Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2017 i Bird Watching

TAXONOMY CAN be a daunting subject, but it’s fascinating piecing together the relationships between what, on the face of it, are diverse and disparate families of birds. Our 16-page special section, Meet The Family, explores these links, and reveals the connections between exotic birds and their more everyday relations. Birdfair, of course, has done much over the years to conserve some extraordinary birds overseas. We’ll be there again, as ever, so make sure you come and see us to say hello, tell us your birding tales, and to update us on your #My200BirdYear efforts, if you’ve taken part. I’ll be hoping to slip away and add a bogey bird or two, such as Spotted Flycatcher, to my own list, ahead of the main rush of autumn migration. Wherever you’re birdwatching…

Your summer rest is over! As far as many birds are concerned, it has been over for a while, with migration taking place in earnest for some weeks. But September sees a shifting of gears and a sizeable increase in movement. Birds of all sorts are on what is called ‘return’ passage, heading to their wintering grounds. Unlike spring migration, the autumn’s episode is a more leisurely affair, without the need to rush to claim a territory and find a mate. So, you may be lucky and see that birds can linger a while on their way through. Here are five species to catch up with this month, and perhaps add to your #My200BirdYear list. How many can you see? RARITY RATINGS Common, widely distributed Localised – always a treat…

There’s a great chance to catch up with migrant and resident waders this autumn at Slimbridge WWT’s Severn Wader Festival. Running over the weekend of 9-10 September, in conjunction with charity Wader Quest, it is packed with events and activities celebrating the UK’s wading birds. These include a High Tide Safari (Saturday at 10:30am and Sunday at 11am, £5 per person, booking required), a Bird Watching Morning Wader Special (Saturday, 7:30am to 10am and Sunday, 8am to 10:30am, £15.95 per person, including breakfast), a Wader Shore exhibit (free), and 45 minute talks with a host of wader experts. Guides will be on hand in hides from 11am to 3pm each day to help ID waders, and there’ll be a chance to meet conservation organisations from along the Severn Estuary and…

The Isle of Man Post Office has released a set of six stamps featuring the artworks of renowned local wildlife artist, Jeremy Paul, in celebration of the conservation work of the Manx Birdlife Census. A census of all seabirds nesting around the Isle of Mans coastline was undertaken in 2017 by local charity, Manx BirdLife. Lancashire born, Jeremy Paul has lived on the Isle of Man for many years. He originally trained as a marine biologist and is a completely self-taught artist, and has won awards for his work including BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year – Category Winner 2010, 2011, 2012 and the British Wildlife Award at the National Exhibition of Wildlife Art 2015. For this stamp issue Jeremy has painted six species of birds, each of which are…

A HIGH-PITCHED CALL FOLLOWED by a whirr of wings that blurred the shape of the bird as it flew low over the fast-flowing water, signalled the arrival of a Dipper. Landing on a rock mid-stream, the bird gave its characteristic bend at the knees, before it walked headlong into the torrent. All of this happened right in front of me as I stood on the pavement looking down at the East Lyn river in north Devon, where, after plunging off the high ground of Exmoor, the river meets the sea at the charming village of Lynmouth. Now, describing this as urban birding might be stretching it a bit – after all, the actual population of Lynmouth is only a few hundred people – but it was a late summer’s day,…

SO MANY AREAS of Mull can produce the birds, but this single-track road provides a great opportunity to find the ones you have missed. With Loch Don being such a draw for waders, there are various viewpoints along this road from which to scan the loch and the river entering into it. Greenshank winter in the area and species like Black-tailed Godwit, Whimbrel and Ruff can be found in spring. Even then you have a chance of both Hen Harrier and Short-eared Owl flying into view over the grassland. Evening may well bring you a Barn Owl. The woodland adds the chance of Redstart, Wood Warbler and Tree Pipit, with White-tailed Eagle always close-by. The grassland is good for both Stonechat and Whinchat with Reed Bunting, Meadow Pipit and Sky…

THE RELENTLESS POUNDIN G of the Irish Sea has resulted in a massive pebble upper level shoreline contrasting with a superb lower sandy beach combining to protect a low-lying hinterland. Part of that is now occupied by Caernarvon Airport, which includes a small museum and café, beyond which lies Foryd Bay, while away to the east, the region of Snowdonia dominates the skyline. At the northern extremity of the peninsula, Fort Belan advertises self-catering cottages where once Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey 1848-1916, best known to birdwatchers as the author of British Decoys, demonstrated that ancient ballistas could hurl a stone ball across the Menai Straits, here just over a quarter of a mile wide, and that a crossbow could hit a target at the same range. His other interests included golf…

