Wanstead Birder

Dreams come true!!

2012-01-25T22:31:00.000Z

But not for me..... There I was, sitting in my little grey cubicle in big grey Canary Wharf when my phone bonged. It was from Nick. This is rarely good news. He had the good grace to start with an apology, but there was no getting away from the fact that a Lapwing had just flown over his head. Unlike my dream, this one was going east, but they all count.

Meanwhile I took a stroll round Canary Wharf. Though 13 Great Crested Grebes was a new high, I could not help but feel slightly short-changed. If I walked around Wanstead for an equivalent amount of time, I'd easily rack up 30 species, possibly more, and I wouldn't just be seeing one of things, I'd be seeing loads. In 45 minutes today, during which I circumnavigated the whole patch, I saw eleven species. The highlight, other than the Grebes, was a Blue Tit. There is poor, and then there is downright impoverished. And then there is Canary Wharf. At one stage, at the far eastern end of my defined boundary, I thought I heard a Pied Wagtail. I quickly folded my hat up over my ears for that ultra-cool look that I pass off so well, but whatever it was it didn't call again, and with a whole packet of peanuts at stake I can't go claiming dodgy ones.

It will be interesting* to see what happens this spring. I am working it harder than ever before in the limited time I spend there, so perhaps it will shine**. The happy*** news is that my contract has been extended, so I get to spend more time there. Woohoo!**** But it does mean crusts on the table (and wine in the cellar) and in these uncertain times I am thankful; there are plenty of people who are not employed, and plenty of people for whom the future is doubtful. I would still like to petition for continued child benefit though, it's the only reason I had children, and it's the only monetary benefit I have ever claimed. If it goes I will be forced to injure myself more in order to extract a quasi tax rebate out of the NHS. I assure you it will be quite easy- in fact I stubbed my toe (THE toe) just the other day and for a brief moment of extreme pain I thought it had all gone wrong again. It certainly hasn't healed quite correctly, I wonder if I ought to have had some kind of cast after all? Mind you, the doctor I had probably would have put it on the wrong foot....

* not
** almost certainly not
*** errr...
****Never has a woo and a hoo been quite so muted

Dreaming

2012-01-23T23:20:00.001Z

The other night I had a dream. It's possible that I dream every night, I have no idea how it works, but it's not every morning you wake up and wonder whether it was all a dream, so to speak. This particular dream was about the patch, and I was on it. The snide will comment that it must have been a dream, and indeed, sometimes it does appear to be like that, especially so at the moment, where I get perhaps one opportunity a week to not see Woodpeckers. This dream was not about Woodpeckers though, it was about Lapwings.

Lapwings are what a local bird report might call a scarce visitor. When I first moved here, Lapwing was pretty much a dream bird. I suppose, given recent events, that it still is. Anyway, I had lived here nearly five years before I saw my first Lapwing - in a cold spell one December, 12 flew over me in the Park. I could barely believe it. I dashed home to report the good news to my fascinated family, and in a calculated move of which I am still immensely proud, went and stood in the garden for the rest of the day. Lo and behold, and to a chorus of pure joy, a single Lapwing flying south went and got itself onto the house list. Since that momentous day, I've seen Lapwings a further nine times, totalling 33 birds, though I guess you have to be a fan of urban patch stats to truly appreciate this. One more stat - most of these have been from the garden - unemployment has its benefits.

In my dream I was on the Flats, not in the garden. I was in the SSSI, heading home after a fruitless trip - all the best dreams are grounded in reality. Approaching the ditch that runs approximately east to west, two Lapwings flew over. In case you were having the same dream, they went west. Anyway, they were perfect. The rounded rings, narrower at the base, were impeccably floppy, the flight impressively Lapwingy. In my dream I punched the air, over the moon at a tough patch year tick bagged. Then I woke up. Well, not immediately I don't suppose, but upon waking the dream was still fresh, still vivid, in my mind's eye I could picture them still.

One of the very first ones

Is this post a confession? Not really, you all know I'm a sad case already. I am giving absolutely nothing away when I admit that I dream of birds, but what I feel is particularly noteworthy is that I don't dream about finding Sibe Rubythroats on Unst, or jamming in on Calandra Larks on Scilly. No, I dream about bog standard common waders on my own patch. Unconscious dedication.

Once Upon a Time we had Woodpeckers

2012-01-21T20:10:00.000Z

For the last two years on the trot we have had Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers breeding on Wanstead Flats. Wanstead Flats is mostly grassland and football pitches, with a few mature copses. The lack of cover meant you could easily see the Woodpeckers for the trees, so to speak. Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is a good bird anywhere, let alone London, and as they were so reliable, people came from far and wide to get a glimpse of them. Most came away happy, and we, the patch-workers, were also happy. Wanstead is good for Woodpeckers.

Then came health and safety. The Corporation of London, who in all the time I have lived here I have yet to see perform a single worthwhile act that benefits wildlife, decided that the trees in the copses were dangerous. Being so attractive to Woodpeckers, and so, well, dead, there was a risk that they might fall on someone, and that that someone might sue. So breeding Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers be damned, all those trees are now gone. You cannot argue with health and safety. It's like trying to argue with the Olympics, utterly pointless.

The copses are used by breeding Starling, breeding Stock Dove, and Woodpeckers. Blue and Great Tits feed in them, as do winter thrushes. Squirrels and Noctule Bats call them home, and when we had Little Owls, they lived there too. Human activity is confined to the drinking of lager, the lighting of barbeques, the dropping of litter, and casual sex. All of those activities could do with a large lump of wood interrupting them in my opinion. But no, the Corporation does not want to be sued by a bunch of half-drunk eastern european migrants or aged doggers, so the trees have all been reduced to bare trunks. The sensible thing to do would have been to fence off the copses, and leave nature to run its course, which would result in lots of nice dead wood for invertebrates, and the continued presence of breeding Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers. But no, a branch might crush a drunk, so it's far safer just to get rid of the trees altogether. At least the beetles and grubs will have some nice logs to get going on though. Er, no. They constitute a fire hazard, and so have been removed in case the local youf or aforementioned drunks decide to burn them.

I spent a good two hours looking for Lesser Spots on Wanstead Flats today. Guess what?

I took this in 2010

Now the tree looks like this.

A big two fingers up to wildlife

Deep pockets

2012-01-20T23:58:00.000Z

As I go about the tricky business that is sorting out how to get to fantastic birding destinations other than Wanstead Flats, I find myself once again feeling a very deep hatred for budget airlines. In a civilised society, budget airlines would be banned. Instead they are free to con, swindle and rip us off at every opportunity. The booking process is of course the worst bit - somehow, every time and without fail, a £29.99 flight advertised in flashing lights ends up costing about £200. First there are the taxes, not a lot you can do about that apart from vote for the other lot next time around. But then, incrementally, the airlines find more ways to hike it up. So you find insurance pre-selected, including snow and ice cover for your spring break in Egypt, and you find that you are about to hire a car for your trip to Venice. You find that the flight price didn't include a seat on the plane - perhaps you are expected to stand? So booking one - pre-selected for your convenience - sets you back another few quid. If, like I was, you're taking several flights, you find that this applies to each leg, so multiple lots of a few quid. Pre-boarding before the other poor sods on your flight? More money please. What, you want to take some stuff on holiday? Well, you'll need a suitcase then, so another charge - but half price if you book it now rather than at the airport! OK, we're almost done. Do you want to check-in at the airport? If so it'll cost ya! Online it is then. So, your total is now £180. Ah, hang on, we haven't yet added enough spurious extra charges, so we need to add a booking fee. In fact, a booking fee per leg. That's better. Right, £200 then. How would you like to pay? Got a credit card like any normal person? Excellent, that'll be an additional £10. Bit steep? OK, how about a debit card - this only costs us 20p to process, so we can generously drop the handling fee to £8. What, you find that absolutely outrageous? OK, what about a Visa Electron or a pre-paid Mastercard, we don't charge for them. Know why? Because nobody has one and they don't actually exist.

In the end, the flight is probably cheaper than a real airline, but how much there is in it I have no idea. The problem is that budget airline customers end up loathing their carrier before they have even left for the airport - how can that be any kind of successful business model? For me though, the villainly of the booking process is eclipsed by the hand luggage restrictions. The policy on some budget airlines is near enough identical to a normal, decent and morally superior airline, which means that by and large you can get one of those small rolling suitcases on. Some however are just plain evil, and they slash these dimensions to a plainly ridiculous degree, typically about 1cm less than any known bag. You're allowed to bring the case your bins came in, and that's it. Unfortunately birders are not known for travelling light. In addition to bins we need scopes. We need tripods, and we possibly need cameras. All nice and bulky. Packing for birding trip is agony, it takes hours. You pack and repack, you stand on the bathroom scales to see how much your bag weighs. You unpack it all and start again. Three weeks later, you're ready.

At the airport you stand in a long line. Though you checked-in online, this in fact means nothing, you still have to queue. There is one person at the desk, and she is dealing with an irate fat scouser. Finally you get to the front, pretending that your bag isn't really really hurting your back. Nobody asks to see it, nobody weighs it, nobody tries to squish it into one of those little cages. Phew, I've done it, I've made it! The plane is only four hours late, but hey, they didn't check my hand luggage! Result!!

You wait in yet another queue for the plane. They announce boarding - you're off!! All of a sudden there are budget airline staff everywhere! They are checking bags, and they have one of those little cages. In sight of the plane, too late to do anything about it, and now, finally, they are getting draconian on bags. The choice is a stark one. Leave your bag containing thousands of pounds worth of optics behind, forfeit your flight, or.....pay £60 to have a man take your bag to a different door on the airplane approximately twenty feet from the door you're about to go through. Weeping, passengers reach for their credit cards, presumably to be told that if that's how they want to pay, the price has risen to £100. The whole process is sickening. I read recently about a great airline scam - the sizing containers at the check-in desk of one budget airline were larger than the ones at the departure gate! Passengers bags passed the initial checks with flying colours, and then failed the later one. A nice little earner, as they say. I would not be at all surprised if check-in staff work on a commission basis.

The only way to successfully travel on a budget airline is to wear all your clothes, including a coat with masses of pockets. I habitually use a fishing jacket - the rear pocket, designed for trout, can hold a 300mm lens with no problems at all. I can get full size bins in one of the front pockets, a DLSR in the other. A wide-angle lens, macro, and both converters go in the top pockets, my tripod head in another, and I can smugly present them with a very small carry-on bag. My weight has doubled, but so what? I bet I still weigh less than that scouser. I actually think airlines should charge fat people more. Where's the equity in charging me for a bag weighing 1kg more than the defined limit, when the guy behind me weighs the same as my entire family? But I suppose that would be fattist, or whatever the word is, and anyway, I'm at risk of getting charged.......

Bills bills and more bills

2012-01-18T20:48:00.000Z

I have not had any nice post for ages. You know, people sending gifts of chocolates, free optical samples, that kind of thing. The only things that have landed on the mat have been in brown envelopes. Brown envelopes always signal doom. The accepted method of dealing with brown envelopes is to leave them on the kitchen counter unopened and hope they go away. They don't, they just stack up. I've let ours stack up for a couple of weeks now. The crunch came yesterday when a child presented me with an envelope fresh from their school bag. Guess what colour it was? Gah! My own children giving me bills! What have I done?! What have I forgotten to do?!

It was a bill for cello lessons. I've only just paid for three lots of school dinners for this half term, even the school is bankrupting me. I decided to get it over with, and opened the envelopes on the counter. They came to a four figure sum, and are all due now. And it's not like that's it either. The good ship Eco One needs taxing again next month, which also means it needs insuring again. That's another whopper right there I expect. Bills, bills, bills. Basically everything becomes due in either January or February, which is straight after Christmas, not a period known for frugality. But it doesn't stop there. The start of the year is also when you start planning stuff, so today I also booked a flight to Shetland, paid a deposit on a self-catering cottage on Mull, and booked a CalMac ferry ticket. If you're going to be left with beans, you might as well do it properly.

I was just recovering from that by soothingly working out how many decades I had left on my mortgage when an email arrived. It was from the electricity company. Please read your meter, it said, as we would like to send you an enormous bill. If you don't, it went on to say, we will estimate your usage and send you an enormous bill anyway. Win.

Now before you all start sending me cheques, or small wads of used fifties, I am able to pay these bills. I would have been very foolish to have signed up to all the various things that the bills relate to if I could not, though note that this has not stopped many many people from spending wantonly and sucking this country into a large hole, along with the good financial people who encouraged their borrowing. No, it is all OK, just about, and though it pains me, we are not on the street just yet. It's just when it comes up in one lump that you actually notice quite how much normal living actually costs. We are not extravagant people (except for Mrs L's obsession with buying obscene quantities of optical equipment almost constantly), we live well within our means. My car is twenty years old, and we have not heard of flat screen TVs. Most of our kitchen cupboard doors hang on one hinge, and we have instructed our butler to only feed the tropical fish twice a week. My point is that even if you only stick to the basics, which by and large we do, the cost of living is simply ridiculous. Take my council tax for example. Monumental - over two thousand pounds!! Imagine the holiday we could go on?! Imagine the left-hand barrel of a pair of Swarovski SVs! Included within that (since about 2006, and until about 2018)is of course my personal contribution to the 2012 Olympics. The same Olympics that are two miles away and that I got no tickets for. The same Olympics that are going to build a fuck-off police megabase on Wanstead Flats mere yards from my house and prevent me birding Jubilee pond. The same Olympics that are between me and work, and where the transport bosses think that a wait of half an hour to get onto the tube at Stratford is "reasonable". Talking of which, getting to work costs me almost six quid - it's about five miles away. Eating lunch is another four or five, and don't get me started on coffee. At the Spanish Sparrow twitch a bacon roll and a cup of coffee cost me £1.50. In Canary Wharf, where my best bird this year has been a measly Blackbird, I'd be looking at a fiver. London is sickening, and I'm led to believe that there are plenty of other places that are equally as outrageous.

You know what, I am all whined out. Typing this has been very helpful, and I now know what to do. Pour myself a drink. I'll try not to think about 60% of every sip being tax.

Olé Olé, Olé Olé

2012-01-15T20:48:00.000Z

Many many sensible people arriving in the dark for a bird that will be present all year.

Although I very rarely twitch, as any regular reader of these pages will know, there were a couple of cars heading down to the New Forest yesterday. Would I like to be in one of them? Well, not really, but if you insist on having my wit and repartee in order to make the drive that much shorter, how can I refuse? Right, pick you up at 5am says Bradders. 5am? Holy S. Five in the morning, ie waking up at four something, to see a bird that looks remarkably similar to a Sparrow, and that has been there a year and will likely be there a further year. A bird so comfortable in its surroundings that like many a sailor in a foreign port, it has knocked up one of the local lasses, and is even now eyeing up some more. Never have european relations been stronger than in Calshot, Hampshire. But would the bird still be there for the weekend masses?

Housing Estate-watching

An emphatic yes, though I was surprised how few people were there. I had been anxiously expecting a good five-hundred, and had been preparing myself for the shame of being seen amongst so many green-clad middle-aged men. In the event it was fine, perhaps a hundred tops, and many of them in blue, though there is no getting away from the age. I am uncomfortably part of a very particular demographic. But hey, twitching is fun! Ticking birds is fun. Yes, even Sparrows. The locals were doing a roaring trade in bacon butties and teas, and I thought the whole thing passed off really well, with no stupidity from anyone, not even me. Not that it would have been possible to scare the bird off, the thing was seemingly impervious to humans. Anyway, as soon as we were done with ticking it, we were heading off birding in the wilds of the New Forest, where we doubted we would see another birder all day.

¿Qué estás mirando, mal vestido idiota?

Unfortunately the New Forest is teeming with goodies, and we could not avoid driving round in what was essentially an enormous convoy of birders all visiting the same locations. So first the Dark-eyed Junco somewhere near Bewlee (although the signposts all said Beaulieu for some reason), then Blashford for a semi-Ferruginous Duck, and then somewhere else for a regular Hawfinch roost. I swear I saw the exact same people at every place. They probably wondered what I was doing there too.

But of course...

The birds were good. My second Junco, a bird I had not expected to see another of, performed beautifully with 11,000 Reed Buntings and 250,000 Chaffinches. Crossbills were an almost constant feature, all three Swans (naturally, as I had failed to see Bewick's last year), and the Hawfinches showed superbly by their standards. A grand day out, and my year-list is going extremely well.

Managed to take this out of one of the few windows at Blashford HWT that actually opened and that wasn't blue. Worst hides I have ever been in by some distance, they need to sort it out.

Countdown

2012-01-11T19:26:00.000Z

I apologise in advance for what is a highly predicatable post, but one that is wholly consistent with what birding means to me. It’s about Wheatears, and their almost imminent arrival. Over the last three years, Wheatears have arrived on Wanstead Flats on March 14th, March 20th, and March 29th. Doing the maths, if you take the median, it’s the 20th; if you take the average, it’s the 21st. I wonder what the median for this post is? Anyway, this year is a leap year, obviously none of the last three were, and even though the Wheatears are likely oblivious, the earlier date is perhaps the more accurate to use. Actually it’s probably not accurate at all, the birds will come when they come, but either way it could be excitingly soon. 69 days - that's less than ten weeks.

By then the light will be birdable by about 5.20am. That’s not the best time for passerines, they tend to rise later, but it gives me a chance to get out and have a poke around before needing to be back for the school run. You cannot possibly conceive of how tragically excited I already am. In terms of excitement levels, it’s a toss up between January 1st and Wheatear arrival. Or perhaps I’m just a tosser? No matter. Non-birders, non patch-workers, may sneer at the pathetic dribble that is my life, but there is practically nothing that I look forward to more in March, not even my birthday. Which as it happens is also in March, so there is the possibility that the first Wheatear will arrive on THE day, and that I will find it. Hasn’t happened yet, but you would hear the whoops from anywhere within the M25 I reckon.

"Phwoarrrrr!"

So, just what is it about Wheatears? There are very few other regular birds that provoke these feelings. Firecrests, for example, are pretty damn smart, and I never tire of seeing them, but they’re not in the same league as Wheatears, or at least not for me. Perhaps it’s that Wheatears are the first trans-Saharan migrants to make it back each year. For us, having just gone though a miserable and dark four or five months, they probably herald the start of warmth and daylight. It’s true that I don’t look forward to the first returning autumn birds in the same way, but then again, a 1W Wheatear isn’t quite the same as a spring male. Spring male Wheatears are the birds that words like “cracking” and “stonking” were designed for. You can say that about Red-flanked Bluetails and Red-breasted Flycatchers, but deep down you know you should be reserving the accolade for talking about Wheatears. The sparkling silvery-grey mantle and head, the white forehead contrasting beautifully with the broad black eye-stripe, the warm throat and slightly buffy flanks. And the rump! The flash of white that catches your eye, that draws you in. That’s what you have drilled into your subconscious in March – visions of bounding white.

That funny Common Gull

2012-01-10T00:30:00.001Z

Now there's a title guaranteed to pull in the readers! And even ones who like Gulls - both of you - may be put off by the horror of a couple of scabby Common Gulls. On Jan 1st I found a Common Gull with an extremely streaked head - if you lined all the Gulls up in order of head-streakiness, with pure white on the left, this gull would be on the far right hand side. Wouldn't it would be nice if you could command gulls to do that, make it far easier. Anyhow, I wondered whether it was the same bird that I had seen in November, another one with a strikingly dark head.

I managed to take a photograph of each one, though unfortunately from opposite sides. I've studied then for well over five minutes now and can't make up my mind, so over to you. For what it's worth I think the streaking on the head seems very similar towards the front, more or less similar around the eyes - though I am wondering, with the bird's posture similar in each shot - whether the dark streak behind the eye isn't at a different angle on each bird. Hey ho. Moving on, a lot less similar at the back, on the nape, where the January bird (facing right) seems far darker. That said, there is a faint yet obvious whitish divide/collar between the really dark streaking on the rear of the neck and the side of the face on both birds, though it appears more distinct on the November bird (facing left). Bill colour is an obvious difference, but I can't positively say that January bird hasn't just got a bit muddy.

I'm not going to go into Ps, as frankly I have no idea what they are, but if you look at the tip of P27, you'll see a little bit of white. Is that right? Almost impossible to compare as we're looking at a different side of each bird, and they're not necessarily a mirror image. I reckon they're pretty much the same, though I can't see that darker feather on the upper back of the November bird as being present on the January bird, or at least not on the side I can see.

November

January

The other problem is that the light was dreadful on January 1st - conditions so dire that the bird looks purple - just look at the BH Gull next to it, they look almost the same shade of purple. Making any comparisons of the mantle colour is fraught with danger. So, the two bird theory? I'm almost convinced, but not quite. We do have a lot of Common Gulls on the Flats, and I'm sure that the population has a fair bit of turnover as I don't, for instance, see the scabby white-winged one every time, nor this/these darker-headed bird/birds. Could there really be two birds with ridiculous streaking like this 40 days apart. Well, very likely there could. A horrible thought indeed. Much better is this one. Spot on I'd say.

Bugger

2012-01-08T16:39:00.000Z

A mixed day today. Highlights were discovering two Kingfishers and a Grey Wagtail on the Roding with Steve. Low point was discovering that I hadn't, as I had thought, got away with dropping my camera on Southend Pier yesterday. I had only just started birding, and had found a Coal Tit in Reservoir Wood. As a patch year-tick, it needed recording, so I raised the camera upwards.... God-dammit, why isn't it focussing. And hang on a minute, why is the viewfinder all blurry? Return the camera to horizontal and all fine again. Eh? Give it a shake - ah. I'm not sure it should be rattling like that... It's been coming for a while to be honest, I tend to be fairly unforgiving. The cameras I use are built like tanks, and more often than not they just bounce and continue working just fine. I've got away with it more than a few times, but this time I've been caught out and am likely going to end up several hundred pounds poorer. Mind you, the Purple Sand was definitely worth it. Grrrrrr.

I returned home and got another camera - I am lucky enough/forward-thinking enough to have a spare in case the worst happens. This meant I could take this, so we can easily see that having a DSLR gathering dust in a cupboard has been an entirely worthwhile use of funds.

Can you see the bird? The habitat is a clue...

Southend Purple Sandpiper

2012-01-07T21:32:00.001Z

I have been meaning to get myself down Southend Pier for about a month. The opportunities have been few and far between, as you need decent weather, daylight, and the high tide to all coincide so that you can see an ickle Purple Sandpiper roosting with Turnstones. These all aligned today, so I went for it. Disgusting parking charges at Southend for a cold January weekend, they only let you off on Christmas Day and Good Friday - who do they think they are, Westminster? I harrumphed, paid, and hastened to the Pier, there to miss a train by the minute I spent being all upset about parking charges. That'll learn me. Instead I went and ate some chips and saw a few Med Gulls, of which there are loads in Southend. The Med Gulls also ate some chips, but I couldn't be bothered to unpack the camera.

An Essex tick no less

Plenty of Med Gulls as well, all desperate to be photographed for this blog. How could I refuse?

And of course, lots and lots of these, running all around me and making cute noises.

