The Standlake Birder -

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Hawfinch Happiness

I normally get my yearly fix of Hawfinches in the nearby Forest of Dean at Parkend. I usually make one or two visits early in the year to the well-known site at the cricket ground where they come down to feed under Cyprus trees. Its normally best to get there early using your car as a hide then it’s a game of patience, i.e. you normally get a couple of visits spaced over a couple of hours stay. This year I went once in January and didn’t see any at all, hopefully because I was just plain unlucky. I would say that we are at that time of year that birders call the summer doldrums, a calm period post spring and prior to migration getting going again in the autumn. Calling this summer as such would seem a total misjustice with the first Western Reef Heron and the second and third Long-tailed Shrikes already ticked off but in terms of other doable birding for me it’s been quite slow. The heat this year has made my normal summer distraction, gardening, very uncomfortable a...

And just like buses, Britain’s third Long-Tailed Shrike lands in Gloucestershire

My last blog, see here , told the story and background of my twitch to Scotland to see Britain’s second Long-Tailed Shrike, a record 26 years in the making since the first and only previous record on the Outer Hebrides in the year 2000. What this hobby is absolutely guaranteed to do is surprise you! A couple of weeks ago rumours started to circulate of a supressed record of potentially another bird in farmland on the Gloucester/Oxfordshire border. I understand it was suppressed because the farmer was away on holiday and he wanted to sort out parking etc. when he got back which doesn't seem that unreasonable. News only leaked out after it was thought to have gone. Not to be that easily deterred, Gloucester birder Mike King put in a sterling effort to refind it and his efforts were duly rewarded when it flew over his head on a Cotswold lane near the small village of Eastleach Turnville on Sunday. Remarkably, based on near overlapping record da...

Britain’s second Long-tailed Shrike lands in Fife – a mega twitch for a mega bird!

A somewhat distant record shot of Britain's second Long-tailed Shrike So here is my plan to cope with our third heat wave of the year – drive 390 miles overnight to Fife where it’s a balmy 16 degrees. Don’t worry though, there’s no such thing as global warming, the self-proclaimed orange headed genius said so! Seriously though, what would motivate me to drop everything and do a 780 mile round trip to deepest Scotland – well a bird obviously. And I’m not obsessed really! honestly! OK so here is a familiar story for anyone who has read my twitching blogs before. Let’s go back to 13:30 on Saturday afternoon when a Shrike on a farm just outside of Crail in Fife was reported as probably a Lesser Shrike, a nice rare bird in its own right, but possibly a Long-tailed Shrike, a bird as rare as rocking horse poo in the UK. I was home sitting over the weekend while Carolyn was at a wedding fare with her cake business. When she got home mid-afternoon after ...

A sea bird extravaganza at Bempton Cliffs RSPB

Last week I decided to undertake a day trip to Bempton Cliffs RSPB in Yorkshire to see and photograph the hordes of sea birds that gather in the spring and summer to breed on the cliffs. A long but fairly relaxed drive had me on site at 09:00. My main target for the day was to see and photograph Gannet courtship behaviour. Before heading to the cliffs I spent some time with Bemptons thriving Tree Sparrow population. As a young boy growing up in the small Wiltshire village of Hindon Tree Sparrows were a very common site in the countryside hedges. Sadly, our wonton disregard for our environment and the other creatures that inhabit it has hit the Tree Sparrow very hard such that they are now a comparatively scarce bird in the UK with a scattered population at a number of hotspots. Stirling work by the RSPB at Bempton, however, has helped the Tree Sparrows thrive there, so much so that a volunteer told me that they had now ringed more than 400 youn...

Drop everything and twitch for a UK first!! – a Western Reef Heron in Gwynedd on the Northwest Welsh coast

A few days ago I was bemoaning the lack of good rare birds this spring to my good birding mate Nick . Notwithstanding the Cornish Lesser Kestrel at the start of May, nothing has troubled my UK list or made me jump out of the window and into my car. Well, of course, if you are a UK birder you will certainly know what happened mid-morning on Saturday. A Western Reef Heron, sometimes called a Western Reef Egret, was found at a place called Foryd Bay on the Welsh coast. Just to add to the excitement it was, arguably, the more attractive dark morph. This was going to be a major twitch for what was immediately a very strong candidate for UK bird of the year. The Western Reef-Heron is common across coastal Africa and parts of southwest Asia and is an increasing vagrant to southern Europe. It has hence been “on the cards” as a potential UK vagrant for some time. All other plans for Saturday were immediately banished. My poor long suffering wif...

A Wood Warbler in the Wyre Forest at last!

Wood Warblers seem to be comparatively few and far between this year. There have been none at the “usual” hotspots in the forest and my birder friends have reported difficulty finding them elsewhere. The Wood Warbler is my favourite spring migrant and I always look forward to seeing these charismatic little warblers flitting around in the foliage while singing their very unique and characteristic “spinning coin” song. How sad would it be if they are no more a feature of my spring forest walks! I tend not to go to the forest much after late May when the trees are in full leaf and most birds are heard only but last Thursday I decided to make one final attempt to find a Wood Warbler. One had been reported in the western part of the forest at a place called Brands Wood. This is a large expanse of mainly old oak woodland and the location details were very vague. It is also part of the forest I have not visited before. I could not work out where to park close...