THIS IS AN interesting reserve with ancient hay meadows – one that hasn’t been ploughed for about 100 years! An old orchard adds to the possibilities and two ponds help, too. There are lots of hedges around and clumps of vegetation like brambles with big trees, especially oak, here and there. Also there are unclipped, large hedgerows on the tracks around and nearby. I’ve added small adjacent woodland to the walk, so there should be a good range of birds to see in all. Also, there are many different plants and herbs, one of which is called Pignut, a species well-known for providing a home for the small black Chimney Sweeper moth seen in June/July. Setting off from the village hall, there is a fantastic view to the west where,…

AN EARLY START for a birding walk in northern France is well worth the effort at this time of year when migration is in full swing. A short drive along the coast from the Channel Tunnel terminal at Calais brings the birdwatcher to the lovely chalk headland of Cap Griz Nez, overlooking La Manche and the White Cliffs of Dover, only 21 miles across the water. The Cap is one of Europe s premier seawatching locations, and if the wind is in the north-west at any time during the autumn, you’ll have to arrive early to get the best seat in the house, although views from the lookout point can be just as good, if a little exposed. Among the stream of regular gulls, terns, skuas, auks, divers, shearwaters and…

I am relatively new to birding but I must say that I agree with the comments in the July issue of Bird Watching magazine (Grumpy Old Birder column) that hide facilities do not accommodate different people. I am not very tall and I have mobility difficulties and it is not always possible to get a decent view from the windows of hides because the windows are too high. So, I usually get a splendid view of the wooden sills that surround them and the chairs can’t be adjusted – sometimes the chairs are too near the windows and so don’t accommodate walking sticks or stiff lower limbs, and the ledges don’t come out far enough and don’t give any support for older people who may have slight problems with tremors…

BEYOND SKYE, ACROSS the unpredictable waters of the Minch, lie the wild and windy Western Isles, the Outer Hebrides. A 130 mile-long archipelago stretching from Lewis and Harris in the north to the Uists and Barra in the south, the islands appear as an unbroken chain when viewed from across the Minch. In reality, there are more than 200 islands with a total population of fewer than 27,000 people. This is truly a land on the edge, where the turbulent seas of the Atlantic smash up against a geologically complex terrain whose coastline is interrupted by a thousand sheltered bays and, in the far west, a long line of sweeping sandy beaches. The islands’ interiors are equally dramatic, veering between flat, boggy, treeless peat moor and bare mountain tops soaring…

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Ian Parsons urges birders not to dip on Dippers. After all, this is a bird with ‘superpowers’ which can ‘fly’ underwater to swim! Page 27 Dominic Couzens throws the spotlight on the Goosander – a species which is unlike any other duck you’ll have seen before. Page 42 Barrie Cooper explains what birding delights you can expect on a trip to the former Soviet state of Belarus. Find out more on page 72 Ed Hutchings finds beauty – as well as a wide variety of great birds – on a birdwatching trip to the Outer Hebrides. Join him on page 80 David Lindo heads over to the Austrian capital of Vienna and finds parks and woodland sites packed with birds. Read more on page 84 SUBSCRIBE AND SAVE! Head on…

OVENBIRD There have been about half a dozen accepted records of Ovenbird in the UK, one each on Orkney, Shetland, Scilly, Barra (Outer Hebrides), Devon and Herefordshire (a long-stayer). Most have been in October. Of the two accepted records in Ireland, one was in late September. So, we may be a week or so early with this prediction, but if an Ovenbird turns up in September, we called it first! MASKED SHRIKE The first UK Masked Shrike was as recently as 2004, at Kilrenny, Fife. Since then there have been birds on Scilly (2006) and one for a couple of weeks (20 September to 2 October) at Spurn, East Yorkshire, in 2014. So, exceptionally rare, but there is no reason why we can’t have another this year, is there? BROWN…

“Pairs are known to stay together even when travelling between sites for winter” BEARDED TITS ARE not members of the tit family, and the males’ eye-catching facial markings look more like ornate moustaches than a beard, so perhaps they would be better named ‘Moustachioed Parrotbills’. While this is unlikely to catch on, their other names ‘Bearded Reedlings’ or just ‘Reedlings’ also fit the bill pretty well, since these are specialist birds of reedbeds. Family groups can be detected by their ‘pinging’ calls, but they can often go unseen, unless they decide to feed on seed heads or fly above the reeds. Their global distribution stretches from Europe across central Asia and Kazakhstan to Mongolia and China, and it is in eastern areas where other species of parrotbill are found. Their…