A Challenging Year ahead

2012-01-04T20:05:00.001Z

2012 is turning out to be the year of the challenge. I like a challenge, especially if is to do with birds. I have a separate weight-loss challenge going on, but that’s another story – in January, birds are far more interesting, and it’s much easier to seek out a Great Crested Grebe than it is to not eat a cake. So I’ve already mentioned Anas fantabulosa, the Patch List Challenge, and after the fine start on January 1^st I’m currently topping the leaderboard. The rest of the contestants assure me it’s only temporary, and I’m sure they’re right. Most of the birds on a Wanstead year-list are resident. I’ve lived here long enough to know where exactly it is they are resident, and so January 1^st is simply an exercise in walking round to those places and ticking them off if they’re there. This time around, most of them were. I reckon I have about eight more that are here somewhere, and then anything else for the whole rest of the year is either a regular summer breeding visitor, or a passage migrant. There are about ten regular summer breeders, about ten regular passage migrants, and the rest, perhaps 15-20 birds, is pot luck. And it’s the pot luck birds that make all of us patch-workers jump up and down, and are the birds that will determine where the Golden Mallard goes this year. I’m not dusting off my mantelpiece just yet.

Then there is the Peanut Challenge. Yesterday was my first day back in the Office. By about lunchtime my work year-list stood on one, a Pigeon. I mean literally one – a solitary Pigeon. Canary Wharf is not conducive to birds. James A, a man with a similarly bird-free work patch at Tower Bridge, commented that he was on the grand total of three for the year. I immediately went and stood by the window until I had seen three more birds, which were two Mallards, a Coot, and a Crow. Hah, four, take that Mr A! Then James went for a walk at lunch and added nine more. Gah! This meant I too had to go for a walk, which netted me a further six, including a Blue Tit! Blue Tits are mega, but I was still behind. Thus was born the 2012 Peanut Challenge. Which of these two awful patches was truly the worst? Which one can consistently produce nothing but dross? Now you can’t have a competition based on who can see the least, as it would end up a no-score draw, so it has to be the other way around. It has to be who sees the most, and anyway, this way, even when one of us “wins”, the other can still feel proud that his work patch is truly the shittest. Everyone’s, as they say, a winner.

The stakes are high. As the name of the challenge hints at, the loser has to buy the winner a packet of peanuts. I worked here for over ten years and my patch list stands at 35. That’s truly terrible. Involve a small snack item however, and all of a sudden I’m birding it like I’ve never birded it before! Today I spent twenty-five minutes strategically placed at the far south-eastern corner of the patch (see map), and stared steadfastly east. Well there’s no point looking back into the patch, is there? I’ve already told you, there aren’t any birds there. No, the peanut-winning tactic is face outwards and strain to see birds on the far horizon that never even come near the patch. This resulted in no fewer than two Magpies, three (yes, 3!) Woodpigeons, and a flock of about 60 Starlings whizzing about over near the Dome somewhere. Closer in were a pair of Tufted Duck, a bird I didn’t think I’d get as I’ve actually reduced the patch boundaries from the previous ten years to exclude the basin they usually get on, a Moorhen, and 11 Great Crested Grebes. Wow, all of a sudden I’m on 16, and have yet to see a Great Black-backed Gull. Grey Heron, Mute Swan, Canada Goose, Peregrine and Pied Wagtail should all be relatively easy, but after them there are no expected birds left. My work patch is so awful that it tops out at 22, after which it becomes pot luck, just like Wanstead.

It is basically entirely concrete, and incredibly densely populated by humans. There is a lot of water, but again, it’s almost entirely concrete-sided. So far I have found one floating structure that you might call habitat, but a lot of florescent yellow people are currently demolishing a building right next to it, and one presumes that once they’re finished doing that, a bunch of similarly-coloured people are going to arrive and start erecting a new one. My hopes are not high for anything using this habitat in the near future. There are three green spaces. One is in the middle of a roundabout above an underground carpark. It’s a small circular patch of exquisitely-manicured grass surrounded by a circle of London planes. It was in one of these planes that I was staggered to find the Blue Tit yesterday. The second green space is a rectangular patch of grass between Canary Wharf Tower and Waitrose. It currently has an Ice Rink on top of it, but has not been enhanced by Penguins. Later on in the year it will be covered by cars and stuff, and then by various marquees, stages and bandstands. During the short time that it might actually be grass, there is a slim possibility of a thrush visiting it – I live in hope. The third and final green space is south of here, built on top of the Jubilee line station. It is some kind of exhibition garden complete with some water sculptures. Again, it is manicured to within an inch of its life, and being right next to the station and having a path on it to the new shopping centre, is incredibly busy. I did once see a Grey Wagtail on the water sculpture, boy what a day that was - I can still visualise it now. Needless to say it remains the only Grey Wag I’ve seen here, and likely will be forever.

Given that I don’ t work here every day, it’s difficult to say what I might get to. I had initially thought that 20-25 might be a par performance, but the additional enthusiasm generated by the thought of a free packet of peanuts means that I’m going to raise my target to 35. Yup, I’m going to see as many birds in a year as I did in the previous ten, and from within a smaller area. 2012 truly is the year of the challenge.

Seeing lots of birds in Norfolk

2012-01-03T20:40:00.000Z

It has more or less become traditional to bird the patch on January the first, and then have a big day out somewhere on January 2^nd. Last year we went to Norfolk for the day, the year before that, Essex. Looking at a map of “where good birds are at” made it an easy choice yesterday, especially as one of our number needed the Western Sandpiper that is still hanging around at Cley.

I was out waiting on the pavement at 6am sharp, and the boys (Bradders, Monkey, and Hawky) arrived a short while later. En route, the ever sharp-eyed Hawky bagged Barn Owl and Woodcock to ensure the day-list (and the year list) got off to a flying start. Our first stop Fakenham for the interestingly-pale Great Grey Shrike. None of us were quite ready for the intense cold in North Norfolk, especially after the mildest start to January since 1821 which saw me severely over-dressed for my big day in Wanstead. I severely under-compensated and was thus almost immediately freezing, and the Shrike was not an early-riser. Whilst waiting, a load of year ticks made themselves known, including two coveys of Grey Partridge, a species I had failed to see last year. Eventually the Shrike deigned to wake up and gave excellent and prolonged views until we could stand the cold no longer and retreated to the warmth of the car, which with Paul, Monkey and especially me in it, was extremely cosy.

Definitely a very pale bird, not as washed-out as in Steppe, but you can see why people wondered about Homeyeri. I know nothing about such things, but I understand the wing formula, in particular the configuration of the white panel, is wrong for this sub-species. I thought I heard it mutter “doh!” a couple of times, but I don’t know enough about the vocalisations to know if this is diagnostic. None of this matters one jot of course, it is a Shrike, and can be enjoyed regardless. A local who had seen the bird a few times told us it had a larder in the middle of the hedge, but you couldn’t tell where it was; had we known we could have scoped it for evidence of doughnuts....

So, with two birds under the belt that I hadn’t seen in 2011, we carried on to Cley for the Western Sand, which showed immediately, though much further away than last month, which was a shame as it meant I couldn’t get any colour on it all. It still reminded me of a small Dunlin though, in the same way that Semi-Ps don’t. Next stop Salthouse, the target being coffee from the man with the miniature coffee van who can regularly be found at the beach carpark and makes excellent and extremely reasonably-priced coffee – Starbucks take note – a superb coffee in fantastic surroundings for £1.25. As I waited for the brewing process to complete, and looked longingly at the box of biscuits, a shout came from the beach - “Glauc!” Hawky, as is seemingly normal, had done it again. Coffee in hand, he had wandered up the shingle bank and the first bird he had clapped eyes on was a first winter Glaucous Gull flying past. We all scrambled up the slope to make sure we got on this “beauty” before it disappeared out of sight, but happily it landed on the sea, caught a seal, and then came and sat on the beach to eat it. Other punters weren’t so lucky – we had phoned the news out straight away, and this being North Norfolk in early January, birders began to arrive thick and fast, but not fast enough. The gull polished off the seal in under five minutes and then continued its journey east, I think we were the only people to see it, which was a shame.

Pleased with this, as well as a bonus Snow Bunting we had kicked up on the shingle whilst trying to get closer to the gull, we turned back west towards Wells. A quick scan of the Brent flock on the pitch and putt course bagged one of the Black Brants as well as a Pale-bellied, and following up news of a Rough-legged Buzzard in the Holkham area, we were not surprised to pick it up from the car. A convenient layby appeared and we all rapidly bailed out (to the extent really fat people can get out of vehicles quickly). It was a partically leucistic bird, with extremely pale upperparts, and for a while I remained unconvinced that it wasn’t a funny Common Buzzard, but luckily the tail pattern was seen. Rough-leg was another species I hadn’t seen in 2011, annoyingly racked-up only a few days after it’s all over. Shows quite how bizarre year-listing is, or more accurately, how bizarre not year-listing is. Had I been year-listing, presumably I would have made sure to be in Norfolk a few days earlier...

The real target of the day, for me at least, was the Coue’s Arctic Redpoll at Titchwell. I had never seen this sub-species, or maybe that’s “variation on the Redpoll scale”. The initial signs were not good, cars parked all the way along the entrance track, and barely any room in the carpark. It was clearly going to be one of those afternoons. The usual comedy of watching a tricky bird with masses of other people at Titchwell ensued, but I got superb scope views of the bird as it fed with both Mealy (or what I’d call a Mealy at any rate), and a bunch of standard Lessers. The bird on Shetland in 2011 had initially been called as a Coue’s, and on first impression, I’d say that that bird looked whiter, but Redpolls are a lesson in the need for close (very close!) observation and attention to detail - as multiple previous failings have taught me - and gradually I built up a picture of the bird at Titchwell which I am pretty happy with. It might not be a tick, and indeed Redpolls could go the other way and lose me a tick or two, but it was a great bird. Needless to say, I hadn’t seen Arctic Redpoll in 2011.....

Buoyed by this success, I decided to leave the masses and walk down to the beach. There was, however, no avoiding the masses – I have never seen the place so busy. The need for year-tickage dominated though, so we stuck it out ‘til the bitter end, ‘til we had scooped up all available new birds, including two Scaup, yet another 2011 miss. What on earth was happening – that was the fifth bird I hadn’t seen in 2011, scooped up with no hassle whatsoever. The sea held two Whooper Swans, clearly also fed up with the number of people, not including us, on the reserve, a single Velvet Scoter, and perhaps a thousand Common Scoter about a mile out to sea all flying round in a huge circle, literally a ring. Any ideas why, as I have never seen anything like it. Maybe they're all feeling a bit fat from just bobbing about on the sea, and so this is their version of the January exercise regime.

We finished up at Flitcham, where I am happy to report that I dipped Little Owl. That really would have taken the biscuit, but the trees were empty. Instead we jammed a ringtail Hen Harrier, before heading back to London on 90 species. I’m not year-listing – I never do – but my records tell me that this is my best start ever. Not to worry though, I have high hopes of fading fast.

A good list and a good soaking

2012-01-01T21:16:00.000Z

I didn't even make it to midnight last night. At about 10pm, yawning my head off, I looked at Mrs L and asked why exactly we were planning on staying up for another pointless two hours? Let's face it, we're not young any more, so we went to bed. I vaguely recall some fireworks (not those kind of fireworks....) that probably indicated midnight, but I didn't even open my eyes to check.

This nice long sleep meant I actually managed to get out of bed at 7am, some three hours earlier than I seem to have managed for about a week. By 7.30 I was on the patch, and I birded it 'til dusk, which I have not done for a very very long time. And you know what? It was great, absolutely brilliant - until it started to rain, which it did, very heavily, until dusk. I actually deserve some kind of patch-birding medal, as at the point it started raining I was about five minutes from home, and I could very easily have gone back, especially as I had just scored Firecrest and had equalled my January 1st daylist from last year. In the event, I pulled on my waterproofs and went round the patch again.

So how did I do? Well, I wanted 60, which I thought was more than doable, and I ended up blowing it out of the water by a huge margin. My sixty-second and final species was a Collared Dove in a housing estate on the edge of the park, which had somehow eluded me all day. But back to the beginning, might as well draw it out....

I met Nick near Jubilee just after first light, and Tim joined us quite soon afterwards. By then we were on about 20 species. Jubilee added around eight or nine entirely expected birds, and then came something rather special. Tim and I picked up a raptor overheard going west, the shape seemed familiar....Peregrine! Presumably one of the Stratford birds, but even though that's only just around the corner, for some reason we hardly ever see them - this sighting was only my ninth in six years - well, seven now. A great start, and then almost the very next bird was a good one too, a Great Black-backed Gull heading in the same direction.

"homage a Dave Mo"

We continued over the road, adding Kestrel, Skylark and a few others, and then whilst Nick went off for coffee (and excelled himself by also sourcing bacon butties), Tim and I grilled the enormous number of Gulls sitting on the playing fields. First up was either the same Common Gull with very dark streaking on the head that I saw about a month ago, or if not, a very similar one. I'll look at the photos side by side another time, right now I'm a bit gulled-out. We counted at least 30 Lesser Black-backed, about 15 Herring Gulls, and had been looking through them for at least five minutes when I suddenly noticed that slap bang in the middle of them was this:

How on earth you miss a Great Black-backed I have no idea, they're not exactly inconspicuous, but somehow we had looked through it. We eagerly scanned through them again, in case we had also missed Med, Yellow-legged, Ring-billed, Franklin's or Pallas's... but we hadn't, and so continued, refuelled, to the Alex, there to add Greylag, Tuftie and a bonus Teal. A quick search of scrub netting a Greenfinch, and then we headed off to the Park. Reed Bunting, a miss on the Flats, was notched up in the Old Sewage Works, as was Sparrowhawk, but our hopes of a clean sweep were dashed when we couldn't find Snipe, Bullfinch or Little Egret - the OSW is about the only place for them.

Tim (l), Nick (r)

By now about lunchtime, it was off to the Tea Hut for refreshments. As expected, Crufts was in full swing, and there were so many people I had to queue to get the teas in, which allowed Nick to scoop a Kingfisher behind my back, a feat he later repeated on the Roding. Firecrest in Bush Wood was next on the list, via a flock of Redpolls (24 Mealy, 1 Arctic), and on the way we bumped into Paul D, who had just dipped them. He came back with us, and whilst we all saw one, he dipped them again. At this point it began to rain, perhaps to coincide with Paul's mood. Tim, who lives near me, cut his losses and went home for some lunch, and Paul wandered back to the park. A crossroads loomed. Back home for lunch, like Tim, or waterproofs on, and over the Ornamental Waters via the Basin. Thoroughly soaked, and having just missed Kingfisher #2, I wondered if I had made the wrong decision. Arriving at the OSW again, I turned for home. Nick decided he would take one more quick spin around the area. Knowing what would happen, I turned back and came with him. And what a decision that turned out to be! We had gone less than two-hundred yards when five Bullfinches flew out of a Hawthorn, and the Little Egret was hunched up on the Roding! Leaving the site, a Chiffie called a couple of times, and the walk back home produced the Collared Doves. 62 species! Stonking. Of course that's me done until the first Wheatear turns up, but nonetheless an intensely satisfying day, and well worth a good soaking.

2011: The Year in Review

2011-12-31T17:45:00.011Z

So here we are once again, in a seemingly all too quick repeat of 2010

2012 Goals
Professional Goals
- I am employed, which is more than I was this time last year. What more can I ask for? Oh, perhaps that I remain employed. The climate is still treacherous in my chosen industry, but for now, I shall make hay while the sun shines.

Personal Goals
- To actually go birding. Just a bit. Pretty please.
- To win the coveted Golden Mallard, worth at least fifty quid. If I win it, I'm going to sell it.
This past year I had no birding goals at all. This resulted in me seeing a Short-toed Treecreeper, so a fat lot of use that was. Maybe I need to be more specific? I shall not twitch stupid birds just because they are ticks. How about that? Would I stick to it? What do you think?

Best Birding Moment
It has been a pretty fabulous year. I already gave best bird award to the Cory's Shearwater (here), so I need to choose something else. If you recall, there were a couple of contenders, so I think that day on Scilly, when we went over on a day trip expecting to see a Solitary Sandpiper (dull) and dipped it, but instead came away with a Black-and-White Warbler and a Bee-eater that showed so well that my photo of it made it into Birding World. Rounding the corner of one of those narrow Scilly lanes up near Maypole to ask a couple of guys what they were looking at... well, what can you say? Those that were with me can testify to the rapture. A great moment.

But was it better that the exhausted Jack Snipe on Shetland that was oblivious to our presence, so much so that it walked over my hand? A common bird perhaps, but certainly a moment that I will remember for a very long time indeed. I mean it walked over my hand. Not around my hand, or around me, but over me. I doubt I'll ever have anything like that happen again.

And let's not forget the Sandhill Crane that, with impeccable timing, decided to grace the area around Loch of Strathbeg for precisely the few days that I was on my way up to Shetland with an eight hour lay-off in Aberdeen. Arriving at the airport I hustled to a hire car and an hour later was stood on the edge of a field watching this stonking rarity, which of course was all the sweeter for knowing that my mates were either already on Shetland, grimacing, or stuck down in London. Boy did I feel smug, which is of course what birding is all about.

Best UK Trip
Hmmm, not like I've been anywhere, is it? The Waterthrush was ace, but it is the previous trip to Scilly that I remember more. Yes, the Bee-eater one again. Oh, and the Black-and-White Warbler. Did I mention those already? Possibly. What about the Semi-P that came within six feet? No? Well, what about the incredible sea-watch off Pendeen with double figures of Sabine's Gulls and double figure of Grey Phalaropes? Somewhat of a glorious weekend by anybody's standards, including my very low ones. Yes, that gets my vote. Me, Bradders and Crofty on a fly-by-night expedition to the south-west, utterly exhausting, but top notch birding that makes Cornwall seem not too far away at all.....

Best Bird
Two words. Cory's and Shearwater. Magnificent.

Worst Bird
Easy. Short-toed Treecreeper. A boring brown excuse for a bird that could not possibly have been worth the £25 of diesel that it cost me to twitch it. For day one of its stay I was adament - I was not going, end of story. I willed it to die overnight, but it didn't, and so by day three, or maybe even day two (I have no shame) I found myself tootling across to Landguard to place a meaningless tick against it. OK, so I saw it well, well enough to photograph the steps in the wingbar, but seriously, who am I kidding? Pathetic.

Worst UK Trip
Most pleasingly, a very tough one this year. No stupid single-day twitches to the north-east, no nightmare walks down Blakeney Point. So that being the case, it has to be said that Shetland was disappointing, especially given the highs of last year. It was good, lots of decent bird, but it couldn't live up to the previous year. The weather, almost constantly westerly, was never going to produce much; that any eastern birds got through at all was a miracle. There was far too much plantation-bashing for birds that were patently non-existent, and we should have cut our losses and gone to the pub, or at least not been quite so relentless. Self-finding rarities is all well and good, but in truth we didn't stand a chance on the forecast we had, and my desire for continued flogging of habitat that had no birds in it unfortunately did not match that of Bradders. I tried to talk sense into him, but he was having none of it; consequently it was extremely hard work. Then again, I think that to appreciate Shetland, you have to realise that it can't be like 2010 every year, and if you go, you're taking a big gamble. Mine did not pay off, and the good birds were literally either side of my trip. Some you win, some you lose. I'm definitely going back - when it's good it's phenomenal.

Best Foreign Trip
Easy-peasy. Not that I have many trips to choose from, but the February trip to the Baltics was awesome. Cold, but awesome. I have never experienced cold like it, and my clearest memory, other than ending up at forty-five degrees with what was left of the car in a snow-drift, is of walking early one morning from the car to a ferry terminal. It was only about two-hundred yards, so I didn't bother with gloves. Oh. My. God. I felt my hands beginning to die after about twenty paces, it was the most extraordinary feeling. It was, I think, minus twenty-six centigrade, plus (or minus again) whatever the wind was doing. A superb trip, not huge numbers of birds, but most of the targets bagged in some stunning scenery. We felt truly pioneering.

Best Domestic Moment
An improved performance this year, but I was fairly proud of hosting a tea-party for all of Muffin's friends and mothers. I am almost the lone bloke in the playground, so this was quite a coup, or so it felt. I managed to get (and keep) the house tidy, and produce a passable meal of various bits and pieces. I deferred the cake-making to Mrs L, but other than that it was all my own work, and nobody died. Or at least not that I noticed.

Worst Domestic Moment
Usually I have more choice here that any other category. Let me pop downstairs and ask Mrs L what she thinks - I failed to ask this last year and possibly therefore denied you the full and awful truth.

Right, I'm back, and do you know what, the woman is stumped! Yup, for the first time ever, she can't think of anything that I have foulded up. Hah! How about that then? Mind you, I did ask her what the worst one was; presumably she could rattle off dozens of minor incidents, but nothing particularly stands out as being especially bad. So, can I think of anything?

No, I can't. This must mean that I am now, after three years, a fully-fledged Domestic God. Well thank goodness for that. A long winding road, a few hiccups, but we started at five, we're still five, and all four walls are still standing. Shame then that I am now back at work. The garden has gone to wrack and ruin, and the lawn is now an attractive mesh of mud and moss, but hey, I'm always looking at the sky, so what does it matter?

Most Amusing Photograph
This is a photo of Jos sea-watching in Estonia. The weather was so severe that we very nearly dipped the sea entirely, but when we finally managed to get to it, it was one of those great feelings. We had found the sea, it was time to sea-watch. From the sea.

No annual review should be without a pranged car it seems, so here is the offering from 2011. This was taken only a couple of hours after the sea-watching photograph above, and was most unfortunate. Our lovely Renault Laguna was never the same again, and though we made it back to our ferry, we then transferred to a Suzuki Shitter which was nowhere near as good. Though someone did manage to get caught speeding in it....

So, another year done. What will the next one bring?
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Ooh the tourniquet!

2011-12-31T10:08:00.003Z

I have cracked and bought a smart phone. It is considerably smarter than me. It has a special keyboard wave swipe your fingers around that is why the title of this piece is like a rubber band excitement. It also has voice recognition of assault. So get ready for many unintelligible future blog posts.

Wait for it......the Patch

2011-12-29T19:31:00.000Z

A top-class hangover meant I needed to get out. Even though I risked potentially getting a patch year tick, there was nothing for it, I needed air. I figured Wanstead Flats was less likely to produce anything than the Park, whose lakes and ponds might have harboured some goodie like a Smew or a Goosander, so that's where I went. Happily I was quite correct in my assessment, and beyond twenty thousand Woodpigeons, there was nothing doing. Until I started looking through the Gulls. With no other birds to speak of, it was only a matter of time before my eyes were drawn to the large conglomoration of white-coloured things sat on the playing fields...

Hang on a minute - that one looks a bit odd. With only 7x bins on todays outing, I had a horrible feeling I was looking at a White Winger, albeit a small one. I shuffled closer. Still looking pretty white-winged. Closer still....Yes!!! Er, hmmm, er, yes, er very nice. Grrrrrr....

Definitely white-winged!

But that initial view was unfortunately about as exciting as it got

I eventually tracked it down to a goal post.

Yuk.

Hanging On!

2011-12-29T10:56:00.000Z

Two pieces of good news. The first is that I survived Christmas without any kind of Mr Creosote incident, and am now back on the path of virtue and slimming. The second is that the Firecrests also survived, and are apparently very much looking forward to making an appearance on my January 1st day list. At least that's what I assume all the squeaking meant.

So how was Christmas for you? Whilst my children received veritable mountains of gifts, I received one solitary present - from my sister - a field guide to the birds of West Africa. Before you go thinking that she is some kind of genius (though she is, I must admit, fairly smart), this was at my suggestion. Not that I have any firm plans to visit Western Africa, but I am extremely partial to leafing through foreign field guides and dreaming of the day that I will at last visit. Also on the shelf at the moment are various tomes covering Trinidad and Tobago and the greater West Indies. One day, one day....

