AA Birdpix, Birds, Travel and More

That time of year  In common with many birders December is not really our favourite month. Whilst we're not active Scrooges, we get fed up with constant bombardment of Xmas adverts, and having to do things we don't really want to because of "tradition". Nuff said, there have been some memorable Christmases. We once had Xmas dinner in an Australian hotel, which was great. There is a much more laid-back attitude there, whether it's because it's summer I don't know, but shops have small displays and there isn't so much light pollution. The only blow-up Santa we saw was the one below. And the Robins are more stunning. This is a Flame Robin, there's even a pink one! A record of Siberian Thrush has always intrigued me, being on Christmas Day in Great Yarmouth, in 1977, and during research for my website I found the original report in British Birds. Only the second accepted record, the finder was birding in Great Yarmouth cemetary (a luxury few of us are ...

Best Year Ever ? As  I'm compiling photos of Category A birds I'm obviously going over old records and photographs, and have begun to wonder "what was the best year ever for twitching in the UK?" Obviously not this year, but it's very much in the eye of the beholder. I would contend that the best year was one in the best era for twitching which was undoubtedely the last two decades of the 20th century. There were far fewer birders then and most twitchers knew each other, but there were birds that haven't occured again, and it was a lot more fun. Obviously a personal opinion, but I think anyone who was birding then would agree. To an extent, the best year will always be the one when you saw the best birds, but hardcore twitchers in those days tended to see everything unless there was a good reason (such as hospitalisation, or possibly your wedding day, although that is open to debate). Work commitments didn't count, as most twitchers were in a position to p...

  Warblers-Marmite birds? I am always working on my website, my current project is to illustrate every bird on Category A of the British List. I am quite a long way in, and have come to "old world" warblers.  Like gulls, warblers, particularly  Phyllosopus, seem to either provide great interest and a challenge, or are something to be ticked and then forgotten. I used to be somewhat in the latter group, but researching for my website has thrown up many interesting facts about vagrants to Britain.  Many firsts for Britain in the 21st century have been warblers, including Eastern Crowned,  Pale Legged Leaf and Olive-tree. Several have been as a result of splits, and older records were rarely assigned to the relevant subspecies. This is rarely important since few records exist, and they can be re-examined, however in the case of Subalpine Warblers it really isn't possible. Adult male birds aren't too bad, but females and immatures can be impossible to assign to one...

  A long time before the next one? As I suspected, my last blog was not the end of the story. Shetland this year was somewhat different, mainly in terms of numbers of birds, but also birders. Having left the queue for the Unst ferry to retrace my journey and continue to Mainland for the Siberian Thrush, I wasn't about to leave Yell again without a good reason. However, I always spend a couple of days on Mainland before taking the ferry home, and, as the thrush was now showing regularly in the garden, I went back and finally managed to get a photo, just like I had returning to a White's Thrush a few years ago. Back home, I have been compiling a new web page attempting to illustrate every British species, and got to Brunnich's Guillemot. For those that have been around a while, this was another of those birds that was always just out of reach for various reasons, and has probably reverted to the same status now. Its similarity to Common Guillemot means that many birds must be...

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'...

  Mongolia-still truly wild.  To many people countries outside the US or Europe are of no interest, but to a birder the rest of the world holds rare and beautiful species. However, one of the least densely populated countries in the world is almost unknown to most people, indeed the name of its capital used to frequently be a question on quizzes. As time goes on I find that many species and places I always wanted to see have become "tourist attractions". A prime example is the Jaguar, when Wildwings began operating tours, not that long ago, they still appeared on TV documentaries as being impossible to see, in fact I remember a celebrity being sent to a favoured area and not seeing one after a week, that  being the story of the trip. Whether it was true or not, most Wildwings tours in those days saw Jaguar (along with much "harder" species such as Maned Wolf and Brazilian Merganser). We saw that magnificent cat in 2009, our group in two small boats, but now it has b...

  Three Pratincoles on my list I've done little since returning from Mongolia except processing photos, but have been birding a few times. Frampton is my nearest reserve, and my favourite, despite the possibility of being blinded by reflections from a pointless "sculpture" in the early mornings. I keep a Frampton wader list for fun, which currently stands at about 43, so I had to go for the Pratincole recently. As many will know, there are three on the British list, Common, formerly known as Collared, being the commonest; Black-winged, and Oriental, of which there have only been nine records involving five birds. In my twitching days I saw all three in roughly that order and numbers, my first Common in 1986 (total 9). Black-winged in 1988 (total 6) and Oriental later in 1988 (total 3). Ive seen all three species abroad on several occasions, but as they are among my favourite waders I'm always happy to see more. I would like to see Grey, my last Pratincole, but current...

A Naughty Nine No Longer  As I approach the time when I have to stop travelling outside Europe, I found myself wondering where to travel to next. I don't have a bucket list since it would just keep getting longer however many places I go, so I did what I have done in the past and decided on a focus, setting myself a target. Having long ago achieved my first target of seeing all the world's gulls, and finding others now too expensive (such as Pterodroma petrels), I decided to attempt to see every species on Category A of the British List, somewhere in the world. As I had previously done a lot of twitching this started as a "dirty dozen", and the first year I visited Kazakhstan for two species. I had been there before, but to different areas, so a thoroughly enjoyable trip got me White-winged Lark and Caspian Plover, which was also my 200th wader. The lark, which is one of the most attractive of its family, held interest in that the only UK record was less than ten mil...