Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2023 i Birdwatch

THERE have been some quite extraordinary seabird records already this summer. The spectacles seen from the Scilly pelagics (see page 9) must’ve been absolutely thrilling to witness, but it is hard not to feel mixed emotions about this. Part of me wonders whether these unusual displacements are linked to the unprecedented ocean temperatures experienced this year, and consequently what this might mean for the future of our warming world. Is our short-term gain an acceptable trade-off for long-term pain among seabirds in the North Atlantic? There is still plenty of the ‘seabird season’ to come and this month we profile one of the classic September species, Leach’s Storm Petrel, as well as detail the best sites and conditions for east-coast seawatching this autumn. The unsettled conditions that we experienced throughout…

When did you last see a ‘snakebird’? Is finding the ‘little head-wagger’ on your wish list for this autumn – or have you already caught up with the ‘cuckoo’s mate’ this year? These are just some of the old folk names given to a bird that never fails to capture the imagination: Wryneck. Any video posted on social media of the bizarre serpentine, contorting neck movement the species gives when alarmed will always attract attention. It is this behaviour that is behind the name ‘wry’-neck today, as well as the old English name of ‘snakebird’, a moniker that has had various adaptations throughout Europe down the ages, including ‘aderwindl’ (‘wriggling adder’) in Austria and ‘penice hadi’ (‘snake warbler’) in rural Czech Republic. Wryneck also utters a hissing-like call when alarmed.…

REVIEW Canon EOS R3 digital camera THE EOS R3 is Canon’s current flagship mirrorless camera. It is the first to feature the larger, square body, which includes a built-in battery grip with additional buttons for portrait shooting that became familiar through many generations of the 1D, 1Ds and 1DX pro-level digital SLR bodies. While the R3’s appearance and superb ergonomics are similar to these cameras, the weight is anything but; it’s a massive 42% lighter than the 1DX Mark III. The R3 works very well with older EF lenses when combined with the EF to RF mount adapter, but even better with a native RF lens. The R3 features a 24-megapixel (mp) full-frame sensor which is outstanding in low light. You don’t need to worry about using the sort of…

SEPTEMBER means migration. Depending on the weather conditions, birds can appear from all points of the compass, making it an exciting time to be out in the field. A mouth-watering prospect for bird photographers is the arrival of juvenile waders on their way south, supplemented by the occasional rarer visitor from North America or Siberia. There’s a long list of candidates that could provide a memorable encounter this September, and the general tips offered here would apply to any of them, but I’ve opted for the diminutive Little Stint. An important consideration with all waders, but particularly one this small, is to try to get as low down as possible. Lots of good wader habitat in the UK is only viewable from hides or nature reserve paths, but if you…

A new study has concluded that Britain’s population of Golden Pheasant is now functionally extinct. Having first been introduced to Britain in the late 19th century, Golden Pheasant currently sits on category C1E of the British list as a naturalised species – the only country in the Western Palearctic where Golden Pheasant is countable on lists. However, numbers have dwindled in recent decades, and new research has suggested that the remaining birds do not represent a viable population. The authors of the paper have also suggested that the species should be moved to Category C6, a sub-category dedicated to ‘formerly naturalised species’ which are either extinct or no longer self-sustaining. At their peak, between the 1940s and 1970s, as many as 1,000 Golden Pheasants were estimated to be at large…

BLANKET Nook is one of the best places for wader passage in Co Donegal and I try to visit as often as possible during migration periods. Waders were already beginning to pass through and so I was hoping for something interesting when I arranged to meet my friend Theo Campbell there on Friday 14 July. I was ‘scoping the opposite bank when I noticed a wader’s head just above the vegetation among the Northern Lapwing flock. I told Theo: “Don’t panic, but I think I’ve got a pratincole!” It was extremely well hidden, sometimes for long periods, so we couldn’t get much on it. Strangely it was in the exact area where Robert Vaughan found a Collared Pratincole in July 2019. It did venture out briefly on a couple of…

