The Day After Tomorrow

So the observant ones will have noticed that today wasn't an ideal day to be out birding. At least not in North Scotland. I don't know about the rest of the World, cos we've lost all contact with it. In fact this post was hand-written on the back of a Be-bop Deluxe album sleeve and posted by pigeon to an internet cafe in Tangier for uploading. Looked out of the window this morning and saw how wet it was, and actually the prospect of watching several episodes of Birding with Bill Oddie on UKTV Gardens was quite appealing. MMmmmmm... Bill Oddie, put your hands all over my body. But after half an hour of that I decided it was time to tool up and get out. It was one of those days when even the old army coat wasn't going to keep me dry, so I got my 'proper' waterproof. I hardly ever use it - bought it about 10 years ago.... in the shop it looked like a darker version of a subdued airforce blue/grey colour. When I got it outside in the daylight (£105 later) it turned out it was fluorescent blue!! Fantastic for being spotted by mountain rescue when only your arms are sticking out of the snow; crap for creeping up on birds unobserved. Does the job though, if 'the job' is keeping dry and not enjoying leisurely views of relaxed passerines. Still, today it didn't matter becasue the only things I was going to see were the ones I flushed, so maybe it was a benefit.

Eventually out, and as I sheltered behind the Cypress hedge at the Mill garden, a male Goosander (Common Merganser) flew over, going inland. Could be quite a valuable patch year list tick that one. In five years I've seen three here, including that one, so it wasn't guaranteed. Just goes to show it's always worth going out. Flushed a few Chaffinches on my way down the track, and stopped in the bay to admire huge waves crashing into the shore and someone with a 'See you jimmy' hat, complete with red hair, pottering about on the pebbles.

This is a see-you jimmy hat, for those going 'wtf?'. Bit of Scottish culture for you.


Difficult to see what was going on offshore, so I climbed up to the big green box for the pump at the Wastewater Pumping station, in the teeth of the weather (cold and wet and windy). I managed to wedge myself into the gap between the box and the wall (with some difficulty, it's about 30 cm wide), and by twisting round could get a look out to sea without getting sprayed by water. It was err... well worth it. About 40 Herring Gulls hovering in the wind in a line along the edge of the white water of the surf, swooping down to get food items. I don't care where you're from, that looks like hard work. With nothing else on view, I went back home through the village, calling in at all the gardens with bird feeders. SO I saw lots of House Sparrows, Starlings, Chaffinches, Greenfinches, a few European Goldfinches and a couple of mad dog walkers.

Bad weather continued in the afternoon to the extent that I got so bored and desperate that I cleaned the kitchen. I found a dead moth and an earwig under the George Forman Lean Mean Fatbusting Grilling Machine. I scrubbed the sink, cleaned down the side of the fridge and even swept the floor. It's not like me at all. Mind, I wore my leather jeans to maintain the rock n' roll image. Figured I'd get my midlife crisis in nice and early. Hope things improve tomorrow.

A competition

... and I am actually offering a prize. let's see what I've got lying around here..... OK, there is a CD-ROM of 12 FUN Disney girl game demos and a 100 ml tub of Body Shop Hemp Foot Protector (wtf??) for the clever person, probably UK-based, who can tell me what this has got to do with birding.

Have I fallen in his spell?
Does he drown me in Chanel?
Is he vibrant? Is he hell!
So what do I see in him?

Am I dazzled by his style?
Has he made my life worthwhile?
Does he melt me with his smile?
Don't make me laugh.

Every inch of him is limp.
He's a 14-carat wimp.
I would rather have a chimp
As my other half.

But then I'm not blessed with charm.
I bring chaos where there was calm.

So the question should be
What does he see in me?

Now *that's* marketing!

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.... it is May 1919 and popular birdspotting magazine British Birds (the original and best) springs a nasty surprise on its war-weary readership. A 50% (fifty!) increase in price.


Mind... that extra money did pay for a complete redesign of the magazine. Look here - it's barely recognisable. The grouse is facing a different way, and The Zoologist is consigned to the rubbish bin of history. And E. J. Peele has stopped signing her copies in disgust.

Killer Thriller

OoooKay. My first twitch of the year. What could possibly have drawn Martin out of his Newtonhill hermit cave? A time-managing visit to my Dad with Black Scoter thrown in? A choice of Pacific Divers? A year-tick Barrow's Goldeneye or and American Robin? Black-eared Kite? An outside bet on a quick cross-ocean dash for Black-throated Thrush? Ha! Nothing so obvious! (But jeeez what a fantastic choice for February). Nope... down to the Forth for Killer Whales. I get the feeling it's not very PC, but I'm going to call them Killer Whales. None of that Orca nonsense - I know what they're up to. Actually, doesn't 'Orca' mean 'demon' or devil' or something. Either way, I bet mummy seals tell stories about them to warn their babies to be good.
Ian B offered me a lift and the lure was too strong. Tigers and Killer Whales are the two predators you have to see before you die. Even if it's just before you die! A tart's tick, but when they're on a plate...

...except they weren't on a plate. We got to South Queensferry (home of smugglers and press-gangs) at 8.30, but didn't see a Killer Whale until nearly 11 o' clock, under the Forth rail bridge. By that time we'd been along at Hound Point looking at Common Eiders, Bar-tailed Godwits, a Red-breasted Merganser and Shags, from where I sent Diane a text to tell her I was freezing my swonnicles off. She sent a text back saying the kids had been up since 7 and she had a rotten hangover caused by drinking too much iced tea and rosewater at her friend's house last night.

And it was 1 o' clock before we finally got views of the white bits, turning UTVs into UTBs. (eh?). By that time we'd gone back over the river to North Queensferry and shimmied round the side of someone's house to get a magnificent panorama of the firth with 2 Killer Whales swimming about, harassed by a couple of yachts but apparently feeding well. I say 2 - they never showed at the same time, but there were two fin shapes on display - both female-type but one taller one with a bit of a kink, and one rounder one. They/it would come up 3-4 times in succession, then disappear for 4-5 minutes. Underwater. Magnificent beasts, looked powerful. Do you know they take adult Polar Bears? Not in North Queensferry, normally, but it was something to think about as we perched on the slippery stone pier at NQ with a fresh wind pushing us sideways. Actually, before the first sighting at 11 ish, I was at the point of stripping naked and swimming round in the river making baby seal noises. Glad it didn't come to that.

