Parakeet year-tick

For the second year running an afternoon in the away end at Craven Cottage proved irresistible. Excellent tickets and a slightly less B-string Liverpool team than last year ensured an, embarrassingly, easy 2-0 win and an entertaining day out for all. Also bagged Ring-necked Parakeet between Putney Bridge and the ground and got Mallard, Woodpigeon and Feral Dove on my 'birds seen whilst watching Liverpool beat Fulham' list. Best bird of the day, however, was the Woodcock which flew out of Prince Edwards' gaff and over the car near Bagshot. Second best bird of the day were the Snipe at Barnes Station pointing you in the direction of the London Wetland Centre.

Drum roll please

A quick look at Goldcliff pools produced Spotted Redshank, a couple of Greenshank and Ruff. One or two birds were moving up-channel including a few Barwit and Whimbrel plus, most exciting of all [for full effect perform a drum-roll with two rubber-tipped pencils on your desktop at this point] - a Sandwich Tern!

[you can put the pencils down now]

[or the boys can do impressions of Hughie Flint whilst the girls emulate Meg White]


The lovely Meg White, I'd have found a picture of Hughie Flint but he isn't quite as pretty. Mind you, I don't believe Hughie Flint ever cancelled a tour due to "acute anxiety" or became the subject of a bogus internet sex-tape, so they both have their plus and minus points.

A bit of an arrival

Goldcliff and its immediate environs were, at least in Gwentish terms, sinking under the weight of passerine migrants this morning. Gropper, Yellow and White Wagtail, Wheatear, Redstart and Lesser Whitethroat all put in an appearance, ably supported by Golden Plover, Ruff, Spotshank, Greenshank and Whimbrel. How terribly super,... no really,... how terribly super.


Wheatear, so named because 'white-arse' was just too rude; terrible all this rudeness, although factually accurate of course.

Saltmarsh savannah

Migrants noted today, whilst wandering the wide open spaces of the Saltmarsh Grasslands, included: 15 White Wagtail, 2 Wheatear, 2 Reed Warbler, 1 Sedge Warbler, 1 Whimbrel, 1 Greenshank and 1 Spotted Redshank (the latter two presumably having a day out from Goldcliff). Also saw a couple of Hares and the female mostly-Pochard hybrid.

Interesting factoid of the day: did you know there is a hoverfly called the Marmalade Hoverfly? Episyrphus balteatus (click here for a picture) was named by James Keiller, a keen amateur entomologist and the famed inventor of Dundee Marmalade. As a result, ever since 1797, all jars of marmalade have a tiny hoverfly logo stamped on the bottom of the jar.

A few more arrivals

One Sedge and two Reed Warblers were singing away at Uskmouth this morning; the only other notable migrant was a Whimbrel on the foreshore although 140 Black-tailed Godwits, where the Usk spews into the channel, were also worthy of a quick raising of the bins.

Have just been flicking through the 'Climatic Atlas'. According to Huntley and his mates the "simulated potential late 21st century distribution" of Cetti's will be 50% greater than current. Almost all of England, Wales and Ireland is likely to become climatically suitable for our noisy little friends, plus south and west Scotland. Of course the downside is that, as Spain turns into a desert, gaps start appearing further south. How exciting,... bet it happens twice as fast as predicted.

One for the knaves

After a wee bit of ringing, dropped in on Goldcliff where at least half a dozen White Wagtails were pottering about, lovely.


Does my supra-orbital ridge look big in this?

Humans are soooo shit

Walked from Goldcliff Point to Redwick and back this morning, in the hope that the Slimbridge White-tailed Eagle might have decided to touch down on the levels - no such luck. A dozen Whimbrel were the 'highlight' along with a trickle of hirundines and a few scattered Cetti's Warblers.


My digi-binning technique could do with a bit of work, the brown blob balancing on the rocks is a Whimbrel, honest. Just above the bird, at the top of the seawall was half a mile of heavy gauge fishing-line and a gaggle of fisher-folk, apparently the latter felt absolutely no responsibility for the former, but then why would they? Click here for another, ever so slightly more extreme, illustration of why humans are shit.

Drown'd, drown'd

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelibear,
And therefore I forbid my tears...


Millais ain't got nuffin' on me.

Weea-choo!

Whilst out bagging Cetti's at Uskmouth, I snuck up on a randy group of Pochard doing their thing (well who wouldn't?), surely the most acoustically entertaining Aythya in the world. If all you expect of Pochard is the 'grrr-grrr-grrr' flight call, click on the snippet below and prepare for 'wi-wi-wi' whistles and nasal wheezes (with and without 'ricochets') courtesy of displaying males; and the odd soft cluck or two (not sure which sex is emitting this, answers on a postcard/comment). As if that's not enough, there is also a pretty picture to show you what you're hearing from roughly second 17 to 20. PS. Apologies for the wind/anthropogenic background rumble, I had to leave it in or lose some low frequency elements of Poch.

Identification pitfalls (part 2)

The second installment of this regular feature (click here for part 1) includes a moth that won't be seen until the summer but, given the trickiness of the identification challenge, I thought I'd bring it up now. First off, you can tell it is a moth because it has six legs, most birds have two. However, quite how you discriminate the pretty little critter from the spherical glass object (shown here on the left) is beyond me.