The Standlake Birder

     My marketing director in a previous existence once said to me while we were discussing a high risk, high reward business opportunity – “Well you are a long time dead Jim!”. His meaning being that you only get one shot at some things in life. This quote has stuck with me and, perhaps, grown in relevance as I have become older. Recently attending the funeral of an elderly relative and celebrating her amazing life yet again brought this sentiment banging home to me.   Moving onto  Friday then …..   Greater Sand Plovers, with just 17 previous records to the end of 2019, are as rare as hens teeth in the UK so when one was found late on Thursday evening on the beach at Redcar in Cleveland I was itching at the bit to go and acquire a new UK tick.   There was, however, a complication in that our Doberman recently had major surgery on an ACL injury and needs watching pretty much continuously. She is more or less on bed rest and is not allowed to jump ...

Whinchat in the gloom Yesterday I decided to have a potter around Slimbridge.  When I arrived around 10:00 the car park was very busy with parents, grandparents and young children engaged in the traditional emergency entertain the kids at all costs summer holiday outing activity. Anything’s better than the wall climbing cabin fever of the 6 week holiday, believe me I’ve been there!   I headed to the Rushy hide only to discover that a coach load of OAP’s had been dumped there with their guide. Having recently become a silver back OAP myself, I’m allowed to say that!   So, with my normal lack of common sense, I ignore the gathering ominous black clouds and headed to the very exposed estuary bank at mid-point to look for passage migrants. As the rain came in I spotted two Whinchat sat on what looked like a purposely positioned twig perch in the reed bed. I assume this was one of the perches erected for the illusive Slimbridge Scarlet Pimpernel, aka Bluethroat, earlier i...

Cornwall is, without a doubt, one of the top, if not the top, seabird watching sites in the UK. If, like me, you are prone to an occasional bit of seabird watching but Cornwall is a long, in my case  4 hour, drive getting the timing right of when to go is important. A poor day after a 2 am start or overnight stay to be on site by 6 am is, to put it mildly, very dispiriting! The perceived wisdom is that mid-July through to the end of September is the best time of year and that ideal conditions are moderate south-westerly winds. Hence the south-west facing headlands of Porthgwarra and Pendeen are widely recognised as the best spots in Cornwall. To try and be a bit more scientific about this I decided to collect the daily reports from these two sites and analyse them according to wind strength and direction. The source of my data was my default site for bird news,  Rare Bird Alert , and the excellent Cornwall Bird website .  I have tried to remove duplicated data.   The...

This blog is another addition to my     very occasionally series of bird book reviews, this time featuring the excellent “ Around the World in 80 Birds ” by Mike Unwin.     So why excellent? Well its quite unique and very different to your average bird identification book of which there are many good publications and a few bad!   As the name suggests, the author takes us on an around the world tour of his favourite birds. What makes this book different is the rich and well written content focusing not just on a description of the bird but the human history, culture and tradition including local myths and current status.   I found the myths and legends around bird migration particularly fascinating including the now astounding belief that Swallows hibernated at the bottom of a pond! For instance did you know that the first clue as to the mystery of migrating birds annual disappearance occurred in the autumn of 1822 when a white Stork appeared in the north Ge...

  Cape Gull My planned lazy Sunday yesterday was interrupted mid-morning by an RBA alert telling me that a Cape Gull had been found at Grafham water in Cambridgeshire. Now, if confirmed, this would be as mega as its gets being the first UK record of this South African Gull. My birding pal Nick from Bicester and I were soon messaging each other along the lines of “are you going?”, “has the identity been confirmed?” Gulls are notoriously difficult to identify, not least because they hybridise very ready, but photographic evidence soon confirmed the identify and what will almost certainly be the biggest twitch of the year was on!   The Kelp Gull    is a common bird in maritime Southern Hemisphere with five recognised subspecies. One of these subspecies, namely the southern African  vetula  which goes by the common name of Cape Gull ,  accounts for all accepted Kelp Gull records in the Western Palearctic. The Cape Gull, which breeds commonly in coastal sou...

         My radio silence over the last few weeks reflects my recent lack of birding. A combination of a lack of birds that I wanted to twitch and saving my pennies for a ten day trip to Shetland at the end of next month has kept me at home. In truth there have been a few good birds around, e.g. Silt and Least Sandpipers, but they are all birds already on my UK list and with the cost of a tank of diesel for the Land Rover peaking at £140 I’ve found plenty to keep me busy at home.   I had a day free of other commitments on Friday and decided to get out and about and pay a visit to the picturesque RSPB reserve at Pagham harbour to see a Squacco Herron. This  is a rare vagrant to UK averaging just one record per year. It has quite a scattered distribution breeding across southern Europe into southern Ukraine and Central Asia. It is mainly migratory and winters in tropical sub-Saharan Africa. In breeding plumage the   crown is a mane of yell...