There's a BBC report on them, with a link to a bit of video HERE.

Belatedly, here's a rubbish picture of those Grey Partridges that turned up in our neighbour's garden across the road in September (posted here). They were driven out of their favourite field by some heinous muckspreading. Sorry I didn't have the digital camera at hand, so it was done with Diane's old fashioned film camera on max zoom, but no light, hand held. Hence it's shit.

More faux-borealis Common Eiders

See Norman van Swelm's delightfully quirky 'Radioactive Robins'
website.

He posted on ID Frontiers to point out these 'borealis' Common Eiders
on the Dutch coast, and to ask if any others had turned up recently.

Norman and I have a long history of good-natured and light-hearted
antagonism, the origins of which are lost in the mists of time but probably
involved a disagreement over gulls.

So I was hoping someone else would take this up and educate me too,
but no one did, so I posted...



If no one else is taking this up, I'll start, cos
it's been bugging me all month.  There have been
a few borealis reported around the place in recent
weeks (quite impressive for a bird with only one
accepted british record), so I started checking
our local birds (NE Scotland) more carefully.
Certainly birds with yellow-orange bills are
remarkably common around me and I have seen one or
two with extended scapular sails, and one or two
orange-billed ones that appear to show no sails,
and a reddish female. You can read the semi-literate
'lite' version of what's been going on in George
Bristow's Secret Freezer  
http://proregulus.blogspot.com (
28th and 21st jan entries, with photos).
Have to say, based on my personal prejudices,
which I know you always agree with norman, that
given the known tendency of european Eiders to
shown yellow/mustard tones in the bill, I'm
inclined to think there's a good chance that
they are local breeders.  Especially the ones
without good sails like on your site :-) If you
can go back to June entries on the blog there's
a photo of one of the local males with a yellow
bill (but no sails).  Blogger seems a bit
screwed up just now, so let me know if you want
any files mailed.

Norman got back with a typically informative reply:



My dear Martin, believe me I am not responsible for Canadian
Eiders breeding in Scotland! May be the same people who were
responsible for the introduction of American Ruddy Ducks in
England are, ask Malcolm Ogilvie. Or 'climate change'? Seen
any icebergs lately? If so, Polar Bears may follow soon!

How do you know your June bird is a local breeder? High Arctic
birds leave Europe from late May onwards and some stay f.i.
because the weather is unfavourable at the time of departure.
I have seen large numbers of seaducks along the Atlantic
coast of Ireland in summer.

The 'sails', if visible, may indicate an arctic origin but are
of no value in determining the bird's subspecies. The
impression is that these 'sails' are being kept down most of
the time so if you maintain Garner's criterion that 'sails'
must be seen than I am not surprised there's only one accepted
British record!
Have a glass of wine with Mrs.Collinson my lad.

Cheers,Norman


Angus Wilson was confused too, but had a good reference:
Can anyone point me to recent literature or good web sites
that summarize the identification criteria for subspecific
ID of Common Eiders?

I'm familiar with some of the classic accounts (e.g. Parkes'
descriptions in Palmer's "Handbook of North American birds"
(1976) and Knapton's 1997 article "Identification of female
Common Eider subspecies in Canada." Birders J. 6: 134–136)
but wondered if there is anything more recent or from a
European perspective.

In light of recent discussions, it seems worth keeping in mind
the following list in the Birds of North America bibliography:

Baker, A. J., A. Grapputo, K. Dickson, S. Wendt, K. Scribner.
1997. 
Mitochondrial DNA control region sequence variation in Common
Eiders reveals extensive mixing of subspecies. Abstract.
First North American Duck Symposium and Workshop, Baton Rouge,
LA.

Cheers, Angus Wilson
New York City, USA
http:www.oceanwanderers.com


Then Martin Scott provided the killer info on the local provenance of these Eiders.  
I didn't know about the ringed bird.

There has been a lot of discussion about this among some of the
Scottish birders of late (as I am sure Martin is aware)
One, of four, "sailed" birds on the Ythan Estuary north of
Aberdeen bears a ring which has been traced to it being ringed
at the same locality as a nestling c.20 years ago. Thereby
either "boreal" Eiders have been breeding in Scotland since at
least then, and have gone undetected or they aint Boreals........

We have also had sailed birds in the Outer Hebrides. Some of thes
have also different in lobe shape (eastern Scottish birds seem
to have pointed lobes, western ones rounded) and in structure.
Perhaps here in the Hebrides we are getting birds of a NW/ Nearctic
origin. Is bill colour so important?

Overall I dont think Boreal Eider is as 'easy' as has been suggested. 
Perhaps not every bird with a sail is a Boreal.

Work in progress is the label for this one!

I think I'm happy that borealis is not an easy one to clinch in the field, that
diagnosability is not fully figured out, and that these 'borealis-ish' ones we
see are local breeders.

Heroes of the Birding Revolution VII - Joseph Grinnell

Joseph Grinnell 1877 - 1939

A former biology teacher with a lifelong interest in natural history became California's foremost ornithologist and mammalogist. He was the founder and first director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, UC Berkeley from 1908 until his death in 1939.

Joe was an enthusiastic field biologist who wanted to understand the relationship between an organism and its environment. He invented, or at least defined, what we now understand to be competitive exclusion. He pioneered and invented the concept of the ecological niche (published 1924) and gathered evidence to show that two different species cannot occupy the same niche at same time, because one will exclude the other. Millions of students worldwide are taught this, and it shapes their world view, but few know where it came from. Blame Joey.

Of course, this being the early 20th century, the art of writing wasn't quite dead, and his scientific works are quite entertaining to read. Check this, from California’s grizzly bears

‘Opinion frequently expressed by old-timers to the effect that grizzlies would not tolerate the presence of black bears within their home territories is borne out by the history of the respective geographic ranges of the two species: As that of the grizzly in certain parts of the State shrank, that of the black bear expanded - at least in those directions where factors of climate, food, and shelter were favorable to the latter species. Thus, at the south, in the Tehachapi-to-Santa Barbara tangle of chaparral-clothed mountains, up even to the 1890's the metropolis of grizzlies, as these beasts vanished, blacks (or browns) came in from the southern Sierra, to the eastward, spread and multiplied, until according to Forest Service reports they are now relatively numerous in Los Padres National Forest.’

