June birding: more two-barred crossbills and LEOs

Another self-found Two-barred Crossbill - this time in Lothian - not quite as exciting as earlier in the year as this was simply a case of doubling the number of 2barXbills in a flock from 1 to 2 (eventually others recorded 7!)

After an amazing May birding in Lothian this year, I was expecting June to be a disappointment.Well, it turns out that I needn't have worried - June was another stunner. Greenish Warbler and Two-barred Crossbills, Long-eared and Short-eared Owls,

Here she is again, on the right, along with a male and female Common Crossbill

And here is the male drinking from the Hedderwick Burn

Ok, probably not the best shot, but gives an idea...

Greenish Warbler was the other outstanding bird at the site on the same day

Singing away - a song I had never heard before - and one that I could easily have overlooked

Long-eared Owls were the highlight of the month for me, culminating in watching this adult hunting under streetlights in Edinburgh

I found 5 broods of young in total, some younger than this

And some barely distinguishable from adults - the constant begging helps, of course

I bumped into two Short-eared Owls this month as well... don't think they bumped into each other though...

This Red Kite (a 2CY bird?) was a county tick for me - sadly it only has one leg (just a stump on the left) - is it a coincidence that it is in a grouse moor area with lots of mammal traps?

This month I saw more Whinchats than I have seen in Lothian before - the result of exploring upland areas I have not visited before

It only seems a few weeks since the Common Sandpipers arrived in the uplands, but there are almost full grown young already - this one scuttling next to the road

As was this juvenile Lapwing - not quite as cute as last month's pic

Grey Phalarope at Skateraw

I was heading out to Belhaven again to try for the Caspian Gull seen on Friday when news broke of this lovely little wader just a little further along the coast at Skateraw. I was delighted to see it was present and performing as I haven't had much luck with twitching this year... still irked by the unreasonable behaviour of the two Northumbrian Ivory Gulls... After watching the Grey Phalarope for half an hour or so I tried again for the gull at Skateraw tip and Belhaven. After a good few hours at the latter site, where the highlight was a Greenshank, I headed back and had a bonus Merlin from the A1 as I passed the Blindwells area. Not only was the Phalarope a Scottish/Lothian tick for me but the falcon was the first in 2013. Nice though to see so many of the Lothian bird-finders out and about today - keep it up guys, maybe I'll pay you back... I'm hoping for a much better run in 2014...

A Lidl bit of twitching

I haven't seen Black Guillemot in Lothian for a few years so it would have been churlish not to stop off at the Prestonpans Lidl carpark when passing on Sunday. It took 10 minutes or so to find it as it was pretty far offshore, but the sea was flat and the light good. Not sure that it is quite identifiable in the photo, but that is what it is.

Meanwhile, hats off the Stephen W for finding a new species for Lothian round about the same time - managing to pick up an Egyptian Goose in a field near Haddington. With only a very small number of recent records in Scotland of individuals (presumably) dispersing from the feral population in East Anglia, I was keen to add this species to my county list. With work and home commitments I arrived at the site today at about 6:00pm when I suppose it would be officially dark. Luckily the bird was showing at the same spot and could easily be identified even in the gloomy views through the scope. Neither my phone or camera could manage any decent images, so these shots are all from Malawi in October.

Egyptian Geese with Spur-winged Plover, Spur-winged Geese, African Openbill Stork, Nile Crocodile and Hippoptamus at Liwonde National Park in Malawi.

So, did anyone have a bet on Egyptian Goose being the next addition to the Lothian list? In a word, No!

(Un)Common Crane, East Lothian

Twitched the Common Crane at Knowes Farm in East Lothian today that has been present for the last few days. Great to get such useful help from the farmer and landowner who gave advice on best route and filled us in on the latest sightings. He was spot on about the bird's location. We kept to the John Muir Way as advised and were treated to good but distant views of the bird feeding. A little later the bird flew towards us and over the river to feed in another recently ploughed field. Superb flight views, and a species that I haven't seen since visiting southern Spain in winter 1989... So, in short, a Scottish and Lothian tick!

Great to see a bird that can be easily placed in a specific category - the last couple of trips have been dominated by hybrid gulls...

2012: The year of the aquatic mammal?

Well, 2012 is drawing to an end and I think my wildlife watching account has now closed for the year. At some point in the first week of 2013 it will resume and I'll be participating in the Foot It birding by foot challenge over the month of January. I have set a target of 65 species which I think is a realistic target - we'll just have to see.