Birding abroad is brilliant, bloody brilliant. You can take nothing for granted, even your ears count for nothing. It is birding at its rawest, its most intimate. You rely on sight, and nothing else. I rarely go abroad purely for birding, there is more often than not an ulterior motive, so usually I don't even take a scope - luggage is at a premium, bins is all I have. So I have to get close. Very close. I take my time, there is no urgency. And so it is back to basics, how birding should be - no preconceptions, nothing taken for granted. It also helps that foreign birds simply love having cameras shoved in their faces, whereas British birds dive for cover at the slightest hint of a long lens. Now that I am gainfully employed once again, though for how long I cannot say, I am looking forward to being able to go on a few jaunts abroad. Whether it will be Western Africa, or whether I'll build up to that, I have no idea. But right now the mere thought of being somewhere warm and filled to the brim with colourful and extremely photogenic birds is getting me through the holiday season.

The Patch List Challenge

2011-12-23T14:17:00.000Z

I am a patch worker. I have always been a patch worker. Twitcher? Maybe a bit, maybe more than a bit lately. There is an undeniable thrill about seeing an extremely rare bird, especially one that your mates haven’t seen. The travelling part is what does my head in. As part of a longer trip, say a weekend away, I can cope with a bit of car time, but the mad dashes, rushed views and then piling back into the car I can do without. A weekend trip, albeit planned at very short notice, where you score the bird in question first thing and then have essentially two whole days of relaxed birding in front of you, they can be really good. Often though, that isn’t possible. Various commitments get in the way, and so if you’re going to see a bird, you’ve got a very limited window.

On the patch there is rarely that worry, and even a fifteen minute visit can be rewarding. I’m fortunate in that I live literally next to the patch – I can be counting birds on my patch list as soon as I’m out of the front door. This past year has seen me eclipse my previous best year by some margin. For a while I thought I might not make three figures, but I needn’t have worried. Some fine autumn migrants saw me slip past that particular hurdle, and before I knew it I had equalled my previous best of 108. A late flurry of winter quality, including garden Crossbill and Brambling, and then the memorable and invisible Oystercatcher, and I had chalked up a new record. Time to wheel out those laurels and have a well-deserved rest on them methinks.

Not so! Enter the Patch List Challenge! The theory is quite simple, thrash your patch day after day and you could win the coveted Golden Mallard, worth, I am told, at least fifty quid on Ebay. How could I resist, the thought of that gem of pure quality gracing my mantelpiece....I had to enter! In order to even things out between those lucky so and sos who bird blinding coastal patches, you’re competing only against yourself – you need to beat the average of your three previous yearlists. The patch worker who has the highest percentage versus that number wins the duck. It was unfortunate that this year’s patch total was my highest ever and thus bumped up the average, but as soon as I decided to enter I stopped going on the patch and closed my eyes whenever I went near a window. Not that I have had any time anyway, meagre daylight (though I enjoyed my extra minute yesterday) and work have essentially killed off any patch-working ambitions these past three months. But if I can get myself back into the groove of birding before work in the spring months, I could be a contender! Hopefully it will be a laugh, and though I have only actually met one of the entrants, they all seem eager to take the piss and generally muck about, which is one of the things I particularly enjoy about birding. Don’t take it, or yourself, too seriously.

I’m eagerly awaiting January 1^st 2012. My spreadsheets are primed and ready, and my mental list of ticks is at the forefront of my mind. Last year Nick and I managed 56 species, this year I’m aiming for 60. The only thing that’s going to stop me is rain. Or if it’s a bit cold. Or windy. Or.....

Gluttony

2011-12-21T16:09:00.001Z

The average UK glutton is set to consume somewhere around 6500 calories over the course of Christmas Day, or so I overheard on the radio. That’s the equivalent of 23 Mars Bars. Can you imagine that many Mars Bars on a plate in front of you? Can you imagine eating them all, even across several sittings? I couldn’t even do that with Doubledeckers. Grotesque, yet many of us will nonetheless eat and eat and eat on Christmas Day. A handful of peanuts here, an enormous portion of Turkey here, and don’t forget those delicious mini-sausages wrapped in bacon.....

I’ve been noticing that I have become slightly more rotund (than usual) of late. Pictures at some Christmas drinks showing approximately eighteen chins convinced me that I needed to know quite how bad it was. Shortly afterwards I bought some bathroom scales. We have not had any bathroom scales since the children broke them about two years ago. They denied it of course, blaming that perennial scamp Notme, responsible for most acts of destruction and vandalism at Chateau L. I stepped on the scales, and once I’d shifted my enormous gut to one side, peered down at the dial. Assuming some kind of mistake, I stepped off, confirmed it was at zero, and got on again. Then I got off again, and lay down on the floor to check it was level. It was. With a sense of dread I got on again. Modesty prevents me from sharing the number, but Notme has a lot to answer for. I am heavier than I have ever been.

Buying a set of scales two weeks before Christmas was perhaps very foolish, or perhaps very sensible. It opens up two very distinct avenues of thought. One is that I will take it easy over Christmas and refuse all delicacies, which would be very sad. The second is that I will gorge myself senseless as usual, and along with the rest of the population start a new regime at the beginning of January. This is known as the cop-out option. I’ve not yet decided what I’m going to do. The house is currently filled to the rafters with nice things. Cheese, cold meats, nuts, biscuits, and we are never short of something to drink. I am not sure I have the willpower, which is presumably what got me into this predicament in the first place.

Mrs L has also had a go on the scales. Self-preservation prevents me from divulging any details, but she too was shocked. Pregnancy saves her from the ignominy of a new personal best, but she has agreed that buying the scales, whilst sad, was a good thing. The scales are the old fashioned sort with a dial, the primary measurement being Stones and Pounds, so it’s also helping the children get to grip with fractions. Muffin is particularly good at fractions, as he showed when Mrs L stepped off the scales looking miserable. “Well?”, I said. “Something and a half” she replied. “.....”and three-quarters!” a small voice chimed in. I know who I believe! Err, Mrs L, obviously.

Almost exactly a week after buying the scales, I have failed to shed a single pound, which is indicative of the cop-out route being taken. Hmmm. To add insult to injury, yesterday I had lunch with two former colleagues. We had not seen each other for a few years, and so naturally the conversation turned to how much fatter each one of us was than the other. Many years ago, when all working in the same team, we started a weight-loss competition. Inspired by another colleague’s tales of extreme weight-loss via means of a beetroot, tuna and egg diet which culminated in him collapsing on a train, we agreed to a weekly public weigh-in, and clubbed together to buy a set of scales which were kept under my desk. Any week-on-week rise was chargeable, with the proceeds going towards a bumper blow-out lunch when the competition was over. I remember that lunch to this day.

Being much younger than we are now, and far more immature hem hem, our weekly weigh-in was keenly contested, with all sorts of random chocolate items mysteriously appearing on co-competitors’ desks in the run up to the appointed time. The critical thing was not to go up. But as each week set the bar lower, you did not want to lose too much weight in a week that would then see you put some or all of it back on the following week, and thus have to cough up. This led to all sorts of shenanigans, such as tactical water-drinking immediately before the weigh-in, and on one occasion an emergency haircut. Being technically and analytically-minded, we kept a running spreadsheet, and I discovered yesterday that one of the guys still had it. It dates back to 2004, when I was still in my twenties, and very happily the password was still “domisfat”, Dom being one of the three competitors. Remarkably, he is still approximately the same weight as he ended up in 2007, which was when our competition finally ran out of steam, whereas I am in a different league. Perhaps the Sekitori league.... Anyway, he only ever gained weight over those three years, and was a major contributor to the lunch. He had some minor victories, but overall the line went only in one direction. Mine on the other hand was all over the place. Over those three years my weight varied by 23 pounds, but the start and end points are exactly the same, so an entirely pointless exercise. I can see that during the first week of March 2007 I lost 6lbs, and another 3lbs the week after that. The week after that required a pay-out!

We’re now talking about starting the spreadsheet again. The intervening four years have not been kind to me, to the extent that we would actually need to increase the range scale on the Y-axis. A large vertical line would ensue, and I would need to lose almost fully 3 stone to get back to my lowest ever point on the graph. Hugely embarrassing, and highly motivating. How I ever allowed myself to fall so comprehensively off the wagon I don’t know. Age plays a part, but I see plenty of people my age who are thin, so I am coming to the inescapable conclusion that I have a thyroid problem. This is hugely relieving, as no doubt it is for many fat people. Yup, that’s right, I have a medical condition. It’s definitely not related to the fact that I eat too much and do no exercise. Glad we cleared that up.

My timing is impeccable - look what I found today on the BBC!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16275027

I sent it to Mrs L. She replied that she loves me. Both of me.

The 2011 Year List that I didn't do

2011-12-17T20:53:00.000Z

Regular readers will know I bang on about year-listing quite a lot. This year however I didn't bang on about it quite as much. Shocking though it may sound, I didn't do one. No, really. The year I really did one was 2009. It was fun at the beginning, awful close to the end, and then quite fun again at the very end. The angst of dipping my eighth-seventh Wryneck, not to mention the absurdity of the price of fuel, convinced me that it would be foolish to do another one, so in 2010 I took it nice and easy, and it was only when I returned from a monumental week on Shetland that I changed my mind, and drove some pointless miles to see birds I'd seen plenty of before. Three hundred, that magical number in the UK year-listing stakes, certificate-worthy no less (no, I didn't), fell just over two frenetic weeks later, and I breathed a long sigh of hypocrital relief. Then I went to Cornwall. And then Devon. And then Manchester....

This year, I was determined that there would be none of this stupidity, none of this weakness. As such, I started out with no goals, no predetermined targets. I will see what I see, I said. My love-hate relationship with twitching also started off at a new low, though a Lesser White-fronted Goose on Jan 2nd tells another story. Largely I have stuck true to my word, though why I deemed a trip to Landguard for a Short-toed Treecreeper necessary I really have no idea - the one trip, which despite the tick, I still feel embarrassed about. Rubbish, and then some. As the year progressed, I became progressively more twitchy, which culminated in not one but two trips to Scilly, finally paying me back for an entire week in 2009 where all I saw was a crappy Radde's Warbler.

I have of course, despite any protestations to the contrary, been keeping a year list all along. Well, not keeping one as such, but at any point in the year I could have told you how many. Does that count as not keeping one? I think it does. Anyhow, I reckon the year's birding is basically done, and so I am proud (er, maybe) to be able to announce that my 2011 year list is on a whopping 271. This strikes me as quite a lot, particularly given my stated intentions, for it puts my just outside the top ten on Bubo, and if you look at what I have not seen, I suspect I could very easily sneak in. I won't of course, I can't be bothered, but it does show that if you twitch a few things, and it doesn't have to be very many, your incidental count of birds will be surprisingly high.

I twitched about twenty birds this year, and dipped just one - an extremely uncooperative (though previously highly cooperative) Great Snipe at Cley. By the time I got there, it was bored of all the tape recordings and had buggered off to the far side of the marsh, where it remained until after I left. Such is life, but on the whole my approach to twitching is so tempered in sensibleness that I very rarely dip. This is great, as dipping sucks. It means I'll never have the enormous list that those who drop everything at the slightest hint of a possible have, but it ensures an almost one hundred percent happy outcome.

So, 271 birds, and very nice they were too. More interesting is what I didn't see. Birds you would think would be absolute gimmes that any birder worth his salt would see at least once a year. Here is the roll of shame.

Black-throated Diver, Little Auk, Long-eared Owl, Bewick's Swan, Scaup, Grey Partridge, Turtle Dove, Little Owl, Dipper, Willow Tit, Water Pipit.

MISSING

I mean how can you bird for an entire year and not see a Little Owl? Pfffff. There are oodles of them about. Wanstead is bracketed by them, with regular birds in Walthamstow and in the Ingrebourne Valley. Somehow I've managed to avoid seeing one all year, I'm not sure how. And I could go and see a Water Pipit tomorrow in all likelihood, less than 15 miles from home, but I just can't drum up the enthusiasm. Oh well. That little lot would have seen me clear 280. I've also not done my traditional dash around Scotland, so no Ptarmigan, Caper, Black Grouse, or Crested Tit. Also no Eagles. Approaching 290. Add in the Hoopoes, Rose-coloured Starlings and Wrynecks (!) of this world, things like Rough-legged Buzzard and Red-necked Grebe, Corncrake and Quail, and you're on the cusp of 300 yet again. There isn't really a great deal of difference between a normal year list, and a perceived big year list. I wonder what all the fuss is about?

For the curious

2011-12-13T20:29:00.000Z

Once upon a time I showed you the interior of my fridge. I have no idea why. I suspect that it had been a quiet day on the birding front, and so in another "filler" move, I picked something random, which at that point in time was a broken fridge and a nice shiny replacement. Today is another such quiet day.....but I have nothing quite as interesting as a new fridge. So in a truly barrel-scraping move, I'm blogging about where it all happens.

Here is my desk. This is where I sit for hours on end, blogging. Oh, and lately, working. In fact, it's mostly working. The computer used to be in the kitchen, so I sat there. With the need to lock myself away in order to concentrate on vast Regulatory Capital spreadsheets, I moved it upstairs. This necessitated turning the whole house upsidedown, and turfing my youngest daughter out of her bedroom under the guise that bunkbeds are really cool. Yes, that old chestnut. We're also calling it a guestroom, as in addition to the desk, we shoved a double bed in there. In fact, bar a personal toilet and the lack of Sky TV, it is remarkably like a prison cell: it is small and cramped, and I spend most of my daylight hours confined in there. Seeing as it is my new abode, in that I do literally live in there - here - I thought I would show you what it's like.

First of all, the desk, with my increasing ancient PC on it, complete with relevant advertising for the purposes of this post. You will note how squished the cushion is - the reason for that is peeking out from behind the monitor - a 150g bag (that's a big one) of Waitrose hand-cooked Texan BBQ flavour crisps. I opened them yesterday, but not even I could finish them in one sitting. I've put that right today of course, but this is very very bad. Crisps are my downfall. I am not a chocolate person, bar the very occasional Double-decker, but crisps, oh dear. I could easily eat four packets of Walkers in one go, one after the other. I discovered this packet whilst looking for kitchen roll, a huge bonus. I think I completed whatever task the kitchen roll was destined for, but I can't be absolutely certain - it's entirely possible I just sat down on the floor immediately and got to work on the crisps. Also visible is what is left of breakfast - I really should eat breakfast in a nice and relaxed manner downstairs somewhere, but it's a habit I can't get out of. If I'm working, I'm also eating. I mean, not all the time (well, perhaps most of the time....), but I have this complusion to eat meals whilst tapping away. I was always like this in the office, and somehow it has come home too.

The next photo shows my view. Not that see it much, I am always pointed at the computer screen, but if I swivel to my right, this is what I see. Try and ignore the curtains, they're the previous owners'....So, I can see the tops of my neighbours' houses, and a small strip of sky. Sky! Sky-watching? Not really. So far the only birds I've seen from this fairly rubbish vantage point have been Pigeons, Jackdaws, Crows, Black-headed Gulls, Common Gulls, a Lesser Black-backed Gull, a Blue Tit - actually this is sounding rather another list...... Anyhow, listing aside, there is a pair of bins stashed strategically on the window sill - porros that are of no use whatsoever outside. They're placed there deliberately - out of reach. They are but a short leap across the bed if required, but it's best not to have the constant temptation. Next to them is my beloved radio, which I listen to constantly. Radio 2 is the station of choice, perfect for my middle-aged middle-of-the-road tastes. It's tuned in almost all of the time, except from 12-2pm, where if it was tuned to the Jeremy Vine show it would quickly get thrown out of the window in response to the biggoted dullards that phone in every day. I either flip to Radio 4 then, or if I have time, try and find an interesting SW station, ideally in a foreign language with some quality twangy regional music. If there's a test match on, it's on 198 LW. Obviously. In the corner is a nice plant. All rooms in this house have plants in, most more than one, and this one is called a Metallica Palm, Chamaedorea metallica, a relative of the Parlour Palm that the Victorians were besotted with, but more interesting and better able to live in a low-light, low-humidity atmosphere, in case you were interested. And finally, no room would be complete without a life-size King Penguin stuffed toy, so we've put one of those in there too.

Failure and Reflection

2011-12-12T21:36:00.000Z

On Sunday, I was definitely going out birding. Definitely. After being stuck indoors all on Saturday, I was going out, end of. I woke up just before nine, and looked out of the window. A bit grey. Hmm. I was out by ten, but only as far as the car - destination Southend Pier to take lots of point blank photographs of Turnstones and stuff. By 10:30 I had got as far as Pitsea, by which time it was greyer still and raining. I abandoned the Southend Plan, and instead went shopping for outdoor gear that would be ideal in this kind of weather, and which is, as I type, still lying in a bag on my bed, as outside the rain lashes against the window and I feel nothing but happiness that I am inside, dry and warm.

I love buying outdoor stuff, I just go through periods when I have little or no inclination to go outdoors and actually use it. I'm in the middle of one right now, though the end of it is surely less than a few weeks away. Typically today has been nice and sunny again. I did look out of the window a couple of times and wish for my old life back, but then the phone rang or something and I had to get back to it. So instead of actual birding, let's just reflect on a couple of favourite moments from this past year. Yup, you got it, a filler, pure and simple. Usually I do this in one post on the cusp of the New Year; this year I may not get time, so perhaps best to spread it out a bit...

It has been a struggle to know what has been my favourite bird this year. There have been more than a few candidates: the magical moment as Bradders, Nick and I stood underneath the tangle of branches in Lower Moors looking up a Black-and-white Warbler mere feet away, it has to be said that was pretty special. We had come over for a Green Sandpiper lookalike, never dreaming that instead we would gazing at one of my favourite of all American wood warblers. Then, on the same island a few weeks later, the hectic sprint from Higgo's Project Pool to Shooters Pool, followed by twenty minutes of lapping up a Northern Waterthrush in the company of perhaps three other people. That too will live long in the memory. They might both be rare, but can they compete with rounding a corner to find a couple of guys looking over an old stone wall. What'ya looking at? Oh, just a Bee-eater. There is no such thing as just a Bee-eater. A Bee-eater!!!! And there it was, not an invisible call, not a distant flight view, not a soggy miserable-looking bird on a wire, but a glorious riot of colour sat in bright sunshine in a bare sapling about twenty feet away. A bird I had wanted to see for simply ages, falling in the best possible of circumstances. Utterly superb, but can it be trumped?

It can, by a far commoner bird, and another I had wanted to see for ages. Years, in fact. A bird which had dragged me down to Cornwall many times, but with which I had never connected. A bird which I had just seen six of, but distantly, and a bird which I thought probably only occured distantly. Then a shout from along the Lighthouse wall. "Cory's in the close Manx line!....coming over right rock....now!" And by golly it did, and by golly it was magnificent. None of this lolloping, lazy bowed-wing flight jizz, instead a Cory's that was serioulsy motoring. Dwarfing the Maxies, it absolutely sped past, leaving me and the rest of the crowd at Pendeen that day enthralled. God only knows quite how much I like sea-watching, and though I never spurn opportunities to mention Fea's Petrels, this was right up there..... but better. What a bird! What. A. Bird. In case I have not been clear, WHAT A BIRD!! If I had to vote for just one of these four top birding experiences, top moments of complete elation, I would have to hand it to that Cory's Shearwater. It, of course, has no idea quite how happy it made me, nor quite how often I think about it, wonder where in the vast ocean it now is, where it has been, and where it will go.

More Not Birding in Wanstead Today

2011-12-10T16:04:00.003Z

Today was Christmas Tree day. To say the children were over-excited was a bit of an understatement. They have been begging for one for weeks, roughly ever since Mrs L started playing Christmas carols in about mid-October. So yesterday, seeing as I was doing the school run in the good ship Eco One, we came back via Homebase, bought a tree and threw it on the roof-rack. Despite last year's disappointment, I found myself once again choosing a Nordmann Fir. I figure that seeing as it is a dead cert that it will scatter needles all over the place with every single minor vibration, I might as well get a tree whose needles don't jab painfully into your feet like tiny shards of glass. These ones are at least soft. I didn't really pay much attention to labels, other than scoffing at the trademarked "needlefast" bit. I just selected a tree that would look nice in the bay window, and hauled it to the till. The till rang up an eye-watering and wallet-busting £45. Surely some mistake, I only had one tree, not three. But no, Christmas in Norway comes earlier than elsewhere it seems, and Harald and his merry men must be laughing as they sup their £25 pints of festive Aquavit. I did not tell the children how much Lego they could have had instead of this tree, nor how that Lego would bring lasting satisfaction, unlike the tree, which is destined for the local tip in about three weeks. Upon arriving home, I stashed it carefully in the back garden for the night, and hoped that the foxes wouldn't piss on it like they do everything else. Everything was ready.

The foxes, I am happy to report, have not ruined Christmas, and our front room now smells of pine, rather than anything else. Rapt with delight, three small faces beamed up at me as I lugged it in from the garden. A few snips to release it from the netting, and there it was in all it's £45 magnificence. It is on the 6ft side of the 6-7ft quoted on the label, but the children are happy, and that is the main thing. The decorations were retrieved from the loft, and we were off. Joy of joys, the lights worked first time. This is about the tenth year in a row that this has been the case, and is nothing short of a miracle. When I was a child, the two weeks leading up to Christmas were spent unscrewing and screwing back in tiny little bulbs in a vain effort to find which of the 300,000 was causing the other 299,999 to fail. Not so with modern lights it appears, plug in and away you go. Christmas music on the stereo, and the scene is set.

As you can probably guess, I have not been birding today. I have to admit it did look nice outside, but I decided that I would prefer to stay indoors and drink tea. I need to be kicked out. This happens from time to time, my urge to bird the patch diminishes to nothing. Then, finally, I drag myself out and really really enjoy it. I'm almost there. Perhaps tomorrow. Sorry if you came here wanting birds, but don't despair, January the first is just around the corner. Then it will be hell for leather, with non-stop birdy talk, and the excitement that only a January Blue Tit can bring.

The End of Free Speech

2011-12-05T18:36:00.000Z

I really enjoy blogging. For starters I like writing, pretty much a prerequisite (imagine if you didn't, and were made to blog daily?!) I also like taking photos and boring people with them. Perfect. What started as an unadvertised toe-dip has morphed into what sometimes feels like an obligation. I'm approaching three years behind the keyboard, and amazingly still have not run out of things to say, though I reckon some people wish that I had. Perhaps I have a very active mind, but I find myself mentally composing blog posts at almost any time of day. Driving, shopping, commuting, you name it. I get home, and it just trips out, just as this one is now doing, for I have been thinking about it on and off all day, as well as part of yesterday. Often I have several thoughts on the go, so sometimes they become one horribly rambling post. Sometimes they stay separate, but many times they just go nowhere. Something else catches my attention, and so a 90% formed blog post about some tiny and meaningless aspect of my life gets cast by the wayside. Drivel that never was. And then sometimes, just very occasionally, I decide that I just cannot be bothered to write anything at all. Sometimes reader, you don't realise just how lucky you are.

