better machine but the extra cost just tipped the whole lot over a nominal boundary of how much money I wanted to spend. I also bought a Canon 75-300 lens, for a bargain price online - literally a £200 saving on the high-street retailers.

Through work commitments, shitty weather and a couple of other things I'd been unable to test it at all, and this afternoon I decided not to wait for a nice day and took it for a walk round Rainham. The first thing I noticed was how utterly different it was to a film SLR. I have a film SLR and used to do a lot of building photography and arty black and white stuff, so even with a couple of years off I thought that the jump to a DSLR would be piss easy. Not so.

Most of the results from today were pretty disappointing, but then I did tend to spend as much time looking at the birds as photographing them, and birds move a hell of a lot faster than buildings. I found that the lens tends not to be 100% sharp at the top end and in the low light it can take a little too long to auto focus, but otherwise I was pretty happy with it. These small performance nuggles are what you get when you don't spend several thousand on kit. In better conditions, ie not high wind, rain and low light, I imagine the results will be slightly better and easier to obtain.

Here are some funny looking ducks from Russia, or some other shit cold place.

Birds today were a full set of ducks, 60 odd golden plovers in with a few hundred lapwings, and this:

I've not been keeping up with local bird news over the last few days. It's just too frustrating when I'm unable to go and see any of it (prior to today the biggest recent bird-related excitments have been arguing on birdforum and a stock dove in Hornchurch), so the hen harrier was a very nice surprise. I spent a while in the Butts Hide (teehee) watching it quartering the Targets and Wennington. I'd say it showed pretty well, on and off. It wasn't exactly close, but it wasn't distant like raptors often are at Rainham, spending most of its time over the reedbed at the back of the Target Pools. Hen harriers are proper quality birds and always great to watch. Have some more crappy record shots.

Not going to win prizes, but considerably better than my previous attempts at ring-tail harrier photography, this from Norfolk back in April last year:

What a crap photo. Also, what a crap day, despite the harrier and finding two self-found not-at-Hickling-or-Lakenheath cranes. Stokesby is shit.

Norfolk Weekend

2011-01-23T17:13:00.007Z

Instead of just talking about how a weekend in Norfolk is really quite a cheap and easy thing to do we actually went and did it. We stayed, of course, at the hostel - the one that everybody uses - which was fantastic, if you forgive the lack of sound insulation. We were kept awake both nights by a loud Brummie snoring. I guess it could have been far worse.

Saturday started at Thornham in heavy rain, where we missed the harrier. Apparently, 2 minutes prior to our arrival it had been up over the reeds before heading inland. Not a great start. With the rain, lack of harrier and the tide covering the carpark at an impressive rate we headed to Titchwell.

Starting with whooper swan, barn owl, and pretty well all the expected waders and ducks we spent a fair amount of time looking at the dryer areas in front of the new Parrinder hide. This held a large mixed flock of small stuff; around 40 twite, two water pipits, a rock pipit, loads of skylarks and mipits, and a few linnets. Unfortunately there were no shorelarks. A look back towards Thornham revealed a ringtail hen harrier on the ground by the concrete thing.

A couple of guys heading back inland told us that the sea was "Quite empty, really. Very disappointing". Undeterred, we headed out and found two flocks of common scoters, numbering probably 3000, though it was impossible to count. Empty, indeed. A couple of velvet scoters were mixed in, with goldeneye, red-breasted mergansers, a female eider and a slavonian grebe closer to shore. A flock of nine twite were further up the beach with a single snow bunting and just before we left, a small flock flew in.

Despite all this, undoubted bird of the site was this guy:

I only took this to prove a point: I can do it when I want to.

It sat watching us snack in the car, before almost divebombing the window. Shortly afterwards, it did this:

After I'd given half my lunch away, we drove along to Cley for a spot of filthy twitchering. The American Wigeon was still present, if a little distantly, with another whooper swan. I didn't enjoy it at all.

We finished up at Burnham Overy Staithe, looking for rough-legged buzzards from the roadside. A fairly convincing common buzzard was present, along with around 15,000 pink-footed geese and a single waxwing in a nearby hedgerow.

The girl took this. You can tell, because it's good...

We picked up several grey partridges on the walk out to the seawall, where, scanning towards Holkham there was a young rough-legged buzzard on a very distant scaffold structure. Hardly a satisfactory life-tick. Marsh harriers and barn owls quartered the fields, covered in pink-feet and a single barnacle goose. A small pool in front of us had an unmentionable duck - not something I'd expected to see. Useful information from a local had us scoping out over the dunes on Scolt Head, where we had one, two, and then three rough-legged buzzards up at one time. There are apparently six or so along the coast between Burnham Norton and Wells at the moment. The young bird from behind us eventually got up and flew a big lazy loop, affording us far more satisfying views.

