The Standlake Birder

  Whoops wrong type of Western !!! A rare Pacific Golden Plover, a most attractive  bird and one missing from my UK life list, has been  frequenting Frampton Marsh RSPB reserve on the Lincolnshire wash for the past week or so. At the weekend we had a summer party in one of our paddocks and with family staying over Monday was realistically the first day I could go. To be absolutely honest, I was also feeling a little fragile for most of Sunday! We had 40 or so people from the village at our garden party and one of my favourite real ales, Enville, on tap which flowed rather too copiously!     Lets get the party started! When an even rarer Western Sandpiper was also found at the weekend near to Frampton on the wash at Snettisham RSPB reserve the motivation to twitch reached near boiling point!   The Western Sandpiper is indeed a truly rare bird with just 10 accepted records on the BBRC list to the end of 2019. The Collin’s bird bible rates it as a 3 ...

  With nothing that I really wanted to travel very long distance to twitch since my visit to the Elegant Tern in Anglesey last week , I decided to visit  Langford Lakes in Wiltshire today where a photogenic first summer female Red-footed Falcon has been for the past few days. I have seen the foresaid Falcon in England a number of times before but only distantly through my scope and so I don’t have any even half decent photos.   The Red-footed Falcon is the eastern cousin of our summer visitor, the Eurasian Hobby. It often favours similar wet habitats where it can find copious dragonflies and small birds to eat. It is normally found in eastern Europe and Asia as a summer migrant and it winters in Africa. Its conservation status is near threatened due to habitat loss in its breeding grounds. The Colins birding bible rates it as a one start rarity equating to “an annual vagrant in some numbers”. Moving even further east to Northern China, there is another cousin of the ...

  July is the new October!   Well, in birding terms at least, this certainly seems to be the case with a number of truly rare birds currently available to twitch. Prince Albert of Bempton  has put in a somewhat surprising reappearance and is wowing allcomers on the cliffs and sea around Bempton. On Sunday morning reports started to emerge of an orange billed Tern fraternising with the Sandwich Terns at the Tern colony at Cemlyn Bay on the north coast of Anglesey. This was quickly confirmed to be an Elegant Tern which, at least in a UK context, is an extremely rare bird with just 4 accepted records   The history of Elegant Terns in Europe is a fascinating one and amply demonstrates how mother nature can throw up some colossal surprises.  It breeds on the Pacific  coasts of the southern United  States and Mexico  and winters    in Peru, Ecuador and Chile .   I believe it was unknown in Europe prior to the 1970’s when reports...

  What is more improbable -   a)     England’ football team    beating Germany in the knockout stages of a major competition   b)     Seeing an Albatross in England   Actually the answer is a) because it has not happened since 1966 rather than b) as Albert the Albatross, as he is affectionally known, has made a number of passing visits to the UK since 1967!   On Monday evening reports started to emerge of Albert associating with the Gannet colony at RSPB Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, almost one year after his    last brief visit to the same site. During the intervening period there have been a number of sightings of Albert across Europe, particularly from the Baltic Sea where he appears to have spent much of the last 12 months. In fact there were reports that he had been attacked and killed in the area by two eagles.    Reports of his death were clearly greatly exaggerated!   The Black-browed Albatross is ci...