When this happens, I wonder whether people will be disappointed? Whether my inconsistency will put people off? I read somewhere that the most successful blogs always post at the same time of day. Regular readers know when that is, go and check it, and hey presto there is the next installment. I am all too aware that it must be horribly frustrating to keep coming back to a photo of a strange-looking Common Gull for days on end. But that's just the way it is. The Fatbirder counter, shrouded in mystique though it undoubtedly is, is a chronic nag. Anything below 150 and I realise I must pull my socks up. The dizzy heights of double digits and I am in a frenzy of wishing to keep my spot. All ridiculous, but then when you think about it, that's blogging. Ridiculous. There are some blogs out there that actually serve a purpose, where you can actually learn stuff, guru Mattanganna's Birding Frontiers perhaps being the best example, but by far the majority are waffle. Padding. This blog is padding par excellence. I am gratified that people continue to read it.

I've never been much good on the stats element, I just forget to keep track. Every now and again I remember that there are stats, but because it will have been a couple months since I looked at them, I never really build up a picture. Instead I judge the success or failure of a post on comments. All bloggers LOVE comments. Don't pretend you don't. They are valediction for our efforts, and we relish their leaving. There are some blogs I read that within half an hour of having been posted have attracted thirty or more comments. Mrs L reads a knitting blog that is guaranteed to get over a hundred every single time. A few days ago one post had 634!! Were it me, I would read each and every one of them. Twice, probably. Luckily I don't have that problem. My average number of comments is about three. If you take my replies out, probably about 0.3, but nevermind, I love each and every one of them. Almost.

Although bloggers live for comments, there are some that I would gladly do without. I deleted one such comment just yesterday. Zapped it, just like that, which is what made me write this post. Normally I'd say that for the sake of free speech, people should be allowed to say what they like, generally it works better like that. As such I've never moderated comments - I don't review them before they get posted, they just go straight on, easier all round. But this particular comment has made me change my mind. There was no swearing, no abusive language, but the comment was left with the sole intention of belittling, and of winding me up. On this last part it has succeeded admirably. Naturally it was left by "Anon", they usually are. I read it, and my immediate thought was "You swine". I devote a great deal of time and energy to writing this, to trying to make it vaguely entertaining. I do it because I enjoy it, I am not so grand as to think I am providing any kind of service to the birding community. I do it for my own sake, I don't ask that anyone read it, though I am pleased when they do. And Anon, whoever you are, you see fit to post a snide, rude, very clearly designed-to-insult comment. For what reason exactly? I wish now that I had kept it, as I am struggling to remember exactly what it said, and it would help explain, but it's too late. Zap, gone. There might have been an element of sarcasm buried within it, but no amount of smilies would have made it benign. So now there is a new policy on comments. Until I start getting 634 per day, I'm going to moderate them, and I am only going to publish glowingly positive, gushingly feel-good ones.

Not really. I expect I'll wave most of them straight through, as many times the comments are far more interesting than the original post. They allow for discussion and the development of ideas, and they're often extremely amusing. But the anonymous 'grudge' ones like I got yesterday will be going precisely nowhere. I am currently preparing my vast ego for the inevitable decline in the number of comments that this will unfortunately result in. I suspect I'll cope.

Go West, Young Man!

2011-12-04T23:25:00.000Z

I had been sincerely hoping that no good birds would turn up this side of Christmas. Then "Just another Semi-p" at Cley turned into a Western Sandpiper. Bugger. I thought about it on Saturday morning, but elected to give it a miss, and then cracked that same evening. I am a fool. Plans, as they say, were hatched. These involved getting up very much in the dark, and driving there in a semi-broken car with Hawky. The car very nearly failed at Lakenheath, but we nursed it there, and nursed it back. Muffin came too. Presented yesterday afternoon with the choice of going birding with Daddy, or going to listen to Mummy sing, he chose the lesser of the two evils. Talk about presenting a kid with an impossible choice. So, he is now the proud ticker of a Western Sandpiper, something like the eighth for Britain. I figured that the next one would probably be further away than Norfolk, so that makes it almost a certainty for London. He also ticked the drake Green-winged Teal, a distinction he shared with Hawky, who, birding for a quarter of a century, has finally put his all-time bogey bird well and truly behind him. It was my fifth....

So, what did I think? You are no doubt itching to know, to be enlightened. Ah. Well, I've seen a couple of Semi-ps this year, and this I thought was different. Clearly a challenging bird, but it did not strike me a crouchy and creepy like the Drift bird. In fact, the Collins description of miniature Dunlin I thought was spot on. Only when it faced me directly did I get any hint of rufous in the scapulars, but then again it was a dull morning. Having read internet "chat", I was on the fence, but there is no substitute for actually seeing it. Having done so, and not just because it's the rarer one (that I need), I would be voting for Western. Tick and run.

Long-tailed Duck in London

2011-12-03T17:31:00.001Z

There is a Long-tailed Duck in Bromley, which is in Kent. Generally when it comes to Long-tailed Ducks in Kent, I could not care less. However Bromley, whilst in Kent, is also in London. Suddenly, I find that I do care. Not that much, as the bird has been there for over a week now, but every now and again I wonder if I should go see it. Then I think of the Blackwall Tunnel, and care less again. When it came up this morning, I decided it was now or never, and so piled the children into the car after lunch (Mrs L was out selfishly pursuing her own hobbies again rather than staying at home so that I can go look at birds, pah!)

I take my kids to all the nicest places....

London traffic being what it is, the 16 miles took just over an hour, and when we parked up we could see a muddy lane heading off into the trees. My research had been somewhat minimal, but seeing as it was the most likely option, and we had passed no ponds, we sauntered down there. Plenty of muddy puddles for one and all, including for a dumb son who had decided to wear trainers but did not want to be left out. They're drying on the radiator.

The path did indeed lead to a small pond, and on that pond, surrounded by Mallards, Coots, Little Grebes and a few Tufties was a very fine female Long-tailed Duck. Where it came from and what it is doing there, who can say? It passed the bread test, and in fact stayed right at the far end of the pond. This is of course the acid test with wildfowl. Nobody will actually ever know where it came from, so punters like me make up rules that can fairly easily be satisfied. We throw one tiny lump of bread in towards the nearest Mallard, which naturally snaffles it instantly, thus ensuring the target bird does not get a look in, and we make sure that we view from as far away as possible, and move if it swims towards us. Well, it behaved like a wild bird, we then say indignantly. Didn't show the slightest interest in bread..... And then we whack it on our lists. Triumphantly.

Which is what I have just done, and in doing so discovered that not only is it a London tick, but a Kent tick too! Double whammy. Actually, triple whammy, as unbelievably it gets better - a year tick! Good gracious, what a haul, what a tick-fest! Good thing I'm not year-listing! Well worth the two hours in the car. That's the trouble with London birding, small distances take forever. I don't mind going out to Rainham, or popping up to the Lea Valley Reservoirs, but as soon as a bird turns up south of the river, or, heaven forbid, south-west London, an involuntary groan escapes me. Why do I do it, I ask myself. It's stupid, I tell myself. Never was that worse than last year, when I was trying a London year list, but even now when the pressure is off, it's still a pain. Should I, shouldn't I, and so on. Anyway, 'tis done, and it's another one I won't have to schlep round to Staines or Wraysbury for. Local listing, for people with no concept of perspective.

They will thank me in years to come

Tired

2011-12-02T09:36:00.000Z

As expected, my memorable post about the heavily-streaked Common Gull went down like the proverbial lead balloon. Whether people are just too polite these days to point out my glaring lack of Gull skills, or whether they are too scared to offer even a heavily-caveated opinion on any Gull, well, who can say? It’s not like this blog is Birdforum is it? For starters it’s rarely about birds, despite the title conning you into thinking it might be. Actually you could say the same thing about Birdforum, which has a tendency to stray away from birds and instead be mainly about people and their diverse personalities.

Since I last spouted forth, I have been birding precisely once – a swift lunchtime visit to Bush Wood to help Hawky find the Firecrests. As it was, and entirely predictably, I was no help whatsoever - he found them himself, so I went back to work. Excellent. We saw four, which is really rather exciting. I remember twitching Bloomsbury Square in Central London early one morning before work to see my first Firecrest, one of those fond recollections of my youthful exuberance and general stupidity. Similar expeditions away from Wanstead were undertaken for Ring Ouzel, where I drove all the way to Hertfordshire, and also for Redstart, both of which we get every year without fail approximately five hundred yard from my front door. Mind you, I don’t suppose there is a birder out there who does not have similar tales from when they were first starting out, and that now induce a wry smile and spot of self-ridicule. It’s all about the journey, and for me, the silly moments rank right up there with past glories. Despite the oodles of Ring Ouzels present on the Flats since that date, I still treasure my mobile phone-scoped shot of that bird at the famous layby in Batford. I had driven at least an hour, and by some miracle found exactly the right spot. As I scanned down the hedge that separated two paddocks, it suddenly hopped out and began feeding on the grass. My heart skipped a beat, all my Christmases had come at once. A Ring Ouzel, a perfect, perfect male Ring Ouzel. Despite their relative frequency so close to home, they’re still a special bird for me. I’ve yet to get a decent photo of one though, they are some of the scarediest, sneakiest, flightiest birds I’ve ever come across. I’d planned to put that particular omission to bed this autumn, but there weren’t any, or at least not that I saw, as I had started work on exactly the date they tend to start coming through.

There was some internet speculation about whether it was true that I was now working. I can confirm that, sadly, it is indeed true. This blog started up in January 2009 as a hastily conceived “Oh a lot of people are doing that, I wonder if I can too?” kind of thing. About six weeks later I lost my job, so people who have read this or the column in Birdwatch will only ever have done so in the context of me being an unemployed layabout, home dad etc. Actually I worked extremely hard for many years, over ten in fact, in a large grey building in Canary Wharf. As of about eight weeks ago, I’m back in that same building. Birding opportunities have thus dropped off a cliff, and will only recover in Spring, when we get some morning daylight again, or when Greece and Italy collapse, whichever comes sooner. For the sake of my mortgage and desire to start shopping in Waitrose again, I’m hoping it’s the former.

I am finding that work is extremely tiring. It does not help, of course, that my domestic responsibilities remain unchanged. I’m still doing the school runs, still doing the domestic stuff, but the fact is that I am not twenty five any more, when I revelled in fourteen hour days, survived on about five hours sleep, and generally bounced around. I am now old. Old and tired. Two nights ago I had dinner with a friend after work, drank two very meagrely-sized beers, and arrived home at approximately 8pm. By 9pm I was tucked up in bed, and I was probably asleep before 10pm. Rock and Roll. I woke up at 7am. Nine hours sleep is almost unprecedented, but I yawned my way through the entire day at work, and at one point seriously considered taking a day off next week purely in order to stay in bed with my eyes closed. Then I realised that with children that’s basically impossible. There is no respite in sight until after Christmas, itself a shattering affair; by then I may have curled up and died. On the plus side, my new endeavours are bringing crusts to the family table, and buying an increasing number of bricks in the four walls that surround us, which after all is the whole point of human existence, isn't it? Maybe that's just what it seems like sometimes. I am consoling myself with thoughts of birding opportunities that with renewed financial health are now possible. Extramadura seems a likely spring destination, and there are fairly firm rumblings regarding Arctic Finland and Norway. A family expedition to somewhere warm in the New Year is also looking good, so who knows, maybe I will have something interesting to blog about in the not too distant future.

I wouldn’t count on it though.

Busy

2011-11-26T20:46:00.000Z

Been a bit busy of late. The week can be summarised in one word. Work. On the birding front there has been very little - one mid-week patch visit to see the Firecrests (all four of them), and a quick jaunt this morning out onto Wanstead Flats. You will be pleased to hear that Gull numbers are building up nicely - almost entirely Common and Black-headed, in about equal number. I have, of course, been forced to look at them. More fool me.

The other day this one caught my beady eye. It is clearly a Common Gull, but I think it's an Azorean Common Gull. Just look at that streaking! Any Azorean Y-L Gull would be proud to have streaking like that. The bird caught my eye from some way away, and immediately looked exciting. Being a closet Larophile (or should that be phobe?) I remembered having read about an eastern race of Common Gull, one field mark of which was extensive dark streaking on the head. Naturally I couldn't remember anything else about it, or even what is was called. No matter, that's what cameras are for right? Note what?

It would be ambitious of me to mention heinei this early in my Gull career (and remember that the Gulls are still winning by some margin), but all I can say is that it stood out by a wide margin whilst still being just a Common Gull. I've also read that the occasional normal canus Common Gull can show streaking this extensive, but this is the first I can recall seeing. I had a look for it this morning in the flock, but it wasn't there. Nevermind. Note that it was a very foggy day, so the photo has come out a bit odd, at least there's another bird in there for comparison though.

Gulls - stay well away!

Understanding the Internet

2011-11-22T22:32:00.008Z

The internet is a difficult place in which to be understood. Two people may read the same sentence and come away thinking two entirely different things. To ensure that you get your message across to one and all, it is suggested that you use emoticons. There are almost endless variations upon the now-ubiquitous smiley face, the following short guide is intended to help people who can actually read english, and thus don't know what emoticons mean. And if, like me, you are an avid consumer of rare bird threads, you had better know how to use them.

This one is really easy. It means that you are happy. And have had a good dentist.
Again easy. It means that you are sad about something.
Not quite as easy. Let's just say you are enigmatic, but it all depends on how the reader views the emoticon.
I honestly can't believe it, I am so surprised.
You have been browsing a rare bird thread for too long.
You need to adjust your monitor brightness settings.
You're blessed with good teeth and a great dentist, and you've just been on the Scillonian for the first time. I can't see this one getting used a lot.
The badge recently came off your Leicas.
You are confused. Or a muppet.
Everyone's favourite. Use this when you are being deliberately rude or obstreperous - it softens the impact and helps you get away with it more often. Also useful for hinting at sarcasm or humour for people who have trouble recognising either.
If you are a twitcher who believes you have a god-given right to see all rare birds, you could use this when talking about Needs Ore Point, East Norfolk, or North Cornwall.

If you are a birder from Needs Ore Point, East Norfolk or North Cornwall and are using the internet to gloat about rare birds, this would be ideal.

Should have gone to Specsavers.

Of course, you can use combinations of emoticons as well. Take the following sentence, of the type that I might contribute to a rare bird thread:

"Gosh, I could not possibly have predicted that people would start bitching about Lee Evans on this thread that has actually got nothing to do with him."

What would you use here? You could use the one to indicate the use of sarcasm and frivolity. Or you could use the one instead to indicate surprise and thus increase the amount of sarcasm that you wanted to convey. But why not use both? The more emoticons you use the better people will be able to understand you.

How about this:

"It is a shame that I could not see the xxxxxxx bird that was shamelessly supressed by those bastards in North Cornwall , but I respect everyone's right to do as they please and accept that because I am sat behind a computer reading rare bird threads all day long I cannot see every bird that turns up . However I will exercise my right to nonetheless whinge massively in the interests of utterly ruining what might otherwise have been a sensible and mature discussion . By the way, my bins recently broke ."

Another Firecrest

2011-11-21T22:51:00.000Z

Well, the same Firecrest, or one of the same ones anyway. I couldn't resist going back for another look at the weekend. Well, actually, apart from today, I think I've been to see them every day since whatever day it was I first saw them. They're that good. I saw three again on Sunday; what's better then three Firecrests eh? How about four Firecrests? Yup, there could be four according to a report from another of the local birders. Hopefully they will stay all winter - likely - and I'll get to see even more of them. Snow rarely penetrates into the lower story of Bush Wood, but it's a photo I find myself dreaming of from time to time.

Photographing them is rather challenging. Slow and predictable they are not, and the Holly plays havoc with the autofocus system. You can forget about a tripod, no way is that quick enough, you have to hand hold. It's pretty dark in there, so that nice high shutter speed you wanted isn't going to happen. Nonetheless, modern technology is there to offer a helping hand. Hello image stabilisation, and hello high ISO. I took this next photo at 1/320s at ISO 1250. The focal length is 650mm equivalent, so you can see IS in operation here - I've managed a sharp shot (Picasa, my host, tends to muller my photos, the one on my screen is a lot nicer) with an extremely heavy lens which I would expect to wobble like a good'un. And the only reason I even scraped 1/320s is because I had 1250 available and knew it would be OK - you can see some grain but isn't troublesome. You won't be able to tell from the photo, but I also underexposed it by 2/3rds of a stop, the metered exposure was only 1/200s. The overall scene tended to dark, thus likely fooling the camera's metering, which is exposing for mid-tones. I felt that -2/3rds was a more accurate reflection of what I was seeing, and it also gave me that extra bit of speed. I probably could have taken it down even more and brought it back up in post-processing, a useful trick if you're really struggling with available light.

Essex Birds

2011-11-19T22:34:00.002Z

Wanstead is in Essex, and that's where I started today. Nick and I were nice and early on the patch, but no goodies were produced. I had palpitations early on when I saw two distant flying waterfowl and immediately issued the joyful shout of "Brent Geese!", a long-awaited patch tick. My initial joy turned to consternation though, when after some proper squinting I felt that the rear-most bird was definitely lighter in tone that the lead bird. Although I'd been certain that the first bird was a Brent, the apparent difference between the two raised all sorts of questions, and very sadly I've binned them. Although generally very low, I do have some standards.

Thinking about it, Brent Goose is a good candidate for my most-wanted bird for the patch. It's entirely possible, is big and easy to spot, which is always a plus, and now is the right time of year. That said, there are many others. Marsh Harrier and Short-eared Owl both rank highly, as do Smew and Bewick's Swan. I've decided on my most-wanted for the garden. That's going to be Little Egret from now until I get one. It's still a hard bird away from the Roding, but I'm close enough to the Walthamstow-Thames flight path to be in with a chance. Other possibilities for the garden are Firecrests on an away day, and perhaps also one of the seven Egyptian Geese which seem to have taken up residence on the Basin, just a short flight away.

Why is Alexandra Lake filled with algal blooms and infested with rats? No idea.

Wanstead held little else, six Teal on Alex probably the highlight. A quick grill of the gulls produced nothing remarkable, though I still think that with the number of Common Gulls we get, Ring-billed has to be a serious possibility. I suppose that could be the new most-wanted... A group of Long-tailed Tits did not want their photograph taken, and an out-of-control dog jumped all over me. The second time it jumped all over me, I nudged it away with my leg. Oh dear, in the eyes of the owner that counted as kicking the dog, and that was well out of order. It's great isn't it? A dog jumps all over me and all of a sudden it's my problem. Yes, that sounds fair to me. Here's an alternative suggestion though, dog-owner. Keep your stupid f***ing dog under control or on a f***ing lead, or don't f***ing bring it to Wanstead f***ing Flats. Or am I out of order again? I tell you, the day I get a sincere apology from a dog-owner, or even just an apology, will be the day I..., the day I..., well I just don't know. It's so massively unlikely it will never ever happen.

Moving on, we moved on. To real Essex, with additional passengers in the shape of Paul W and Muffin. Fingringhoe to be precise, where we spent an hour not seeing a Glossy Ibis for Paul's Essex list that he does now keep (it would be a great deal quicker to list the counties for which Paul does not keep a list. Herefordshire I think.), which was in fact there all along. The next stop was Mersea, where I quickly added a perfectly genuine and acceptable Red-breasted Goose to the Essex List I definitely don't keep, and added Black Brant for the day when that becomes tickable.This was a life tick for Muffin, and he was so delighted that he made some patterns in the mud with his trainers. A Wigeon we had been watching and thinking was a little odd then died in front of us, a nice lesson in the natural way of things for junior. This air of finality caused us to surmise that the day was basically over, so we went home.

What do you mean you can't see it?

Weekend

2011-11-18T20:35:00.000Z

Another five days of toil, another five days of columns and rows. To celebrate the impending two days of relative freedom, I made myself a cheeky Mojito whilst preparing yet another family meal. Where is that fairy when you need her? I didn't take an awful lot of care, I measured nothing. In fact I didn't even crush the ice, but the result was mind-blowingly stupendous. So stupendous that before I even allowed myself a sip I just had to take a photograph of it. Just so we're all clear, it tasted even better than it looks. Wow. Forget Wanstead, Havana here I come.

Just look at it! Just the photo is making me feel thirsty!. I'm seriously considering another, although I'd have to make two as Mrs L is now home. It all bodes well for the weekend, and I have no plans whatsoever. This is how I like weekends to be. No stressing about rare Sandpipers in Somerset, no stressing about funny Greenshanks in Northumberland. I am going to take it easy. I am harbouring vague thoughts about a Red-breasted Goose in Essex, but that's as far as it goes. Whatever you end up doing, have a good one.

Racking them up

2011-11-17T20:05:00.000Z

Last year I got to the then incredible total of 108 species on the patch. Untouchable, I thought, if I make a hundred I'll be lucky. I know I mentioned this only a couple of days ago but I've gone and added another one!

Firecrest in Bush Wood. The tick actually happened yesterday, but I was busy. I nipped into Bush Wood following a tip-off, not really expecting to find anything, it being a big wood and they being small birds, but it look less than two minutes. Did I have a camera with me? Ah. So today, in need of some air after wrestling with a recalcitrant regulatory capital system, I set off, armed, to Bush Wood. With some trepidation of course, it being the site of previous maltreatment, but it was a nice sunny day, and I felt pretty safe.

As before, I located the birds within five minutes, given away almost immediately by a host of squeaky dog-toy calls. Soon I had three birds flitting around my head between two large holly bushes. Bush Wood is mostly large holly bushes, so I'm not giving away much. Snappity snappity snap. It's relatively dark, and the birds are extremely active, so a high ISO was needed, in this case 1250. Can you tell, because I certainly couldn't? I reckon it's as good as ISO 400 on my last camera, which for most of you is an utterly meaningless comparison. Suffice to say it is amazing. Two years hence and I'll be moaning how awful the dark days of 2011 were, but for now, it's affording me opportunities that didn't exist even two years ago. Loving it. This is what coffee breaks are made for, though I think I actually ascribed it as a late lunch, which I ended up sacrificing in favour of these little beauties. Glad I did, as is my less-than-washboard-like tummy.

Commuting

2011-11-15T20:49:00.000Z

Once I get to work, I'm generally fine. I act totally professionally, and get on with the job in hand. I do not complain or whimper (whilst there), I suck it up. Getting there is another matter entirely. I LOATHE it. Hate it. Detest it. At the moment I am largely working from home. The commute from bed to study takes approximately ten seconds, involves very little angst, and costs nothing. Some days, however, I go into the office, which is at Canary Wharf. Today was one of those days. Let me describe it for you.

The first half hour was extremely pleasant. Then I finished birding my way across the Flats and, as acid grassland turned to concrete, I found myself in the wilderness of Forest Gate. Descending the stairs at the train station, I waited with about two-hundred other merry commuters. Standing on the platform, watching depressed-looking travellers rattling into Liverpool Street, I casually wondered how many of them were happy. My conclusion, few. Finally a stopping-train came in. It was reasonably full, but plenty of space inside the carriage if people moved down and away from the doors. The doors opened. People, including me, stood on the platform waiting to get on. However people inside the train didn’t move. They kept reading their papers, tapping their smart phones, avoiding eye-contact. The doors closed without a single person where I was stood getting on, and the train moved off. As it did so I could see a man leisurely stretching his legs inside the far end of the carriage. Well thanks very much Essex commuters, you selfish so-and-sos. Perhaps it is merely a mechanism for survival? Don’t speak, don’t give an inch. These are presumably sociable people with families, who enjoy an evening down the pub, who communicate with colleagues now and again. Yet on a train they are silent automatons. This is what I hate about London and about commuting. Part of it is physical, being crammed into small spaces and being uncomfortably close to the smelly parts of other human beings. But part of it is the sheer unfriendliness of it all. You’re all in it together, all hating every minute of it, but yet there is a massive lack of empathy which you would expect to be present in spades in such a horrible environment. Instead it is cold, silent, and forboding. I managed to get onto the second train, where a number of people mistook me for a large sack of potatoes. It did nothing to improve my mood.

