The Standlake Birder -

Western Siberian Stonechat   There are three species of stonechat on the BOU british list, the common european stonechat plus its two much rarer cousins, the Siberian and Stejneger's stonechats. The Siberian species is further split into two sub species, western and eastern. Stejneger's stonechat breeds in eastern Asia and migrates to southern China in winter. The Siberian stonechat breeds in most of temperate Asia and the far north west of Europe. It winters in southern Japan, Thailand, India and northeast Africa. Stejneger's Stonechat Identification of the two Asia species is very tricky in the field and formal identification normally requires a DNA sample. These can be obtained from intestinal cells in the birds poo. The DNA analysis normally takes four to eight weeks hence the bird has normally moved on before formal identification can be confirmed. I was lucky enough to see a Stejneger’s stonechat a few years ago in Norfolk but I still needed Siberian ...

  Stonechat With a bright cold winter’s day forecast, and the pit 60 area currently looking like a scene from waterworld, I decided to do something different on Sunday and head down to Kent. Now, the big advantage of getting up at silly o clock on a Sunday morning is that no one else is daft enough to do it. So with clear roads I arrived at my first destination, Reculver on the north coast of Kent, shortly after sunrise. I’ve been to this location several times before and have always enjoyed the long walk along the coastal path. From the car park you have to walk up the hill next to the ruined towers of Saint Mary’s church. The original church was built on the site of a Roman fort in 669 and the now truly impressive but sadly ruined towers were added in the 15 th century. A bracing north wind was blowing but the lovely mid-winter sun lifted my spirts and made for a very enjoyable walk east along the coastal path towards cold harbour lagoon. The birding highlight of the ...

Snow Bunting To help kick-start my new year birding list I like to do a January trip to Norfolk where, hopefully, I will connect with the various east coast winter specialties. The short days this time of year require an early start to maximise the daylight birding on site. So with a forecast that was at least not dreadful on Monday I was up at silly o’clock and on my way.  My habit when driving to Norfolk is to take a small detour around the so called Wolferton triangle near Sandringham. This was, at least until recently, one of very few places you could still see Golden Pheasant in the UK. I’ve not seen one over the past 4 years and again there was no sign on Monday. Sadly, it looks as though this exotic gamebird is close to, or perhaps actually, nationally extinct. Maybe they have all been run over by a certain member of the royal family! My first port of call in Norfolk was the wonderful RSPB reserve at Titchwell. Not surprisingly, given the amount of th...

Top of the Flops 2019 The votes are in and have been counted and independently verified so here we go with the annual review of my birding year. Dip of the year So where better to start than with the most eagerly awaited award. Yet again this year there were so many fantastic entries. Surely an overnight stay in Cornwall and then missing the Brown Booby by one day can’t be beaten. No? While perhaps another overnight stay in Yorkshire only to discover that the supposed Lesser Kestrel was (or was not!) a common Kestrel must trump the Brown Booby. No there is one dip that is simple head and shoulders above all else. A round trip of some one thousand three hundred miles and 8 nights away from home in the Outer Hebrides looking for Pom and Long-tailed Skuas. In Jeremy’s unforgettable words before we left – “there was no Skua passage last year so there is bound to be one this year”. Cue endless hours staring out at a grey Hebridean sea in the freezing cold– result – ZERO Skua...

Black-throated thrush Jealousy ( noun ) a feeling of unhappiness and anger because someone has something or someone that you want Relating in my particular case to my crap record shots of the fantastic adult Black-throated Thrush compared to the many fantastic pics on line. So today, with wall to wall sun forecast, it was back to Whipsnade for second dibs with much better results ... Black-throated Thrush Redwing

Black-throated Thrush It must be a good thirty years since I last went to Whipsnade Zoo. We were living in London, which, by the way, I hated, at the time and we were there for my daughter’s birthday party. Last Wednesday an adult male Black-throated Thrush was found there which would represent a lifer for me. It’s breeding range extends from the extreme east of Europe to Western Siberia and north-west Mongolia and it normally winters in the Middle East, i.e it’s a bit lost! It’s the commonest of the rare Asia vagrant thrushes, if that makes sense, with 84 records to date in the UK. It went AWOL on Thursday but was re-found on Friday in a flock of Redwings feeding on berries in a tree. It was again a little evasive on Saturday disappearing around lunch time. Yesterday was the first day I could make the 50 mile journey to Whipsnade but I decided to wait until it was reported which, as is turns out, was a mistake on this occasion! I expected the zoo to be q...

Great White Egret, Pit 60 today I grew up in a small village in the Wiltshire countryside called Hindon. I have fond memories of long countryside walks with my dad looking for birds and other wildlife. I still have my Spotting Birds pocket guide with a written note on the inside cover written by my dad “To James Xmas 1968” in which we have ticked the birds we saw on our many walks. I remember hedgerows alive with Yellowhammers and Corn Buntings and countless Skylarks signing their sweet summer song over green flower filled fields. Now some 50 years later the hedgerows are so much quieter.  Many years of intensive agricultural monoculture with its war on weeds and insects seems to have denuded our countryside of the wildlife I so cherished as a young lad. Still it’s not all doom and gloom, some species have benefited from changes in the way we manage our countryside, climate change and the growth in wetland reserves. I remember walking what seemed miles from Hindon t...

White-browed Coucal  Kenya’s borders, as in most of Africa, do not reflect social or tribal boundaries. Many borders are straight lines drawn by European colonialists with a ruler while paying scant regard to tribal and cultural differences. Kenya boasts 42 separate tribes with different languages and cultures that all somehow peacefully merge to become the unique mix of Kenyan culture. While the official languages of Kenya are Swahili and English each tribe also has its own language. This means that many Kenyans speak at least three languages putting the linguistic skills of most English folk to considerable shame. By and large Kenya has avoided the tribal conflict that neighbouring countries have suffered in recent times with such terrible human cost. So perhaps it is not too surprising that the biggest desire of most Kenyans is simply for a peaceful existence. Apart from the main driver of comfort and security for their friends and family, so much of Kenya’s eco...