AA Birdpix, Birds, Travel and More

  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...

  Forty Years a Twitcher We all twitch to a certain extent, it is merely travelling to see a new bird, but the term in birding circles, as opposed to the media, still implies a certain effort, beyond normal birding. Many people twitch occasionally, there is a great range from obsessive, going for everything twitching to local county twitching, or occasional when it's a bird you particularly want to see. In my case it's now the last category, but in the last part of the 20th century Ann and I were pretty much full-on twitchers. However, as in everything, twitching has changed. We used to get derogatory comments about "other people's birds" and people going to see birds they'd never heard of, now it's about carbon footprints. But sadly, the one thing that has changed is-it's not so much fun. At one time, everybody knew everybody (or knew of them), and complete strangers would jump in each others cars at the drop of a hat to go and see a rarity. Most of t...

Vagrants  Whilst updating my website recently I came across the fact that a Great Black Hawk was voted "Number one craziest vagrant of 2018" by the ABA. This led me to thinking about other unexpected records, of which the UK, due to its geographical location, has more than its fair share. None more so than the moribund White Tern recently, but many unexpected seabirds have turned up in the last decade- Boobies, Albatrosses (other than Black-browed), Soft-plumaged Petrel, White-chinned Petrel etc. With climate change and weather patterns altering virtually no pelagic species is totally unexpected, plus we knew little of some species movements before satellite tracking, so birds may have been dismissed as "impossible". However, many of these are untwitchable, although a lot of people have added one or two Boobies to their list. Having seen plenty whilst travelling I didn't bother, but on driving north just after a long-staying  Brown Booby had moved on I stopped a...

  Careless news costs Avian Lives Birding is a victim of its own success, in Europe at least. There are far more people interested in wildlife throughout the world than when I grew up, and hopefully a gradual decline in those wishing to trophy-hunt or collect specimens or eggs. Overall the fact that I can't park at certain reserves on a holiday weekend is a fair price to pay, as I wouldn't want to anyway. The fact that many of the visitors actually know little or learn about the birds they are watching, is up to them, I am all for people doing what they want in life. However, a few things recently have got me thinking. I was watching, I think it was Countryfile, a black grouse lek in Wales when I suddenly realised that it was probably possible to work out its location. I know a lek in Scotland where locals are very reluctant to reveal its whereabouts because there is a footpath from the main road which leads closer, and whilst it is easily viewed from a main road, there are tho...

 World Curlews Earlier this week was apparently World Curlew Day. Naturally the media weren't interested as it wasn't anything shallow or pointless. So I thought I'd do a blog about Curlews which many of you will already know, but you can just look at the pictures! There are nine species of Curlew or Whimbrel, all in the genus Numenius , although some taxonomists would argue that Eurasian and Hudsonian Whimbrel are conspecific, an argument that's been going on for years. Many years ago Little Curlew (then called Whimbrel) was sometimes considered conspecific with Eskimo Curlew, whether that was clutching at straws in view of its imminent extinction we'll never know, but I think DNA has established they weren't the same species, so it will just be another extinction to add to the "hunted-out" list. I was lucky enough to see these on a trip to see Tuamotu Sandpiper, arranged by Dave Rosair and Wildwings. We were lucky with the timing as birds become fli...