AA Birdpix, Birds, Travel and More

Two Musings for the price of one I am currently on Shetland, and as I feel I'm entitled at my age to stay indoors when it's wet and windy, I'm working on my website at times. My latest "project" is to show a photo of every Category A species on the British List. Of course, many of these will have been taken abroad, some will have eluded me thus far so it gives me an incentive to continue birding (I will even twitch  something if it's a world tick!)                              One of the species I have a love-hate relationship with is Siberian Thrush. When I started birding the old Shell guide was "the" field guide;  it had a separate section at the back for rarities, and therein was a bird I was immediately attracted to, with three records at the time of publication. One of these has subsequently become "not proven", but of the other two, one was on the Isle of May in 1954, and the other, in Great Yarm...

Brinkmanship   Anyone who has done a reasonable amount of twitching will recognise this, but many people never experience it because they give up, not too easily, but too soon. This is often unavoidable because birders may have other commitments such as work. (To some that is an alien concept, others will have families to return to, or wives). However, to most hardcore twitchers it will happen quite frequently, but staying to the bitter end can often have rewards.    There are two issues here, the obvious one is that if everyone else has gone, and you see the bird, you run the risk of being labelled a stringer. In (g)olden days birders lived by their reputations, or judgement by Lee, usually it wasn't a problem unless you really were a stringer.  I had a great advantage as I was usually with Ann, but it always helps to have backup evidence such as a photo, or another birder. We waited most of the day in a hide at Dawlish Warren, hoping to catch up with a wandering El...

  What Goes Around Comes Around Or does it? There have recently been several articles in birding magazines and posts reminding birders of what they have missed by being born too late. The number of species on your British List is largely dependent on money and how far you're prepared to travel, but the quality of species is dependent on when you started twitching (if indeed you do). I started birding in 1980, a late starter compared to some, but didn't start twitching until late 1984. I was very lucky to have seen the Little Curlew (nee Whimbrel) at Blakeney the following year. The "Big Picture" in Birdwatch magazine invokes similar memories for the writer and myself, in that neither of us quite knew what exactly we were looking at, it didn't appear in any field guides of European species at the time. I had been to see it on the strength of a phone call to Nancy's (more nostalgia), whereas Simon had been on a family holiday in Norfolk (thankfully his parents ...

AA Birdpix the website My blog is for interest but also to promote my website. The website started in 2004-ish as a means to sell rarity photos, but now there is little commercial aspect to it I have expanded it to a collection of galleries with photos from all over the world, mainly for interest. I have found the maintenance of it therapeutic and relaxing, since I write my own code. Whilst this does cause occasional errors, it means no annoying pop-ups, adverts or notifications. There are a number of links to other sites, and I will update them occasionally and add links if I am asked. There are also pages covering moths and butterflies, and recently  cetaceans. Another retirement hobby of mine is painting owls, and prints are available to purchase, although it's not a big commercial thing, I just enjoy it. Older sections of the site (badly in need of updating) hark back to selling rarity photos, which I will still do if asked, although I will often supply them free to individuals...

Gull Lovers Travels  As many people will know, some years ago I  set out to see every species of gull in the world, and, having achieved my goal, wrote an article about it in Birdwatch magazine. The heading is misleading, I don't love gulls, it's a poor attempt at a pun. My reason was that only about six families of birds occur on every continent, and I used it as a focus of where to travel in the world as I had decided that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, having recently re-married and finding Ann to be just as interested as I was. I had already seen two difficult species on Galapagos, Lava and Swallow-tailed, although Ann and I saw Swallow-tailed again about thirty years later, feeding at night using the lights of a cruise ship. Galapagos and Ecuador was my first trip abroad, I had a good job and was able to take holidays whenever I wanted, although in retrospect a little bit more experience of foreign birding could have been worthwhile.  When I made th...

  Artificial Intelligence vs Human Intelligence We all have views on AI, usually polarised, and I have to admit when confronted with a chatbot mine becomes very polarised, especially when I have to "ask" three times to contact a human being. Of course the problem here is that the software involved is usually as cheap as possible and the bot only "understands" what is programmed in to it.  However, as ever the overall situation is not black and white, and there is some extremely sophisticated and useful AI which we use happily without even thinking about it. From a birder's point of view  using  photo processing software gives a whole new dimension, not only to what I've just taken, but more importantly, to those poor shots which I took on slide film, such as Slender-billed Curlew, and a completely black (silhouetted) Parrot which I took years ago. In the eyes of a photographer it may be cheating, but I've always been a birder with a camera, so I don'...