Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i Birdwatch

HAPPY New Year! Welcome to 2023 – may it be a bird-filled one for all Birdwatch readers. I hope you’ve managed to get your year lists off to a good start. It’s been a quiet opening week for me, but a beautiful drake Smew on a local gravel pit helped to put a smile on my face. My thanks must go to Lucy McRobert for doing such a sterling job on the January issue, putting together a magazine full of great content. It was nice to have a month off! But the issues come around quickly and we’re back again already with a packed February edition. Sam Viles is on hand to summarise a bumper year for mega rarities in our annual review (pages 22-26), while Brian McCloskey reports on…

STATS & FACTS First recorded: Murcar, Aberdeenshire, 11-23 June 2011 Last recorded: Lothian, winter 2022-23 Previous UK records: 3 Previous Irish records: 0 Mega rating: ★★★★ WHILE birding over the 2022 Christmas period in the west of Ireland I decided to go to Achill Island on 29 December. Almost immediately after arriving at the northern end of Sruhill Lough, in the north-east corner of the island, at 2 pm, I picked up a female Velvet-type scoter on the sea 500 m to the north, in a small cove just below Valley Pier. Velvet Scoter is scarce in the west of Ireland and one relatively close to shore even rarer. Furthermore, given the recent sightings of two Bufflehead near Belmullet, some 30 km to the north, and a Hooded Merganser near…

I have a dog. He’s a scruffy Border Terrier cross called Bubo that hates cats. He will chase after anything that looks interesting, or anything that looks big and slow enough for him to catch. He’s particularly fond of Woodpigeons and Common Pheasants when they visit our garden. For the last few years I’ve mostly kept him on the lead when out, partly because his recall is woeful and partly because it’s increasingly apparent – from both personal observation and excellent articles such as that by Alex Lees (‘Gone to the dogs’, Birdwatch 349: 42-44) – that the disturbance impacts on the birds and wildlife I cherish. Alex’s article is well worth a read. He summarises the issues and ends by offering some hope for change and a call for…

In association with www.birders-store.co.uk AFTER being launched in the December issue, voting for the 2022 Birders’ Choice Awards took place over a five-week period up until the end of the year. Birdwatch and BirdGuides readers cast their votes, recognising the best and worst in birding and conservation during the past 12 months. Thank you to everyone who took part. Below you will find details on who or what won each of our coveted accolades, with 2022’s Local Hero of the Year also announced. Furthermore, the results of the prize draw will be revealed, with the lucky winner netting a Hawke Frontier HDX 8x42 binocular worth £349. 1 Conservation Hero of the Year WINNER: Wild Justice It’s been another action-packed year for the not-for-profit environmental organisation, headed up by Mark Avery,…

IT might come as a surprise, but London is teeming with wildlife. It’s also well served by those green and blue spaces that this wildlife calls home. This book from the London Wildlife Trust takes a look at those spaces. It starts with an introduction by the ever-popular Chris Packham. Each chapter then covers a different habitat type, including parks, wetlands, woodland, grassland and, of course, that icon of London, the River Thames. These sections have all been written by a different author, which is unusual for a book like this and it does result in a rather eclectic mix of styles. It ranges from personal accounts of the author’s experiences at a particular site (Kabir Kaul’s account of a winter spent visiting a local wetland is among the best…

WHEN I was approached by Birdwatch to write a new wildlife gardening section, I had a good think about the best way to begin. It’s midwinter as I write this and, although it might seem like somewhat of a cop-out on my part, perhaps the best thing you can do in your garden at this time of year to help wildlife is… as little as possible! Now, you might be glancing out of the window at this point and thinking your garden looks a bit of a mess, especially if you didn’t get around to ‘putting it to bed’ in the autumn. For those not au fait with horticultural lingo, putting the garden to bed is an old gardening expression referring to all the cutting back and tidying traditionally associated…