...whereas with me, more often than not, the quality of the photograph is inversely proportional to the quality of the bird.

As we walked back up the track, ten waxwings flew over us heading east, and the single in the hedgerow had been joined by five more.

Sunday was less productive. We made the stupid decision of heading south immediately, with the intention of doing the Brecks on the way home. At Santon Downham, where we'd hoped for bramblings, crossbills and lesser-spots, we found only four bullfinches of note. We left, and headed over to Welney WWT.

Which was mistake. £7.10 each? Wow. Considering that this kind of expense usually requires a second mortgage we discussed it over a costly and tasteless tea/scone/cake combo. Fortunately, we were told before we paid that all the trails were closed and that only one hide was open and we decided pretty quickly that this was not worth £14. The girl lodged a complaint, and the answer given was pretty poor:

"most people don't go past the first hide."

I don't care that most people don't go past the hide. I would go past the first hide. Having travelled and paid I'd explore every corner of the site, and just because most people wouldn't, doesn't mean I wouldn't feel any less short-changed for only being allowed access to a very small part of it. I wouldn't sell you five slices of bread and charge you for a loaf, then when you complained tell you that it's ok, because most people would only use five slices and bin the rest. My visitor experience/cost ratio has bugger all to do with anybody elses.

You could argue that we should have checked their website before we travelled, and they did argue this. Irrespective of the fact that we visited on a whim on the way home from a break without internet access, or of the fact that many visitors won't have internet access, this argument misses the point. It doesn't address the fact that charging full price for a fraction of a product doesn't stack up.

One of the criticisms most often levelled at conservation charities (not that I share this view) is that they are in it for the money. The WWT today didn't do much to allay that concern, and I reckon it sends out the wrong message. Word on site was that they used to charge half price entry when they had to limit access to parts of the site, but that this stopped a while back with a change of regime. This is, in my opinion, the reasonable thing to do, and should be continued.

We left a complaint card thing at the desk, and I'll be firing off some emails later in the week. I hope they come to something, but my experiences of complaints is that they don't often have much of an effect. Honestly, it's not a place I'd recommend a visit to, no matter how stunning their feeds are supposed to be.

So we left, and promptly stumbled upon 800 bewicks, 400 whooper swans, 20 pink-feet and a barn owl in a field a couple of miles away. Hah. Now that field, that's a site I would recommend a return visit to.

I'm still totally not yearlisting. But I am on more - far more - than I was this time last year...

Lots of words and no pictures makes retarded children cry

2011-01-15T00:12:00.012Z

So I hear there's a funny looking lesser black-back on the tip. This is suddenly a whole lot more relevant than it was a couple of days ago.

I might go tomorrow, I might not. I mean, it's just a gull and I'm struggling to get excited. It's not like the white-tailed plover. When I read about this gull at work today I didn't immediately try and think of ways to pull a sicky to go see it. With this, the feeling of having missed out on something everyone else didn't miss is far stronger than any positive feelings I have about seeing another large white-headed gull, and that's not a good reason to do anything. I have a sneaky suspicion that a fair few of the people there tomorrow will be their for that very reason. I mean, it's hardly a stunner, is it? It's not like a shrike, or pendulines, or a bee-eater, or a marmora's, or a sandhill crane, or a... (this particular list could go on almost forever)

Also, I honestly can't stomach the idea of jostling amongst hundreds of people, most of whom I probably wouldn't like, all pushing and fagging about, stringing badly seen lesserbacks into something more 'interesting'. The annoying thing is that if I don't at least make the effort, I know, that against my better judgement, and probably for all the wrong reasons, I'm going to regret it. We all know it's going to pull a fast one tomorrow afternoon, and if it does turn up on Monday at another ~~beautiful nature reserve~~ landfill it probably won't be anywhere accessible. It certainly won't be anywhere more local than Rainham. (And if it was, I wouldn't care - I'm going to Narfuk on Friday anyway). But again, hardly a good reason.

Abrupt subject change.

Last weekend I went to Old Leigh/Two Tree with the girl. The tide was perfect for us, reaching a high just after we arrived at the lagoon. Unfortunately, the weather was also perfect, and consequently we were joined by a large group of idiots with top-end scopes and bins pointing and shouting that there was a lapwing flying over. Now, please don't think I suddenly hate people who aren't very good at birding. I don't. Nor do I hate people with top-end kit who don't know their waders. I don't. I just don't like loud people, and I especially don't like loud people when they're near me, in a hide, while I'm trying to look at birds.

Not that there were very many birds there, just small numbers of the expected stuff - I think the highlight on the wader front was a single greenshank, and that didn't stay long. The tide wasn't quite big enough to push any number of birds in, the people in the hide were too loud and there was a pair of peregrines going back and forth overhead that didn't help either. The female was massive, a seriously big bird with messed up primarys on the left wing - a pretty distinctive individual. She had an obviously bulging crop, but I doubt the waders stopped to notice that the pair weren't hunting.

