Home Birding

An extract from an email all ringers received this week.

“BTO SURVEYS IN THE WIDER COUNTRYSIDE”. 

“Following the Government statement on 23 March, our Senior Leadership Team has reviewed the BTO advice and is asking all volunteers to follow the guidelines presented by the Prime Minister. While the monitoring work undertaken by volunteers is extremely important, it must not compromise public health. 

To avoid this potential risk, we are requesting that all BTO surveyors, including ringers and nest recorders, refrain from undertaking survey work at sites to which they would need to travel by any means until this guidance is reviewed.” 

“All the best and stay safe”. 

Dave Leech, Head of Ringing & Nest Recording 
James Pearce-Higgins, Director of Science” 

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Here's my contribution to "Home Birding", the newest buzz phrase for locked down birders with a post first published on Another Bird Blog on 31/12/2011 - New Year’s Eve 2011. Click the pictures for a close-up.

It’s time for recalling the past year’s highlights of birding, ringing and photography. Now is the moment when we choose to forget the low points, the empty pages in a sodden notebook, netting a handful of birds on a seemingly perfect spring morning, or discovering that you set the aperture wrong.

Here we go in rough chronological order with a selection of photos and personal highlights of 2011.

In the early part of the year we holidayed in Egypt at a time when the country was undergoing a revolution, but the confiding birds hadn’t joined in the turmoil and just behaved naturally for a visiting Brit.

Egypt proved to be a wonderful place for bird photography and so difficult to select just a few pictures, apart from the Kingfisher which is just about my favourite photo of the year, taken with a decent choice of aperture for once.

Kingfisher - Egypt

Cattle Egret - Egypt

I’d left Will counting Siskins building up by the hundreds in his garden, together with a dozen or two Brambling and Lesser Redpoll. Within days of returning from Egypt I joined him for some memorable ringing sessions and notable breakfasts.

Brambling

Lesser Redpoll 

Siskin 

Bacon Butty 

Spring and autumn were great for catching and photographing Northern Wheatears at Pilling. With the help of sacrificial meal worms I caught fourteen “Wheats” and clicked the shutter button a couple of hundred times on the beautiful chat, passing Meadow Pipits or the occasional Linnet.

Wheatear

Meadow Pipit

Linnet 

The annual ritual came along, May in Menorca, the island where birds are hard to find but fortunately more numerous than birders. This year a ringed Audouin’s Gull at the hotel pool gave me an excuse to search for that extreme rarity, a Menorcan ringer.

A Ringed Audouin’s Gull -

A Ringed Audouin's Gull

Summer was warm and wonderful, ringing Swallow chicks, finding Skylark nests and stumbling upon young Lapwings or breeding Redshank.

Skylark

Barn Swallow 

Redshank

Lapwing

Then at the end of summer came a chance to take photographs of a species rapidly becoming a rarity, the unfortunately named “Common” Cuckoo.

Cuckoo 

Autumn and early winter was given over to ringing pipits, buntings, finches and thrushes “on the moss”, the satisfaction of working a regular patch with a job well done.

Reed Bunting 

Tree Pipit

Yellowhammer

Don't forget to Spring forward tonight by changing all those clocks. Or not.

Back soon with Another Bird Blog.  Linking this post to Anni's Birding in Texas.

Goldfinch Gone

Three days of sunshine and all the Goldfinches suddenly vanished from my garden. There's been 15-20 most of the winter so bang goes my plan to do a little garden ringing while in lockdown.

Goldfinch

So here's a post first published at the end of 2013 to celebrate the year's pictures in a month by month sequence. It’s mostly the birds which stirred the senses with odd shots of the places where memories are made. 

January is time to escape from the grey, cold skies of a UK winter and grab some welcome sunshine, if only for a few weeks. We were stunned by the long, wide, sandy expanse of the beaches of Fuerteventura, some several miles long and just begging to be walked. When tired of the walking I sat on some quiet rocks near the shore and took pictures of a Whimbrel, a shy wader species I had longed to photograph. 

Fuerteventura

Whimbrel

February continued where I left off in the early part of the year in ringing birds out on the frozen mossland. Brambling winters don’t happen too often, 2012 and 2013 being the first for several years and a winter when I caught 66 of the striking finches. One bore a Norwegian ring, another one later captured in Norway. 