I may not have kicked off 2023 with an epic year list, scored a lifer or enjoyed an exotic birding holiday overseas, but it was delightful to see the January issue of Birdwatch hitting the doormats over the festive period and receive such lovely feedback. (Though not my doormat – I haven’t seen a copy yet thanks to the postal strikes.) I was guest editor of the January issue, which was a celebration of women in ornithology and conservation. From Hep Cairnswood’s beautiful prose about winter birding to Cath Jeffs’s 25-year career dedicated to saving Cirl Buntings, it was an honour to help them tell their stories. One humbling moment was chatting to Hana Raza on the phone about a new nature reserve in Qara Dhag; she was in a…

Winter finally arrived in mid-December. Northerlies bedded in for a good period of the month, with snowfall gripping many parts of Britain and Ireland. This brought an abrupt end to the riches of autumn but, as it transpired, December had surprises of its own in store. Lothian boasted one of the biggest prizes of all, with the first Stejneger’s Scoter for Britain at Aberlady Bay from 10-20th (see page 8). Proving a tricky customer to pin down amid the throng of Velvet Scoter, it nevertheless tempted many to brave icy roads and attempt a twitch. Not all would be successful. Its appearance wasn’t entirely surprising – in recent weeks, an unprecedented influx into the Baltic has produced no fewer than four in Poland, two in Latvia and one in Sweden.…

The story so far… It’s the early 1960s. Bill and his father have driven down the M5 for a day out at Slimbridge. It’s late afternoon and time to head home to Birmingham. Dad has had a good time, but he isn’t sure about Bill. “Bill, are you sulking?” “No, but I suppose I am a bit disappointed that I haven’t really seen any properly wild geese. In big flocks. Flying over us in a V-formation like…” “Like in a Peter Scott painting?” “Exactly. Apparently, today they may be feeding on the mud over by the river, or grazing out on The Dumbles.” “The what?” “Over in that direction, about half a mile away.” “Can we get closer?” “I doubt it. They’ll probably spook. Mind you, they’ll look great, and…

REVIEW ZEISS SFL 10x30 binocular LESS than seven months after ZEISS introduced two 40 mm lightweight binoculars to the market, 17 January 2023 saw the launch of two more models in the SFL range. With the emphasis firmly on weight reduction and a compact format, these new 30 mm binoculars offer the user a choice between 8x and 10x magnification, without compromising overall quality. When it comes to owning binoculars, I have always been a fan of the higher of these magnifications, preferring the extra reach they provide, so I was pleased to be offered the chance to assess the performance of the greater of the two magnification values. Performance, of course, is not simply limited to optical quality alone. Design, functionality and ergonomics all play important roles in the…

THE subtitle explains what this book is: a season-by-season account of encounters with birds, butterflies, wildflowers … and an evocation of what makes each season so different and, each in its own way, so enjoyable. There is a lot here to inform readers about the subjects, whether Spotted Flycatchers or European Nightjars, Dippers or egrets, Badgers or Brimstones, all of which is beautifully written. There is also a good deal of discussion of the factors that shape our contemporary countryside, for good or ill. It is so disheartening to find the ‘ill’ so strongly to the fore in modern nature books, but Ian Parsons rises above it for the most part and sees the good in things: there’s plenty here to enjoy and to relate to. MORE INFO byIanParsonsWhittles…

Tell us what you think. Write to: The Editor, at: Birdwatch, Warners Group Publications plc, The Maltings, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH or email editorial@birdwatch.co.uk www.facebook.com/birdwatchmagazine @BirdwatchExtra Improving diversity HOW refreshing was the January 2023 edition of Birdwatch? Lucy McRobert is to be applauded for her guest editorial in bringing so many women’s voices to the fore, in what has for many years been a male-dominated hobby. Birds and wildlife are for everyone and so I was also pleased to see some contributions from the LGBTQ+ community. I think that maybe, and this is not meant as a criticism, that the front cover could have highlighted the contributions of women in this issue a bit more boldly, perhaps featuring female birders on the cover. This might have piqued the…

STATS & FACTS First and last recorded: Rossbeigh, Co Kerry, 1 February-11 April 2011 Previous UK records: 0 Previous Irish records: 1 Mega rating: ★★★★★ WITH the weekend approaching, I resolved to make Aberlady Bay my starting point on Saturday 10 December. News on the Friday afternoon that Lothian’s second Black-throated Thrush had been photographed in a private Haddington garden cemented the decision: I would be within close striking distance should the thrush be relocated in a publicly viewable area. A phone call that evening from Calum Scott resulted in him agreeing to join me and we arranged to meet at mine at 8 am the following day. The morning dawned with grim weather. Thick cloud cover and sleet and snow showers were at odds to the crisp blue skies…