“A Hobby put the afterburners on and whizzed towards us, at the last moment braking and twisting to try to snatch a Sand Martin” LAST MONTH, I was waxing lyrical about summer’s great distractions, and the wealth of other wildlife you can enjoy during the long, warm sunny days, when the birding is quiet. Well, at the weekend I tried to put this into practice, in a way that I like to think would even have made wildlife polymath James Lowen proud. Saturday was spent hanging out with my daughter Jasmine, now freed from the hell of school exams. Our first destination was Bedford Purlieus NNR in the north-west corner of Cambridgeshire (ie a few miles west of Peterborough). A family of Marsh Tits were one of the first things…

Spurn Migration Festival 2017 will take place over 8-10 September, with the aim of celebrating the natural spectacle that is bird migration. Renowned expert in bird migration, Professor Ian Newton – author of the Collins New Naturalist ‘Bird Migration’ – as its keynote speaker. Alongside talks throughout the weekend, there are regular guided walks to look at waders on the Humber, migrants in the bushes and birds passing by, both overhead and at offshore. Rob Adams, Spurn Bird Observatory Trust, said: “Migfest continues to go from strength to strength and is well established as an annual event not to miss. If you are interested in bird migration, want to learn about bird migration, or just enjoy the company of friendly, like-minded people, Migfest is for you.” Tickets are on sale…

HALF A CENTURY ago, a Malaysian friend told me of his dream. He wanted to write, but first needed to earn enough money to buy a small plot of land where he would dig a pond for carp, plant breadfruit trees around it and keep pigs. He would always have water, and food, having carp, pig meat and breadfruit; his dream was of agricultural perpetual motion. Breadfruit would fall from the trees for the pigs to eat, pig manure would keep the trees healthy and shovelled into the pond would feed the carp, any leftovers from the carp would be quickly eaten by pigs! Not my idea of heaven, even if the breadfruit trees held broadbills and bee-eaters, I don’t eat meat, don’t like breadfruit, don’t really fancy shovelling pig…

Friday, 18 August Lecture Marquee 2, 12pm-12.20pm Toby Green – The Scottish islands for UK rarities – Heatherlea guide Toby explains how to take your UK bird list (and your #my200birdyear list) to new heights, with the help of a trip to Shetland, Fair Isle, North Ronaldsay, Orkney, and the Outer Hebrides. Friday, 18 August Author’s Forum, 3.15pm-4pm Dominic Couzens – Britain’s Mammals: A Field Guide to the Mammals of Britain and Ireland. Dominic talks about his new book, followed by the opportunity to purchase (and have signed ) Dominic’s publications. Friday, 18 August Author’s Forum, 4.15pm-4.45pm A Sweet Wild Note – Bird Watching regular Richard Smyth talks about his cultural history of birdsong, from poetry and music, to bird anatomy and the acoustics of landscape and a passionate call…

MANY PEOPLE THINK of waders as a particularly challenging group. And, to an extent, this is true. But they are a diverse and charismatic bunch, so don’t let their relative trickiness put you off enjoying these brilliant birds. That said, it would be no fun if the ID Challenge didn’t make you at least think a bit about the identifications; so we have chosen one or two slightly less conventional poses, as well as some fully side-on, ‘couldn’t-be-easier’ portraits for this suite of wader photos. The idea is to look at the pictures, try to name the birds featured (and, if you feel confident, perhaps try to ‘age’ the birds, as well). Then turn the page for our answers and solutions and, as usual, turn once more for some tips…

ST MARY’S ISLE is more of a peninsula than an island, but does have a small island at its southern tip called Insh. The peninsula was once the location of a priory founded in the 12th Century and connected to Holyrood in Edinburgh. It is easy to walk around thanks to a track which takes you most of the way around it. This is also helpful as it covers the edge of the peninsula, giving you views over Manxman’s Bay and the River Dee. The peninsula itself has mixed woodland, along with scrub allowing you to enjoy spring arrivals as well as autumn waders. Winter can see feeding waders as well as occasional movements of geese. The area was made famous for having one of the earliest breeding Spoonbills in…

STIFFKEY SALTMARSHES WERE acquired by the National Trust in 1976 and form part of Blakeney National Nature Reserve. The area offers a vast open expanse of saltmarsh along with a wonderful walk along part of the Norfolk coastal path, which stretches for 62 miles in total. It is well known for its breeding birds, as well as a mixture of rare migrants being so close to Blakeney Point, another National Trust property. The car park offers views across the marsh and you may see Little Egrets all year round, Hen Harrier in winter along with possible Short-eared Owl and even a Rough-legged Buzzard newly arrived over the North Sea. The Sycamores along the front near the car park can give you Pied Flycatcher and Redstart in both spring and autumn.…