Brambling

March, and as the ice lingered on there were still Bramblings to be seen along with a good number of common Reed Buntings. Bird ringing is not about catching rare or scarce birds. Catching and ringing birds is about monitoring the populations of common birds, an important and vital job in these worrying days of wholesale declines.

Many a trainee ringer has fallen by the wayside when realising that rare birds appear in mist nets on equally rare days and that the humdrum of catching common birds is mostly unexciting hard graft. Imagine my surprise on 15th March to find a Little Bunting in the net, an agreeable but unimportant addition to the winter catch of 72 Reed Buntings. That Little Bunting was still around into April when I guess it felt the urge to migrate.

Little Bunting

April is Wheatear Time. The migrant chats appear along the coast on their way to the uplands of the UK or Scandinavia. A few are destined for Iceland or even distant Greenland. The birds are hungry following their journey from further south and can rarely resist a mealworm, so I send them on their way north bearing a ring which tells others that they arrived there via the UK. 

Wheatear

May usually involves Menorca. The island draws us back with its rugged and gentle landscape, quiet roads, friendly locals and spring sunshine. Birds are hard to find but rewarding when you do, unimpeded by crowds of target birders running here, there and everywhere. The Hoopoes use the same nest site and feeding locations every year. Creatures of habit also use the same café for a spot of lunch. 

Hoopoe

Menorcan lunch

June and it’s time to find and ring some wader chicks. The task is to find them in the literal sense but also find them before they disappear as a species from our diminishing wetlands and intensified farms. Redshanks aren’t the easiest to come across, in fact they are damned difficult to locate, sprint like Usain Bolt and have protective parents that shame many a human. The first I ringed for a good few years. 

Redshank chick

July is a time when birds and birders go quiet. There nothing much to do except feed the kids and stay around the house, least of all travel very far to discover new things when migration time is far away. Skylarks aren’t the easiest of nests to find but I daren’t go near this one as the size of those grubs says the chicks are big and possibly out of the nest. Skylark chicks often leave the nest long before they can fly, an evolutionary adaptation which increases their chance of survival. 

Skylark

August often sits on the fence between summer and autumn not knowing which way to jump. The cold, late spring of 2013 made late broods last into August and wader chicks about to fly. My personal favourite picture of 2013 just happens to be my favourite species the Lapwing. With luck the spikiy young Lapwing below will live 15/20 years. Let’s hope there are places for it to live 20 years from now. 

Lapwing

September produced an unexpected holiday in Greece when our daughter Joanne married on the island of Skiathos. Two weeks of unbroken sunshine with a few birds thrown in. A battered old Suzuki Jimny served as a passable hide to photograph the normally unapproachable Woodchat Shrike and a superb vehicle to reach Kastro where we enjoyed numerous Eleanor’s Falcons. So many reasons to return in 2014 to the tranquil haven of Hotel Ostria owned by the delightful Mathinou family.

Skiathos, Greece

Makis and aubergines at Hotel Ostria

Woodchat Shrike

October was quiet with subdued migration on our west facing coast. Red-breasted Mergansers eluded me for years, shy birds unwilling to have a portrait taken until after a couple of days of rough weather I came across a young bird at Pilling. I got my picture on a grey, cloudy day but wonder what happened to the bird and if there will be another chance to photograph a merganser so close. 

Red-breasted Merganser

November turned up a few Snow Buntings, scarce in recent years. So infrequent have they become in recent years that any discovered immediately become target birds for those less inclined to actually find any birds for themselves. I had a Snow Bunting to myself for a while at Pilling and spent time lying spread-eagled on the tideline to take a few portraits as the bird fed unconcerned at my presence. 

Snow Bunting

December 2013 is ending as it began in a raging storm and more to come. In between the birding was hard slog with not much to show for time spent in the field. I searched my archives for December to find the best picture of a month’s efforts, a mediocre shot of an above average bird. Things can only get better in 2014. 

Curlew

As a footnote to the above. we won't get to Skiathos in May 2020 and maybe not in September.  The people of Skiathos suffered a financial blow in 2019 at the time of the Thomas Cook debacle - car hires, holiday lets, hotels, cafes, shops and restaurants, many of them small family businesses. Now those lovely people will be hit again as the island is already in lock-down. 