Grinnell was devoted to wildlife conservation, particularly through the National Park system, and performed numerous long term studies in Yosemite national Park. He recognised that California's wild lands and wildlife were under threat and used his ecological studies to suggest management plans. Perhaps his greatest insight was in recognising the value of baseline data - going out into the countryside and recording accurately what was there, such that 'after the lapse of many years, possibly a century, the student of the future will have access to the original recordof faunal conditions in California'. It took us in Britain over 50 years to catch up with that.

His strength was in accurate observation and record keeping: Grinnell and coworkers collected more than 20,000 specimens, took about 2,000 photographs, and filled 13,000 journal pages at over 700 study sites. Working for Joey sounds like hard slog - he required more from his collectors than the ability to bring home a dead bird in a bag. Each specimen had to be accompanied by detailed notes on the circumstances of its collection and (here comes the ecological niche bit), the surroundings and the weather. But don't be fooled into thinking he was dry and boring. Have a scout through his field notebooks, starting here and you see he's just a birder at heart. Good man. He was a keen student of subspecies too, and began to put two and two together regarding the role of natural selection in shaping ecological communities.

His vision is being followed up too... there is now a resurvey project going back to his old haunts

Many of his books and articles describing Californian avifauna are online (google them), but among the areas where he was ahead of his time are things like this:
Risks incurred in the introduction of alien game birds." Science 61:621-623
where he pointed out the detrimental effects of exotic introductions on native communities.

To my mind, this is the best bit... for all the great philosophers out there who believe they were the first ones to suggest that vagrant birds might be pioneers of new breeding or wintering areas, I'm afraid Joey got there before you. Read this and weep, from The role of the accidental. Auk 39 (1922): 373-380.

'But before the individuals within the metropolis of a species succumb directly or indirectly to the results of severe competition, or those at the periphery succumb to the extreme vicissitudes of unfavorable conditions of climate, food or whatnot obtaining there, the latter have served the species invaluably in testing out the adjoining areas for possibly new territory to occupy. These pioneers are of exceeding importance to the species in that they are continually being centrifuged off on scouting expeditions (to mix the metaphor), to seek new country which may prove fit for occupancy. The vast majority of such individuals, 99 out of every hundred perhaps, are foredoomed to early destruction without any opportunity of breeding. Some few individuals may get back to the metropolis of the species. In the relatively rare case two birds comprising a pair, of greater hardihood, possibly, than the average, will find themselves a little beyond the confines of the metropolis of the species, where they will rear a brood successfully and thus establish a new outpost. Or, having gone farther yet, such a pair may even stumble upon a combination of conditions in a new locality the same as in its parent metropolis, and there start a new detached colony of the species.'

See also this 'amusing' cartoon suggesting (horrors!) that birders might get frustrated by taxonomists recognising and naming taxa that are difficult to distinguish from each other. See, if you think you were the first to think of that, Grinnell was miles ahead.

That cartoon also demonstrates that the standard of publishable humour has improved dramatically in the last 80 years.

Joseph Grinnell - visionary, cleverclogs, pioneer of Biodiversity Action Plans(!), ecologist, taxonomist, collector, curator, rarity hunter, enthusiast. You shaped our modern view of what drives birds to do what they do. In the spirit of internationalism, I hereby name you a Hero of the Birding Revolution.

"We’d be sitting in camp, and we’d both be skinning. Pretty soon, he’d throw a rat over to me, and he’d say, 'Here, Russell, finish this one up,' and he’d just ... pick up his notebook, and start writing."
Ward Russell

Down on the beach

Newtonhill smelt of cow-crap this morning. Actually, it still smells like that as I'm writing this (evening). I went to find the source of this scatalogical horror, which turned out to be a fertilised stubble field up by the A90. Birds in said field were 7 Carrion Crows, 1 Rook, 2 Magpies and a Skylark. Not very exciting, but slightly better was a pack of birds around the feeders in one of the gardens by the track, which included at least 3 Yellowhammers. Btw will someone tell my why we stopped calling them Yellow Buntings?

Emberiza citrinella, the real Yellow Bunting

Emberiza sulphurata - the vaguely Yellow Bunting

High tide when I got down to the beach this morning, so I settled down to count the shifting hordes of roosting waders. Here they are, look.

A wee secret, some more were hiding on the other side of the rock. So 2 Purple Sandpipers, 15 Ruddy Turnstones and 2 Common Redshanks. Sorry it's crap, but it was so murky I had to go up to ISO800.

Offshore, I was looking for some faux-borealis Common Eiders. Nothing with decent scapulars today, but cop a load of the bill colour on this one.

Sorry, bit of an eider overload there. Also offshore, a rather spankingly white Red-throated Diver fishing in the bay (and another one going north), a really meaningful Shag, afew Common Guillemots and Razorbills back and forth, the usual assortment of gulls, but not many of them, and some Northern Fulmars inspecting the cliffs.

A family of hybrid Hoodie x Carrion Crows were feeding on the clifftop grass - happy slapping hoodies with ASBOs - and a couple of Rock Pipits.

In Cage and Aviary Birds this week... how not to kill your Cockateils by scaring them in the night. (Strobelights and fireworks are right out!). A few 'Pekin Robins' (Red-billed Leiothrix) going cheap and blimey - pairs of Marbled Ducks at £30 a time! Cripes, at that price I think I might get a couple. I'll release them on Rutland Water when I go down for the Bird Fair. Future-read all about it: '2007 was the hottest summer on record in Mediterranean North Africa, a possible consequence of global warming, and widespread dessication and desertion of the Tunisian breeding lakes was reported in late July. That these wary and unringed birds should turn up at the right time does suggest that at least some of these wild birds may have headed north...'
You might be wondering whether there was a point to that, and you'd be right.
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But I guess it is possible to make arguments for the wild origin of the most obvious escapes. Conversely, it's possible to come up with convoluted escapee arguments for the most obvious vagrants. I was going to mention some examples, but it's too inflammatory!

