Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2026 i Birdwatch

Finder’s Report Pine Bunting, St Aldhelm’s Head, Dorset, 13 November 2025 I adopted St Aldhelm’s Head as my birding patch upon moving to Dorset in 2019. Jutting from the south-western corner of Purbeck, the headland is sandwiched between Portland and Durlston Head, and although lacking both the cover and coverage of its famed neighbours, it is an excellent location to observe migration. Its open fields and hedgerows annually attract rare and scarce species too, including the well-twitched Two-barred Warbler in Trev’s Quarry back in 2017. Autumn 2025 had however proven surprisingly unproductive, with little to show for repeated wanderings. However, this all changed on the morning of 13 November. Having already been on site for several hours, I arrived at ‘the paddocks’ – situated north of Trev’s Quarry – and…

The short winter days always come as a shock. After months of generous daylight for relentless birding marathons, or enough leeway to come home and work for a few hours before heading out again, each minute of sunshine seems precious come December. I’m still not clear whether I’m a ‘lark’ or an ‘owl’. Early mornings are my favourite time of day, a chance to snatch some solitude before car parks fill up, and the best way to set myself up for tackling a to-do list at home. However, getting out of bed for sunrise is often challenging, so December makes it easy for a while. With many of our favourite winter visitors becoming scarcer or less predictable, it can be a frustrating time. However, the season still holds enough to…

A younger me used to read about the Medieval Warm Period in Britain, when our climate resembled that of Bulgaria or Greece, with birds to match. With southern and south-eastern European species appearing ever more frequently each year, and some continuing to colonise Britain, it seems that we now have the chance to see what our country was like under those conditions without having to examine subfossil remains. These are exciting times for birding, but there is also a substantial downside. Global bird populations have lost up to half of their numbers and ranges as habitats have changed more rapidly and adaptation has not kept pace. So while there is still variety, old hands like me are unavoidably noticing differences. Being well into my retirement, the chance to see all…

AFTER many years residing in the Cambridgeshire fens, Ian Carter had a short spell in Devon before more recently relocating to the rolling countryside of Dumfries and Galloway. His latest book Wild Galloway is a collection of his thoughts and observations regarding the environment around him and the wildlife it supports. Carter has good form for producing poignant, reflective wildlife writing, as evidenced in previous releases such as Human, Nature (Birdwatch 354: 51). His most recent offering is no different as he contemplates the state of the countryside surrounding his new home. Here, there is plenty of cause for concern, be it the impacts of Sitka spruce plantations on the uplands and their special breeding birds, or the northward march of non-native Grey Squirrels into Red Squirrel habitat. But there…

CHILE is the longest country in the world when viewed from north to south (at more than 4,300 km), but it is also the narrowest (at 64 km at one point). For its entire length it is adjacent to Argentina, with which it shares a huge number of species, including 47 near-endemics. It also shares a further 20 near-endemics with Peru and Bolivia. There are some 420 regular species seen annually, and although there are 10 species with Chilean in their name, only two are endemics! There are great birding opportunities within only a few hours’ drive from Chile’s capital city, Santiago, with easy access to the Andes along the Farellones Road (Camino a Farellones). All eight mainland endemic species can be found nearby: Chilean Tinamou, Slender-billed Parakeet, Crag Chilia,…

White Whinchat BETWEEN 12 September and 4 October 2025, a leucistic Whinchat was observed at Forcarei in Galicia, north-west Spain. The unusual bird was seen by myself, Javier Valladares and Juan Antonio Gómez alongside three Whinchats with typical plumage. In Ewan Urquhart’s book Stonechats, leucistic birds are said to be “rare or at least rarely recorded in literature.” We found reference to a creamy-white individual on the Farne Islands, Northumberland, in September-October 1998 and another leucistic bird photographed at Maasvlakte, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on 2 September 2000. The latter bird was a very pale milky-brown on the entire upperparts including the wings and tail, but showed a slightly darker brown crown and a darker eyestripe running from the lores to the rear of the ear coverts. However, we haven’t found…

Western Palearctic November 2025 BLACK-FACED Bunting has shown a steady uptick in occurrences across Europe in recent years, hinting at the potential for a largescale arrival. This November, the influx duly arrived. No fewer than nine birds were discovered across mainland Europe – in addition to four in Britain – marking the largest regional occurrence on record. The Netherlands claimed the lion’s share with three individuals, while Belgium logged its second and third national records. Singles also surfaced in France, Norway and Sweden. The month’s only accessible bird – frustratingly so for most European listers – was the Swedish individual at Kannebäck on 6 November. The rest were either flyovers, mistnet captures or birds at private sites, leaving the majority of the influx untwitchable. A similarly eastern flavour came from…

