Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i Birdwatch

A small owl was first noticed by my son, Andy Short, while I was on a pre-Christmas break in Egypt with my other son and his girlfriend. We were interested to hear of Andy’s sighting, but it wasn’t until 24 December that I could take a post-dusk walk with him around the cricket ground in Broadstairs. We managed a brief view of a small owl, taller than it was round, at distance on top of a fence, but could not relocate it. Christmas Day was our next chance. So, while everybody else was celebrating, we took our walk. We had hardly entered the park grounds when a small owl left its perch on top of the cricket nets and flew towards our property. We quickly advanced to the hedge by…

Southern Algeria is surely one of the Western Palearctic’s most exciting destinations and, thanks to the improving access situation, is now being increasingly explored by resident Algerian and visiting European birders alike. Coverage during December revealed plenty of excitement, with the most notable news from a regional perspective coming in the form of an African Hoopoe on the outskirts of Tamanrasset on 7th. This new species for the WP is rarely recorded away from Southern Africa and the northern edge of its range only just extends north of the Equator. However, as misfortune would have it, the IOC announced that it would be lumping the taxon with Hoopoe on its World Bird List only five days later! Elsewhere in Tamanrasset Province, a flock of 10 Sudan Golden Sparrows and an…

I hadn’t seen a bean goose for some 20 years and it occurred to me on a family visit to Edinburgh in early December that this might easily be remedied. And so it was, with promises of ‘a nice drive in the countryside’, ‘lunch out’, ‘a visit to a good playground’ and a lifer for everyone except me, that we headed off to search the Slamannan Plateau, south of Falkirk, for geese. ‘We’ were wife, son, daughter-in-law and grandson and, obviously, we were on a wild goose chase. I’ve never before found a reason to explore the Central Belt between Edinburgh and Glasgow, but lurking here somewhere was the most important site in the UK for Taiga Bean Goose. Although the RSPB owns land in the area to protect the geese…

In the depths of winter, gulls come to the fore of many birders’ minds. Fascinating, entertaining and sometimes rather bewildering, these intelligent birds test our identification skills and provide a reliable source of birding fun. With such an array of immature plumages, even a single species can throw up a huge degree of variation. It can take a while to get one’s head around the basics of gull identification, but the reality is that we are always learning new things when it comes to these birds. In many respects, this is what makes them so engaging to study. Gulls are well known for their migratory and dispersal capabilities, and their movements ensure that there can be plenty of turnover at your local sites throughout the year – what might show…

REVIEW ZEISS Conquest HDX 8x42 binocular HITTING the market in October 2024, the ZEISS Conquest HDX range is effectively set to replace the brand’s current HD binoculars with a series of new models that are designed to increase handling and operating performance. The series consists of seven models ranging from 8x32 to 15x56, priced from £850 to £1,500 respectively, with the birders’ popular choice of 8x42 central to the range. Essentially, these new models are more refined in terms of overall usage, as well as taking on a new look, and effectively represent an upgrade to the established HD binoculars. So, what are the differences and how do these translate to more efficient use in the field? Looking at the 8x42, the slick body style features a covering of black…

THE more you get into birding, the more fascinating and absorbing this hobby becomes. There are endless avenues to explore. Patchbirding, photography, rarity finding, surveying, conservation, science, history, culture … all of these (and much more) provide countless hours of interest. Over time, our field-birding abilities develop, and with that comes knowledge. But while many aspects about birds are best learned while watching them, becoming a more rounded enthusiast should also involve reading around the subject. That is where the newly published RSPB Bird Tales comes in. Written by Dawn Casey and illustrated by Lucinda Warner, this book presents bird-related titbits in a chronological journey through the calendar year, touching on aspects as varied as identification, folklore and practical activities. In the blurb’s own words, this book offers a “wealth…

THIS little book packs pictures and accompanying informative text into 140 small pages. It is far from a bird artists’ directory but offers a wide range of styles from several centuries of painting and sculpture. As with art criticism everywhere, the text offers new ideas and revealing viewpoints while sometimes opening itself to criticism of pretention: do three rather ugly ibises in flight, which might as well be flamingos, really suggest ‘the transience of life’? Does a box of feathers that open to reveal a naked male figure, or a clump of feathers that ‘explores ideas of sexual availability and intimacy’ really deserve their place? Or a photo of a shelf of cassette tapes with bird recordings on them? Are Henry Moore’s scribbles for his grandson really better than anyone…

BRAZIL has at least nine new species waiting to be formally described, while seven species on its checklist are feared to be extinct. However, we shouldn’t give up hope as three missing species have been rediscovered in recent years. As the fifth-largest country in the world and the third most prolific in terms of total bird species, Brazil needs to be treated in two articles which split the country into east and west. We will look at the western part next month. Taking the area from the state of Maranhão in the north right down along the coast to Rio Grande do Sul (3,700 km in a straight line) this covers less than half of the country, but an astonishing 80% of its endemic bird species. The biggest focus has…

Pre-order your copy online now – see www.birdguides.com for details of how to subscribe and save more than 15% a year! ■ Twenty years of Corvo Two decades on from his inaugural rarity-hunting trip to the now-famous Azorean island, Peter Alfrey reflects on the legacy of that visit and the many extraordinary vagrants that have been recorded there since. ■ A life of county listing In the first instalment of a new occasional series, Paul James discusses the years of effort and enjoyment invested into listing in his beloved Sussex, including memories of some special birds. ■ Dashing diving duck Common Pochard has experienced mixed fortunes in the UK in recent decades, with winter numbers subject to big declines but the breeding population seemingly holding its own. Kane Brides profiles this…