Since I mentioned the delights of my ex-home village of Winchburgh, I noticed I'm getting a lot of hits from people doing Google searches for that very village. So I'll set the record straight right away and say it was a very welcoming place in no way deserving of being slagged off by my exaggerations about the level of air-rifle crime and other nefariousness. It is however a matter of public record that certain of our neighbours were known to get drunk and head out on spontaneous Orange Marches round the town, complete with their instruments, in the wee small hours on more than one occasion. I'm sure it doesn't happen any more :-$

It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how

More things Martin does not recommend.

Holding up the cup and the milk and the cake and these books, and the fish and the rake. The toy ship, a little toy man, and with my tail I can hold a red fan. Fanning with the fan as I hop on the ball. But that is not all. Oh no, that is not all....

It was bound to end in disaster - I read it in a book. Please send cards and flowers to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Fell on your Head Unit.

While I'm on the subject, other things Martin doesn't recommend almost certainly include:
Green Eggs and Ham
Tweetle Beetles.

But to business. I was FINALLY up to a bit of light birding. The emergency medical quarantine squad have stood down... bits of my spleen have signed contracts with the Ministry of Defence, probably, and Birdspotting lay before me today like the odour of myrrh, like sitting under a sail in a good wind, like the home that a man longs to see after years spent as a captive. But I could have picked a better day for it. Chilly. Plan A was to find a big congregation of gulls. Disaster! Couldn't find any. Options now limiting, cos there weren't any other birds around either. A Common Redshank on the beach, and a small flock of Common Eiders offshore. OK then let's sort out this borealis Eider nonsense. I've never got my head round borealis Eiders, but suddenly it seems like everyone is seeing them. Or at least they're on BirdGuides every flipping day. I can do that too. In fact today I had 5 Common Eiders with bright orange/yellow tones in their bills, two with obvious 'sails' (I assumed these were long scaps though BWP says they're tertials) courting a reddish female. How easy is that? :-) I'm certain they're ALL local breeders and not borealis at all. Maybe if someone could show me a real borealis I might see the error of my ways.

Proper birding soon. Meanwhile remember... when beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a bottle... they call this a tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle muddle.

My tweet mag

For sale in this week's Cage and Aviary Birds...

Face it, it's mostly budgies, canaries and African Grey Parrots, but other interesting stuff includes

European Eagle Owls
Snowy Owls
Red-footed Falcon
Golden Eagles
Redpolls - all flavours
Bufflehead (£300 a pair)
Hooded Mergansers (£125 pr)
Meadow and Rock Pipits
'Siberian' Bullfinches

The price of Hooded Mergs and Buffleheads compares to about £500 for a pair of African Greys :-O

Things Martin does not recommend

No 2)
Wheelchair races down a flight of stairs.

Please send cards and flowers to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Testicular Bruises Unit.

No. 1 in a potentially long-running series

Things Martin does not recommend:
1) Debriding the infection with a hot kitchen knife.

Please send flowers and cards to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Idiotic Burns Unit.

Bring out your dead

Eugh. I'm sick. The doctor says he hasn't seen anything like it outside 18th century French medical textbooks. I didn't know it was possible to catch dropsy off a friendly goldfish. And boils! Anyway, I'm away to debride the infection with a red hot kitchen knife, so here's some pictures. Normal service will be resumed etc etc.


Things that aren't looking forward to global warming. No. 1 Rock Ptarmigans



Things that aren't looking forward to global warming. No. 2 Arctic Hares. Especially that one.

Hero of the Revolution addendum

Thanks to Lee Sterrenburg from Bloomington Indiana, who posted this OED entry on BIRDWG01. In Harry Witherby's 'Hero' entry I overlooked (in fact it's been widely overlooked) that his Practical Handbook (1920) contains the first recognised use of the term 'vagrant' in ornithology. can that be true? I'll be checking older books tonight.

ADDITIONS SERIES 1997

vagrant, n. and a.

Add: [A.] 4. Ornith. A bird that is encountered outside its normal area of distribution or migration; spec. (in the U.K.), one that has been recorded fewer than twenty times in the British Isles.

1920 H. F. WITHERBY et al. Pract. Handbk. Brit. Birds I. 140 The Lapland Bunting... has occurred [in] many English counties as vagrant. 1953 D. A. BANNERMAN Birds Brit. Isles I. 337 The snow finch has occurred as a vagrant in several other countries of eastern Europe. 1983 Birds Spring 15/2 The vagrant from the Continent, was found sheltering under a car. Many birds are blown off course during gales. 1988 Bird Watching Aug. 46/2 Returning migrants are beginning to appear and by the end of the month we could witness good seabird movements and the first North American vagrant.

Lest we forget, again again

I found this photo getting all scratched and fading, so thought best to get it scanned before it goes away forever. 13th March 1989, Baltimore Oriole at Roch, a long way down in Wales. I remember we's spent all day on Saturday (12th) showing an American birder (argh!, forgotten his name) round Norfolk etc. to tick off Willow Tits and other burdies. Then as Satan's way of saying thank you for being so good, we were rewarded with a Baltimore Oriole (it was on a taxonomic holiday as Northern Oriole in those days) at Roch. So it was back in the car and AWAY!

Baltimore Oriole (photo by Pete Wheeler)

Mind, it didn't show straight away. There was an hour wait, which wasn't pleasant.

I immortalised it with an inaccurate sketch that I coloured in on the way home.

I wish I could remember that American birder's name, cos although he didn't come all the way across for the Oriole, he did twitch Golden-winged Warbler a month earlier, on account of them not being particularly easy to see back home. Would there have been a revolution if that bird had gone in Category D?
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... where it belongs!!!!! :-O :-) :-)))) joke

I thought it might be a bit of a hoot to make an early start and go down to Ferryden to see this Bonaparte's Gull. Must be 15 years since I've seen one. Unfortunately, when it came to this morning, I couldn't be bothered. Something to do with my unhealthy obsession with Princess Leia, and playing PS2 Star Wars Lego II until the wee hours. So I ended up walking round Newtonhill instead, where the only thing of any remote interest was a White-throated Dipper singing lustily on the Elsick Burn. He must be keen to get started. Whipped out RememBird.... unfortunately, it's another one that suffers from background noise, in this case on account of the bird being shy, and stood on a rock in the middle of a babbling brook next to the A90. But turn your bass down and everything else up, and it might be tolerable. Everything louder than everything else.