Grassy intermission. This is on the Flats, and I have no idea why.

At Stratford station I was ejected, almost literally, onto another heaving platform, and traipsed over to the Docklands Light Railway. Again I found myself sharing other peoples' personal space a little too cozily, but there is nothing you can do. It's have an enforced cuddle with four or five strangers, one of whom will be really scummy, or walk to work. At Canary Wharf, you have to move swiftly. If you don't fall into line and elegantly synchronise your movements with a thousand other people, you are liable to be trampled to death. People at Canary Wharf do not stop, everything is fluid. If you're not moving, you don't exist. There are no barriers, so sometimes I forget to bleep out at the Oystercard reader. Turning back, against the flow, can be suicidal, which brings me neatly to the other thing I hate about commuting in London.

I have a very keen sense of self-preservation. I am not the kind of person who needs regular adrenalin rushes. I have never harboured any desire to go bungy-jumping, sky-diving, or swimming with Great White Sharks, I very much prefer tamer activities. Like sitting down on sofas. I was on the tube on 7th July 2005. Luckily, working in a bank that believed in taking its pound of flesh, I was at my desk well before four crazies from Leeds blew themselves and fifty-two other people up. I am sure I speak for many when I say that travelling by tube has never really been the same since. I remember walking home that day, and the following day I actually got off a train because a man with a bag and a beard got on. Pathetic and predjudiced perhaps, but perfectly understandable. As time passes, the memory fades, but never completely, and always at the back of mind is the thought that some brain-washed freako may jump up and shout "Allahu Akbar!" or some such and then attempt to kill as many people as possible in the hope of being granted 72 Siberian Rubythroats and a Wallcreeper in paradise. Now before anyone passes a fatwah on me, I mention this not as an attack on Islam, which I know nothing about (it might be Siberian Blue Robins, not Rubythroats, I have not really researched it), but because in this day and age lunatics of all creed and race are something you have to be genuinely concerned about. Look at that bloke in Norway, an extreme example perhaps, but there are plenty of other less sensational attacks we all forget about. Just last month in Bexleyheath of all places a woman ran amok with a carving knife and killed a lady on her way to work. An innocent commuter, just like me.

And then of course, assuming I survive all that twice, there and back, I have to run the gauntlet of Bush Wood, over whose 100m distance I now look behind me about forty times. It's easily dark by the time I come through. To say I am paranoid is the understatement of the century, but if you had been pinned to the ground by four blokes, punched in the face ten times entirely unnecessarily and had your Leicas stolen I reckon you'd be pretty paranoid as well. Yeah, I reckon commuting is vastly overrated.

Listing Angst

2011-11-14T18:03:00.000Z

Mrs L was doing the school run this morning, so I snuck out on the patch before work. Or rather, she kicked me out onto the patch - it is quite possible I would have just lazed around in bed. I am very glad that she did, or at least I think I am. It was extremely misty on the Flats, not the low mist that hangs between three and six feet in the air, but a consistent bank of mist that restricted any kind of view of the sky. Perhaps best to call it extremely low cloud, as horizontal visibility was fine. I had stopped to photograph a large mushroom when an Oystercatcher called. Wah!! Then it called again, a whole series of "kleeps". I strained to see it, I wanted a glimpse, fleeting would have been sufficient. It seemed to have come from south of my position in the Broom Fields, but try as I might one final, faint kleep and that was it. Dagnabit!

I was immediately overcome with self-doubt and introspective cynicism. When I had heard the call, I had immediately and automatically gone "Oystercatcher!" to myself. It is a highly distinctive call. I had looked up expecting to see an Oystercatcher, but the fog had prevented me seeing it. Ten seconds later and I was trying to talk myself out of it. Why? I should have been doing cartwheels, for Oystercatcher was my number one most-wanted patch tick. And this is the problem. It is too convenient. What is my most-wanted patch tick? An Oystercatcher? Right, that's what I'll go out and hear then. SImple. It's another version of seeing what you expect to see, the little cynical voice inside me said. I hung around for a while, listening out for a particularly talented Starling. I strained to turn Ring-neked Parakeets into distant Oystercatchers but could not. I could only conclude that I had been correct. I didn't really need any more convincing, but I was still plagued with small amounts of self-doubt, and so played it on my phone. Yup, Oystercatcher. My suspicion is that it had been feeding on the playing fields south of South Copse, and had been disturbed and taken flight eastwards, as I had heard nothing from the west. Shame then that I had stopped to photograph a mushroom.

For many years, Osprey was my number one target bird. I dispensed with that this September, when I was lucky enough to coincide with one flying lazily south over Alexandra Lake early in the morning. That out of the way, I needed a new target bird. I ended up choosing Oystercatcher, and, after this morning the reason why seems pretty clear. At the time I hadn't given it much thought, but now that I am bashing out the minutae, it's because it was easy with high probability of success. A common bird on the Thames estuary, large, generally not elusive, with a call that even I can recognise, with the added bonus that I could find no historical records. Brilliant, an ideal choice for a top target. I was kidding no-one but myself.

So, I need a new one, but clearly something a bit more challenging, but at the same time, it has to be at least a possibility. I might start a poll thing, it has been a while. Alternatively, please suggest something juicy in the comments box. You can see my Wanstead list here, and the Wanstead historical sitelist here.

Lonely Husband

2011-11-13T18:55:00.002Z

Mrs L went out today. To do music. This is her hobby, we must not begrudge it. I have, afterall, been known to go out birding from time to time. Not often, but nonetheless those few days of absenteeism are felt. And noted. So today it was her turn. She would only be gone for a few hours, she said. Back mid-afternoon, she said. Mrs L's mid-afternoon is 5:30pm. My mid-afternoon is about 1pm, perhaps 1:30. I pined.

So, no birding today. Well, I could have gone out on the patch this morning, I had a very slim window of opportunity, but I elected to stay in my nice warm bed and make soft snoring noises. This is another rare event, and as the days grow shorter and the nights colder, one I am hopeful of repeating. It has been a very pleasant weekend of low achievement. Precisely, had we had need of a doctor, what he would have ordered. My birding has been restricted to a very brief foray yesterday before lunch. This was enough to relocate the long-staying female Wigeon on Alexandra Lake, and not relocate the six Teal that have been hanging around. In fact the whole sortie could easily have been in vain had a Woodcock not flown past me whilst I was in the Broom Fields on the way back. Naturally there is no photo. I merely looked blankly at it as it flew past, and as it inclined it's head fractionally in my direction, I recalled the camera hanging off my shoulder, but of course it was too late. It nipped over the trees of Long Wood, and appeared to drop in. Even though it is November now, I decided not to go and look for it. The statistician I employ to count birds for me notes that this is only the second ever Woodcock that I have seen in Wanstead, and its sighting exactly mirrors the first, which also flew past my very surprised head in the Broom Fields and plopped into Long Wood. He also mentioned that this is patch year-tick 111, the dreaded Nelson, and that I had to hop home. This I dutifully did, and when I eventually arrived at Chateau L, further good news awaited me - the Woodcock was in fact an actual year tick, new for 2011 anywhere. I shan't tell you the number, it would be embarrassing.

The rest of the weekend has, as I mentioned, been binocular-free. A Greater Yellowlegs annoyed me briefy by being in Northumberland for the entire weekend, but once I realised that even contemplating twitching such a distance was utter madness, it ceased to rankle, and I busied myself doing nothing. Doing nothing, as any good interviewer will tell you, involves playing with children, stopping them fighting, cooking them food, and cleaning up after them. I did a great deal of nothing today, and am rather tired. And when, finally, Mrs L arrived back home, I flopped gratefully into an armchair with a vodka tonic enhanced by passion-fruit syrup, the handover complete. A little later on, I noticed she had left her laptop unguarded on the kitchen worktop. I snuck up to it, got up Google, and searched for "lovely husband", aiming to leave it on that page, just so she knew. Google is a marvellous thing sometimes. Do you know what it said? Try it at home and see if it works for you of if it's a phenomenon unique to Chateau L. Here, at any rate, a search for "lovely husband" brings up "did you mean to search for lonely husband?" Quite.

A Funny Story Ruined by Mathematicians

2011-11-10T21:12:00.000Z

I use the word funny in the loosest possible sense of the word. It's not really funny at all, but I have spent most of the day thinking about it so it's only fair that you too should share in the wonder. It is not about birds at all, if any of you nerdy types want to quit while you're marginally ahead. This is a good thing of course. I am well aware that for a supposedly birdy blog, I stray very frequently, and very often, but were it to be only about birds, it would be very short, very turgid, and often very blank. I have an extremely active mind, especially now that I am back at work and daydreaming is firmly back on the agenda, and so you should expect more of these tangential musings.

So, this all started yesterday. No, I'm wrong, it was Tuesday, though that makes no difference at all to the story. I was sitting at my desk in Canary Wharf thinking about smartphones. I have been resisting smart phones for an extremely long time. I don't need a smartphone, and am perfectly happy with my normal phone, whose capabilities are far beyond anything I could comprehend. I use it for speaking to people, for sending bird-related text messages to people, and for splurging nonsense on Twitter to 250 poor misguided souls. I have also loaded up the songs and calls of all European species of bird, and those of you that actually know me will know that when it rings it is a Corncrake, which has led, in certain situations, to mild panic from birders that don't know me. Having all these on the phone is extremely useful in the field, for reminding oneself of unfamiliar calls, a la Crossbill over my garden the other day, or for those "ooooh, was that a......?" moments that we all have from time to time, and of course for attempting to persuade recalcitrant birds to reveal themselves from time to time, which sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. I am too primitive to even have voicemail. But I digress. I don't need a smartphone, but the guy who sits opposite me just got himself a shiny new iPhone 4S, the latest model. This got me thinking about smartphones, and before I knew it I was on the line to Vodafone inquiring when my contract was up for renewal.

Three weeks.

Bored yet? I'm not. I decided that were I to get a smartphone in three weeks, then it would be rather useful to have email on it. I seem to have collected quite a few email addresses over the years, one for this, one for that, but apart from the home one, none of them are actually my name though. Though I know nothing about smartphones, I felt that their email functionality might work best with a web-based gmail account. So rather than wansteadbirder, wansteadbirding etc, yesterday I decided that my actual name at gmail.com was the way to go, so I tried to set it up. I filled in all the boxes, and then it told me that the address I wanted was taken. Eh? I tried it again. No, sorry, taken. Oh. Had I perhaps created it some time ago and then forgotten about it? So I tried to log into it. I tried every password I have ever used, all the silly little variations, and nothing worked. OK, not to worry, this happens very frequently. With every website ever wanting a username and password, there is no possible way for any normal human being to be able to remember them all, so the "forgotten your password?" link that appears on most websites is very often my only recourse. I clicked on it, and it had two secure retrieval options. One was to send the password to an alternative email address, the other was to send it via text message. To help you with that they provided clues, revealing a small portion of the address and number. Hey presto, the last two digits of the phone number were mine! Account retrieval seconds away, I eagerly tapped my number in and hit send. Not recognised. I tried it with +44. I tried it without the zero. I tried it with brackets around the zero. I tried it with more zeros. Then it froze, saying I had tried too many times. Surely this is my email account? I mean, with the last two digits of my phone number, it has to be my account? Am I the victim of identity fraud here? The probability of there being another Jonathan Lethbridge somewhere with a ten digit phone number with the final two digits the same as mine - infinitessimally small.

But remember that post a few days ago where I noted that there were now seven billion people on the planet? I wonder.... I banged off a quick email. It read thus: "Is this my email, or is there another J Lethbridge?" Then I went to bed, which is critical to the story.

In the morning there was a reply. Remember, I was asleep, so it wasn't from me. Like I said, critical. I have to say it is rather strange having an email in my inbox that is from me but isn't from me. Turns out that Jonathan Lethbridge, who has my email address - well, his email address, lives in Montreal in Canada, though was born here in the UK. He pointed me in the direction of some kind of geneaology website, whereby I learned that there are Lethbridges everywhere. This isn't a huge surprise. In fact, when I was on Scilly for some reason or other a couple of weeks ago I noticed that Carreg Dhu Gardens, of tame Song Thrush fame, is maintained by a Mary Lethbridge. This website seemed to indicate that the hub of Lethbridgedom is the south-west, particularly south Devon. I know virtually nothing about my ancestry, but I do know that my Grandfather was from Devon, and drove a train from Exeter to London (regularly, not just once). That's about all I can tell you, though I have been to Devon. Mainly I drive through it to get to Cornwall (and beyond....), but a King Eider at Appledore once provided a spurious reason for a family weekend break, and I did twitch an American Robin at Exminster as recently as last year. Anyway, ancestry is for old people; not surprisingly my Dad told me at Christmas he was thinking of researching the family tree and creating some kind of archive. Good for him - I'll revive it in thirty years time. Er where was I? Oh yes, Canadian Jonathan Lethbridge. By return of email I quizzed him about his phone number. It does indeed end in the same two digits as mine. Sweet Baby Moses, it is just too bizarre to even contemplate.

This, you will be relieved to hear, is where this particular story ends. But there is a postscript. For the purposes of blog accuracy I asked a mathmo geek I know to compute the answer for me. I was expecting it to be about a zillion zillion to one, or something with about forty-five decimal places. This mathmo geek was in the pub with five other mathmo geeks, so I had immense brain power at my disposal for this colossal sum. Their answer? 100/1. No, really. Talk about pissing on a parade. Get this - probablility of there being a person in Canada with my exact name? Very close to one, ie a dead cert. Canada being a developed nation, the probablity of that person owning a mobile phone in the year 2011 AD - again, almost certain. So the probability of that ten digit number having the final two numbers the same as mine? One in a hundred. This proves beyond any doubt that mathematicians only exist in order to suck all joy out of the world. And that's the real point of this story.

What I didn't write

2011-11-08T20:32:00.000Z

In my haste to bash out yet another ill-conceived and boring blog post yesterday, I forgot a critical, nay crucial piece of information. It was about that Brambling. It was a year tick! A patch year-tick I mean, I don't go in for all this national year-listing nonsense. Never have, never will. So yes, a patch year-tick, coming in at a rather splendid 110. This a whole two more than last year - a year I thought would never be broken, which, now I come to think of it, is probably exactly what I said the year before that. No matter. I am pleased, which, when it comes to patch-working, is the entire point. You'd have to be pretty stupid to wander round an inland patch year after year whilst hating every minute of it.

Yes it would be nice to have a coastal patch, yes it would be nice to have a patch capable of producing a right stonker, but then things like Dunlin would lose their appeal, and we can't be having that. There's an argument that suggests that at a coastal patch the bar is simply higher, and that's true of course, but ultimately there would be far fewer birds with that "wow" factor that is so important in patch-birding and keeps us all going. "Oystercatcher, whatever" is not something you'll hear uttered in Wanstead anytime soon.

So what's new? Nothing. All work and no tidying makes Jonathan a dull boy. With the absence of the Magic Fairy, who true to her word departed for pastures new about a month ago, Chateau L is gradually falling apart. Mount Garment grows ever higher, and items now largely lie where they fall. Weekends, so useful for staying more-or-less afloat, are dedicated to having fun rather than domestic trivialities, and so slowly but surely we're descending to a new level of slovenliness. I may or may not engage a cleaner, we'll see how bad it gets before I crack. However if you're local, and bored (really bored), do pop round. The hoover is in the cupboard under the stairs, the dusters are under the sink. Marigolds are provided.

On the plus side, and coinciding nicely with my return to banking hell, my writing career is really taking off. Forget Birdwatch, I have now penned a piece in the nationally-distributed and globally-read Wanstead Village Directory. Any misconceptions you may have about this publication being merely a vehicle for local businesses to advertise their services should be totally banished. Any thoughts that over 95% of the pages relate to hairdressing, kitchen design and local restaurants should be similarly cast aside. It's only 90%, and so this month there is room for an article on Ducks. Yes, Ducks. I am fed up of seeing people point at Tufted Ducks and Pochards and call them Ducks. Or worse, Mallards. So when polled by this august institution for a future article on wildlife in a winter issue, I thought "Right, let's sort it out once and for all, and get people involved in Ducks", or words to that effect. The lavishly-illustrated result is now in quality newsagents everywhere, or you can pick one up in the Co-Op on the high street. Or, as Muffin did today, at the community centre where Ballet takes place, where he then proceeded to wave it in the faces of a few of my fellow Mums [sic] so now they all know what a sad bird-nerd loser I am, which obviously I had been trying to conceal. Excellent. Anyway, now that the secret is out, if you're too late in the mad scramble for printed copies, you can see it online here. Note the huge amount of reaction and comment....

It's all about timing

2011-11-07T18:54:00.000Z

Finally back to a bit of local birding, and Saturday morning saw me hit the Flats, albeit it only briefly as kiddy duties called. But even my short wander was worth it, adding the female Wigeon that has been tempting me all week, ditto the Med Gull, and as a bonus, four Teal and seven Egyptian Geese, a record-breaking count. All of these birds were on Alexandra Lake, so I suppose you could say that the rest of the Flats didn't get a look-in. Still, it was excellent to be out and about, as the onset of winter is really quite excting.

This is one of the great things about birding a patch solidly, you get to see the seaons change before your very eyes. It's the same every year. Warblers suddenly get scarcer, until one day they're gone. Meanwhile the strong passage of Hirundines peaks and then declines to odd stragglers, and the winter Ducks begin to arrive. Small numbers of winter Thrushes also appear, a couple here, a couple there, until one day you realise that there are thirty Redwings flying around. Finches start moving strongly west, mostly Chaffinches it seems, but Siskin and Redpoll too.

At the moment it's the turn of Woodpigeons and Lapwings. I've been outside for all of about twenty-five minutes today, two opportune cups of tea, but in that short time I counted about four-hundred Woodpigeons in large flocks, all heading west. They were mostly this morning, after dawn, but cup of tea number two made headlines, at least for the garden, when mid-morning twenty Lapwing went over North, seen moments before by Nick out on the Flats somewhere. In context, I've seen exactly two Lapwing over the garden before. That makes a flock of twenty remarkable - though over eighty were seen yesterday on the patch, possibly some of them went over my house too, but I wasn't at home to see them. Shortly after the Lapwing went through, two Redpoll buzzed over before wheeling back. I'd seen two in my early morning stint, so assumed the same birds still knocking about. All of a sudden the whole sky was filled with buzzing and chirping, and from nowhere, a flock of perhaps fifty were wheeling around overhead. Nick, still on the Flats, had counted 38 a short while earlier, but I think there were more than that. The biggest garden count previously was 21 birds, back in December last year. To say I was stunned is understating things. Even more remarkably, from somewhere within the tumbling flock a Brambling made itself known. I've never known them assosciate with Redpoll before, or at least not that I recall, but I'm certain of the call. Nick picked up a larger finch in with the flock when they went back onto the Flats, but couldn't get anything on it.

I finished my tea and went inside, rather chuffed that I had got my timings spot on. Of course, who knows what went over when I was back indoors staring at the computer screen. Presumably a large flock of Golden Plover, a few dozen Brent Geese, and a couple of pale Swift sp, but you can't waste time thinking about what might have been. I'm more than happy with my haul. It's an exciting time of year. I need to think of a way to move my desk outside....

Fantastic Mr Fox

2011-11-04T18:33:00.000Z

I have perhaps blogged before on foxes, and their perception of my garden versus my perception of my garden. Whilst I am not a big gardener, I nonetheless view my garden as a tranquil haven in which to drink cool glasses of Rosé on warm summer evenings. A peaceful oasis of overgrown flowerbeds, weeds, and various spiky plants in pots. A place for children to run, to play, to shout and make merry.

The foxes? They view my garden primarily as a toilet, though they also enjoy using it as a place to scatter rubbish from neighbouring bins and gardens. Previous items that I have had to go round and pick up have included several shredded used disposable nappies, various plastic bottles, sachets of catfood, crisp packets, plastic bags, a bag of frozen oven chips, and, tantalisingly, a size 12 purple and white thong. Foxes have a particular smell, a scent that they seem able to leave on anything they have touched. A smell that lingers on one's hands, and one's moth trap, even after washing several time. It's not a nice smell. Fed up with it, and the likely hygiene issues, I bought one of those litter picker claw things that you see people doing community service using, so now, once a week or so, I trapse round the garden delicately pincering rubbish and women's underwear and placing it in a bin bag.

Lately my mind has been wandering to prevention. The air rifle which was so ineffectual against squirrels has gone back to Shaun, and in any event I'd imagine that Wanstead foxes are equally bomb-proof, so instead I've invested in two things. The first are some kind of chemical granules that you scatter round the garden, but I've been unable to use them as they just wash away in the rain. Genius. The second is one of those ultrasonic infra-red scarers. It looks like one of those PIRs that would activate a security light, but instead sits on a spike in the lawn. It looks mean, and so it should for the price. When a fox (or cat or squirrel, it isn't fussy, and neither am I) comes into the area of coverage, it begins to emit a sound that is to Foxes what Metallica is to humans, a sound so intensely painful that you have to leave immediately or die. I placed this near the end of of the terrace, its arc of deterrent covering most of the what used to be called a lawn before we moved in and my children ruined it. Hah!, I thought, this will fox them, they won't know what's hit them! Goodbye fox turds and rubbish, hello pristine grassy surface of happiness!

It turns out that I have underestimated the foxes of Wanstead. I have attempted to show this in the following diagram. Simply hover your mouse over it to discover what I discovered this afternoon. If you have any suggestions, I am all ears.

4,054,458,047

2011-11-02T19:45:00.001Z

That’s me that is. On this glorious planet on which we blog, tweet and snipe on Birdforum, I am the 4 billionth, 54 millionth, four-hundred and fifty-eight thousandth and forty-seventh person to have been born. Whoa. How s about that for mind-boggling thought eh? Hope you were sitting down. How do I know this? It was on the BBC website, so it must be true. You can play too:

What's Your Number

The reason that this little gem of a stat exists is that the population of planet earth recently passed the seven billion mark. That is a serious number of people, imagine the queue at the post office, it would go on for ever and ever. I mean when I get up in the morning and catch the tube, I think that’s a lot of people, but seven billion! They wouldn’t even fit in an extra-long train! Seven billion is like, loads. The other interesting stat is that, in the history of the universe and space, there have been 78,404,690,760 sentient human beings. And then add some birders. With seven billion alive (if not all well, necessarily) that means a lot of dead people. 71 billion to be imprecise. Where did they all go? Jeez. I’m alive though, one of the seven billion, and able to blog, tweet, and post inanities on Birdforum. Talking of which, I’m actually having a little love-in with Lee Evans on there at the moment, or rather he is, as for some reason he believes me to be on his side. I’m not on his side, nor am I on the opposing Lee-bashing side, but it didn’t prevent him declaring his adoring and eternal gratitude for something he perceived me to have done. Had there been a “hugs” emoticon thing, I would have used it in reply. Except emoticons are a load of crap, and I refuse to use them; they are a poor substitute for intelligent writing, and only exist so that stupid people can grasp simple sentences and get a vague understanding of their likely meaning. I didn’t reply, I couldn’t think of anything both cutting, witty, and genuinely inoffensive.