Linking today to Eileen's Saturday.

A Menorca Love Story

I may not get out this week.  Storm Brendan is on the way from Canada. I think it's payback time because we sent them Harry and Sparkle.

My gout has returned with a resolve to keep me indoors this week. For now here is a tale of Menorca with lots of pictures. Click the pics for a panorama.

   

Once the kids finished living the good life and made their way into the big wide world, Sue and I took a few holidays. It’s fair to say we got around a bit; Caribbean, Malaysia, Mexico, The Golden Triangle, Thailand, Goa, Sri Lanka, et al. I also spent a couple of spring times undertaking voluntary ringing work at Long Point, Canada, helping locals get to grips with handling wild birds. 

Eventually the long hauls became tiring and wasteful for us both. Two days travelling at either end of each holiday was no longer a thrill to tick just another spot on the globe. We looked around for somewhere to spend a couple of weeks in Spring or Autumn - a decent sort of place without Brits in Union Jack shirts or bars that promised “Full English” and 50 inch sport until 2am; somewhere we might relax, explore and discover. We found Menorca, a two hour flight away and where a 15 year love affair began. 

The Menorcan landscape is like the Yorkshire Dales on steroids, but with wall-to-wall sunshine and clear blue skies 24/7. The smooth as glass and super fast roads are no-expense-spared, courtesy of the EU’s mammoth unverified budget and thanks to a hefty contribution from long-suffering British Taxpayers.  In spring wildflowers dominate the landscape in countless shades and voluminous hues. 

Menorca 

Menorca

There is one main road in Menorca that links the capital Mahon in the east to the earlier capital but now second city of Ciutadella in the extreme west. Think of the island roads like the bones of a Dover Sole with the backbone down the centre and minor bones heading off north and south. 

The minor bones lead to the seasonal and coastal holiday resorts May to October because Menorca shuts up shop to sun seekers from November to April. A Menorcan winter in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea can be wet and windy, rather like a March day in in Blackpool or Brighton. 

https://www.map-of-spain.co.uk/large-map-of-menorca.htm 

We mostly based in the well-mannered south coast holiday resort of Sant Tomas where the sun shone hot and long, and from where we spent most days, or mornings at least until the afternoon sun beckoned. From here we explored the countryside and visited real Menorcan towns like Alaior, Es Migjorn, Es Mercadal or the fishing village of Fornells rather than sunshine resorts. Not for us the few plebby, honky-tonk resorts in the south west of the island that in part mimic the worst of both Ibiza and Majorca, Menorca’s sister Balearic islands. If we wanted that we could stay home and hit the M55 to Blackpool or Lytham St Annes. 

Es Migjorn 

 Fornells

Es Migjorn 

 Alaior

Es Mercadal

Often we’d drive into the second city, Ciutadella, a fine old city with an authentic vibe, a charming port, and an old quarter with good examples of Baroque and Gothic architecture. Ciutadella used to be the capital of culture and commerce in Menorca. It has supposedly been superseded by the official capital Mahon but any Menorca aficionado will tell you that Ciutadella or “Vella I Bella”, the Old and Beautiful, is the finer of the two. 

Ciutadella 

The Gothic cathedral of Ciutadella in Placa de la Catedral dates back to the 13th century. Although it’s impossible not to take photographs of its domineering presence, as an odd couple of lapsed Catholic and agnostic we never felt the need to enter, but rather to simply marvel at the awe-inspiring dimensions. 

Placa de la Catedral

 Ciutadella

The port of Ciutadella is both a fishing and leisure port with an abundance of waterside restaurants which line the quay. Early risers get to watch the fisherman bring in the local catch of the day. From here there’s a ferry over to Alcudia in Mallorca (Majorca), if you really have to. The Placa d’es Born is one of the most picturesque squares in Ciutadella, on what used to be a former Arab marching ground; an obelisk now stands to commemorate the Turkish invasion of 1558. 

Placa d’es Born 

In the old streets there’s a fish market and a row of butcher’s shops that sell free range chicken, pork and beef that once upon a time you could buy in any British town until out-of-town supermarkets destroyed them. And then there’s the serrano, air dried ham - choose your leg and gnaw away. 

