White-billed Diver, Sandside Bay

A couple of weeks back, I was lucky enough to get a few days birding in Scotland with my Dad, while Suzanne and Jessica visited friends from Canada while they were in Wales. The weather was actually much better than down south, and the quality of the birds was pretty high.

One of the highlights was this White-billed Diver (or Yellow-billed Loon, for any American readers) right up on the far north coast near Thurso. It was showing down to about 20 or 30m (as I’d hoped the Brixham bird might have been in December), and with only a couple of other birders present in the cold sunshine, gave us a fantastic couple of hours. Certainly far and away the best views of this Arctic species I’ve ever had.

As the photos suggest, the bird was feeding in very shallow water around the rocky coast, dabbling and nosing around in the seaweed in the manner of a Shoveler. We never saw it dive, nor bring any food up to the surface. At the time, we just thought this was a bit weird – but by late afternoon the following day, what must surely have been the same bird was found floating on the surface, dead. Very sad… Perhaps the inshore feeding was a consequence of the diver already being either ill or starving, and its apparently inability to feed there just hastened the end?

On a happier note, the rest of our short trip took in a stack of other great birds: rarity highlights included Lesser Scaup, King Eider and some funny Coot or other, while the usual selection of Speyside and Scottish coastal specialities were excellent as usual.

Bradders Baby Blog

Jessica Bradnum made an appearance early on Tuesday morning, and so the last few days have been something of a whirlwind, in a truly amazing way. Suffice to say that birding is a fair way down my list of priorities just now – below ‘sleeping’, for instance! So anyone disinterested in anything but birds should probably delete the blog from their bookmarks for at least eighteen years a month or two.

However, for those that are still reading, the blog provides a convenient way of meeting numerous consistently-themed requests: “Can you send us some photos?”; “Where are the photos?”; “But there must be more photos…?”; “Must. Have. PHOTOS!”; and so on. So here’s a start.

 

It’s been an eventful few days: there have been lots of hugs and cuddles…

… the postman keeps bringing us all presents:

… we’ve been out for a little walk, to see some birds…

… one of which Daddy is still unable to identify:

We’ve been meeting people…

And above all else, we’ve been getting to know our beautiful little girl.

Rarity distribution in pictures: 2013, and before

This is far from a typical end-of-year review (but there are enough of those out there already). Instead, I’ve spent an hour or two playing around with some new data visualisation tools in the latest version of Excel, and my birding records from the year. If a picture speaks a thousand words, then this is going to be pretty long!

First up: where have I seen anything good this year? The chart below tells the story…

On the left, we have my nine British lifers – I think this validates the story that there’s been lots of amazing birds, but few of them close to home! (You can also see from the colour key that one of the nine was a bit of a tart, the Great Snipe at Kilnsea… but compensated for by the ridiculously good view!)

On the right, we have all the other species that I log all records for – basically anything unusual, scarce migrants and better. The bigger circles (disproportionately big, I reckon?) are sites with multiple goodies: the Uwchmynydd peninsula in Wales, or St. Abbs Head, for instance. One slight surprise from all this is that I’ve not been down to the far southwest at all in 2013… I’ve been missing out! And even though we didn’t have the mass of megas we’d hoped for on Shetland, the rash of bubbles says we didn’t do badly!

Next – how do those lifers’ locations compare to those in the previous five years, say? Those are shown in the following chart:

There’s less scatter here, with a predictable bias towards the south-east. And a few hotspots emerge: Dungeness is in the lead with three (including the tarty, turquoise coloured Melodious Warbler!), and for an inland site, Chew Valley Lake has done well to give me two (Sharp-tailed Sand and Franklin’s Gull). Portland has two more megas (Eastern Bonelli’s and Collared Fly), as well, to put alongside this week’s unexpected Alcid addition.

But that wide distribution is a huge change to how my birding started as a teenager in the early 90’s! No national twitching back then, as the next pic illustrates – this is all lifers between 1992 (at the start of which I had a British list of around 230) and 2003 (when I graduated from university, with the list on around 310):

Clearly, it was all about East Anglia, with just a tiny handful of holiday bonuses elsewhere!

Obviously I’ve had plenty of excellent birding up there since then as well.So the next chart illustrates that region in more detail, showing all notable records from 1992 to date, again with lifers on the left and everything else on the right.

Looking at the lifers, there’s clearly no shortage of quality in that lot! This clearly reveals a tendency to only go for rarer birds further away from the area where I grew up, near Great Yarmouth – for instance, Canvasback and Pied-billed Grebe in west Norfolk… and the navy megas in south Suffolk are all relatively recent.

On the right-hand side, you can see some happy hunting grounds highlighted with larger circles: for instance, Minsmere, Lowestoft, Winterton, and Sheringham (dominated by seawatching records, principally ‘local’ birds in a big turquoise slice of the pie). And of course, the North Norfolk coast is simply littered with great birds – shown below in more detail:

No prizes for guessing where Cley is here… the best site for sheer number of species for me, anywhere in the country – though Rainham is certainly punching above its weight here!