Wildlife watching over the last 12 months has been pretty exciting and it would be fair to say that the highlights for me have all been mammalian - African Elephants in Malawi, Humpback Whales off Cape Cod and River Otters in the Outer Hebrides and Edinburgh all being outstanding experiences.

Looking back on the year the birding has been good as well. I saw about 80 species for the first time - mostly in Malawi but a handful in the States as well. The raptors in Malawi were diverse and the seabirds in the States excellent. I also added a few species to my Scottish list including a self-found Wryneck and a local twitch for Buff-breasted Sandpiper(s) in Lothian. I have shots of the latter as the images were on a cf card lying around the house - the others are still in limbo on a crashed disc which may get sorted in the new year...

And finally, what about gulls. Well, 2012 has been a good year for gulls for me with lots of white-wingers in Ireland, the Outer Hebrides and Orkney, more exotic species in Africa and America and a hybrid Herring x LBBG closer to home. My quest to find a YLG or a Caspo in Lothian continues but I have been trying very hard on that front over the last few weeks - I have grilled thousands of Herring Gulls and that is what they have proved to be... well alongside a fair few GBBGs and a single LBBG!

 Here's to 2013 being lucky for Larids in Lothian!

Black tale Godwit

This is a black tale alright - a grim story that exposes the cut and thrust of self-found year listing in Lothian. It shows the lengths that normally mild-mannered birders will go to to add another number on their list - without even a cursory glance at the rules or thought for the moral or ethical niceties of this ungoverned, and some would say ungovernable, sport. It is a story of how one man's lust for listing has resulted in behaviour that others will call cheating, or even, if pushed, (godwit-forbid) stringy duff dude birding. And just who is this stringy cheat, well, I have to name names, it is me.

So what is this horrific behaviour and how did it come about. Well let's rewind to yesterday. I find myself in possession of a new lens and decide to take it to Musselburgh. Pretty much the first birds I see is a group of Bar-tailed Godwits on the breakwater. I point my lens. I press. Godwits shuffle. Godwits flutter. Chimplike I gleefully capture shots of a Bar-tail leaping into the air, and I am joyful that I have resolved feather detail on the camera screen rather than the amorphous blur I have become used to of late. At no point do I knowingly detect the Black-tailed Godwit in amongst the Bar-tails until today when I first looked closely at the shots. It is the bird with the black, rather than barred tail, funnily enough (centre rear above, fourth from left below).

So what's the crime? Well the crime is that I am tempted to add it to my year list, and worse still I am tempted to add it to my self-found year list. In fact I am so tempted that I have done it*. After all, I saw the bird and I identified the bird and I was genuinely surprised to see it there. So, what do you think? Tick and run, or suck it up and keep looking for a real one.

* For now.... I'll probably remove it!...

What May have been...

 

May, like any month, had its misses. I was hoping to see the escaped White Stork flying over the back garden (probably visible twice during the month) but it managed to evade me. (The bird above is a wild bird photographed in 2009 in Andalucia.) More galling perhaps were the Red Kite and Little Egret seen by others in the vicinity - both almost certainly garden ticks there for the taking. Of course, with the cold and windy weather that predominated for the latter half of the month there was little opportunity for garden birding.

In terms of Lothian listing, at least 187 species have now been recorded in 2011 (186 on Bubo plus Spoonbill). Mike H is still heading up the Lothian listing leaderboard this year with 177 species, a great tally given his comment that he is not listing this year. I have only managed 141 of these, but that represents a leap of 22 species during the month of May. Still plenty of obvious targets to keep my interest up as we approach June. Jay, for example, is still conspicuously absent - I just have not spent any real time in the correct habitat (i.e. woodland!). My chief target for June will be hearing Quail, a species I haven't yet recorded in Scotland. Again, it is a question of spending time in the appropriate habitat in the appropriate part of the region. Of course, I'm not thinking that I'm actually going to see one, but hearing the 'wet my lips' song should not be impossible...

Best birds of the month for me ... well, I cannot complain about a garden tick (Lesser Whitethroat) and a patch tick (Tree Pipit), but easily my best bird was the male Grey-headed Wagtail at Whitesands Bay last weekend. Just kicking myself that I didn't really manage to get shots that a more than a few blurry pixels - an utterly stunning bird - just needed that camera out of the bag before I got out of the car... ah well, next time...