White-throated Dipper, Newtonhill

And I finally went back to ASDA to pick up the prints of those Grey Partridges that turned up in the garden across the road last September during the muckspreading (ancient Kincardinshire fertility ritual). They were well worth waiting 4 months for. NOT! :-) I'd have posted them here just now, but unfortunately the rest of the film is happy smiling faces of my kiddies playing in puddles, so Diane's Mum has snaffled them for the mo. Will post when we get them back.

Phew!

I'm glad that's over, got my 2006 records into Excel ready to go to Andy (County Recorder). I decided that rather than do any descriptions... I'd just give the address of relevant blog entries to back up (or not) anything I might have seen. It's more fun that way.

Random Horned Lark

Sorry so sorry - I forgot who I stole this photo off, so if it's yours... please leave a comment with permission to use it. :-) The Newmachar Common Buff-finch. Great photo, whoever you are. And thanks!

Winchburgh

Y'know, sometimes I miss Winchburgh, where we used to live in West Lothian. It had character. And characters. Rarely would you go out birding without meeting an air-rifle-toting teenager taking pot-shots at the coots, or some seriously badger-baiting individuals with dogs, looking for active setts, and sometime badger-gassing, buzzard shooting, etc . On one memorable occasion I was walking down the Union Canal and met a tousled young gentleman trying unsuccessfully to hide at least three (3!) Pheasants inside his coat. Then there was the landfill site, home of Glaucous Gulls... if you didn't mind the management threatening to throw you off the land. And the beautiful farmland full of Tree Sparrows, now in the process of being trashed by house builders. Problem with Newtonhill is that it's too posh - we don't get any of that. The village does have its bad boys, but they just hang around the bus shelter drinking Diamond White, if I'm around to buy it for them. Face it, the schemiest thing you're likely to bump into here is me. And I'm a pussycat, it's just my coat that smells.

New Year's Resolutions

No! I don't need to make any. Though I have kindly distributed a list of suggested resolutions to my family and friends.

Actually I've resolved to be less tolerant and open minded, and to drip more sarcasm. So look out.

Also, on the birding front, I have resolved to go for a modest 140 year list in the strict boundaries of my Newtonhill patch, which is here.... Although that sounds pitifully easy, when I think about it there's only about 90-100 that are reasonably guaranteed, even with a modicum of persistence. So I'll have to dig the rest out, and one had better be a BB rarity. If I'm desperate I'm going to annex Cove.

I'm currently on about 30! So well on target :-$
5 Purple Sandpipers were with 14 Ruddy Turnstones on the rocks amid the gull roost this afternoon. 5 Carrion Crows noisily mobbing a Common Buzzard along the clifftops, and my first dilemma of the year - a couple of Hooded x Carrion Crow 'x-generation' hybrids in the cow field north of the Elsick Burn. Can I count them as both species? We do get some good hybrid combinations here - one brood in particular of 4 birds from a hybrid x hybrid cross had one 'dark' hoodie-lookalike, one 'speckled' hoodie lookalike, one normal 'Carrion' lookalike and one runty black one that could hardly fly.

Scanning 6 square miles of North Sea was rewarded with 1 Guillemot on the water.

Thanks for your messages of support regarding uptake of IOC names. Apparently I don't need to cos you all hate me already.

In the interests of complete-itudity

Just back from the beach at Newtonhill is a sloping cow-pasture with a half-hearted spring/burn running through it, notable cos it always looks like there should be Yellow Wagtails running around it in spring (there never is). But it does build up a flock of Rock Pipits during the winter - over 50 in 2005/6 - that feed inconspicuously among the wet grasses. I always feel obliged to spend 30 minutes scoping the field for Water Pipits (no luck there either). Anyway, this year there hasn't been very many Rockits at all in that field - max was 13, put up by a dog-walker, and his dog, on 17th December. Hoping for better things. 30 Ruddy Turnstones on the beach on 17th too, but disappointingly no Purple Sandpipers at that point.

Cripes, this stretch of North Sea is dead during the mid-winter. And its cold. So cold. Ach, comrade, it isz zo cold. Occasional auks flying past, with 3 Razorbills fishing in synchrony behind a Red-throated Diver on 17th. We've also picked up a flock of 11+ Mallards, that swim around with the Common Eiders and roost with the Herring Gulls on the rocks.
After their traditional month off, a couple of Northern Fulmars were back at the cliffs on 24 December, with a few more going south and a feeding party of 7 on the water. Highlight of my birding that morning though was the delightful smell of bacon sandwiches wafting down from the houses at St Ann's. Oooh, no, not quite - the highlight was the delightful smell of 11 Purple Sandpipers with the Turnstones on the rocks. There were 73 Eurasian Curlews in the fields at Cran Hill on 24th too. It's not much, but it's something.

There's a couple of Peregrines in residence too, hunting pretty much all the time in and around the Newtonhill area, so plenty of hot all bird action to keep me occupied.

This week, I am mostly looking forward to:
1) Breaking the seal on a virgin notebook for 2007.

I am mostly not looking forward to:
1) Sorting out 2006 records for the County Recorder. grrr.... I hate those difficult choices. Do I include Garden Warblers? They're as common as muck but all mine are migrants. Does anyone care how many pairs of Sedge Warblers bred?

I also think, in the spirit of internationalism and solidarity with the working birders of the World, I might adopt IOC official English names :-) It sounds like a good way of making sure everyone hates me.

Random recommendation.
This was sent to me in error, I think. from BEYOND THE GRAVE!! oooooooh!
With the greatest interest and never-slackening attention I read Tom McKinney's website Skills Bills. Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world. Here is a website that I should like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages. It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. These problems are widely discussed, but before one can accept or reject these ideas one must understand the full significance of such a decision. Tom McKinney's website will undoubtedly help to clear this question, which is the fundamental problem of the universal workers' movement.
Nikolai Lenin
(Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov)

It must be true- I couldn't make it up....