This bird is largely responsible for global warning. I hope it goes south via Malta.

Er, where was I? Oh yes, over-population. Not quite as important as which UK twitchers have seen the most birds and which grown men hate which other grown men, but worthy of mention nonetheless. I read somewhere that by 2050 – this could be wrong, I refuse to actually conduct research - we will need two earths to feed the population, which by that time will be ten billion people. The trouble is we don’t have two earths, we only have one. Better hope somebody thinks of something, and fast. The good news is that by 2050 I’ll be on the way out, so won’t have to worry too much about, except perhaps over where to get buried alongside 71 billion other people, but it will be a genuine problem for my kids and my kid’s kids. I mean, what if they have to knock down Waitrose and grow turmips there instead? Where will they buy their imported green beans in December, or their Malaysian jumbo king tiger prawns? Like I said, genuine problems. Forget about where they might live, that’s blindingly obvious. They’re all going to be living with me and Mrs L until their early forties, possibly beyond. We will make weekly attempts to throw them out of course, but ultimately with starter houses by then costing a million quid, and starter salaries remaining exactly as they are today, and perhaps even less, what choice are they really going to have? I'm already resigned to it, but I suppose it will be nice to be looked after in my old age.

Seriously worrying statistics though, the cost of the weekly shop is only going in one direction. That said, it is a very clear case of SEP (someone else's problem), and I don't expect anyone reading the BBC website to do a damn thing except moan about the increasing cost of bread. In case you were wondering my preferred loaf has risen from £1.65 to £2.09. Yet another interesting stat. I am sure I can find more. Sorry this hasn't been about birds. I was going to go on the patch at the weekend and get the blog back on track, but instead I'm going to be planting spuds in the front garden and stocking up on canned food.

Back at school

2011-11-01T20:06:00.000Z

Today I shouted at one of the teaching assistants at my kids’ school. I am officially nasty me again. Thanks banking. I didn’t actually shout, but after needing to knock on the window at middle child's classroom five minutes after the bell had rung with no effect, when the door finally opened around 3:37pm, I was in no mood for mucking about. Sorry we’re a few minutes late was the feeble statement on opening the door. It’s a bit annoying actually, I stated matter of factly, I have three children to pick up in three different places. Well we’re only just after half past, came the tart response. The classroom clock said otherwise, but I said nothing. I felt like I was getting told off. We’re working very hard, we’re doing the best we can. Again I said nothing. It was for the best, as whatever I might have said would not have gone down well, and with the rest of the parents standing behind me, no doubt aghast at my bluntness, I was already Captain Bastard.

What the dopey assistant failed to realise is that to be seven minutes late letting the children out wastes 210 minutes of thirty parents time. That’s three and a half hours for the mathematically challenged. Parents’ time is extremely precious, and teachers, as a rule, seem not to recognise this. It’s OK for them though, the school day runs from 9 to 3:30, and they get about 13 weeks holiday a year, and then a further week’s worth of gratuitous inset days that, per class, each time use up an entire month of parents' holiday. In my current job I get five weeks of unpaid holiday and zero inset days. I am trying to juggle a full-time job around the daily school runs, and I have three kids to pick up, and when one kid is released late, I am thus late for the other two. And so it was today, and Pudding was the last in her class to be picked up, and I only had fifteen minutes to get to the girls’ Ballet lessons and get them changed into their fetching pink and white checked leotards and frilly dress things, rather than the more realistic twenty plus. I just don’t have slack time any more, every minute counts.

I am surprised how quickly my demeanour has changed. A month ago I was nice me, relaxed me. Now…oh hang on, now what? I am being shouted at by a deaf old woman. FFS. I am in the local community centre, where the afore-mentioned ballet is taking place. The car park is ingeniously laid out, two spaces deep. This being London, you park where you can park, and it seems that my Land Rover is blocking this old woman’s 1983 Fiesta. I was a little tardy to realise what she was asking the assembled room, so peeved am I that I have become a shit again, so didn’t answer straight away. More fool me. “Well will you move it, you are blocking me in”. Yes, I’ll move it, I replied meekly, repect your elders and all that. “Yes, move it now, you’re in my way, come on, come on.” Right. As I followed her to the carpark, two paces behind her, she was loudly telling her equally deaf friend about how awful it was that she had been blocked in, how she had asked several times, and weren’t people terrible these days. She probably doesn’t realise how close she came to having her Fiesta crushed. It would have been so simple. "Oops, was that reverse? Sorry about that. Shall I put it in the recycling for you?"

Today is clearly just one of these days where it all goes wrong. I’ve just looked up and seen a sign posted to the wall, two foot square, addressed to “BALLET PARENTS”. It reads thus, and the capital letters are important: PLEASE DO NOT BRING RAISINS FOR CHILDREN TO EAT HERE. IF THEY ARE EATING OTHER SNACKS, PLEASE ASK THEM TO SIT DOWN THUS, HOPEFULLY REDUCING THE MESS”. Grammar aside, it is the kind of officious notice that makes my blood boil. Especially today. I’ve just looked for raisins in my bag of kid paraphernalia, and am irrationally annoyed that we don’t have any, as I would like to wantonly scatter some all over the room. I’ve totally forgotten what I was saying now. Oh yes, my new, unimproved self. It makes me unhappy. I liked being calm, relaxed, and in control. Trying to also fit nine hours of work into a day and something has to give. In my case it seems to be calmness, relaxedness, if that is even a word, and being in control. I felt bad about having a go at the teaching assistant. She probably was doing her best, and while it wasn't good enough, I should have just rolled with it, and accepted the additional stress this caused me. Much as I want my life to be stress-free, and this is what I particularly enjoyed about the last two and a half years, I think I just need to accept the fact that it isn’t going to be like that any more. Reality is biting. I should remember to try and not bite back.

A new low is established. Or a new high.

2011-10-31T20:56:00.001Z

Do you know where I was this weekend? Where I, the ardent patch-worker and anti-twitcher was? Scilly. I am disgusted with myself, I am so so weak. If I look back at this blog, I am certain to find post after post decrying twitching, promoting common sense, enobling patch-working, and generally sounding holier-than-thou. And then what do I go and do? I twitch Scilly. No, no, no, I'm not interested in twitching any more, stupid hobby, not for me.

Never, ever, believe anything I say.

Perhaps you didn't anyway? I do, it is true, have a love hate relationship with twitching. I think it comes and goes in phases. Earlier this year, certainly at the beginning of the year, my interest in twitching was at an all-time low. Ditto with year-listing. Gradually as the year has progressed I've been getting these urges that I have been finding increasingly difficult to suppress. This has culminated in hiring a car at Aberdeen airport and snaffling the Sandhill Crane, day-tripping Scilly for a Solitary Sandpiper that eluded me but coming away with a Black-and-White Warbler, and now this latest fraud, twitching Scilly again, this time for the Northern Waterthrush, a bird I saw about ten of in New York in April. What, exactly, is wrong with me? Why do I do it?

Because it was fun! Yes I spent a ton of money, yes I drove a stack of miles, yes I played no part in family life this weekend, but boy oh boy, what a great trip! And that's what it's all about. I spent a very pleasant two days strolling around St Mary's looking at mostly common birds, but with a bit of mad running around for the Waterthrush. I spent two evenings in two extremely nice pubs, drinking excellent beer and eating enormous quantities of delicious food. I had a great time taking photographs of highly obliging birds, some of which are the best I have ever taken, and I got loads of yearticks. Er I mean, I saw loads of birds I haven't seen for a long time*.

It's all the bird's fault. Why on earth has a Northern Waterthrush taken up permanent residence on Scilly? Back in September when I was last on, it had just arrived. I didn't see it, in fact made no effort to see it, putting what limited time I had into the Black-and-White Warbler, a brilliant Bee-eater, and the no-show Solitary Sand. I left the islands a very happy man, the Northern Waterthrush of no consequence. The next weekend it was still there, but I was on Shetland. Pah! The following weekend it was there again, but I was in Norfolk. As you can see, I hardly ever go birding... The next weekend it was still there. Pah! Not twitching Scilly again, lunacy! The next weekend it was there again. For God's sake just LEAVE!!!! It didn't, and was still there the following weekend. Fine, stay then, it doesn't bother me as I am DEFINITELY NOT GOING. Not now. Not ever.

By Tuesday of last week I was surreptitiously checking Scillonian sailing times and Skybus prices. By Wednesday, all pretence had gone and I was pricing it up and convincing Bradders that it was a really really good idea. Thursday, and I was packed and ready to go. Friday morning and I was actually on the boat. Berating myself, obviously. It was a glorious day. Hardly a breath of wind, blue skies and bright sunshine. There is something magical about birding in short sleeves on the cusp of November. The pace was relaxed for most of the day, and in truth we saw very little. The other target birds, Upland Sandpiper and Wilson's Snipe, had both contrived to disappear the day before, and Thursday's Red-eyed Vireo remained precisely that; Thursday's. At about 4.30, knowing the Waterthrush's likely movements, we strolled the ten minutes from Lower Moors to Higgo's Pool. Sidetracked by two Firecrests going bonkers at each other, we arrived about half an hour later to learn that the Waterthrush had been showing for the previous fifteen minutes but had disappeared five minutes ago.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A tense twenty minutes followed with no sign. Then a message came through to say it was at Lower Moors, about twenty seconds away as the Waterthrush flies, but about five minutes as the fat person runs. What to do? We ran. Bradders is much, much younger than I am, and so arrived much, much more quickly. He is also less fat. I kind of ran, but mostly panted, struggled for breath, and walked a bit. Finally in sight of the Shooter's Pool screen, I could just about see Bradders frantically waving me on. Arriving at the screen, someone made way, but in those last fifteen seconds.... "Just gone round the corner mate, far left" said one of the birders there. Gah!
And then suddenly there it was. I had ten seconds of it, perhaps not even that many, and then it disappeared and didn't come back. Magic, pure magic.

When I came to and could stand again, we decided that we would wander back to Higgo's Pool in case it came back. Ignoring the plaintive calls of the evil Firecrests, we arrived back there to learn that the bird had come in for two minutes and then zoomed off again. Higgo, pool-digging supremo, opined that that was that. We waited. We waited some more. Nothing. And then it was back! Calling at ASBO-inducing volumes, it came back in pursued by a Robin, and spent the next twenty minutes feeding in front of perhaps eight silent observers. Towards the end of the evening, there were only three of us watching it. What a bloody brilliant bird. The trip, the expense, justified in an instant. Forgive the photos, ISO 6400, though in one sense utterly miraculous, is relatively unforgiving.

That evening, thrift went out the window. Despite being sucked dry by the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company and Esso, we were on the kind of high that couldn't be dampened. Ridiculous as this sounds, particularly coming from me, sometimes twitching is really really good. This was one of those times. The previous evening I had been in an office in Canary Wharf. Less than twenty-four hours later I was in the Mermaid Pub in Hughtown on St Mary's, indulging in a vast and waist-expanding meal, and drinking Doom Bar, Scuppered, Betty Stoggs..... Twitching might be stupid, but sometimes, just sometimes, and if you can get past the meaningless tick aspect, it is superb.

* About a year...

My new old home

2011-10-26T20:59:00.000+01:00

I'm back at Canarius Wharfus Maximus. The very words are depressing. Canary Wharf, a place of shiny buildings and expensive suits. A place with pointless shops and more coffee and smoothie places than are needed in the whole of the UK. Three quid for a tall, skinny, soya caramel latte? Sign me up! In truth, I did not miss it at all. Neither the commute, nor the place. Give me Wanstead Flats any day. But this is irrelevant. I am back.

Home Sweet Home

Nothing has really changed. It is still a concrete jungle with a few pockets of habitat. The stories you read about Blyth's Reed Warblers hopping around in roses at the foot of tower may or may not be true, but take it from me, you struggle to find even a Robin on the estate. Search back through this blog for long enough and you'll find joyous posts about finding some Great Tits (take that Google engines!) and a Wren. Beyond Crow and Pigeon, I've not seen a passerine yet. The place is a desert. My gloom was momentarily lifted today when a Peregrine happened to fly past the very window I was sat at, a smallish male by the looks of it, but on the whole the place is bird free.

Not that I have to go birding anyway, as I am working my little cotton socks off, trying to get my childcare-dulled brain to comprehend securities lending and repo financing. It is a world away from plasticine and colouring-in fairies. It pays better though, which is why I'm doing it. Today, before I'd even had lunch, I had to go to a meeting in a different building. On the way I passed what is officially known as "habitat". Look, here it is.

"Habitat"

It looks like someone has actually gone to Habitat, the shop, and bought some of those ridiculous bamboo stems of different heights in white china pots that were so fashionable several years ago, atatched them to a discarded doormat, and then chucked the whole lot over the side of the dock. I'm no ecologist, but what exactly is the point? Maybe they're in fact very very small Phragmites, and I'm as good at botany as I am ecology, and in six months time they'll be crawling with Sedgies. Time will tell. Today they held nothing, a few desultory Mallards avoiding them at the far edge. Highlights today on my walk were two Coots and a Moorhen.
Take that Shetland!

Binocular Confessional

2011-10-24T23:43:00.000+01:00

I have a Binocular obsession. There, I’ve said it. Like most people I have two eyes. They are, again like most people, nicely positioned either side of the top of my nose. In other words my face, other than being a bit fat, is perfectly normal. With my two evenly-spaced eyes, I can use precisely one pair of binoculars. Any more than one, and I get into all sorts of difficulty.

Why then do I currently have six pairs of binoculars? Ok, so one of these was a freebie with a magazine subscription and lives in the car, and is about as technologically advanced as two smarty tubes with the lids popped off (and about as useful for seeing birds with) but the other ones are all proper ones, and at any one time, four of them are likely to be gathering dust. I could argue that I have one pair for each member of the family, but I put them all off birds years ago, and with the exception of muffin, they’re about as likely to pick up a pair of bins as they are to take Duivendijk to bed for some light perusing.

Once upon a time, I had one pair of binoculars. I’d saved up for them, they were my first really nice pair. I’d thought that the ones I’d inherited from my grandfather were amazing, then I picked up some Leica Ultravids and I saw the light. I watched out for my pennies, they turned into pounds, and after what seemed like an age I gathered them into a huge pile and dragged them to a Leica dealer in central London, emerging some time later with a very nice and shiny pair of my dream bins.

Do you know what happened to them? I’ve almost certainly mentioned it before, and it still chokes me up. On my way back home after a long, hard day of honest toil, four less-honest people jumped on me in Bush Wood because they wanted my mobile phone. Needless to say they took my mobile phone, and as an afterthought, my bag too. With it went my prized binoculars. What happened to them, who can say? Outwardly they look like a pair of bins, with nothing to suggest they were worth twenty times what my phone was worth. The ready currency of thugs and petty criminals generally being portable electronics with things like Nokia and Sony written on them, I suspect that my bins, with their quaint little red scripted dot on, ended up in a bin. Or a bush perhaps. It doesn’t matter. They were gone, and from that point on binoculars ceased to be something special. With the insurance payout fortunately coinciding with the dealers looking to clear old stock in preparation for an updated model, I bought two replacement pairs, a 7x for general birding, and 10x for when I would be without a scope. And then for good measure, I bought a cheap(ish) pair of small second-hand roof-prisms to use on the patch that wouldn’t cause me much angst if I was robbed again. Needless to say I always used one of the other pairs instead.

For a year or two, this new status quo was maintained. To Mrs L, one pair of bins looks much like another, and no subterfuge was needed. Recently though, I bought a pair of porros out of curiosity, and they are so good that I can’t possibly sell them again, but unfortunately I can’t possibly go birding with them because they look so antiquated and rubbish. I have an image to maintain, dontchaknow? Not really. Though they are optically sensational, wide and bright, they are not waterproof, and as such, useless for birding. They now live on a windowsill at home, ready for the day when a distant raptor needs resolving into a Short-toed Eagle with an abysmally poor sense of direction. I’ve used them twice I think, and they were both Crows.

All was going well, and then for no reason at all other than that they were a “bargain”, I bought another pair last week. I really really like them. They could easily turn into the bins I use every day. So now I have a problem, a stupid problem entirely of my own making. What I really need to do is pull myself together, select one pair, two tops, that I will keep, and get rid of the rest. Any one of them will last a lifetime, and I only have about half of one of those to go. I can perhaps justify keeping one of the cheaper ones for the kids to use when they come out with me, or as a backup in case something bad should happen, but beyond that it is just plain stupid, not to mention greedy, to have any more than one pair. So I am going to man up, and get rid of some. It pains me, but I know it is the right thing to do and that I will feel better for it. Question is, which ones.....

Barrel-dredging

2011-10-22T21:16:00.000+01:00

I was so bored today that I drove round the M25 (well, was driven round the M25 would be slightly more accurate) to see a Glossy Ibis. Yawn. I am told that Glossy Ibis is a real London blocker, that there hasn't been a twitchable one since Andrew M saw one in 1937. Well, perhaps there hasn't, but I could still derive very little pleasure from seeing it, and my mood only lifted slightly when it flew off. There was a time, only a few short years ago, when I looked at Glossy Ibis in my field guide and drooled a bit. What a massive rarity - look, three stars in the Collins! Bet I'll never see one of those, mega.

My chance came in October 2008 when I dashed to the Cambridgeshire fens and connected! It was my 274th UK bird (I very nearly got a Tshirt made up). So what has changed? Have I lost my birding innocence? No. The trouble is that I have now seen three in the last two weeks. Glossy Ibis are everywhere, almost pestilential. No watermeadow is safe, and rumour has it that DEFRA will have to be called in soon to start shooting them lest they start breeding with our native Cattle Egrets.

Still, the day could have been a lot worse. A LOT. At six in the evening yesterday I was on the point of packing my bags for Cornwall, and we all know what would have happened then.... Thankfully common sense prevailed, and I decided to stay at home. Wanstead was very quiet so Nick & I went to Rainham. This was once again packed to the rafters with waders and wildfowl, so after kicking a few stones by Aveley tip we decided the only thing for it was to circumnavigate the M25 for a Glossy Ibis. That is how bad it's been today. Roll on tomorrow...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. This one was in Essex last weekend. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Finchtastic

2011-10-20T21:01:00.000+01:00

I had intended not to blog today, but I have news. I was going to give you all a break, but I cannot help myself. I don't honestly don't believe in daily posting for the sake of it, as I'm sure you all know. Though how would you tell.....

Anyway, I have important news. Happy news. Played for and got news. The best kind of news really. I recently moaned, uncharacteristically, about not being able to get out on the patch for proper birding. This remains true, but I realised that there was an alternative, which was to engage in a spot of viz-migging from the garden. This is where you get up really early, stand getting really cold in the half-light, and neither see nor hear birds. Winner. That said, this is how I got Waxwing on the garden list last year. That was a fluke of course, but my thinking today was that there are a lot of finches about, including Crossbills...

It started slowly, as it always does. My warming mug of tea a distant memory, it took forty-five minutes for the first migrating birds to make it onto the list - some distant and invisible Redpolls. Things picked up at around half seven when I started to get decent numbers of Greenfinch and Chaffinch, as well as a rare Pied Wagtail. But the real played for and got birds appeared just before eight. Eight, possibly nine Crossbills flying north-east. Calling, and calling loudly. OMG.

Now it's all too easy when viz-migging to "hear" a bird you need for your some list or other, and Crossbill is not a bird I hear often. But there was no doubt - I had been listening to Crossbill calls on my phone only half an hour earlier. What surprised me was how loud they were. They probably passed over about six or eight houses down, but the calls positively rang out. The whole experience lasted about fifteen seconds, as the loose flock appeared over the big trees and then disappeared over the houses. Fifteen seconds, but still sensational. What I particularly enjoyed was the planning element. Just the inkling that I could strike lucky, and that tiny tiny thought meant I was there, and ready. I can't wait for tomorrow.

Crossbill is a patch tick, and the best place to get patch ticks from is of course from the garden. On the offchance that anyone is interested in the numbers, I feel it is my solemn duty as a birding dullard to lay them out. Here and now, you cannot escape. It is bird #126 for the patch, bird #76 for the garden, and bird #109 for the patch yearlist, which is of extra significance as my patch record is 108, achieved last year with a Treecreeper. There are still quite a few possibilities as well - Goosander, Goldeneye and Ruddy Duck, or perhaps winter Geese. Or Nuthatch, Brambling, Siberian Rubythroat, Firecrest....

Coffee Break

2011-10-19T20:32:00.001+01:00

Nick is finally back from ticking every bird under the sun on Scilly. This is great news, as between children and work I have had almost no chance to get out on the patch, and coverage has thus been almost non-existent. With the declining daylight, I can't get out in the mornings, and this work malarky has meant I can't get out in the daytime either, and to round it off nicely, the children and encroaching darkness preclude getting out in the evening. You have no idea how frustrating this is. When Mrs L was at home, I'd do a quick half-hour on the patch before going to work; it kept me going, made work that much easier. Now there's no chance.

Today, just before lunch, Nick found a Stonechat in the Broom on his way home. "Coffee break?" he enquired, sardonically. What perfect timing, you know what, I do feel like a coffee. Excellent. Leaving my extremely large and very interesting spreadsheet containing 50,000 rows of things, I grabbed some ~~bins~~ coffee and headed out to Wanstead Flats to ~~look through them~~ drink it. Two young ladies from somewhere east of here were unfortunately walking eleven dogs (yes, eleven) through the exact spot where the Stonechat had been, so there was no sign of it. Not that I was looking, I was drinking coffee, remember? Soon though the pack disappeared, and the Stonechat re-appeared. Hooray, a patch year tick, and equalling last year's total of 108! And coinciding with my coffee break too, what luck. I ~~put my bins back in my pocket~~ finished my coffee and went back home to continue looking at the extremely large spreadsheet, but with added elan and happiness. My first visit to the patch in five days, and although extremely brief, extremely pleasing.

I have no idea why I took my camera on my coffee break

Life lists are a load of crap

2011-10-17T20:58:00.000+01:00

Yes, I’m sorry, yet another blog post on listing. The opportunities to waffle on about listing are many and varied, and frankly I’m amazed I don’t write about it more, for it affords an insight into the minds of many of this country’s finest birders. Or is that listers? The prompt for this post came yesterday at Landguard.

For those of you who have not been there, Landguard sits below Felixstowe on the very southern tip of the Suffolk coast. It is a short shingle spit, and like many shingle spits in this counrty, is covered in old concrete things designed to impede tanks, with yet more old concrete things that used to contain large guns with which to blast tanks as they attempted to negotiate old concrete things, or at that period in history, new concrete things. In the event I don’t think any tanks ever arrived, but that is by the by – this is not a history blog. In the middle of the spit there is a very large concrete thing that was once a fort, or something, and this is now home to the Landguard Bird Observatory. The Obs is surrounded by Holm Oaks and Tamarisks, and is somewhat of an obstacle course for small birds, being filled with mist nets and people with small bags. These people find a lot of birds, not only entangled in nets, but also in the bushes and brambles surrounding the fort. This is what happened yesterday, and Bradders and I were the happy recipients of news that either a Booted or Skyes’s Warbler had been found at Landguard. Being a mere twenty miles away, we decided, there and then, to go. Filth.