April round-up: ticks all round

April seems to have flown by, which is exactly what most of the best birds I have seen this month have done. My Lothian yearlist has remained in the doldrums with an accumulated total of only 119 species, which is way off Mike H's 159 species and the combined total of 164 species recorded in the county so far this year on Bubo listing. However, I have had an excellent month bird wise with self-found patch-ticks in both Edinburgh (Osprey, plus second record of Merlin) and Nercwys Mountain (Hobby) as well as a self-found lifer in Highland (White-billed Diver). Plenty of other interesting birds were seen in the Outer Hebrides (divers, waders, raptors, buntings). Even if I did fail to connect with either the big white falcon or the big white owl, I did manage to find a big sandy hawker dragonfly while on North Uist - a Vagrant Emperor - more later.

The Hobby provided an interesting diversion shortly after the royal wedding on Friday as it raced over fairly high on a north easterly bearing. As I haven't managed much birding at my Welsh patch in recent years I decided to ask Peter R about its recent local status when I saw him later in the day. "Ahh... it's funny you should ask", he commented "I just saw one today during the royal wedding." Since Peter's sighting was in the next valley it is highly likely that we saw the same bird!

A quick walk this morning before heading back to Scotland up to the Bryn Alyn SSSI limestone pavement revealed a lovely showing of Early Purple Orchids including the magnificent specimen above.

Blurry Bewick's Marches on to Lothian List

As March drew to a close my Lothian Year List sat at 110 species, up thirteen species on last month. In terms of self-finds pride of place would go to Northern-type Eider on the 3rd (BBRC-listed although the identification of this form is under debate - my photos certainly won't help) and patch tick Iceland Gull on the 24th. Other good finds included Kingfisher, Waxwing and Snow Bunting.

Other observers have seen considerably more species in the county so far this year. TO'C is topping the Bubo listings with 133 species, out of a total of 149. Luckily I still have plenty of species to bump into over the next few months. For example, the species recorded by most other listers that I have yet to see this year in the county include Golden Plover, Sanderling, Kittiwake, Guillemot, Jay and Green-winged Teal. Only the latter should prove to be a difficult task.

I should mention that I managed to add not only a county tick but a Scottish tick to the list this week - a Bewick's Swan that has been hanging around near Tyninghame for the last week or so (i.e. long enough for a slow-off-the-mark twitcher like me to have a chance to see it). To be honest, I am pretty certain that I have seen this species elsewhere in Scotland before, if not within the county. However, for some reason, large wildfowl do not really really make me tick (pun intended) and do not seem to register for long in the memory bank.

The Bewick's Swan is named after Thomas Bewick, an eighteenth and nineteenth century engraver famed for the accuracy and precision of his work. I wish the same could be said for my photos of the bird. My excuse is that every time I photograph a bird named after Bewick the result is blurry... Here is another attempt, taken at Slimbridge in December 2009. Admittedly it was almost dark when this shot was taken, but if I can't take a decent shot of a Bewick's Swan at Slimbridge then there is little hope for me...

Here is my final blurry Bewick - a Bewick's Wren photographed in California a year ago. Now in this case I can't blame the light quality, and the bird was close at hand for a decent period of time. So what is the reason for such a blurry shot, err... well, in this case I do know... it was a life-tick wren and therefore an ultimate little brown job, so the blur is pure excitement!

Lothian list: February update

Another month passes with little birding time under my belt sadly. Only just managed to scrape together a meager nine county year ticks over the four weeks to bring me up to a running total of 97 species. This low total is about twenty five to thirty species below the current front runners on Bubo listing (TO'C: 124 species; MH 121 species). On that site a total of 139 species have been logged in the county since the beginning of the year.

I do fear that I will need a lot of luck to catch up with Shorelark, Great Grey Shrike or Green-winged Teal in the county in the next 10 months. On the other hand, most others will be easy to see - I have yet to catch sight of Sanderling, Razorbill or Jay this year, for example...

Here is my latest addition, two of the five Goosanders that I found a couple of days ago at Alnwickhill Water Treatment works. This is also a site tick for me - I am sure they must drop in fairly regularly but most ducks do not seem to hang around for long on these filter beds. Of course they are quite hard to see as the gap between the wall and the metal gate is only just wide enough for the scope or camera and panning left or right is just not possible!



Another notable sighting was this flock of 14 Waxwings from the back door yesterday. I am glad they decided to visit just as I popped outside to hang out the washing...