PANSHANGER PARK IS a new country park and nature reserve which opened to the public in March 2014. Owned by building materials company Tarmac, the site was, in former years, partially quarried for sand and gravel, but was recently restored to its current condition, with only a small section still in use today by the aggregate industry. Originally a historic Grade II park and garden that was created by Humphrey Repton in the 18th Century, the park includes many veteran oak trees. Tarmac received awards for its restoration and nature conservation of the wetland and agricultural meadows. The park is gradually being opened to the public in phases, with the Oak Trail being the most recent. No matter what the time of year, there is plenty to see around Panshanger…

BIRDS OF KRUGER NATIONAL PARK Keith Barnes & Ken Bahrens Princeton University Press, SB, £22.95, you pay £18.95 when you quote BW-REV One of the world's best-known and most iconic wildlife-watching destinations, the Kruger National Park boasts diverse and colourful birdlife. This guide, in the now familiar Princeton/WildGuides style, does it justice with superb photography, and is excellent as a practical guide to use in the field (259 species are covered). There's a question, I suppose, as to whether you'd buy it rather than the comprehensive Birds of Southern Africa guide, for example, but it's a thing of beauty in its own right, so will appeal to any birders heading to South Africa. Species are grouped according to habitat, which should help speedy ID in the field, although it can…

SOUTH WEST Highlights The rarest bird of the month was undoubtedly the Elegant Tern seen on Brownsea Island NT, Dorset, (21 June) then in the mouth of Poole Harbour (22nd), which was the same colour-ringed individual temporarily relocating from West Sussex. Otherwise, the rarest birds seen were two Little Shearwaters photographed 40km south of the Devon coast on 2 June. AVON SEVERNSIDE: Little Ringed Plovers remained at two coastal sites with birds displaying but no evidence of breeding success. A Spoonbill dropped in at Pilning Wetlands (3rd). Good seawatch days at Severn Beach produced two Fulmars and up to two Arctic Skuas (6th-11th), an Arctic and a Sandwich Tern (6th), a Guillemot (11th), a male Common Scoter (12th) and a female (23rd), single Storm Petrels (6th & 23rd) and a…

Parrots’ closest relatives are, it turns out, the songbirds. Studies in the last decade showed that the common ancestor of landbirds, which include songbirds, parrots, woodpeckers, owls, eagles and falcons, was an apex predator. Whole-genome analysis dates the evolutionary expansion of birds to the time of the mass extinction event 66 million years ago – it had formerly been thought that they blossomed 10 to 80 million years earlier. Only a few bird lineages survived the mass extinction, and gave rise to the more than 10,000 ‘Neoaves’ species that comprise 95% of all bird species living today. It’s thought that the freed-up ecological niches caused by the extinction allowed rapid species radiation of birds in less than 15 million years, which explains much of modern bird biodiversity.…

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The times below are for high tide, when waders and wildfowl will be pushed closer to dry land... Find the location closest to your destination and add or subtract the hours and minutes from the high tide time at London Bridge, below. SOUTH WEST Weston-Super-Mare (+5:05) Barnstaple (+4:30) Newquay (+3:32) Falmouth (+3:30) Plymouth (+4:05) Torquay (+4:40) Bournemouth (-5:09)* Portland (+4:57) St Peter Port (+4:53) Swanage (-5:19)* Portsmouth (-2:29) Southampton (-2:53) SOUTH EAST Ryde (-2:29) Brighton (-2:51) Eastbourne (-2:48) Dungeness(-3:05) Dover (-2:53) Margate (-1:52) Herne Bay (-1:24) Southend-on-sea (-1:22) Clacton-on-sea (-2:00) EAST ANGLIA FelixstowePier (-2:23) Aldeburgh (-2:53) Lowestoft (-4:23) Cromer (+4:56) Hunstanton (+4:44) WALES Colwyn Bay (-2:47) Holyhead (-3:28) Barmouth (-5:45) Aberystwyth (-6:11) Fishguard (+5:44) Swansea (+4:42) Milford Haven (+4:37) Cardiff (+5:15) NORTH WEST Whitehaven (-2:30) Douglas(-2:44) Morecambe (-2:33) Blackpool (-2:50)…