We arrived to find a lot of people already there, with more arriving all the time. The bird was remarkably obliging, feeding in the open, and sometimes just sitting around in the open doing nothing. Excellent and prolonged scope views were had by all, and the noise of camera shutters, had we been in the 1940s, would have had gunners in concrete things in a right old panic. Booted Warbler is a rare bird, but Skyes’s Warbler is even rarer. Much rarer. The two were previously considered conspecific, so nobody went to see Sykes’s Booted Warbler. Now that it is treated as full species there is a surprising amount of interest. More than a few 500+ listers still haven’t seen a Sykes’s Warbler. Oh dear, what a shame.

Can you guess what the favoured outcome of the identity debate on this bird was? Bet you can’t…..I shall put you out of your misery – amazingly, many people there wanted the bird to be a Skyes’s. Unbelievable, but true. Out of genuine interest? Not on your nelly. They wanted to be able to say that they had seen a new bird. Sykes’s would a be a tick, Booted, nothing. Nul points. At this point I should declare a vested interest. Being fairly new to this seeing vagrant bird malarkey, I had only seen a Sykes’s Warbler, and not a Booted. Booted was an outcome that suited my list particularly well. And although the bird was a challenging one, it didn’t take long for the backs of cameras to get scrutinised to the nth degree, and with Obs literature to hand, the bird quickly resolved into the one I wanted. But this was against a backdrop of very experienced birders trying to talk it into a Sykes’s Warbler, searching for tenuous things that might make it one, trying to convince others of the light. Surely this is a Sykes’s, one implored.

My comments about teaching Nils (Van Duivendijk) everything he knows were obviously in jest. He spent some time with other people too. But even I, with my pathetic bird knowledge, my almost non-existent grasp of bird topography (I believe I got tertials and secondaries mixed up yesterday, but maybe not, that’s how clear I am), managed to look at it critically. And really, it was simple. The bird was browny-beige. The Sykes’s I had seen on Shetland had looked grey. Booted. End of. The ringers caught it a bit later and measured its eyelid or something. Guess what? Booted. Hurrah, so I get to tick it, and the legions of mega-listers came away disappointed. Not a new bird, just another bloody Booted Warbler. Wasted journey.

What amazed me is that it was obvious that some of the people there didn’t actually know the difference between the two birds. Granted that it is subtle, but the information is out there. If I can read (and mostly comprehend) Duivendijk, then trust me, anyone can. But when a bird is just a tick in box, it’s clear that being able to ID it for yourself is for some people irrelevant. I am guilty of this of course, as I am sure are many twitchers new to the glorious sport. In fact to begin with I was a hopeless tick and run machine, and my recent experience with a funny Greenshank served only to hammer the point home. But to continue to be guilty of it after twenty or more years and having seen in excess of 500 species is an exercise in the pointless.

I would not go far as to say that the size of someone’s BOU list is the inverse of their birding abilty or knowledge, but it raises the question as to exactly what the point of having a large life list is. Given that a tick is prized so highly, what exactly does it mean to have a lot of them? What does it measure exactly? Well, it is not totally without value. It measures your ability to read a map and drive somewhere. And it also takes in your ability to have a flexible working arrangement/low moral standards re work, or a large trust-fund? The UK400 club “list of lists” that causes so much furore is what then? Irrelevant? One-upmanship in tabular form? And Bubo, where I record my little-league list?

I like lists, I have no problem admitting that. I take regular medication to ensure the number of lists I keep remains sensible. I think I have about eight, if you exclude year-lists. The one that really matters to most people is their UK life list. This is the biggie, the one people brag about, the one people mistakenly think commands respect. My entry on the list of lists, were I to have one, would be 380, presumably a few more in UK400 terms. This is so lowly that I wouldn’t even get on the list. I am nothing, a birding nobody. And yet those pitiful 380 birds on my list tell people nothing about my field ability, but presumably the assumption would be that I’m not much good. That happens to be true, but the number of birds I’ve seen isn’t the reason. Isn’t that odd? The fact that I’ve even seen as many as 380 birds is down to two things. I can read a map, and I can drive. Well jolly well done me I say. When I reach 400 I will slap myself on the back and offer myself hearty congratulations on my tenacity. But not on my skill. The two are not related. Pointless.

So what does mark a good birder out? The classic measure would presumably be a self-found list, but there is an argument to say that land-locked birders are at a severe disadvantage. Sure, they can drive to the coast, and I’m sure many do, but ultimately the guy who can be in the sueda ten-minutes after rolling out of bed will have a clear and distinct advantage. Still, I’m sure the measure has its uses, particularly as many many keen birders deliberately live on the coast. I would, and at the drop of a hat. I am however extremely tied to London, and have sworn on many occasions that I am Never. Moving. House. Again. Stamp tax is one reason. Packing and unpacking is the major one. Thus when I added up my self-found life list the other day, it came to a meagre 215. I can’t blame that on London though, a lot of it is time birding, and the relative inexperience that comes along with that. Oh, and that and I always go out birding with better birders, thus they nearly always call the birds first. Unless they happen to be on the phone, which is what happened the other day, and I was able to seize my chance. Perhaps I should distract them. “Look, what’s that behind you!”, and whilst they turn around quickly scan the juicy habitat they were about to get to. Might work. But I am thinking of a different measure. An unquantifiable one, or rather a series of unquantifiable measures. What about the birder who enthuses about common birds, the birder who can accurately draw a Blue Tit from memory? The birder who spends time counting breeding birds, observing regular activity like nest-building. How about the birder who carries and uses a notebook, an argument that gets touted again and again, and with some merit. The birder who instantly knows the calls of common birds and thus pauses when something out of the ordinary calls from a bush. The birder who can smell weather. The birder who questions facts that are known as standard knowledge, that push the boundaries. Surely these guys are the real gurus? The real masters of their craft.

Anyway, next time someone tells you they’ve seen over 500 birds in the UK, the approach is as follows. I dare you. Look amazed. Look stunned. Say “Wow” a lot. Say that you find them god-like, incredible. Then say that you are in awe of their driving skills, amazed by their ability to follow simple directions, and extremely jealous of the amount of free time they have. Do let me know what they say.

Filling my Boots

2011-10-16T21:27:00.000+01:00

Just got in from a great day out, and I need to breathlessly tell you all about it. Except I'm too tired as I woke up at 5:30am, and have driven 360 miles whilst ~~birding~~ twitching in three counties, and now need to go sleep again as I have a lot to do tomorrow, starting with taking not three but five children to school.

Seven-striped Sprite. Mmmm mmmm.

In summary, I saw a lot of good birds, but the distances between them were not small. There were ticks of many kinds. A Booted Warbler at Landguard was an ever, anywhere tick. A Glossy Ibis and Pallas's Warbler in Essex were Essex ticks (obviously). Of these three birds, two were year ticks for the list I'm not keeping this year, as was a stunning adult Isabelline Shrike in Kent. Always go see Shrikes. At the moment I am more often than not sticking to this rule and it is proving extremely worthwhile.

The Booted Warbler was not obvious, even when showing extremely well. Many on site, no doubt desperate for it to be a Sykes's, were talking it into one. I never thought so, mainly because Booted was the one I needed. Need, who am I kidding? What a stupid use of the word need, birding terminology is rubbish sometimes. Anyway, the one I hadn't seen. Tertials this, primaries that. Nonsense. The bird was beigy-brown, which made it a Booted. The Sykes's I saw on Shetland was grey. Easy. I taught Nils all he knows.

Wildside

2011-10-15T18:47:00.000+01:00

I thought of a really good* joke whilst walking round Wanstead Flats this morning. It came to me suddenly, at around 9am, after seeing some "no sign" messages on my phone. For the benefit of those of you fortunate enough not to get my inane tweets on your phone, here it is.

Q: Are Dippers rare in Norfolk?
A: Not this morning.

Ho, ho, ho. I can only imagine the scenes this morning, with five-hundred hopefuls looking fearfully at the clear dawn skies. Oh dear. Still, I had a great morning on Wanstead Flats, and that's what really matters right?

I had forgotton what a special place it can be on chilly autumn mornings. As is normal in these conditions, a heavy mist lay on the ground, rising to about six feet, and the grass was all frosty. Finches flew over south-west in small groups - Redpoll, Chaffinch, Greenfinch, a handful of Siskin. Gradually the sun came up, piercing the mist. The thin layer of ice on the grasses melted quickly, and suddenly everything was golden. I had the place to myself, more or less. I had seen a guy early on with some kind of parabolic reflector - nutter, I thought, as he disappeared back into the mist. Turns out it was Stuart, experimenting with an umbrella and a microphone. I met him a little later on when I could actually see, and noticed the umbrella sticking out of his rucksack. I didn't tell him my earlier thoughts about nutcases, it would have been rude. Far better to just write about it on my blog I felt.

As the mist cleared two Geese flew west. One was enormous, or the other was very small. The Canada was obvious, but the other.....ah a patch of sunlight and a perfect little Barnacle Goose was revealed. I set off to look for it, Jubilee the likely destination, and there it was, eyeing me warily from an island, and seeking the protection of bigger, tougher Geese. Looking back through my notes there is no mention of Barnacle Goose, though I would swear I have seen one on the patch before. No matter, here it was now, looking extremely lovely in the soft morning light. Wild? About as wild as the Red-breasted Goose I expect, possibly a shade wilder - there are a few at large in the Lea Valley.

Alexandra Lake had three drake Teal and a few returning Shoveler, and everywhere I went there were Song Thrushes. By now the footballers were invading, so I left the Flats and headed for the Old Sewage Works. It didn't hold the Great Grey Shrike I was hoping for, but yet more Siskin flew overhead and the big hedge was alive with small birds. Willow and Chiff, Dunnock and Robin, Song Thrush and Blackbird. At the Tea Hut of Happiness crufts was in full swing, and sitting by the water I could hear Wanstead's loudest man in the Dell - about three hundred yards away. This is how I always refer to him, it would be very wrong of me to say his name is Bernie. He could talk for Britain, or perhaps shout for Britain. A small child chased away the Egyptian Goose even before a dog could, and the ever increasing multitude of humanity caused me to seek calmer shores. This is the trouble when the sun shines. People come out to enjoy themselves. Far better that it be cold and miserable. Not long now I expect.

* really lame

And isn't it Ironic

2011-10-14T20:23:00.000+01:00

MEGA: Rufous-tailed Robin, Norfolk. Previous British Records? One. A biggie then. Right, JL in the car tomorrow, tick and run? Sadly not. In a cruel twist of fate, having just worked a five day week for the first time in almost three years, I can't go.

Alanis Morisette sang about it,

Mr. Stay-at-home Dad wasn't afraid to shirk
He put on his suit, took the tube, went to work
He slaved the whole damn week, then couldn't get out
And as the mega arrived, he thought
Well isn't this shite

Six days on Shetland, no biggies. Four days in Norfolk, no ~~biggies~~ birds. And finally, a breath of easterly wind, and the coast is instantly carpeted in great birds. None that I hadn't seen already, but I would definitely have been up for a Bluetail or an Isabelline Shrike. And I can't go, can you believe it? Ho hum, it's not like I haven't been anywhere recently is it? I had my shot, it's just that the weather has stymied me. Fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more, as someone once said.

Still, I am going to be out on the Wanstead Flats at dawn tomorrow, and I am greatly excited by the prospect. I have not birded Wanstead for approximately three weeks, and I have missed it. Nick is filthily on Scilly, and Tim is in Yorkshire. Mine, all mine. I wonder what I will find? A dog, probably.

What price one of these though?

All work and no play makes Jonathan a dull boy

2011-10-13T19:41:00.000+01:00

Egad, this working life is tough! I've been outside for about 0.2s seconds today and during that time I heard a Ring-necked Parakeet but didn't see it. OK, so I've actually been outside for a bit more than that as I had to do three school runs, but my point is that working and birding do not mix particularly well. Unless you're a bird guide of course, then the two would go together extremely well. Unfortunately I'm not a bird guide. I'm an office drone. Mind you at least I got to work from home. Most people don't even get that, and instead are cloistered in an air-conditioned cubicle for hours at a stretch.

Productivity at home today was quite remarkable. If you didn't think I had the will-power, think again! I very dutifully worked out some very boring things and told some people about them. The people then wrote back about them. One of them even called me, that was quite exciting. When I'd finished looking at this particular thing, I looked at another thing. Welcome to my new life.

A propos of nothing at all. I didn't even see one of these today.

Meanwhile, for I keep an eye on these things, the east coast got plastered with rarities. Red-flanked Bluetails everywhere with Great Grey Shrikes hunting them, Yellow-browed Warblers all over the shop, and even an Isabelline Wheatear roughly where the Woodchat Shrike was at the weekend. Had I not been otherwise engaged, I may have gone. Rats, as they say. I am not used to this, but no doubt the realisation will sink in with time.

Anyway, as you have probably gathered, I have nothing to say as I have done nothing. Whilst this does not usually hold me back, today I just can't spout forth. Blogger's block? No idea, it may be that my creative senses have been dulled by excel spreadsheets and the heady world of regulatory capital. Just a thought.

But fear not, for the weekend is close at hand. One more day of working to get through, and then two precious days are mine. All mine. Oh, apart from Saturday, when I'm busy with stuff. Children, that kind of thing. So Sunday then. Question is do I hit the patch, or do I go further afield? Only time will tell.

Not enough hours in the day

2011-10-12T20:56:00.000+01:00

Imagine for a moment that I have a wick coming out of the top of my head. I am a candle, and I am alight. My hair is gently being singed, my scalp getting hotter. There is also a wick coming out of my left foot. That too is alight, and causing some discomfort. I am a candle burning at both ends. Put without stupid references to candles, there is not enough time in the day. Last night I went to bed at 1am, the night before that, also 1am. With paid employment now taking up the vast majority of my normal waking hours, all the stuff that I used to do during the day while the kids were at school is getting pushed to either end, and I’m still not getting it all done.

This is exactly how I remember it before, but then that was without the comparative luxury of knowing that one didn’t have to live in complete chaos. Back then, living in a bombsite seemed normal. When I lost my job in 2009, I turned my not inconsiderable energy and drive to running the house and looking after the kids, with possibly a small amount of local birding thrown in. Now that I am back at work, I see everything I strived to sort out disintegrating, and disintegrating fast. This is naturally extremely irritating. My response has been to attempt to squeeze some of what I used to do during the day into the mornings and evenings.

Last night for instance I did a pile of cleaning in the kitchen, and this morning saw me hanging up washing, cleaning up the kitchen – again, moving the vacuum cleaner whose upturned plug I had trodden on several times in the last few days, and helping the kids with the arduous task of putting away socks. It didn’t help that I got up late, but that was because I had only gone to bed a matter of hours previously after all the stuff I had needed to do last night. And this is with help!! At the moment, I am not responsible for either the school run or feeding anyone. That thankless task is being done by a succession of exhausted relatives, without whom we would be up a certain creek missing a certain paddle, and we are very grateful.

Tomorrow, I’m in charge again. I’ve had over a week in the office now, sorting myself out and working out what exactly it is that I need to do, but with that bedding-in out of the way, I’m going to attempt to work from home. I won’t have time during the day to do much of what I used to, but I think that just by being present when the children are around I can perhaps keep a lid on quite how much devastation they can cause. Or that is the plan anyway. In reality I’m going to be hiding myself away and hoping that they don’t kill each other.

We always knew that this period would be difficult, and of course it didn’t help that I went to both Shetland and Norfolk in quick succession, but that’s October for you, and I'm already planning next year. We’re both working full-time, we have three kids at school, including one on a daft half-day schedule (which thankfully comes to an end quite soon), and the house does not clean itself, nor the clothes wash themselves. Neither does food cook itself, nor transport itself from the shop to our kitchen. And more is the pity, for soon something will have to give. I’m thinking specifically of the word “cleaner” at this point. Though it pains me to pay someone else to clean my house, it may have to happen. It would be one less thing to worry about, and would of course help the economy. The Lithuanian economy primarily.

Then there is the small matter of local birding, the thing that above all keeps me sane and balanced. Can you guess how much I’ve done in the last two weeks? Exactly. Right now, I’d need help finding my way to Wanstead Flats. I’ve not been out once. Not that there has been much to see, the odd Ring Ouzel, a few Skylarks and a large Sparrowhawk ;-) , but that’s not the point. I just enjoy being out there, and that has been sacrificed. I’m not happy about it, but there is nothing I can do at the moment. The good times are over it seems.....

Unless.....have a Shrike! They always cheer me up, and they may cheer you up too having just read my big whinge. This juvenile Woodchat Shrike at Lowestoft in Suffolk was extremely approachable, though with many other birders there, and a recent article in Birdwatch Mag about photographers, I didn't want to push my luck. We popped in to pay it homage on the way back from birdless Norfolk last weekend, and it cheered us up no end, as did a Glossy Ibis just down the road at Minsmere, site of some of my finest smash and grab raids. And I finally connected with the Semipalmated Sandpiper in Essex as well, although my mate Lee, er I mean Bradders, thinks we're stringing it as he didn't see it earlier in the afternoon. I of course would never doubt any of my mates' sightings..... no no no, never.

Seeing no birds in Norfolk

2011-10-11T23:54:00.000+01:00

A few of us had booked a birdy long weekend in Norfolk about six months ago. At peak time, we would surely be knee-deep in rarities, fighting Yellow-browed Warblers off with our bare hand, shooing Olive-backed Pipits off the pavements. The westerly winds had other ideas however, and as our long-awaited trip dawned, so too did the realisation that we were going to see almost nothing. Naturally, we turned to drink.

We had left on Thursday morning, and taken a circuitous route that involved dipping the Semipalmated Sandpiper at East Tilbury, spending eleven hours in the Hornchurch/Romford area picking the Monkey up, ticking the Sandhill Crane for the England list I don't keep, and finally arriving in West Norfolk late afternoon. Rather than go out birding, we made for the nearest pub.

Whereas my trip to Shetland was characterised by 8pm being thought of as a late night, this trip to Norfolk was the birding equivalent of Ibiza (though without any Mediterranean species). Wherry on draft and a rack of ribs, does it come any better? The boozing continued back at the accomodation, and about twenty minutes after we all went to bed, Dave Mo got up and started his morning routine with a shower. This was to become a feature of the holiday.

The following day, suitably refreshed after fifteen million gallons of beer and about an hour's sleep, we indecisively made our way to Hunstanton. There we saw no birds over the course of about half an hour, and then gave up and went to a cafe for breakfast. After more indecisiveness and ever-increasing numbers of Gadwall being released, we set upon a new plan which took us to Cley. Guess what? We saw no birds. Well, we saw a handful of Great Skuas and some Goldies, but the Richard's Pipits and Red-flanked Bluetails were sadly lacking. We couldn't even find the Lapland Buntings that had been reported from the Eye Field. This was not for want of trying though. I spent about an hour scanning and scanning, and in the process was nearly forced to kill about twenty other birders.

Perhaps this is unique to the type of birding gentry found only in Norfolk, or perhaps this is a sign of national malaise, but not a single other birder could be bothered to actually look for the Laps. This didn't stop all twenty of them coming up to Hawky and I, setting up their scopes, and then asking if we had them. When we answered no, they looked through their scopes for approximately eight seconds each, and then picked them up and walked off back to the beach, their car, their deckchair, whatever. To begin with I was fairly cheerful about it. Nope, hadn't seen them, but it was a big field and they were small birds. Then I started saying that only by looking could you hope to find. Then I became a little short, and asked them how many birders they could actually see looking for them. When this didn't faze them at all, and they walked off exactly as all the others had done before them, I snapped, and was possibly then overtly rude to the next lot that turned up and called them a bunch of of lazy goodfornothing wankers and that I was not there just to ensure that they could view a Lapland Bunting through my scope and that they could just piss off. At that point we too decided to leave, which was fortunate, as the next sixty-something well-kitted-out birding incompetent who had asked me if I had the Lapland Buntings for him would likely have been twatted with my extremely substantial tripod, and then battered to death whilst on the floor with the blunt end of my SLR.

Next stop Wells Wood, where we all wandered around disconsolently for ages, and on the point of leaving were extremely fortunate that my Shetland-trained ears picked out the Yellow-browed Warbler which then proceeded to utterly elude us, bar more brief calls, for a further hour. I forget what we did next, but it almost certainly didn't involved birds and almost certainly did involve beer in dramatic quantites whilst we waited for Dave Mo to get up and for the next day to start.

The next day was pretty fun it has to be said. We left the Mo and the Monkey watching some rugby game or other, and Shaun, Hawky, Redsy and me went off to Twitchwell to photograph waders. This we achieved, though at the cost of getting rather wet, particularly Shaun. It's all about fieldcraft. Position yourself correctly, don't move (unless a wave threatens to drown you), be patient, and the birds will come to you. This culminated in me being surrounded by Knot, Barwit and Turnstone literally feet away, it was superb. I rattled off some 850 frames in the two hours I was there, some of which you are privileged to see littering this post. Kind of. After some comedy antics from the orienteering team of Monkey and Mo, who tried to access Titchwell via Thornham saltmarsh, we attempted a Seawatch at Sheringham, saw nothing, and went home for - wait for it - some beers.

And that was it really. Norfolk in three days netted one Yellow-browed Warbler and a few Skuas. We decided we would cut our losses and so we all went home and back to work. Yes, even me. Happily we went via Suffolk, which actually had some birds. And you can see some of those... in the next ~~program~~ post.

PS If you didn't read the last sentence in a David Attenborough voice you will have entirely missed out on what I was trying to achieve. Natch.

When Technology Fails

2011-10-06T20:55:00.002+01:00

Largely, I like the gadgets that living in the year 2011 means exist for my convenience and entertainment. For instance, I like having my entire music collection on a very small piece of electronic wizardry. I enjoy the fact that my camera can take ten frames a second, and continue to do so for ages. I also enjoy not having to change the film after 36 shots, and instead being able to take over 1000 images without even thinking about it. I like the instant gratification that having a small screen on the back allows. And histograms, well, where do I start? There is no praise high enough. I like having all the calls and songs of hundreds of European birds on my phone as an instant reference, and I like being able to call friends and family from just about anywhere with the same device, especially when it is to report the bagging of Sandhill Cranes in Aberdeenshire when they are all miles away. As far as I am concernced, these are excellent uses of technology, and they suit my needs very well.

Sometimes however technology oversteps the mark. This happened today, and predictably the device in question was a satnav. Now satnavs have their uses, don’t get me wrong, many is the time that mine has got me to an unfamiliar location, there to see some rare bird or other. I daresay that on occasion not having had a satnav might have caused me to miss a bird whilst I faffed about working out where I needed to go. Today though I could have lived without a satnav. When you are driving down a road in the Norfolk countryside, and the satnav comes out with “continue 400 yards , then board ferry”, you have to wonder if technology isn’t all it’s cracked up to to be.

A ferry?! The four of us in the car looked at each other and wondered if we had heard it right. We had, for about a minute later the road ended abruptly at a river, and there, clanking towards us from the other side, was a small chain ferry. WTF? The lady in the satnav had announced the ferry-boarding with absolutely no change in intonation, it had all been very factual. “Proceed down the road, board the ferry”. I might have forgiven it had she been marginally excited. “Guys, carry on for just a bit longer, and then there’s a surprise!” But no, monotone. Actually it was quite exciting. Until we saw the sign that said a car and passengers would be charged £3.90 for the 45 second crossing. For the distance travelled, that made it more expensive than the Scillonian, which is saying something. At least there wasn’t a long wait, but it would have been nice to have been asked. More human to have been asked.