Serrano 

We knew from previous visits that another day to Mahon (Mao) might coincide with a Med Cruise stop when spotless cruisers, released from captivity for the day, swarm along the lovely old streets looking for tat which local shops provide in abundance. After a couple of visits we gave it a miss just in case. 

Mahon 

In Menorca it’s impossible to buy a bad cup of cappuccino and where Costa Coffee is but a bad dream. We learned Spanish, or at least how to ask for “dos café con leche, por favour”. Y un ensaimada, Gracias”. We never did get the hang of Menorquí apart from “Bon Dia.” 

Ensaimada, Coffee, Bocadilla  

The two official languages of Menorca are Catalan and Spanish. Natives to the island speak the variety of Catalan called Menorquí, and they typically speak Spanish fluently as a second language. A 2014 survey carried out by the Government of the Balearic Islands found that 53.5% of participants identified themselves as Catalan speakers, 36.7% as Spanish speakers, and 7.7% as bilingual speakers. Quite where the islanders stand on the question of Catalan independence and that the EU insist Catalans are Europeans we don’t know. Suffice to say that in fifteen years we never discussed politics with a native, only with other British holidaymakers, more so since June 2016. 

Many Menorquins still practice traditional farming. Spring flowers and Mediterranean birds thrive, but even here this historic farming technique is on the decline in favour of agri-monoculture, the policy that has destroyed so much of Britain’s diversity of flora and fauna during the last forty years. Our fifteen years in Menorca saw perceptible declines in some species of flowers and native birds, although being on a migration path to and from Europe and Africa, the island still provides a stop-off point for birds on that journey in spring and autumn.  

Menorca in May

In 2014 I spent a morning with Javier helping with his local version of Constant Effort Ringing. In following years we always bumped into Javier on our travels as he led springtime birding and walking tours around the island  

 Sardinian Warbler

Mediterranean Flycatcher 

Javier 

In spring the valles (valleys) and roadsides throb with the sounds of warblers, Bee Eaters, Hoopoes and Nightingales, so much so that I swear the Nightingale is the most common bird of the island. Trying to see this highly secretive bird, day or night is another matter.  Fortunately there are other special birds to enjoy, and even the resident Hermann's Tortoise to admire, very often at the risky roadside where cars and oblivious occupants speed by. Sue became my dependable spotter and camera minder when the promise of a later glass of rioja worked like magic. 

Woodchat Shrike 

 Black-winged Stilt

Audouin's Gull 

Cattle Egret 

Egyptian Vulture 

Purple Heron

Stonechat 

Bee Eater

Mediterranean Flycatcher 

Corn Bunting

 Turtle Dove

Heerman's Tortoise 

Tawny Pipit 

Red-footed Falcon 

Scops' Owl 

Hoopoes - A Menorca Love Story

Menorca was quiet enough for us. From 2005 and all through the global financial downturn we found the peace and quiet we desired on an island we could discover with little help from brochures and tourist guides. A simple map and a hire car was all we required. We made friends of locals and tourists alike.  Hotel and shop staff greeted us like long lost pals and we to them. 

Menorca

And then in 2017 came changes. The self-governing Balearics decided that tourism should increase and that the tourists themselves should contribute to the cost of the necessary infrastructure. In came a tourist tax that added another Euro 90 to our not inconsiderable bill for two weeks at a four star. In addition, every year the price of our room increased by 10%. 

In came “improvements” and extensions to the once small and user-friendly airport. In 2018 and 2019, we lined up outside the terminal like naughty schoolchildren then spent two hours and three hours at passport control where two Policia youths scrutinised our pale British faces for signs of terrorism. Once cleared of extremist preferences, the queues for hire cars snaked through the hall but luckily we had a local contact who met us outside away from the madding crowds to lead us to a waiting Panda. 

Our self-discovered noiseless spots became loud and overrun with boisterous, shouty people. And then came the bikes, hordes of them riding in impassable convoy along once quiet byways and tracks, yelling so that all could hear their inanities; throwing their water bottles onto the verge or stuffing them into ancient stone walls along once deserted roads. 

Punta Nati

Menorca had become not quite a hell-hole, but not the place we grew to love. The island was in danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg. 

Menorcan Donkeys

We may go back but for now have decamped to Greece where we found a new love.

Linking this post to Anni's Birding  and  Eileen's Saturday Critters.