The Standlake Birder

  I’ve seen a couple of Baikal Teals in the UK, most recently 2 years ago at RSPB Greylake on the Somerset levels. It sits in that well populated category on my UK list that I’ve mentioned many times in blogs before, i.e. seen but badly!   Now a little surprisingly given its two year absence, what is presumably the returning  adult drake was re-found at Greylake yesterday.  So, with at least some sun forecast to break the seemingly endlessly monotonous  dull December days today, off I went on the 90 minute journey down the M5 to see if I could get some better views.    While checking previous Baikal Teal records I discovered that the Greylake bird from two years ago was the only UK bird I have seen that has been accepted as wild by the great powers to be providing further incentive to visit. A short walk from an almost full car park took me to the same hide overlooking a large expanse of water that I last visited two years ago. The small...

With tongue in cheek, I normally call my annual birding reviews “Top of the Flops” but this seems a really disingenuous title for a truly exceptional year during which I added a staggering 27 birds to my UK life list.   The birding event of the year, perhaps even of the decade, was the star spangled influx of ultra-rare American passerines in September driven by an unprecedented combination of events. Lee, a truly  monstrous storm sprawling across some 15,000 square miles of the Atlantic with winds up to 165mph coincided with the mass migration of passerines along the west coast of north America. The resulting sheer number of rare passerines blown to our shores was quite overwhelming ,for example 46 rare vagrant Red-eyed Vireos were found within the space of a few days. The epicentre of the fall of rare birds, and hence the September destination for many UK based birders,  was the Pembrokeshire islands and mainland coast, see my bird of the year below. Every sil...

  Waxwing Every winter a small number of Waxwings can be found in the UK, mainly in the north and northeast. Just occasionally, a mass eruption occurs with many thousands of birds that would usually overwinter in Scandinavia relocating to the UK. We call this very welcome phenomena a “Waxwing Winter”.  Such an eruption has occurred this year with remarkable flocks exceeding a thousand birds relocating to Scotland in the late autumn and early winter to feed on the abundant  berry crop. Rowan berries are a particular favourite. I always thought that these mass eruptions only occur when the berry crop has failed in Scandinavia but a number of people have told me that the berry crop there has been very good this year. So I’m not sure what has driven this year’s mass eruption.   As the berry crop further north becomes exhausted the birds move south in search of food and so I’ve been waiting for a photo opportunity from some local birds. With not much else around...

   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...

    It was my 68 th  birthday on Friday and boy did we celebrate in style! Dinner at our favourite Italian restaurant with good friends was washed down with copious amounts of Italian Red wine followed by a few Limoncello shots. We then retired to our friends house and energetically tucked into their delicious home-made toffee vodka. By all accounts a thoroughly good time was had by all but boy did I suffer on Saturday! I remember a time in the dim distant past when I didn’t get hangovers. When I was still living at home pre-university I would often go out for a few beers with my dad to his working men’s club. I remember him complaining of how hungover he was the next day but I seriously thought he was making it up as I had no experience whatsoever of this terrible curse of the drinking classes! Sadly those days seem long gone!   So with Saturday a complete write-off I resolved to get off my backside on Sunday and twitch a rare Pallid Swift which has been in a small ...

        On Tuesday of this week news started to filter out of a Little Crake at Linford Lakes Nature Reserve on the outskirts of Milton Keynes. Potentially this would be another UK tick for me in what has already been an exceptional year. I however had other more important priorities in the middle of the week, i.e. spending time  with my gorgeous little 11 month old Grandson in Manchester!   Friday was hence the first day I could go and so, buoyed by good pictures posted on social media of what is normally a shy and reclusive bird, I set off on the 2 hour drive to Milton Keynes. Linford Lakes Nature reserve is owned and managed by the parks trust. I learnt later that this was set up when the town was first created and 10% of all land has to be given to them by property developers – what an excellent scheme! Access to the site is normally by permit only but the volunteers had kindly arranged managed access on a couple of days in return for a £5 donation...

  First winter Red-headed Bunting There really was only one place to go birding this weekend, Flamborough on the east coast of Yorkshire above Hull. On offer was a Red-headed Bunting, potentially the second UK record, another mega in the form of a Two-barred Greenish Warbler, a Pallas’s Warbler, and a Dusky Warbler.    Saturday looked the better of the two weekend days so I left home at 05:30 for the 4 hour drive to Yorkshire. After a couple of breaks I pulled up at Flamborough head just before 10:00,  parked up at the Lighthouse carpark and paid £4.50 for all day parking. Not too surprisingly, many other birders had had the same idea, it fact it felt like a Shetland 2023 reunion with so many familiar faces from our autumn holiday present.   Faced with such a glut of rare birds to see I was in a  dilemma as to what to go for first. My priority for the day was the Bunting as, if accepted by the powers to be, this would be a UK tick for me. However,...

  The Purple Heron sits in the well populated category on my UK bird list, seen badly on numerous occasions. All the ones I have seen in the UK have been very skittish, unapproachable, and easily flushed. We had one at Otmoor RSPB for a few weeks back in the summer of 2016 but, despite a number of visits, I only ever had frustratingly brief flight views. So when pictures started to emerge of a seemingly very confiding individual only 40 odd miles from home at Whelford a visit was a no-brainer.   The weather looked fairly favourable for photography yesterday so, after completing a number of domestic chores, I drove the comparatively short distance to Whelford near Fairford in Gloucestershire arriving around mid-day.    The heron had taken up residence at Whelford pool nature reserve and had been favouring a small wet area of recently cut reeds conveniently in front of a small hide only a short walk from the road. Not too surprisingly, the hide was pretty full with sta...

Here is a selection of the best of the rest photos from our 2023 Shetland holiday. Siskin Wheatear Greater Short-toed Lark Turnstone Knot Barred Warbler Brambling Birds of note Verry ✅ White's Thrush ✅ Eastern Sub-alpine Warbler ✅ Yellow Warbler ✅ Siberian Stonechat Snowy Owl Dusky Warbler Great Skua Yellow-browed Warbler Barred Warbler Pied Flycatcher Hawfinch Blyth's Reed Warbler Merlin Siskin Redpoll Red-breasted Flycatcher Whooper Swan Footnote - My blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!