UK’S LARGEST COLONY Gannets, Puffins and Razorbills are among the hundreds of thousands of seabirds that make up the largest mainland seabird colony in the UK on the Flamborough and Filey Coast, new figures have revealed. The 400ft chalk cliffs around the Flamborough and Filey coast – a proposed Special Protected Area (pSPA) – stretch 17 miles from Bridlington to the north of Filey, including special sites such as Bempton Cliffs RSPB, Flamborough Head and Filey Bay. The latest count of the birds, which took a team of six experts 253 hours during May and June, has revealed the colony is now home to 298,054 breeding seabirds, which fledge over 113,000 young, making it the largest mainland colony in the UK. RSPB HIDE APPEAL Birdwatchers are being urged to back…

K E Y Sites may be best visited by car, or a car may be required to get from point to point. Requires birding to be done on foot. Specified points to visit, but can be done in any order (known as KEYPOINTS) Specified points to visit and are best done in numerical order (known as WAYMARKERS) NB: The MILES ON FOOT is the amount of miles you will need to walk and not necessarily the amount of miles in the whole route. The TIME is how many hours we recommend. So, if there are fewer miles per hour, it maybe that there is more to see. MORE SITES For a full list of the sites we’ve featured, go to birdwatching.co.uk/gbindex COLLECT & KEEP Every month we bring you…

WITH LAGOONS, REEDBEDS, meadows and woodland, Staveley Nature Reserve is a wildlife-rich wetland with a good mix of habitats and birds – 205 species have been recorded since 1974. There’s something to see all year round, but spring through to autumn is the liveliest time, with Common Tern, Sand Martin and several species of warbler breeding here – Reed, Sedge and Willow are most common, but Grasshopper Warbler breeds in some years. When I visited in May, the place felt alive with birdsong, with Swifts screeching overhead and Reed Buntings and Sedge Warblers competing for air time. There’s always a chance something rare will call in during spring or summer migration, particularly passage waders. Shoveller, Gadwall, Wigeon and Great Crested Grebe are among the wildfowl, while Marsh and Willow Tit…

CHARLES DARWIN WAS born in Shrewsbury in 1809 and this woodland is next to the house The Mount, where he was brought up. He is well known for his contribution to the science of evolution and his book (one of many) the Origin of Species, and for his five-year journey round the world in HMS Beagle. He changed the way we see nature. This enjoyable walk travels alongside the River Severn and hints at Darwin’s inspiration when he lived here in his younger days to develop his interest in the natural world. And this area hasn’t really changed much with the river ambling by and the trees, some maybe planted by the Darwin family, hosting a range of bird species, from Kingfisher to woodpeckers. The walk can be followed both…

RECENTLY CREATED BY spoil deposited from excavated material from the Channel Tunnel project, Samphire Hoe has gained a reputation as a local migrant hotspot due to its location. Habitats here include herb-rich grassland, scrub and several small marl ponds, all managed in partnership with the White Cliffs Countryside Project. The views along the iconic White Cliffs are wonderful and are worth scanning from late morning for migrating raptors such as Buzzard and Honey Buzzard, Red Kite, Sparrowhawk and Hobby. Ring Ouzels are often noted on the lower slopes while fencelines and scrub along the railway track typically attract chats, starts, warblers and the occasional Wryneck. At times the overhead passage of wagtails, pipits and hirundines can be spectacular and, given an onshore wind, seawatching is worthwhile, with skuas regularly seen…

Can I suggest that David Lindo, the Urban Birder, pays a visit to Singapore? It would be interesting to compare his experience with that I had on a recent trip. Sungei Buloh is an excellent wetland reserve which gives a good introduction to mangrove swamps as well as jungle forests. A humbling and frustrating day was spent there as it was like going back to being a beginner; initially, the only bird that I could identify was Tree Sparrow (they were everywhere). But with persistence and the use of YouTube videos, I was soon able to identify birds such as koel, Black-naped Oriole and Common Tailorbird. I enjoyed both Collared and Black-capped Kingfisher as well, finding it surprising easy to find White-bellied Sea Eagle soaring overhead. But I missed any…

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So, what is taxonomy, exactly? Put simply, it’s the study of the classification and scientific naming of living things, and taxa include large units, such as kingdoms and families, and smaller ones such as orders, genera, species and subspecies. In a ‘taxonomic’ or ‘systematic’ list of birds, species are placed in a linear sequence according to how long ago they are thought to have evolved, oldest first. Related taxa are grouped together. Scientists are constantly uncovering new relationships between taxa, so some of our long-held beliefs about the relationships between different species have to be rethought. The main reason has been the introduction of molecular taxonomy, typically using DNA, to replace the old phenetic approach (based on observable traits). An initial reordering of birds in the 1990s, using DNA, is…

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