... The freezer is back

... It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnent. In these blissful curcumstances , what is there to read?

Naturally, Cage and Aviary Birds.

Well that's what I've been reading recently. And what delights lay within? Why... For Sale... Eagle Owls. In the 'Found' column, an escapee Eagle Owl. Everything else is lost canaries, budgies, cockateils, Mealy Redpolls (eh?). Eagle owls!!!! No rubythroats just now. Can you see where this would be going, if I wasn't in such a good mood?? Happy New Year everyone!

I *have* been out birdspotting, but it wasn't very interesting. Promise I'll spill the beans tomorrow.

Thanks to George Orwell for the first para.

Puffin strongly

I like this one cos there's a robust Scottish wind going on.

Wedgies

Cripes, is it just me or do the carol singers get weirder every year?

Bird Jokes

Oldies, but goldies.

Two vultures are sat in a desert eating a dead clown. One looks up to the other and says:
'Does this taste funny to you?'


A baby penguin at the South Pole goes to it's Mum and says:
'Am I a real penguin'
'Course you are,' says its Mum. 'I'm a penguin, your Dad's a penguin, so you're a penguin too!'
Baby penguin isn't convinced, so he goes to his Dad:
'Am I a real penguin'
'Don't be stupid - course you are,' says its Dad. But he can see the look of worry in his baby's eyes, and tries to explain. 'I'm a penguin, your Mum's a penguin, so you're a penguin too! That's how it works. but why are you asking?
And baby penguin looks up at his dad with his big dark eyes and says:
'Cos I'm f***ing freezing.'

Night all - did see some birds today and might tell you about them later.

More Hume's stuff

Ah, the little darlings... it was Christmas assembly at Lizzie's school this morning so I spent an hour listening to the in-tune warblings of 60 Primary Schoolers. Then to work, but if I was going to turn up at 11.30, I wouldn't get parked, so solved that problem by going off to the Donmouth for another hour with my own scratched bins and RememBird and tried to get some recordings. This I did, just. Haven't had time to sort them all out but have put an audible one on putfile.

Try and ignore the traffic noise, howling wind and assorted cracklings, turn it up LOUD and listen to rather boring HLW call here.

Got a crappy sonagram out of it, and it confirms my sharp(!) perception of a flat monosyllabic call with a hint of a downturn. The 5 kHz frequency is lower than your Yellow-broweds, and the call is very short, about 0.14 s, which is shorter than YBW but within range of HLW. It's not the most typical Humey call, but I think it corresponds to the 'forceful dsweet' of the Collins Guide. I bet Yellow-broweds could do that too, but they also do their characteristic calls as well. I wish this bird would do something more characteristic of Hume's, like an upward inflecting or disyllabic call, but it doesn't.

Other links:
Other Hume's and Yellow-browed calls, showing variation at here, here and here.

Finder's report and photo for this bird here. (12th and 13th December entries).

Plumage: in the sunshine today the bird looked a bit brighter on occasions... with a mossy green dusting to the uppers (not YBW-green, though :-)) . On he left wing there is a very thin but complete median covert bar, but on the right only a couple of feathers tipped pale.

Phylloscopus jacobscreamcrackerii

Well whaddayaknow.... Elvis is dead, but autumn has not yet left the building! Eh? A Hume's Leaf Warbler turned up at the Donmouth yesterday. Malheureusement (that's a sophisticated 'bugger', in French) I didn't have the car today, but made a mental note to take my nockies into work just in case the opportunity to get away happened. Then of course this morning in my dash to get out of the door, I forgot them, which made it even more embarrassing when Ian Broadbent met me in the queue at the canteen this morning and asked if I wanted a lift down. 'But I don't have my binoculars!' Didn't matter... he had a spare pair. Get in! grabbed a biro and a bit of paper... up up and away!

The bird didn't take too much searching for when we got there - staying low in the bushes next to the shore, out of the wind. *That's* how I like my Phylloscs. On the ground. And alive. Alive is very important.
it was calling regularly, and that immediately grabbed attention - not like a Yellow-browed's piercing 'tsooeeee!', but still pretty loud. A slightly lower 'pheeeeeu' - almost monosyllabic, but could just pick up at downturn at the end. This is the third one I've seen, and the first I haven't had to break my neck to get views of. We got good views too, so much so I was inspired to use my biro and bit of paper in a Mckinney-esque orgy of fine artwork.

Were I a conscientious rarity recorder I would produce a tidied-up, after-the-event sketch posing as a real field sketch like [censor - names deleted to protect the guilty], but being lazy, I'll leave my original sketch all perfect as baby jesus and all his little angels intended. Otherwise, grey-buff dirty macintosh uppers, off-white supercilium with no obvious yellow tones, obvious greater covert bar (white) but not much median covert (was convinced of 2 white-tipped feathers on right hand side and maybe something similar on left). Dark, white-edged tertials, and primary projection about 1/2 to 2/3 tertial length. No obviously contrasty dark secondary bar. Whitish underparts - no yellow. Largely black bill though saw v small amount of pale pink at base of lower mandible. Dark brown legs, but feet pinky-orange. Plumage would possibly nail it as Hume's, but there's no real clinching feature. Really needs the call, which is distinctive. We gave it a blast of Hume's call playback and it immediately responded, calling several times and coming close for a look. It also responded to Yellow-browed call, though less intensely (called once and didn't come closer), before responding strongly to Hume's again. Interesting. I'm willing to bet £25 it would have responded to Chiffchaff too, or a creaky door.

And it was a JOY to look through some binoculars that weren't scratched! Ian may have got the call on video, but I might go back tomorrow with the RememBird and get some more recordings. If it's still there. And another thing... you know that any bird with the word 'Hume's' in its name is going to be a cracker! Also 'Pallas's' - they're all crackers too. And don't get me started on 'Blyth's', 'Steller's' and 'Jacob's Cream'. They're all crackers.

Ken Dodd diversion...
What a lovely day. What a lovely day for running through a biscuit factory shouting: 'You're all crackers!'.. [30 minutes of jokes about taxman, followed by tired rendition of 'Happiness']. [Curtain]

Mamma told me there'd be days like this.

