The Standlake Birder

   Hudsonian Godwit Here then is my traditional year end review of my birding year.    The year of 2024 was definitely a case of “what a difference a year makes!”    It certainly    brought us all back down to earth after a truly stellar 2023.    In the autumn of 2023 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. This almost unprecedented series of events delivered a large number of mega rare and UK first American    passerines, mainly to the UK west coast, such that I managed to add a rather staggering 27 new birds to my UK life list. In contrast 2024 was notable for the almost total absence of American vagrants with the exception of a small number of birds early in the year, presumably leftover and undiscovered from the previous autumn. I managed ...

  A few days ago I made the short trip to Gloucestershire’s worst kept secret birding location to watch and photograph Short-eared Owls. I normally go to this location two or three times during the winter and have been blessed on occasion with some fantastic views.  I’m told the farmer maintains the fields here specifically with the Short-eared Owls in mind, meaning maintaining scrubby uncut grass, - so hats off to him or her!!    Sometimes they take to the air at midday and sometimes not until its almost dark – it’s pretty much potluck. At a guess I would say that it depends how hungry they are as their ability to find their favourite prey, voles, is much reduced in wet windy weather. This was my first visit this winter and it was great to see that at least three owls have returned. They came out  at 14:30 and continued to show well until sunset. In truth, it can be a bit of a circus at this site with many photographers present but on this occasion it...

  Water Rail The winter birding months tend to be mega rarity free and  I wouldn’t expect anything that would be an addition to my Uk bird list until at least April or more probably May. I find it hard to motivate myself to travel long distances for birds that I’ve seen well and photographed so the next 3 months will probably be mainly local.   I had a pleasant and relaxed day at Slimbridge on Monday. I hoped to see two scarce birds that had been present for a few days, namely Little Stint and Green-winged Teal. With no pressure to get there at a particular time I rolled up just before 10:00. From the car park I immediately  heard the eerie bugling of the recently returned Bewick Swans. I was, perhaps rather selfishly,  pleased to find very few visitors at the reserve, the combination of a school term weekday and winter having the desired effect. I say selfishly because, of course, the WWT are largely reliant on members and visitors for funding th...

    Little Owl, a UK introduction almost universally accepted as tickable on a UK list Many birders keep bird lists. These, for example, might record the number of birds seen in the UK, worldwide, or a particular country or area. Two issues arise when deciding what birds to include in such lists, what constitutes a species and how to identify a true wild bird as opposed to one which has escaped from an aviary. In this blog I will give my own personal thoughts on this somewhat controversial topic. My thinking on this issue will be guided by objectivity wherever possible driven by my scientific background.   The former is perhaps the easiest of these two issues to address. Modern affordable and rapid DNA sequencers provide the ability to study birds DNA rapidly and economically. It should be hence possible to define the level of DNA divergence between two birds  necessary for them to be recognised as separate species. Delving a bit further , there are a number of ...

  The Lapland Bunting is certainly not a bird I expect to see annually. In fact, the last one I saw was 4 years ago on the Malvern Hills. So when a very confiding  and photogenic male was found on the causeway at Staines Reservoir in Surrey I planned a trip to see it. Other commitments determined that the first day I could go was Friday just gone. Given that it had been there a few days already, I decided to wait for it to be reported before setting off as crawling around the M25 to dip a bird I have seen before was not very appealing! I kept an eye on both RBA and our excellent “Twitching the UK and Ireland” WhatsApp group and was pleased to see it reported on our group just before 08:00. Oddly, it didn’t get reported on RBA for another hour so it was a good job I was not solely reliant on that source of information.   The causeway on the reservoir is quite long so I parked at the end where it was mostly being reported from and walked up to the causeway. The last ti...