Most British birders’ first (or only) experience of Leach’s Storm Petrel is of a storm-driven bird inshore on an autumn seawatch. To see them at their colonies, though, you need to venture to some of the most far-flung outcrops of Britain and Ireland. The vast majority of British-breeding Leach’s nest on St Kilda, an isolated archipelago 60 km west of the Outer Hebrides, which is owned by the National Trust for Scotland. Smaller colonies are also present on North Rona and the Flannan Isles (also in the Outer Hebrides), with a smattering of nest sites found on some of the more inaccessible stacks around Shetland. Ireland can also claim a few hundred breeding pairs on islands off the Co Mayo coast. No doubt there are pockets of breeding birds at…

If you have to get up at dawn on a chilly January morning, then El Rocío, in Andalucía’s Huelva province, is a magical place to do it. As usual we visit this year, and awake to the fabulous sounds of dozensof gently honking Greater Flamingos and the delicate kyik-kyik of Black-winged Stilts. Pink light from the rising sun glints off the pretty white village and gives an ethereal glow to the lake by which it sits. A pleasing selection of waders feed busily in the still waters, among Eurasian Spoonbills, Western Swamphens, Glossy Ibis and White Storks. Here and nearby, we often enjoy views of White-headed Duck, Red-knobbed Coot and Marbled Duck, which is Critically Endangered in Spain. In the reed fringes, we pick out Eurasian Penduline Tits, Bluethroat and…

THIS familiar seabird is always a very popular target for photographers, and so this challenge proved. Unsurprisingly, photos taken at Bempton Cliffs RSPB featured heavily among the submissions and indeed it was at the famous East Yorkshire site that both of the images depicted here were taken. The first of these, by Robert Kitchen, shows a gannet in a classic pose with a beak full of grass, which the bird will be using to line its nest. While the sharp subject and diffuse blue background help to make this a great image, it’s in fact the bird’s black eye which is the most striking feature – this has been linked to birds having recovered from avian influenza, thus seeing healthy birds breeding with this condition gives optimism for the future…

DO pigeons dream of flying? Of course, there is no way of knowing, but recent research has looked at what actually happens when pigeons are sleeping. The phenomenon of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in humans is well known along with its link to high brain activity, corresponding to extremely vivid dreams. Birds are also known to have REM sleep phases and these were studied in pigeons using MRI and video cameras. The birds’ eye movements could be seen through their transparent eyelids and the MRI measured their brain activity. It was found that during periods of REM sleep the parts of the pigeon’s brain that were most active were the ones associated with visual processing of their surroundings, and with their wings. At the same time the pupils of…

BIRDWATCH has always been a keen supporter of bird art and was among the very first magazines to offer awards to artists, and together with SWAROVSKI OPTIK launched the European Bird Artist of the Year Award in the 1990s. As the competition grew more established, the award found a natural partnership with the Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA), and since 2005 the Birdwatch and SWAROVSKI OPTIK Bird Artist of the Year Award has been the most coveted of prizes offered at the society’s annual exhibition, The Natural Eye, which takes place at London’s Mall Galleries every autumn. The list of past winners includes many of the popular names in the wildlife art world and covers an array of styles and approaches – from the meticulous portrayal of King Penguins in…

In association with On the face of it, Rüppell’s Vulture looks to be doing well in the Western Palearctic. The presence of the species has been well documented across the Iberian Peninsula during the past three decades – in 2015, Rüppell’s was taken off the official list of Spanish rarities and instead recognised as a fifth resident or migrant vulture species in the south of the country. Birds have been observed to arrive with Griffon Vultures at the Strait of Gibraltar in spring, having travelled north through north-west Africa from the Griffons’ wintering grounds south of the Sahara. Breeding behaviour has been observed in multiple years, too. But this all belies a bird in serious trouble. Indeed, in the same year (2015) that it was taken off the Spanish rarities…