And man, she wasn't foolin'

With all the hero-data yesterday, didn't get chance to expand on my Sunday birding. But first, let me set the scene... Friday/Saturday I'd been in the deep deep deeeeepppppp south, i.e. Newcastle, in the Secret Underground Bunker where the BOURC has its winter meetings. Got home about 10 on Saturday night after hacking and spluttering all over my fellow passengers on the train for 4 hours - they loved it really. Don't they know who I am!!!???? Spent the night coughing away, waking up with a chest full of pains. Then at 7.30 Lizzie comes through to the bed and tries to get in and headbutts me full on on the nose! Ow! Seeing stars. Now my head was full of aches. Sundays don't start much worse than that. Except THEN I look out of the window at the weather and see they can get worse. Not that it was particularly wet; it wasn't. Or even particularly windy. But it was dreary dark, and it never really got light all day. Land of the mid-day dimming here. I sat around the house, interacting with the kids (THAT's how bad it was), before heading out about 1 pm - it was still dark! And frankly things went downhill from there. There was a small movement of Black-legged Kittiwakes going south offshore. More precisely, two.

Heroes of the Birding Revolution VI - Harry Witherby, 1873-1943

Henry (Harry) Forbes Witherby, son of Henry Forbes Witherby, owner of Witherby & Co. publishers, came out of nowhere, took British ornithology by surprise, gave it a good seeing-to and left it sore, grateful and forever changed. Indeed for much of the first half of the twentieth century, he was the face of the birding establishment.

He was born into the comfortable surroundings of the family of a small but moderately successful publishing firm, and seemed to have spent his early years pottering around the babbling brooks and whispering canopies of the New Forest, where one assumes he became interested in birds. He went straight from school into the family firm - nepotism compensating for lack of qualifications in the traditional olde-English way - and never received a formal scientific training. He got his feet under the table in a conventional self-educational-type magazine (published by Witherby's) called Knowledge, where he started a regular series of Bird Notes that proved extremely popular. He didn't have his own pair of binoculars, so he used the family pair of opera glasses and bumbled about the countryside observing and learning. Harry eventually started publishing books, pretty dreadful ones at first... but daddy owned the company, don't you know? Forest Birds in 1894 was the first, but then Harry started birding abroad, bought himself some bins, and got interested in plumage changes, moults, and geographical variation within species. So he bought himself a gun too, and started amassing a significant collection of skins. Ahead of his time, he saw the value in preserving moulting birds, immature specimens, and tatty things that he could not quite characterise. They were to form the basis of not only his education, but his readers' too. He went round Spain, through north-west Russia, North Africa and the Middle East, killing and preserving interesting birds, and meticulously forming his own opinions about the value of subspecies, and about the distribution of birds and the relation of moult timings to life histories. It was exciting stuff. He married his wife (as was conventional...) Lilian in 1904 and took her on honeymoon to Algeria where they whiled away the long evenings skinning birds together, their eyes meeting over a bucket of entrails, and their bloodied fingers accidentally brushing against each other by candlelight. They were eventually to have five kids together, so it must have worked.

Harry was bursting with ideas about birds, and was desperate for ornithology to take off in an organised way so that birders could find out new things. And he wasn't alone; although there were a number of Natural History magazines available to moneyed gentlefolk of the time, he saw that there was space on the market for a magazine devoted solely to birds. And moreover, to his vision of a modern, collective, scientific ornithology. He got together with William Pycraft at his Marylebourne Club and as the room filled with the pungent aroma of Turkish cigarettes, warm leather and fine Scotch Whisky they sketched out the crazy idea for a magazine called 'British Birds', which was launched in 1907 with Witherby as the editor, published by the family firm. The history of BB is about to be explained fully in a forthcoming article for the 100th anniversary, so I won't pre-empt that. But in the end, his crazy idea worked. British Birds was popular... and it did what Witherby wanted - it mobilised a generation of amateur ornithologists to intensify their hobby, and to work together, through BB, to perform large scale studies of the distribution, status and migration of birds. Two aspects of Witherby's personality and modus operandi are relevant to his hero status. The first was that he destroyed the competition, partly because his magazine was best, but partly because he had a web of international contacts and a family publishing house that was prepared to invest heavily in his undertaking. BB's 'forerunner', a Natural History magazine called The Zoologist was perhaps the most high profile casualty (although I guess 'Knowledge' didn't last long either). The Zoologist had been started by Edward Newman in 1843, but wilted under the pressure and finally gave in, being incorporated into BB in 1916. The second aspect of Witherby's hero status was that he was a stickler for accuracy, and indeed must have been a total pain in the butt. He insisted that everything that went into his magazine and books was checked and double checked for accuracy, and that every statement could be justified on the basis of published data. Nice if you can do it... but Witherby did, and he stuck to it. He was trying to bring some order to the chaotic situation that was developing as more and more authorities published more and more data in more and more places in the early 20th century. His solution was to say 'BB will have all that, thank you', and then he took on the job of checking it all. An enormous and heroic task that occupied the last thirty-odd years of his life; and if he hadn't succeeded none of us would have known what the heck was going on.

Part of his mission was to muscle himself to the the top of the British ornithological pyramid (and there were already some pretty huge giants trying to get to the same place), and a significant part of that was to place the editors of BB (in practice, himself) as judge and jury for records of rare birds in Britain. It was still more-or-less acceptable for records of rarities to be published piecemeal in County avifaunas and local publications, provided they were supported or verified by a recognised authority, but increasingly the gold standard of trust for a rarity record became publication in BB - not least because of the stringent checks made by Harry W. The battle between him, George Bristow, and J B Nichols over the provenance of the Hastings Rarities has gone down in folklore (a 1910s gentlemens' equivalent of a flame war), and it was one of the few times that Harry was beaten and ended up publishing duff records.