And I could easily go on – where on earth have I seen exactly 100 Yellow-browed Warblers, 26 Red-backed Shrikes or 21 Pec Sands? Where have I seen most stuff on Shetland, or Scilly? What are the peak weeks of the year for scarcities, rarities, and megas?

But in conclusion for now, I hope this just goes to show the value in keeping records over a period of time, since it’s easier and easier to draw out patterns and insight as better software comes along. I’m already thinking that I need to keep more data electronically – perhaps all species, not just the rarer ones, with full counts? And then I should submit it all to the BTO, so they can draw much more interesting (and important) conclusions from the data, across all observers, as they’ve done with the excellent Bird Atlas.

Maybe there’s a New Year’s resolution in there somewhere?

A very Murre Christmas!

Just a couple of photos from the final twitch of 2013 (or maybe not, given the way this year’s been going on?!)

Like many other birders, I practically had to read the message twice when it popped up in the morning: Brunnich’s Guillemot in Portland Harbour. Whaaaaaat??? And then there’s a photo – it definitely is a Brunnich’s, and it looks like it’s paddling around at the finder’s feet. Better get cracking!

I didn’t have much time to play with, and the traffic was painfully bad for most of the route down there – problems on the M25 and M3, and then the road west from the M27 never seems to be quick in daylight (at least, not when there’s a good bird on Portland!). Fortunately, though, the usual bottlenecks around Weymouth were clear, and a phone-call with directions to the best parking spot from Matt was well timed as I crossed the end of the Fleet.

It’s never that easy, though – as I joined the crowd of c. 70 people, it was clear that the bird had been lost, and as usual in these situations the ratio of folk looking to talking was not favourable! After legging it backwards and forwards up and down the Castletown seafront with a few others, getting a couple of tantalisingly brief views of the back-end of a very black-and-white auk diving, the Brunnich’s eventually gave itself up again… and in style, down to 10 metres at times.

The distance it covered underwater was nothing short of amazing – I imagine any non-birding bystanders watching a bunch of grown men literally running along the quayside trying to keep up were probably in hysterics.

Regardless, what a bird, though! I’ve seen Brunnich’s well previously on Hornoya, a small island off Vardo in NE Norway (more details here – and what a trip that was, by the way!), but a live, twitchable bird in England (and maybe even anywhere outside the Northern Isles?) is unprecedented. Whether the combination of this one, and Mark Pearson’s bird at Filey, within a short space of time is just a coincidence or the start of a change in status, we’ll have to wait and see. Glad I got this one, though… that’s all I’m saying!

 

PS: thanks to Tony B for the pun-tastic title… had me laughing out loud on the quayside when it appeared on my phone!

Shetland summary (and since)

I was up on Shetland from 14-20 October with Messrs Eade, Lethbridge, Croft and Johnson – bit later than previous years, so a slightly different experience and mix of birds, but still a fantastic place and a great trip. Since getting back to work on the following Tuesday morning, I’ve been pretty busy there, and then birding at the weekends so this feels a bit like ancient history now. Never mind.

The birding was unsurprisingly quite hard work, with relatively few migrants this late in the season. We still scored a fair range of rarities and scarcities, generally on our own, with very few other visiting birders remaining. The most exciting (but also most challenging) period was the last couple of days, with a strong constant easterly wind and pretty much constant rain. At times, pretty foul conditions – but it was obvious that birds were arriving. Our spirits were buoyed by finding an super-skulky Olive-backed Pipit on the Saturday, and the near-certainty that there was a ‘big one’ out there somewhere to be found kept us going non-stop til the end.

We were right, as well – but the fact it was a male Rubythroat, on Fair Isle, with news breaking while we were on the A1 near Newcastle, was a bit of a kick in the teeth. Still, surely that was it, so not too bad? (I’m sure there will be at least one twitchable mainland Rubythroat in the next ten years, given the recent surge in records). Oh dear: the kick in the teeth was followed by a Cape May style slap in the face. Ouch.

But enough complaining – any trip of this kind is almost guaranteed to miss something good by a day or two, it’s just the nature of the beast. I love these remote places, and rare bird searching / finding (far more than the idea of smash-and-grab twitching megas from down south)… so I’m happy with the outcome, even if it could’ve been better still.

The rarity roll-call featured:

• Wilson’s Phalarope – the moulting adult at Sand
• Western Bonelli’s Warbler – cracking views on Whalsay, with the bird calling quite a bit too

• Little Bunting: very close, though very brief views at Quendale
• Citrine Wagtail: another showy bird, at Fleck, just down the road from Boddam:

• the aforementioned self-found Olive-backed Pipit – a real team effort, found and identified in horrid weather. (Hard to believe this was my bogey bird, with seven dips prior to 2010, yet now I’ve seen one every year since then, and co-found one).
• White-rumped Sandpiper – good views of a rather bright juvenile bird at Boddam, again in driving rain!
• four Yellow-browed Warblers, including a close bird in small patches of irises out on Garths Ness – maybe newly arrived?