May I wish all Birdwatch readers a Happy New Year! For me personally 2025 was a good year, personally, but environmentally and politically it was dire. Let us hope that 2026 is much better. Maybe it will be the year when an Osprey flies over my garden (I think it is long overdue) and perhaps a wandering White-tailed Eagle will do the same. Might Stanwick Lakes get more than its fair share of Northants’s rare birds and pinch some from Pitsford and Summer Leys? We can dream, but we can also spend more time in the field putting in the hours to find those birds. We can dream about the birds we might see, and find for others to see, but the political landscape is a thing of nightmares. The…

BRAMBLING is a familiar finch that’s always nice to see in Britain, arriving from Fennoscandia during the autumn and departing again in spring. These birds are reasonably widespread and can be locally common, although they are decidedly scarcer in some regions. A charming species in many respects, the warm autumn palette of burnt orange and black plumage makes it distinctive. The occasional bird lingers into late April and, should you encounter a male at this time, you may be see a smart bird sporting a glossy black head and mantle and a bluish bill. The timing of moult differs between first-calendar-year birds and adults. Adults undergo a complete post-breeding moult, meaning that by autumn and winter all moult is finished. The entire wing and tail therefore appear in good condition,…

Pre-order your copy online now – see www.birdguides.com for details of how to subscribe and save more than 20% a year! ■ Best of 2025 Sam Viles takes a look back at another remarkable year across Britain and Ireland, from headline-making megas to the quieter surprises that shaped the 2025 birding landscape. ■ The Perth pearl From masses of wintering wildfowl to rare breeding species and a wealth of migrants, Loch Leven offers superb year-round birding. Dan Owen profiles this underrated site, its seasons and standout species. ■ Guarding Greenland White-fronts Numbers of wintering Greenland White-fronted Goose have fallen dramatically on these shores in recent years. Tony Fox has spent years studying this subspecies and he examines its distribution, decline and efforts to protect the birds. ■ On the rocks Tough,…

Report Boat-tailed Grackle, Calshot, Hampshire, from 2 November 2025 A male Boat-tailed Grackle appeared in Hampshire on Sunday 2 November, marking the first record of the species in Britain. News broke that afternoon of a grackle wandering around the RNLI lifeboat station at Calshot Spit. Initial images appeared to show a male Great-tailed Grackle, but as detailed photographs were reviewed later that evening, the identification began to shift. The bird’s slimmer bill, more rounded head and distinctly softer expression pointed instead to Boat-tailed Grackle, a species confined to the eastern United States. The occurrence represents the first record of Boat-tailed Grackle in Britain. However, given the bird’s proximity to one of the country’s busiest shipping ports – Calshot Spit lies immediately south of the Port of Southampton – its arrival…

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In the words of Pablo Picasso, “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” Elizabeth Gould produced many illustrations for the bird books published by her husband John Gould, the celebrated British ornithologist. Yet she seems never to have written a word about her art. Her illustrations must speak for themselves. And indeed, they do. Although this talented artist was hardly acclaimed during her own lifetime, her best renderings of birds from several continents are widely appreciated today. She injected life into her subjects and visually documented birds that were unknown to many who would view them. Early life Elizabeth Gould, née Coxen, was born on 18 July 1804 to Nicholas Coxen and Elizabeth Tomkins in Ramsgate, Kent. Of the couple’s many children, only Elizabeth and three brothers survived…

I can’t imagine there are many more thrilling sights for any birder than seeing a Gyr Falcon in flight. I’ve only seen one – on a whale-watching trip in Arctic Norway nearly a decade ago. I recall how its size surprised me more than anything. This spectacular species, the world’s largest falcon, is a rare visitor to Britain. When they do turn up, they tend to be in wild, remote corners of the country – and often for only a fleeting amount of time. As I write this, with BBRC data up to the end of 2024, the last accepted record was at Loch Ordais, on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, on 27 September 2022 – a location both far-flung and beautiful enough to be graced with the presence of…

INSPIRED by an intimate encounter with a roosting Blue Jay in the depths of a winter forest, Pete Dunne embarked on a lifetime’s fascination with how birds last through the coldest months, culminating in this slim but engrossing and wide-ranging summary of the seasonal survival skills of North American birds. Equal parts ecology and personal observation, the labelling of birds’ instinctive and evolutionary behaviours in the book as ‘courage’ may sound anthropomorphic, but it’s hard to think of a more apt word for how their focused determination sees them last through months of blizzards, sleet and settled snow and ice. The story starts with a small group of theropod dinosaurs scraping through the cataclysm of an asteroid impact and facing the challenges of the Northern Hemisphere by either migrating, as…

Writing, as ever, on the day of the deadline, it’s 1 December 2025, and a quick glance at my diary for the coming month suggests my year list has probably peaked. The delightful chaos of Christmas – which I truly adore – leaves little room for birding, and even less for the sort of spur-of-the-moment dashes that add late bonuses. I might scrape a Waxwing, perhaps a Red-breasted Goose or even a Bufflehead, but unless one of them happens to fall neatly along the route to a pre-Christmas engagement, it’s probably not going to happen. And, honestly, I’m fine with that. I’ve started to reflect on what this first year list has meant to me. I’m not publishing my final total – not because it’s woefully small (though minus my…