The old codger operating the ferry did not fail to notice the evident surprise on our faces. Didn’t mean to come ‘ere did ya?, he said. No, we admitted. Satnav, he pronounced, with an air of certainty. Yes, we said. That’ll be £3.90, he said.

Statistical Collective Boredom

2011-10-04T21:50:00.000+01:00

I was recently shown the "Stats" feature of blogger, which, semi-luddite that I am, I had not realised existed. Way back in the distant past I had managed to enable something called "Statcounter", but, these things being what they are, it required a password, which, naturally, I forgot. Since then the only pointers I have had as to blog-popularity are the Fatbirder counter thingy that you see down the bottom, a pageview counter that I cannot remember ever putting on and thus distrust, and the how many comments get left. And given that half the time I can't even leave comments on my own blog, let alone anyone else, I've been largely igoring that guide, and worked solely off the Fatbirder thing. This usually sits at around 150, but peaked once at 88. How that gets worked out I have no idea, as it moves across a fairly wide range with surprising regularity. Right now I'm sitting between a Russian language site that might be about birds, and some kind of photographic encyclopaedia that quacks at you when you open the Ducks page, but this varies.

Now I have discovered blogger stats, and my what a load of fun they are! They tell me, for instance, and this is what has prompted this short post, that yesterday saw a staggering 1044 pageviews. And only about 800 of those were me checking to see if anyone left any comments.... Seriously, 1000 pageviews? Vous etes having a laugh, non? Checking to see if this was some horrible mistake, a thought which presumably went through the minds of roughly 1000 people at some point yesterday, I went back a bit further, and discovered that the day before saw 675, the day before that 825, and the day before that 748. I'm no statistician, but that would seem to indicate that it's not just a fluke. I checked to see if I had inadvertently written about Great Tits on any of the days, for we all know what the internet is primarily used for, but of these there was no mention. Clearly I am on a roll - shame I just started work again...

I think yesterday's sortie into four figures for the first time ever can be explained away by it being Monday, combined with the world being once again close to economic collapse, and having just had three Party Conferences in a row. People are bored. Very bored. Cameron this, Osbourne that. Please, anything but politics! How about a so-called bird blog that hasn't mentioned birds for three days? Yes internet, take me there now! Hallelujah! Oh, wait......

Sadly the stats page does not show the length of each visit, or at least not that I have found, and that of course may paint a different picture, and tell me that cumulatively the 1044 pageviews lasted about 32 seconds. We shall never know, and seeing as it may burst my proverbial bubble, I'm happy to remain in the dark. More interesting is that it tells you which pages have been visited the most. No matter what time period I look at, the top page is "Birding in New Delhi", which dates from May 2009, generally by a factor of ten over any other page. The next most popular is my map of Wanstead Flats, which is probably just people wanting directions to Long Wood. Nothing else even comes close. These two facts are very surprising, but it shows that there may be some mileage in writing about popular birding destinations like Wanstead Flats. And New Delhi.

Far and away the best bit of stats is of course the keyword searches that brought people here. "Hoopoe Bird" is quite a common one - I particularly like how specific people are being. Hoopoe Cow, for example, is never seen. "Birderdes" is another one that crops up fairly frequently. Perhaps there is a birder called Des somewhere, or perhaps, in the same way that I type Wheater instead of Wheatear around 96% of the time, it's just a cock up. This week more than one person searched for "boy otter costume", which is probably entirely innocent, and today someone searched for "ryanair monopod", no doubt wanting to know how a monopod might best be used to beat a hand-luggage-measuring Ryanair employee senseless next time around. Sadly the keyword search is capped at ten per time period, so some of the more obscure and highly perverted ones that are perhaps out there will have to remain a mystery, but the possibility of scoring a few now down the line now that I have discovered a way to view them may prompt me to insert some ambigious phrases in future posts. Not that I am that immature of course.....

Bird's bum wiggling in the air.

So how was it for me?

2011-10-03T20:41:00.000+01:00

Monday morning commute. Other people's BO at 8am. Heat. Noise. All delights I was thrilled to become reacquainted with, and pay for the privilege. I quickly decided I hadn't missed them at all. Forty-five minutes later the system spat me out at Canary Wharf, my home from 1998 to 2009. I approached the familiar building with a spring in my step, no nervousness this time around. First up an HR induction, entirely predictable, entirely unnecessary. Was this my first time working there? Er, no. In fact I was working here while you were still doing your GCSEs. I didn't say this of course, but dutifully signed 12,235 forms in triplicate, promised not to send emails inciting racial hatred, and gave them my National Insurance number so that I could start funding bankrupt-Britain again.

All signed up, I progressed to security. There I queued, at vast expense, for forty-five minutes while a succession of dopey employees explained to the single man on duty on a Monday morning that they had lost their security passes over the weekend. Finally my turn, I was photographed, and a new shiny pass with the new me on it was issued. Through the turnstiles and into the lift.

I was back.

How strange it felt. People looked at me curiously, wondering if it really was (a thinner version of) me. Others, certain of my identity, came up immediately. I had the same conversation about a million times over the course of the day. What, you mean you've been doing nothing? Well, if you discount the childcare, the school runs, the shopping, the cleaning and general shite that comes with running a house, well yes, I've been doing nothing, just twiddling my thumbs really.

At my new desk, logged in, I looked myself up in the internal directory. There I was! But I was the old me again, the photo circa 2004. Big hair. More chins. And my old phone number too, and my old secretary. These I changed, but my email remains the same. I'm definitely back. I called a few people, just to see what would happen. Bloody Hell! What are you doing back here?! What have you been doing? Oh, nothing....

A short while later and I decided to tour my old floor. Same old same old, familiar faces, familiar voices. A real buzz - a trading floor - lots going on. More conversations, more envy. I tried the coffee machine. Cappucino awful, the espresso later was much better, though needed less sugar. Or more coffee. I had my old lunch. Not literally of course, but the same thing I used to eat more or less every day after wandering around the whole restaurant being unenthused by anything else. The BBQ sauce remains excellent, the salad dressing sub-standard and gloopy. Truly nothing has changed.

I've been out of the game, doing nothing, for over two and half years. I always said I would go back to work when Pudding started school, which was two weeks ago. Mrs L doubted my resolve, but I've done it. I hadn't meant go back to exactly the same place, but it was convenient. I'm very much a known quantity. They're prepared to let me transition back around my parental responsibilities, which is fantastic. I don't want to let go of that, I truly enjoy it. I'm part of my kids childhood, a real presence, rather than the dad they never see. It's important. Three years ago I failed to see that importance, it took getting made redundant and having it forced upon me to hammer it home. I was blind, but I soon saw. Money, useful but unimportant. Kids, wife (boss), family, home. That's what it's all about. Oh, and birds.

NB The views and opinions expressed in this blog are entirely my own and are not those of my employer, who are a fine, upstanding company, with moral standards far, far higher than my own.

Economics, by me

2011-10-02T23:17:00.001+01:00

On the cusp of returning to the salt mines, it occured to me that we're all utterly screwed no matter what we do. No, really. I was wondering what happened to all the money that we don't have any more. I reasoned that money doesn't just disappear, so that must mean that someone else must have it. It isn't me. Nor is it anyone I know. A few Russian oligarchs have a shit-load of it, and China presumably has heaps in return for all the plastic shite we collectively buy, but surely that can't account for all of it.

The UK's national debt is currently £940 billion. We have bought almost £1,000 billion of crap from China. If you include the cost of all the bank bailouts, the debt number is £2,266 billion. That is two trillion quid. Maybe - I've never really understood trillions. Anyway, a staggeringly large amount. Money that we don't have, and therefore have to borrow from other people. It costs yet more billions in interest payments. There are three ways the country can get money. The first is taxes. I start paying them again tomorrow - don't say I never help. The second is by selling stuff, such as our entire national infrastructure. This was called privatisation, and we have nothing left to sell anymore. The third is the easiest, whereby we just print more money, and then say "Golly, look at that, where did that come from? Very handy." This is called quantative easing and is generally accepted as a bad thing as it devalues all the other money that we don't have.

So, add up those three things, and that's what we get coming in. Call it a salary if you will. But then come the outgoings. For you and me, it's food, the mortgage, binoculars, that kind of thing. For the country it's stuff like building hospitals and paying nurses to work in them, paying interest on our national debt, and ensuring that thousands of utter layabouts can continue to smoke, swill lager, and watch Sky TV with their benefit cheques.

And that's the problem. The cost of doing all of that far exceeds our salary, and has done for years. If you and I were to do this, we'd be out on the street living in cardboard boxes in shop doorways. For countries, you just call it a budget defecit, blame it on the previous governent, and sell some more gilts to fund it. The actual number this year is forecast to be about £170 billion. That number simply gets added to the £940 billion of money we don't have.

But worry ye not, there is a plan. It is called the goverment's economic strategy, or to use another well-used term, austerity measures. These measures are designed to save £81 billion over the next four years, but of course come at the expense of having policemen on our streets, or even police stations. Oh, and we're all going to have to continue working until we DIE, but on the plus side we are still going to have nice new shiny Aircraft Carrier.

It's a huge amount of money, and is going to be painful for a generation, perhaps longer (see below) But here's the rub. Even if the country does manage to save that £81 billion, some simple maths indicates that we're still screwed. Assuming the budget defecit stays stable at £170 billion a year for the next four years, rather than increase the national debt by £680 billion, we're dramatically slashing that number to only a £599 billion increase. What is the bloody use in that? To even shave £1 billion off the national debt, we need to save £171 billion a year! And even then it will take the best part of a millenium to even get back to zero! To get back to zero in a useful timeframe doesn't even bear thinking about. We're screwed. Utterly screwed. And we're in good shape! Look at Greece. Look at Ireland. Look at Spain, look at America. The western economic model, that of spending money you don't have (and will never have), is well and truly broken. The austerity measures are pie in the sky. What is the bloody point? We're doomed.

It's amazing what you can think of during a short car journey isn't it? All of the above came to me on the M11 between Cambridge and London this afternoon. I've never had any interest in economics whatsoever, apart from on a personal level. But the real worry is what actually is money? Is it a number I see online when I check my bank balance? Or is that ethereal? Is it the the bits of paper I have from time to time in my wallet that promise to pay the bearer on demand? Yeah, with what exactly? All the gold reserves we already sold? The UK ran out of "money", whatever that is, years ago. The situation is only getting worse, and the austerity measures only mean it's getting worse fractionally more slowly.

So the answer is........?

No idea. Just enjoy your birding before you have to sell your binoculars.

Jack Snipe wins Award

2011-10-01T20:43:00.000+01:00

I got back today, just timed it so that I failed to get any new birds, the Grey-cheeked Thrush departing after I arrived, and a couple of Olive-backed Pipits turning up when I got home. That's birding for you, but an excellent week nonetheless, with a slew of decent birds and excellent views of most of them, included the erasure of the dreaded "bvd"* from Barred Warbler after years of getting only glimpses. I'm still swaying gently even twelve hours after disembarking MV Hrossey, but a night in a real bed should sort me out.

I stayed on the islands for a mere five nights, but managed to rack up the following in terms of goodies:

Surf Scoter
Pallid Harrier
Barred Warbler x 3
Yellow-browed Warbler x 5
Bluethroat x 2
Red-breasted Flycatcher
Little Bunting
Black-headed Bunting
Common Rosefinch
Arctic(-type) Redpoll
Lesser Grey Shrike
eastern form of Lesser Whitethroat

That strikes me as pretty good, especially when you plonk a couple of Pectoral Sandpipers and a Sandhill Crane at the beginning of the list that were scored in-transit.

The birding up there is intense. Intense and prolonged concentration, and also intensely difficult in inclement conditions. I have come back a better birder, all you can ask really (apart from half-a-dozen ticks of course). Glimpes of Phylloscs are now enough to separate Chiff from Willow from Yellow-browed. A shape zipping across a gap between vegetation is easily assigned to Blackcap and so on. Quite a lot of fun.

The best bird saved itself until my final afternoon. I forget where exactly we were, checking another plantation. A Jack Snipe flew past Howard at waist height and plonked down in the grass quite close to use. Empoying stealth and fieldcraft I inched the camera towards it as I lay flat on my stomach along a fenceline. The bird didn't move, so I fired away. It decided on a little wander, and walked through the wire fence and then through Bradder's legs. Eh?

It soon became apparent that the bird either had no concept of people, or was so shattered it didn't care. Or perhaps both. Bradders stuck out his hand to see if the bird would walk across it. It did. Then we all wanted a go. Extraordinary behaviour. Pretty amazing from the bird as well. It wandered around between us utterly unconcerned - talk about an opportunity for study.

If anything, this birding trip to Shetland has been about confiding birds. Not necessarily rare ones, but exceptionally good views of pretty much everything we came across. Even of a Barred Warbler, which takes some doing. But despite the awesomeness of the Lesser Grey Shrike, the spendidness of the Arctic Redpoll, and the chirpiness of the Little Bunting, the bird I will remember and smile about, when asked about Shetland 2011, will be the Jack Snipe that walked across my hand and nearly hid in my lens hood.

* better view desired.

More of the Arctic-type Redpoll

2011-10-01T20:17:00.002+01:00

What's not to like? Note the flank streaking, but also the clean white undertail coverts with only a thin central line. Mystery bird! You can click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

It looks very snowball-like in this photo in the shade. On a view like this you would easily convice yourself it had Arctic heritage!!

The pure white portion of the rump is actually quite narrow, there is significant streaking moving into the rump from the top and bottom.

Doesn't it look different in this shot? Much darker.

In sunlight, the bird took on a very milky appearance, like really weak coffee. This was more of a tan and white coloured bird than a grey and white one.

A large red forehead, very nice.

So is the bill small, or large? Or inbetween?

Birding on Unst

2011-09-30T10:08:00.000+01:00

Another day, another island. Unst was one of my favourite places last year, so I was pleased that the team hadn't been before I arrived. After a quick dip of a Booted or Sykes's Warbler on the mainland, we were off up to Toft. Once again Yell didn't get a look in, the Prince Harry of birding islands, and we were straight over onto Unst to search for the Black-headed Bunting just yards from the quay at Belmont.

Tick and run. Well actually just run, as I saw one of these on Skerries last year. Whilst I'm not specifically complaining, if it could have been a different bunting sp that would have been handy. We carries on to Haroldswick where the Desert Lesser Whitethroat proved extremely obliging, and then onto Nordale, where the Bluethroat was a right sod. That said, it did lead us to the pine tree of birding dreams, which contained not only the Bluethroat, but a Yellow-browed Warbler, a Barred Warbler, a Goldcrest and a Willow Warbler. In between all this twitchery, we searched gardens and various little pockets of habitat, once again for little reward.

That's been the problem all week really - despite masses of effort, especially from this iris specialist, we have turned up very little. There hasn't been a hint of east all week, so very few birds are making it over. It has been very pleasant though, and the photographic opportunities have been great - having that extra dimension to this hobby means that even when pickings are slim I tend to have a good time. Amazingly I packed almost exactly the right amount of stuff, after agonising about what to bring for almost two weeks. Next time i won't bother with the waist belt and pouches, which have remained unused due to a plethora of pockets in my jacket being much easier, and ultimately more comfortable. Neither have I used my thermals, the weather here has been incredibly nice, verging on 20 degrees these past two days.

I'm leaving today on the evening boat, one last push for that self-found goody, and that'll be it for another year. Am I coming back? You betcha!

PS Mrs L, please can I come back next year?

Shetland perking up

2011-09-28T21:31:00.002+01:00

I am happy to report a much easier and thus better day today. In common with other parts of the country, it is unseasonally warm, and so I have been birding the Northern Isles in shirt sleeves for most of the day. Although there is a distinct lack of cream tea action, it almost felt like Scilly at times today. Apart from the Northern Waterthrush of course. But we did see some birds, and see them well.

I won't go into an in-depth review of where we went and what we saw, but a Little Bunting on Whalsay was extremely nice, and the Arctic-type Redpoll performed beautifully. Note that I'm calling it "type" - upon consultation with Duivenduiuvijkjdjk there were several features which didn't quite stack up with classic exilipes. Now I'm no expert, but happily one was on hand in the form of Martin Garner. He too (and he didn't need a book!) thought that it wasn't quite a Coue's, but conceded that it was definitely a Redpoll more consistent with what is generally known as "Arctic" than anything else, possibly an Icelandic version. My own personal view is that it was very nice, and frankly, what else matters?

There is nothing wrong with being an ID guru of course. The world needs ID gurus, especially when it comes to Redpolls, it is just that I am not one (a guru or a Redpoll). I just like birds, and this one was brilliant. It got the old grey matter working, which is always nice, but the bottom line is that it was very round, very white, and very fluffy - much like a sheep - and it posed extremely nicely for photographs. Which when you've lugged 4kg of camera round all day is always appreciated.

Moving away from birds and onto Sheep-fanciers, here is a photo of the team. The comedy-pose was unintended - the movement of the Whalsay ferry caused the camera to slip mid-timer, so a quick adjustment was needed to ensure we all got in, and much merriment ensued. Little things....

From left to right: Bradders jnr, Bradders snr, moi, and then Howard.

Desperate Shetland birders start looking at sheep

2011-09-27T19:39:00.001+01:00

No, we haven't seen one. In fact, we've seen nothing.

It's been bad, really bad. The wind-speed increased to 6,000mph overnight, and the few birds that were here got blown to Scandinavia. This is a right bugger if the truth be told, as ironically enough we want the birds currently in Scandinavia to be blown to us. To cut a long story short (on this blog?) we have been out all day and seen very little. When I tell you that the highlight was a singing Robin and a monumental 25 Woodpigeons, you will perhaps understand where I am coming from. I don't know if it's the wind that is preventing us from finding birds, or if there are simply no birds to find. After eight straight months of westerlies, I suspect the latter.

So so close, and yet so so far

But we tried, which is the important thing right? We tried western beaches for uber-flocks of Buff-breasted Sandpipers, Semipalmated Plovers and the like, and found the sum total of about eight Turnstone, six Ringed Plover and a Knot. We tried plantation after plantation, driving about 20,000 miles in search of sycamores, and found three Yellow-browed Warblers, a Chiffchaff, and a handful of Willow Warblers. In eight hours of birding. A poor return? Yes, so we started looking at sheep.

A truly lovely sheep

I found a particularly attractive one at Dale of Walls (I'm releasing the location only on the understanding that she's spoken for). An excellent-looking ravine brimming with cover, about a mile east of the Atlantic, caused us to make an emergency stop. Wow, habitat! Amazing habitat! There could be anything in there, we said. There wasn't, there was nothing. Not a single bloody bird. Then I noticed the sheep. I'm not saying I'm in love, but it's close. Let's just say that it was the most exciting thing that happened all day.

When it's bad up here, it's pretty bloody bad. It got better though as at about 3pm it started raining heavily. As I say, this probably had no impact whatsoever on our ability to find birds, but to ensure that we ended the day on zero we packed it in and went home for a cup of tea. As someone once said, things can only get better, though looking at the forecast the wind seems set to get stronger. That would make Shetland windier than the surface of Jupiter. Having been here for three days now, I contend that to be entirely possible.

PS I swear that there has been absolutely no exaggeration in this post.

Hard work in High Winds

2011-09-26T21:27:00.000+01:00

Eshaness Lighthouse with attractive passerine migrant

It is always windy in Shetland. As a result the tallest tree measures just 25cm. Fact. This makes it easy to scan the treetops, but also means that you usually have to peg yourself down to prevent yourself being blown away. Today it was so windy that I saw a House Sparrow blown across a tin roof. It did a kind of cartwheel before righting itself and managing to cling on again. Or maybe it was just having fun, let's face it, there's piss all else to do on Shetland, you might as well engage in a bit of amateur gymnastics for the amusement of your fellow passerines.

Lovely Sheep

Today was all about seeing rare birds badly, and common birds really well. Some you win, some you lose. The wind was blowing at about 165mph, which probably didn't help matters. The first bird we got terrible views of was a Coue's Arctic Redpoll. This was a great shame as I have never seen this race before. I got it flying away, could have been a Bullfinch, and then briefly in a bush, could have been a Linnet. These two briefest of glimpses took about an hour each, and to really keep our spirits up we all got a good and thorough soaking in driving rain. Happy days. Making us even happier was a sod of an Acro that we spent more time chasing, which when it finally gave up hiding turned out to be the one species we didn't want it to be.

It got better though. We got about 0.2s of a Barred Warbler, and 0 seconds of a Red-breasted Flycatcher. These prolonged views cost another hour or so, but at least it didn't rain again. The wind did increase to 500mph though. Great for getting rid of dandruff.

All was not in vain though. I found a lovely northwestern-type Redpoll at the very top of Mainland Shetland whilst stalking a particularly nice Wheatear, and Bradders found a silky Wood Warbler at Busta House. Bird of the day award probably goes to the 103 Snow Buntings at Eshaness - a proper Shetland bird in a proper Shetland landscape.

So, a hard day. When the wind has been dominated by westerlies for about a month, finding Sibe passerines is always going to be rather challenging. We didn't even get a Yellow-browed today, that's how difficult it has been. The wind is relentless. When you get back indoors after a day in the field you feel raw. You tingle, and the face that looks back at you in the mirror is bright red. Can you imagine what Howard looks like?

Arrival on Shetland

2011-09-25T20:34:00.001+01:00

Lerwick from Bressay Sound

Well, Simon King was right, there is no better way to arrive on Shetland than by boat. Sailing up Bressay Sound in the early morning light was simply fantastic, especially as I had managed to sleep for a full seven hours. Four beers and a large plate of fish and chips probably contributed to my comatose state, but nonetheless I was surprised at how much sleep I got in only a reclining chair with my fleece over my head. A quick breakfast, a cup of tea, and I got myself up on deck for pretty much first light. By this time we were well past Sumburgh Head, only about forty-five minutes out, and in the lee of the mainland, were on a flat-calm sea. It was extremely pleasant, there is something special about a sunrise from the water.

Right on cue, Bradders was there to meet me at the terminal, and after a quick unpacking of gear, the team of the two of us, Howard, and Bradders Snr, were off and out birding. First stop the tiny hamlet of Brake on South Mainland, where we felt we stood a good chance of seeing possibly the only remaining Pallid Harrier on Shetland. After a few Whinchat and my first Yellow-browed Warbler, the Harrier duly appeared in the valley and sat on a post showing off. Then it was up and away, appearing to hunt low along a burn, and we never saw it again.

Next stop Quendale for that superb Shetland past-time, iris-bashing. For those of you that don't know, some of the boggier bits of Shetland are carpeted in vast iris beds, typically along small streams. The sueda of the north, it is the stuff of nightmares. Unfortunately, birds love hiding in it, and the only way to find them is to go in after them. The procedure is as follows: Enter iris bed, fall over. Get up, progress a few feet, fall over again. Get up, sink knee deep in particularly boggy bit, fall over again, swear. Repeat. A lot. Occasionally find a bird, which nine times out of ten will flip in a non-identifiable manner fifty metres back into the irises you just walked through. For our troubles, we found a Bluethroat and another Yellow-browed Warbler, so a fairly good return, though as I sit typing this my ankes really do hurt. Wanstead Flats this is not.

A very large iris bed. Let me at it!!

We birded a few more sites nearby, including the famous Channerwick, but largely drew a blank and so caved in and twitched a fantastic adult Lesser Grey Shrike to the north of Lerwick. I can't tell you how far it was as I fell asleep as soon as we set off, and only woke up when we got there. I like to contribute. Anyway, always go and see Shrikes, you will never - ever - be disappointed.