• a lovely Red-breasted Flycatcher
• no less than 11 Great Spotted Woodpeckers – pretty scarce on Shetland, but there’s been an impressive influx this year. One bird in the second Sumburgh quarry regularly took cover in a hole in the rocks, in the absence of trees!
• a stonking male Northern Bullfinch
• Long-eared Owl in broad daylight
• numerous educational Siberian Chiffchaffs
• hundreds of Mealy Redpolls
• plenty of Crossbills – sadly all Common for us

And of course, the place itself is fantastic, leaving the birds aside. This scene from Whalsay includes the Bonelli’s favoured gardens…

… while these scenes are from Lamba Ness right up at the top of Unst. Beautiful, if rather bleak…

Finally, in the way home, a diversion via St Abbs was well worth it, scoring the Sardinian Warbler immediately, and then enjoying a range of late autumn migrants including more Yellow-browed Warblers.

Since then, I’ve scored a lifer (and got soaked for my trouble) with the Semipalmated Plover on the south coast, enjoyed the cracking male Two-barred Crossbill in Kent, and been buzzed down to a couple of feet by the awesome pair of Pallid Swifts along the clifftops at Foreness Point in Margate.

So, while there’s plenty in the country that I’d like to see right now (hopefully some of it will stick around – for ages!), I can’t really complain. It’s been pretty good!

Herons of the Pantanal

Just time for one final set of photos from Brazil, before heading off up north tonight, first for Matt and Claire’s wedding in Aberdeen, and then on to Shetland for the week. Hopes are high!

It probably won’t come as much of a surprise that the Pantanal has lots of different herons, given that it’s partially underwater for a good chunk of the year. They’re pretty a smart and photogenic bunch, though, so it would be a mistake to overlook them.

First up is the rarest of the bunch, Zigzag Heron:

We finally tracked this down from a late afternoon boat trip from the Hotel Pantanal Mato Grosso, midway along the Transpantaneira. They’re absolutely tiny, and very skulking. Fortunately this one was calling regularly, and our boatman skilfully got us in amongst the vegetation. The photo was taken at ISO 6400, with a spotlight on the bird – it was almost totally invisible otherwise!

Another weird looking beast was Boat-billed Heron, picture below. These are coloured rather like Black-capped Night Heron, but the bill is pretty amazing. Again, these are skulkers, sticking to the shady banks all the time.

A couple of more familiar looking species next – Cocoi Heron is pretty similar to Grey and Great Blue Heron, and Striated Heron is a bird that I’ve seen all over the place (including at least three American birds in the UK). Both were pretty common.

One of the most striking species was the fantastically named Rufescent Tiger Heron, below. We thought that the patterned young birds, like this one, were actually smarter than the more rufescent adults!

We also had good views of Jabiru, Wood and Maguari Storks, plus Roseate Spoonbills, Great, Cattle and Snowy Egrets, Capped, Whistling, Little Blue and Night Herons. Not a bad haul!

Giant River Otters

Second only to the stunning Jaguars in the mammal department, these guys were fantastic value on the River Cuiaba and subsidiaries in the Pantanal.

Clearly very sociable creatures, we had the privilege of watching two different family groups interacting and feeding during our time on the river, both times around half a dozen animals.

The species is now categorised as endangered, with only a few thousand left in the world, centred around the Amazon basin. The biggest individuals are well over five feet long, and all have a pretty ferocious set of teeth.

From some angles, the somewhat sinister and slippery face with big beady eyes recalled Gollum…

… but from others it has to be said that they’re really quite cute!

Pantanal Kingfishers

As you might expect for one of the world’s greatest wetlands, Kingfishers were not in short supply. There are only five species and we saw the lot – but the camera only caught up with two of these, so there’s not much diversity here!

The most obliging from a photographic point of view were Amazon Kingfishers, frequently remaining perched as the boat slid in closer and closer. The male has a large chestnut/rufous patch on the upper breast, while the female is metallic bottle green and white – both pretty smart!

The other species that got caught on camera was the huge Ringed Kingfisher – a fairly common, and often noisy, bird. We’d seen one or two of these in the Lower Rio Grande valley in Texas a few years previously.

Of the remaining three species, Green Kingfisher was reasonably common, but not as easy to see well, while American Pygmy Kingfisher and Green-and-rufous Kingfisher were only seen once or twice, in flight only.

Raptors of the Pantanal, part II

Another of the most common birds was Snail Kite, shown below in adult plumage with a striking red eye and slaty grey upperparts (and a slightly hazy photo – taking even half-decent photos in the heat of the day was nigh-on impossible out here).

The young Snail Kite shown below was ridiculously obliging, while struggling with a crab in a roadside bush. You would simply never be able to just slowly walk straight up to a bird of prey in the UK as I could with this one…

And finally, this is a Southern Caracara, just metres away from the same Snail Kite. I reckon it was trying its luck for a free meal, but didn’t get any joy this time.

Aside from the birds photographed here, you can add Crane Hawk, Great Black Hawk, and Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture to the list, plus a few others that I’ve probably forgotten. Not a bad selection, I reckon…