Sharp readers and tax-dodging students will have noticed that the things that Harry wanted BB to stimulate, i.e. to mobilise a generation of amateur ornithologists to intensify their hobby, and to work collectively to perform large scale studies of the distribution, status and migration of birds, sounds very like what the British Trust for Ornithology, the BTO, considers its job to be today. And Harry did pretty much lay the foundations for the BTO. Nascent ringing (banding) schemes in Aberdeen and in Europe were the inspiration for Witherby to start his own ringing scheme via BB in 1909, and characteristically he then organised the sorting and collation of returns, and publication of reports single-handedly. The ringing scheme grew exponentially and became the biggest of its kind, but Harry stuck with it until 1937 when it was formally handed over to the BTO, who continue it reasonable well(!). Prior to that, he had sold his entire collection of several thousand bird skins to the British Museum for £1500 to get the BTO up and running.

Witherby took on one more battle early in his career - that of the International Rules of Zoological Nomenclature. In that, unlike other Brits at the time, including the BOU, he stuck to them. He recognised the value of trinomials for naming subspecies, and the value of strict use of priority for forcing some order on the chaotic world of scientific names. He fired a killer broadside at the establishment by the publication of the Hand-list of British Birds in 1912, which quickly became the established authoritative reference checklist. So much so that when the BOU published the second edition of their checklist in 1915, they copied the Hand-list to a large extent, without acknowledgement. In his review of the BOU checklist for BB, Harry noticed that the BOU had also copied a few errors!

The Hand-list was followed in 1919-24 by the Practical Handbook of British Birds, which he co-authored with, among others, the future Mrs Meinertzhagen v2.0. It was a huge advance on what was already available because of the amount of detail on plumage sequences and life-history of birds, and became the standard reference for serious birders. Within 10 years, however, it was out of print and Witherby was ready for a final challenge. He had retired from the publising firm at the age of 63 (although still editing BB) and got his team together to produce the Handbook of British Birds (1938-43). The Handbook was, and still is, everything more than everything else, and was the standard reference until the 1980s when BWP hit the shelves. Harry wangled a full set of accurate colour plates for the Handbook depicting different plumage states for all the species and subspecies in there (a pioneering idea). What really made the Handbook stand out was the full treatment of all subspecies - Witherby's hobby horse and in this case, his crowning glory. It must have been an unnerving experience, however, working his way through the publication of 5 volumes as war raged in Europe with no certain outcome, and with Witherby in failing health.

When Harry retired he had wanted to spend his time editing BB and tending his garden at the family home, where he was setting up a small nature reserve. BB was in a bit of a rut, to be honest. And then there were so many men of fighting age out of the country, Harry was forced to go back to work. The strain did not improve his health, and after a couple of bouts of illness he died in 1943. He had lived to see the Handbook universally praised, and had seen enough of the war to have a pretty good idea that there was eventually going to be a Britain where it could be used. Bernard Tucker took over at BB (see Heroes passim). Throughout his life he had published many papers in BB and elsewhere, and his last effort was an article for BB about Black Redstarts nesting on England's bombsites in 1942.

Harry Forbes Witherby. You had visions. In a good way. You were a gentleman, conventional, smart, smoked like a chimney. A self-taught scientist who brought order, your order, to your World, and organised the British birding scene into a useful fighting force that could learn more about birds as a unit than it could as a series of individuals. You pushed the boundaries of knowledge forwards by your own studies of moults and variation within speices, provided the vehicle, British Birds, for ornithologists to tell each other what they had seen, and a series of books that synthesised this knowledge for the next generation to define their own questions. You transformed ornithology into a mass-appeal collective endeavour that it was to remain for much of the twentieth century, and for this I name you a Hero of the Birding Revolution, 1st Class.

Harry Forbes Witherby 1873-1943.

'And finally, I come to the birds. What should we do without them? How can one help studying such wonderful and fascinating creatures? After months of toil in the museum or in the study you may sometimes wonder if it is really worthwhile. But you only have to go outside your door or, indeed, to any part of the world and watch the birds themselves, and you are quickliy reassured that any labour to find out more about them is worthwhile.'
HFW - acceptance address for BOU Salvin-Godman medal, 1938.

Sorry, I'm running out of ideas now...

Last go?

Sorry, another one

Here

O hear us when we cry to Thee, For all in peril on the seawatch.

Oooohhh quite a storm last night. Can always tell it's been a good one when we find a dolphin floundering in the roses. And on one memorable occasion, a Sperm Whale - we didn't need to go to ASDA for weeks! I might have been dreaming about eating the Sperm Whale, mind. When I woke up my pillow was gone. We found the tv aerial dangling from the roof this morning. Sod it, we've got Sky. Let it dangle. Still blowing very fresh from the south this morning, so I headed down to the beach to release the dolphin back into its ocean home. Look at the waves! That was something else.

I think this is what they call a 'boiling' sea. Stoopid! It's obviously freezing. Look at it!

I was lying about the dolphin. But there were 5 Ruddy Turnstones and a couple of Rock Pipits on the beach - braver birds than I. It was a bit hairy when I went up the cliffs to try and seawatch - waves breaking over my head. But, and this is true - I was surprised to see a Harbour Porpoise swimming in and around the surf, feeding on scared fish I suppose. Just a single Guillemot visible offshore through the splatter of salt, a few Great Black-backed Gulls, couple of Common Gulls and a Herring Gull. oooh. I needed a bit more height to keep dry, so headed down to Muchalls, via the allotments (1 Goldcrest, 51 Oystercatchers shelterin on the cricket pitch), and the stubble fields (Skylark, 50 Rooks, 5 Jackdaws, 25 Carrion Crows and one nearly-Hooded Crow). Muchalls was atmospheric, but bird-dead.


Sorry, that's all I got just now. Is anyone hankering after the music videos, instead of weak humour like this?

Oh yeh, I forgot...

Take heed... chew hair, and quite literally take back the thingies. Respect the classics, man!

I try to be self-deprecating...

... but I'm not very good at it.

So in the spirit of humility, I humbly offer my second bollywood movie, found here

Do you know the Playstation beat me at chess today.... but it was no f***ing match at kick-boxing! Boom boom!

errr.... I do know another joke, but it's a career-ender. In the pub last night I had to write it down on the back of a receipt, pass it round and then destroy the evidence. You might know it... it's about whisky, 16 years and coke.


STOP PRESS:
Diane reviewed my movie for me. Something like this:
How long does this last? That long? Well that's just about long enough.

Tin foil hats

Wow, from under there, it feels like you could tick Chestnut Bunting.