The Standlake Birder

     Glossy Ibis Our garden Greater Spotted Woodpecker has started drumming again on his favourite tree, a sure sign that spring is not a million miles away.  He does this as breeding season approaches to proclaim ownership of his territory and warn off any rivals. With this in mind, and a bright cold sunny morning forecast for Wednesday, I set off for the Wyre Forest in Worcestershire to see if I could locate any of my garden drummers much rarer cousins, the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. I arrived  in the forest just before dawn on a beautiful morning faithful to the weather forecast, perfect conditions for a bid of territory advertising.    I was further encouraged by a  Greater Spotted Woodpecker drumming loudly near the car park. I made my way to a spot that has been good in the past where dead partially rotten trees had been favourite drumming spots.  The drumming on old rotten trees is said to carry further. My experien...

     Booted Eagle A mega rare juvenile Booted Eagle from southern Europe has been fairly settled for the last ten days or so near Crowlas at the far end of Cornwall. Regular readers of my blog will know that I have already dipped this bird once, see here . Again, regular readers will know that I’m not that easily defeated and so I made a second attempt this week. I drove down on Tuesday evening and stayed in the cheapest overnight accommodation I could find, a Travel Lodge in Redruth. I was hence on site and staking out the eagle before dawn on Wednesday.    It was thought to be roosting in a small clump of pines just outside of Crowlas which can be viewed from two different locations. A layby on the A30 where I dipped the eagle the previous week, offers the best all round unobstructed views. The other viewing point is a railway bridge on the A394. The latter offers much closer views of the pines but the wider view is much more restricted. The railway bridge is ...

      I received the above as a requested Christmas present from my lovely other half and was so impressed by the books that I thought I should write a brief review.   If you don’t want to read any further here is the takeaway message from this review. This is the new go to ID reference work for the serious birder.   In fact I would go as far as to say that if you’ve got a decent view and/or photos of the bird in question and can’t id with this superb reference work you ain’t  going to. It’s probably, however, not a book for the casual birder who wants to know what the bird at the garden feeders is. There are plenty of other less detailed books eminently suitable for this purpose, for example the excellent RSPB guides   The two volumes separately deal with passerines and non-passerines. In general the quality of the book is absolutely superb, both in terms of the quality of material used to manufacture the book and the wonderful plates of the vari...

     Very dodgy record shot of the Lesser Sandpiper - heavy processed due to mist!   A Least Sandpiper has been present more or less continuously at Steart Marshes since the 2 nd  of January. It was not a drop all and twitch moment as I’ve seen one quite well before with Jeremy back in 2017 at Lodmoor RSPB in Weymouth. The attractive and showy Yellow-browed Warbler and the life tick of the N orthumberland White-billed Diver   have been the traveling focus of my intentions so far in January. Fast forward to this Thursday with a day out somewhere planned and the added attraction of Steart Marshes being a new reserve for me, I left home at the comfortable time of 07:15 and headed down the M5 towards Somerset.    It was very foggy at home, which was a little disconcerting, but this came and went along the M5 with intervals of pale winter sun. It was still pretty misty and cold when I arrived at Steart but as I parked a male Stonechat sat up right in ...

         Northumberland has been on fire recently for rare birds. At some point in the past week or so White-billed Diver, American Pipit, Ross’s Gull, and Grey-headed Lapwing have all been present. While the Diver is not the rarest of the four, that award would surely go to the Lapwing, it’s the one that piqued my interest the most as there is a great big hole in my UK list where it should sit. In contrast, I have previously seen and photographed the other three quite well.    There are five living members of the order Gaviiformes, (Divers, or Loons if you are American)  worldwide. These being the foresaid White-billed Diver, Great Northern Diver, Pacific Diver, Black throated and Red Throated Divers. I have seen the other four in the UK, in some cases many times, so a twitch to see the White-throated would give me the complete set of Gaviiformes.   One of my best birding experiences occurred when watching a  pair of courting ...

Every year a small and variable number of Yellow-browed Warblers attempt to over-winter in the UK. This represents a very interesting example of bird vagrancy. Its nearest breeding range is some 5,000 kilometres away and the vast majority winter in southeast Asia.  A small number, however, exhibit a phenomena known as reverse migration and head off 180 degrees in the wrong direction and end up in the UK. The current theory is that this is due to a genetic error causing  them to get magnetic north and south mixed up, see here  f or a much more detailed account of the causes of bird vagrancy. There is a possibility that having a small fraction of the population reverse migrate has an evolutionary advantage in that, if the habitat and climate is convivial, it would help establish a second independent population. To the best of my knowledge the Yellow-browed Warbler has never attempted to breed in the UK so these reverse migrators must either not survive our harsh w...