The Standlake Birder

       My original plan for Friday just gone was to spend the day out birding somewhere locally. The day out got truncated to just the afternoon on Thursday when an important appointment was confirmed for Friday lunchtime. Now Friday afternoon at the start of a sunny weekend is not a good time to plan to travel on the roads in the south of England, but both Carolyn and I knew that I would be just sulking around the house if I didn’t go out , so I started to plan what to do.   Herein lies the problem of trying to be both a photographer and a keen (rare) birder, Jack of all trades and master of none indeed!   I had pretty much decided on an afternoon photographing a stunning looking Woodchat Shrike on the coast in Dorset when reports started to emerge of a mega rare Eleonora’s Falcon in Kent. The fact that the records show 7 previous UK sightings of the Eleonora’s Falcon hides the fact that none of these have been accessible to twitch and hence almost all UK birders have never seen this

       Nothing typifies the ups and downs of birding as a hobby more than my last few days.   It’s been a rather odd year so far. It started with 3 new UK life ticks for me in Kentish Plover, American Buff-bellied Pipit and American Robin by mid-February. In truth I would normally have expected none at that time of year so quite a stellar start to building my UK bird list. And then …. absolutely zilch! It’s actually been a funny old stop start kind of birding spring and I’ve mostly concentrated on local birding.   Now what happens in these circumstances is that I get twitchy feet and am prone to do stupid things. This is exactly what happened last Thursday when I decided to drive down to Cornwall to see a Montagu’s Harrier. This is our rarest breeding Harrier, in fact it is almost extinct as a breeding species, and any residual breeding pairs should very definitely not be disturbed. The Cornwall bird was a lone sub adult male and its location had been widely publicised with nice photo’

   Tree Pipit My friend and black belt birder, Jeremy from Oxford, came over on Friday    for a day out to sample the birding delights on offer in Worcestershire.   We started with the local Nightingales and found just one singing male. This was notably down from my last visit when there were 4 or 5. The song was also much more fragmented into short bursts rather than the longer melodic song of the past couple of visits, probably indicating that they are now paired up and concentrating on breeding so I don’t plan to visit again this year.   We then went to Wyre forest where we spent the bulk of the day. The highlight for me were the Tree Pipits which I had not managed to see on my previous visits. We, or rather I should say Jeremy, managed to find 4 or 5 singing males. I would describe the Pipit family in general as birders birds. The mostly brown plumage with varying amounts of spotting and striping is far from flamboyant but to me holds a simplistic beauty all of its own. They can be

    Male Yellow Wagtail at Clifton pits of the UK standard flavissima subspecies I visited Clifton pits again today where I spent most of my time watching and photographing the Yellow Wagtails.    The Yellow Wagtail complex is a challenging one, being similar in complexity in many ways to Gulls. It is a highly polytypic species meaning that the members of the classification can be divided into many subspecies which are typically geographically differentiated. There are at least 15 subspecies recognised which are mainly differentiated  by the head pattern of adult males in summer plumage. Ten of these are depicted in the Colins bird guide bible. Here you can see the head pattern variation from the common UK form,  flavissima,  through shades of grey and blue to the almost black head pattern of the form  feldegg  found in the Balkans. The identification of the individual subspecies is made even more challenging by the existence of many intergrades between the recognised subspecies. In e

       And that is, at least in my humble opinion, what life is all about!   It was an early start this morning to go back to the forest with the particular aim of hearing and seeing Wood Warblers. The Wood Warbler is one of the largest Phylloscopus warblers with striking bright yellow upper parts, throat, and upper chest and white under parts. It is widespread in deciduous European forests but in the UK it is mainly limited to the ancient oak woods of Wales and the west midlands. Mainly eating insects and spiders it is strongly migratory spending the winter in tropical Africa.   As I pulled into the small forest car park my spirits were immediately lifted by the early morning spring chorus with Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Blackbird, Song Thrush, and Robin song seemingly coming from all directions. The early morning forest at this time of year has an ethereal almost magical quality. As the early morning mist clears carpets of dazzling Bluebells and pure white Wood Anemones emerge. Wood Anemo