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So many birds are on the move around the North Sea between August and October, including waders migrating south from the Arctic, wildfowl arriving from the Baltic, skuas leaving their Scandinavian and Russian breeding grounds, shearwaters wandering in from the Atlantic, and much more. Although the numbers of some pelagic species cannot rival those seen from Cornish or Irish headlands, the variety of birds involved can make for exciting and memorable days. Having a little knowledge about when and where to go can make your seawatching even more productive. The east coast is an arrival point for wildfowl and waders migrating from the north and east through to their wintering grounds, and these birds are channelled along favoured stretches of our eastern coastline. Some species are predictable in their appearances;…

The arrival of September signals an exciting time in the birder’s calendar. While autumn starts to move through the gears in August, it is September when it truly comes to the boil. For the next two months, the sky is the limit as far as migrants and rarities are concerned. Although seabirds and drift migrants are two classic components of early autumn, for me it is the shorebirds that I look forward to most at this season. Searching through congregations of waders in September is something that I have always found greatly rewarding. There is never a dull moment when watching them, with the mix of adult and juvenile plumages offering great opportunities to study and appreciate the variation shown by even the most familiar species, while sifting through the…

Chatting with another birder at the recent Black-winged Kite twitch in Essex about trips to Bali we’d both taken, I said I’d seen free-flying Bali Mynas easily this summer. In contrast, he told me he’d found them impossible to see in the 1990s, as they were effectively extinct in the wild. How – in less than 30 years – could such a contrast be possible? The answer to this question involves politics, intrigue and determination, as well as the natural resilience of an endemic avian icon. Myna characters Bali Myna – aka Bali Starling, Rothschild’s Mynah and jalak bali – is larger than our familiar Common Starling, with pure white plumage and black tips to the flight and tail feathers. It has bare skin on its face, which is a…

BEHIND THE LENS Using converters A common saying among bird photographers is that whatever ‘reach’ you have with your gear, it’s rarely enough. A relatively cheap, convenient and lightweight option to increase your reach is to add a teleconverter or extender – or simply ‘converter’, as they’re more frequently known. These fit between the lens and camera and multiply the focal length of your lens by a set amount, most commonly 1.4x or 2x (Nikon also offers a 1.7x). If you have a 500 mm lens and add a 1.4x, this will give you 700 mm; a very handy increase in focal length. A 2x converter (often called a ‘doubler’) gives you an impressive-sounding 1,000 mm. Sounds great, doesn’t it? A lot more reach without having to buy a bigger,…

Tight-fisted twitchers THE arrival of a major rarity at a nature reserve should result in a financial bonus for cash-strapped nature conservation organisations, but sadly this was not the case when Britain’s first twitchable Black-winged Kite was available at Hickling on the morning of Tuesday 18 July. Access to both the viewing platform at Stubb Mill and the path to the site require entry to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust (NWT) reserve, for which there is a £4.50 admission charge. On arrival at the reserve car park, a noticeboard informs early arrivals that non-NWT members can leave their admission fee in an honesty box, or make payment when staff have arrived at the visitor centre. It seems shameful that only three birders paid for reserve entry that day – I think…

Basic Principles Not long ago this trio was lumped together as one species. That is hard to understand when watching an ‘all-dark’ Balearic flying alongside a ‘bicoloured’ Manx or Yelkouan (dark upper side, white underside). However, replace that dark Balearic with a pale individual, the underside being whitish, and immediately ID becomes a lot harder. And replace the fresh, greyish-black upper side feathers of Manx with old, sun-bleached, browner ones, the colour being more like Balearic and Yelkouan, then it becomes harder again. Add distance, as with shore-based seawatching, and the challenge is one of the toughest of all for seabirders. That said, most birds can be identified with confidence given reasonable views and command of the knowledge set out below. Manx Shearwater The ubiquitous shearwater of our region, with…