We didn't stay long. One guy was trying to photograph a blackwit that had unwittingly strayed near to the hide. He picked up his camouflaged long-lense (makes it invisible, you see) and whirled it through the hide window. It stuck out at least 18 inches, and upon seeing this, the godwit cacked itself and buggered off. The guy turned to me, shrugged in a baffled way and said

"They always seem to do that, tricky little buggers".

Right. I wonder why?

Shortly afterwards, a grey plover made the same mistake. So did the birder, and the plover did a runner. Flapper. Whatever you want to call it. The guy muttered under his breath. I have very little patience when people make the same mistakes time after time.

Better birding was to be had walking along the sea-wall. The flocks of knot and dunlin over the Kent side of the river must have numbered around 15,000 and performed perfectly - I suspect the peregrines were to thank for this. With no sign of the brent goose flock, we had to make do with a paltry 6 flyovers and a distant circling falcon that was probably a merlin.

While out at Two-Tree I even took some photos, of birds and stuff, with the best of blogging intentions, but I left them on her camera.

I can't promise they were very good, or that they were even of 'good' birds, but I can promise that they were at least 100 times more interesting than all the shitty pictures of shitty gulls you're going to have shoved down your filthy larophile throat over the next couple of days by people who pretend that they actually like spending hours on the side of a stinky landfill on the side of the Thames to see, effectively, and even uglier lesser-back.

Come off it. We all know you're lying. You don't like that. That's not why you got into birding. Nobody reading this had that moment of childhood awakening, that sudden realisation that the natural world was fucking awesome, while looking at a gull. Nobody.

You don't really like gulls and you won't really enjoy tomorrow. The drive, the hideous parking nightmare, the trudge up the river in the rain, the hours of standing downwind of the open landfill, the hours of careful gull inspection, or the 20 minutes you'll spend, if you're lucky, looking at the bird in question and pretending that now you know why it's what it is and why it's not any other large white-header. Stop it.

It's like birders who suddenly become entomologists in June. You couldn't give a rats arse about how the anal protuberances on a shit-spotted darter differ from those of the spotted-shit darter and I don't either.

But, to my shame, that doesn't stop me looking at odonatid rectum all summer long or from taking the odd diversion into the exciting land of lepids.

And it probably won't stop me from going to Rainham tomorrow.
...

Bollerks.

I think I'm feeling a bit grumpy this evening.

I don't think anybody reads this... High quality INTERNET since 2008.

Filler material.

Nothing to report. Except a pipit. And they're boring.

Peanut Challenge Surprise

A shrike in Fakenham; thoughts about Welney

Norfolk + winter + good weather = fantastic day.

Rainham Short-Eared Owls

2012 Crap Patch Peanut Challenge

Rain. And, like every other birdblog out there, a bit about years and lists.

Owls. Everyone likes owls.

Fingringhoe, Abberton, er, Grays.

Kittiwakes from the flat

Quick trip to Dorset. Lots more mediocre pictures.

Christmas - Not seeing owls (again) - Treerats - Swanage (again)

New lens: "An expensive big tube"

Hanningfield again

Hanningfield, for the first time in years.

Cotswolds. Staring out of the window. Owls at Abberton.

Raptorfest.

A page of drawings. A drawings page.

Successful Shrike Hunting in Suffolk

Local stuff. Stuff I've seen locally.

Norfolk trip

Norfolk. Man pissing up wall.

Ranking system. Going to Norfolk. Almost nearly finding birds at Minsmere. Melanie Shitting Phillips.

Productive weekend birding. I know, shocking.

The grass is always greener in Grays.

Danbury, Orsett, Rainham

Lists page, horrible HTML tables, birds.

Grays Bird Obs

New flat...

All change...

Herons at Rainham being cute and cuddly

Thoughts on photographing small mammals; conclusions drawn between mortality of subject and quality of photograph

Hard drive "failures", strange gigs, not very many birds

Dorset again, again, two

Dorset, again, again.

Disappointment.

Today I saw more interesting birds in W1 than I did at Rainham.

It's back!

Skywatching...

Busy, yet lazy

Oh Driving License, why did we not meet earlier?

Irrelevant homeless encounters; not seeing birds at Rainham

New work patch list is off the ground!

More post-work birding

Dorset again

Three posts in three days? Shit!

In which I see actual proper real spring migrants

Great Grey Shrike, Stow Maries Airfield

More boring introspection (and some corn buntings)

Yes, I’m moaning again.

I hate Saturday night TV.

Still bleak and unlovable, but a little bit more enjoyable

Bleak and unlovable.

A short crappy post about a trip to Paris

Another poorly written post

New camera; same old picture quality

Norfolk Weekend

Lots of words and no pictures makes retarded children cry