A gallery of my favourite bird photos

Pied Kingfisher

A combination of dawn to dusk rain and various projects at home meant no birding this week so I thought I’d put together a gallery of some of my favourite bird photos from the last few years. So, in no particular order….

Little Owl

Crested Tit

Bluethroat

Greenfinch

Cuckoo

Puffin

Secretary bird

Blue Tit

Hawfinch

Malachite Kingfisher

Grey-headed Kingfisher

Corncrake

White-bellied Coucal

Common Whitethroat

Red-flanked Bluetail

Grasshopper Warbler

Reed Warbler

Redwing

Fieldfare

Red-footed Falcon

Wryneck

Pied Flycatcher

Spotted Eagle Owl

Spotted Thick Knee

Heuglin's Courser

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Albert the Albatross

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...

The Hawfinches of the Forest of Dean

Hawfinch - Forest of Dean, winter 2017 A highlight of my winter birding is my annual trip to the Forest of Dean to see Hawfinches. I was unable to go last year due to the post-Christmas lockdown so this year’s visit was even more richly anticipated than normal. Parkend in the Forest of Dean is my usual chosen location for watching Hawfinches. Here the proven technique of using your car as a hide normally works well. I must also say that, after a number of quite strenuous twitches recently, I was also looking forward to a much more leisurely birding session! The story of Hawfinches in the UK is, to my mind at least, a fascinating one. It is what is known as an eruptive species meaning that it occasionally erupts from its traditional breeding grounds to invade on mass countries much further away. This is thought to be driven by a combination of breeding success and local crop failure resulting in not enough food to go around. Records indi...

A visit to see a controversial Canvasback and thoughts on its provenance

Canvasback ( its the one with the long black beak) curtsey of Nick Truby Ornamental ducks are perhaps the most difficult and controversial birds that are on the current British bird list. They are widely kept in collections and as such differentiating a genuine wild vagrant from an escapee is extremely challenging and sometimes impossible. I’ve discussed the issue of proving a birds provenance before, see here , but in summary a ring or isotopic analysis of a sample are required to prove beyond all doubt that the bird is a genuine vagrant. In the absence of this objective evidence of origin much more subjective factors are used to prove that the bird is “probably” a genuine wild bird. You could, however, strongly argue that in the absence of the definitive evidence above, none of these ornamental ducks should be on the UK list of accepted wild birds The Canvasback is the North American cousin of our common Pochard and is kept in some UK o...

The Standlake Birder

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