A New Year’s Eve surprise in southern Israel made for a resounding way to round off an action-packed 2022: a male Diederik Cuckoo, no less, trapped and ringed at Eilat. The region’s fourth record of this stunning Afrotropical visitor, it follows previous records from Cyprus, Lebanon and another in Israel. Christmas Day delivered a surprise from sub-Saharan Africa to the north Spanish coast, when a young Striped Crake was found dead in a beach car park at Figueras, Asturias. Recorded in the Western Palearctic on just nine previous occasions – including twice in Spain – this fantastic record on the Biscay coast makes a potential future British or Irish record seem a genuine possibility. It proved an altogether remarkable month for lost Afrotropical rallids, also involving an Allen’s Gallinule and…

Another year draws to a close, and 2022 will long be remembered for a deluge of extreme vagrants – some never recorded in Britain and Ireland before, with others making their first appearances for many years. There was no shortage of memorable birding moments, with some epic twitches – and dips – taking place throughout the year. Meanwhile, Birdwatch’s #LocalBigYear initiative roused birders and led to some exceptional finds at local patches and in gardens across these isles. The megas started flowing almost instantly, with an Afrotropical visitor getting Ireland’s year off to a roaring start: the country’s first Allen’s Gallinule was on Inishmore, Co Galway, on 4 January, although it was unfortunately discovered freshly dead. This was one of four new species for Ireland recorded in the year, two…

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SHRIKES are a family of songbirds that capture our imagination and enthral us when encountered in the field. They are inherently beautiful, often sporting black ‘bandit masks’ and white flashes in the wings and tail, alongside appealing colour combinations of black, white, grey, rufous and buff. Their predatory habits, which will often see them take large insects or, in many cases, small birds or mammals only amplifies their uniqueness among passerines, while a penchant for choosing exposed perches from where to sit and survey their territories makes them generally easy to observe and study. For the British birder, where every shrike species is sadly now at least a scarcity and some are extreme rarities, their allure is all the more intense. Each one tends to be a popular fixture, and…

CORNCRAKE is a species most of us who live away from the west of Scotland and Ireland can only dream of seeing. Not only that, but unless the birds are calling, you also stand next to no chance of seeing one. This has resulted in Corncrake becoming one of our most enigmatic species. This new monograph goes a long way to demystifying this land-based rail, being a succinct summary of our knowledge of its biology, presented in 181 concise pages replete with helpful and targeted graphs and tables. It is a work of ornithology rather than anything more anecdotal, and is as academic as the average New Naturalist title; however, it remains accessible and readable. Corncrake is a rare breeding bird in Britain – and increasingly so in the European part…

PARTIES of Fieldfares and Redwings can always be relied upon to brighten up a muddy walk around my local area in winter. The chacking calls of a flock of Fieldfares as they flutter over the fields is one of my favourite winter sounds, and I always hope for an opportunity to photograph this large and handsome thrush. However, they’re generally shy birds and as they rove the hedgerows they seem to have an almost endless selection of fields and bushes to go for. Later in winter their choice of feeding spots is reduced and this is when I seem to have had more luck with them. Birds enter our towns and cities and can become more tolerant of people as they probe for worms in local parks. In more rural…

Pre-order your copy online now – see www.birdguides.com for details of how to subscribe and save more than 33% a year! ■ The elusive woodpecker One of Britain’s Fully restored most cottage in secretive picturesque Kelling, and sleeps fastest-declining resident birds, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is tricky to track down these days. Experts Ken and Linda Smith profile this much-loved bird. ■ On eggshells Why do birds’ eggs vary so much in their colours and patterns? Why do their shapes differ? What purposes do these serve? Dr Steve Portugal explores the fascinating biology surrounding this crucial stage of a bird’s life cycle. ■ Ebbing tides Estuaries are crucial habitats for an array of migrant and wintering birds. Teresa Frost of the BTO explains the importance of monitoring these species through the WeBS…