RARITY hunters on this side of the Atlantic have long understood the extreme difficulties of identifying American flycatchers. This tyrannid identification crisis only gets much deeper once you’re in North America, where often several very similar species are possible at one site, particularly during migration. The first volume of Cin-Ty Lee’s forensic series dealt with the confusing near-identical species of the genus Empidonax and their doppelgangers (see Birdwatch 377: 57-59). This new guide deals with the larger kingbirds and Myiarchus flycatchers and is just as welcome and useful as the first. Readers of the ‘empid’ guide will find a familiar format in its pages: a helpful contents page allowing quick reference to comparable species; an introduction and phylogeny (their closest relatives are the far more striking kiskadees and Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher);…

CARRY Akroyd’s prints rank among the most recognisable and celebrated bird art out there. In this lovely new book from Bloomsbury, more than 130 of Akroyd’s prints are presented in all their glory alongside words from her long-time collaborator, John McEwen. The book is structured by season, journeying from month to month through the calendar year. While many of the birds featured reflect this seasonality in their order of appearance, this is nonetheless fairly loose and, as Akroyd says, “sometimes, two images just look interesting together.” I found the short section at the beginning on how Akroyd constructs her prints to be particularly fascinating, and it is wonderful to be able to visualise step-by-step how her portrayals of Northern Shoveler, Short-eared Owl and Eurasian Bullfinch all came together. Despite…

THE older I get, the more I realise that, throughout life, I’ve complained a lot but done little that ever gets things done. People who actually ‘get down to it’ and do something practical to help our beleaguered natural world deserve our gratitude. I previously knew nothing of Tina Morris, but this book reveals how much she deserves our thanks. She was one of the first women to front up a raptor reintroduction programme. More specifically, she was a ‘surrogate parent’ to the first Bald Eagle chicks raised in captivity for the release-to-the-wild scheme in the United States that helped to save the species from extinction, resembling the successful reintroduction of Red Kite in the UK. Her methods, developed with reference to those used for Peregrine Falcon by Tom Cade…

POET T S Eliot once said that ‘April is the cruellest month’, but I tend to disagree. In terms of feeling utterly fed up and done with winter, February surely ranks as one of the least popular months of the year. It’s a time when birders are getting pretty sick of being blasted by icy winds and sleet while going cross-eyed scouring through flocks of wildfowl and gulls, dreaming of the first warm days and spring migrants. Thankfully, by the end of the month, that dream is usually becoming a reality as the earliest Sand Martins and Northern Wheatears can arrive in favourable winds. In the garden, it is a time of slow awakening. Everything may still look a little drab and dead but there is much stirring going on…

WATCH a pigeon walking and it seems as though the bird moves its head back and forth as it progresses. What they actually do is a very well co-ordinated movement. As one foot is picked up and moved forward, the head rapidly moves forward and steadies, keeping perfectly still as the body is moved forward, followed by the foot on the other side being moved forward in the same way accompanied by body movement again. This is repeated rapidly to give the bird its distinctive walking motion. In a similar way, a Common Kingfisher can perch on a moving branch and keep its head still, or hover over the water and do the same. Although its body is moving, the bird can keep a steady eye on its prey. Birds’…

January 1st. As the rain and gales battered the car, I observed a bedraggled Eurasian Oystercatcher as my first official bird of 2025. A smidge more interesting than European Robin or European Herring Gull, perhaps, but I could have noted both of those and more much earlier, if only I’d been paying attention. Perhaps I was hoping that the Snow Bunting at Hamworthy Beach, Dorset, would be the first species of 2025, but that had temporarily absconded. Am I doing a year list? I want to. I hope it will encourage me to get out more locally, be more observant and take more of the little opportunities to go birding. On the other hand, I am one for overly ambitious New Year’s resolutions that inevitably fall by the wayside: strict…

NEW Hythe GP near Snodland, Kent, comprises a series of pits and lakes with pockets of scrubby habitat over an area of some 300 ha in the Medway Valley. As is the case with many local patches, birding here can be slow for much of the time, though over the years the site has hosted occasional rarities such as Alpine Swift, Red-rumped Swallow, Eurasian Penduline Tit, Ring-necked Duck, Green-winged Teal and Black-crowned Night Heron. The presence of a decent selection of Odonata adds to the area’s attraction. On Tuesday 24 December, during a routine visit, I decided to walk up the millstream on the east side of Ham Hill sewage works. As I got a couple of hundred metres up the path, I was drawn to a movement in a…

For birders in the North-East, the discovery of an adult Grey-headed Lapwing along the Northumberland coast (see page 9) was a very welcome surprise. For such a mega-rarity, it is tempting to speculate that it could be spring 2023’s bird returning to the county – and it might also explain just where a bird photographed over Le Plan de la Garde, southern France, on 30 October ended up. Kent enjoyed a sensational spell either side of Christmas. A first-winter male American Yellow Warbler (see page 8) brought a dash of luminous yellow to a water-treatment plant near New Hythe on 24th and represented only the second record for the English mainland and the first midwinter record in the Western Palearctic (WP). This area will be familiar to many as the…

I was a relentless birder as a teenager. Every possible opportunity for a minute in the field was seized and every bird that I could realistically twitch was fair game. It was a lifestyle I picked up from the first serious birders I met in south London, whose waking hours were spent on the local patch unless a new county or national bird turned up somewhere else. Patchbirding and twitching are both addictive forms of birding and go hand in hand with student life, so long as enough attention is given to studies. There is plenty of free time and the sweet liberty of having few responsibilities. Even without bunking off from classes and forgoing revision, a student has more chance than most to get away for a rarity or devote…

WHEN I arrived in Cyprus in 1985, I purchased a copy of the first edition of The Birds of Cyprus: An Annotated Checklist by Peter Flint and Peter Stewart that had been published in 1981. It quickly became my go-to book to consult regarding what I was likely to see on the island. The second edition came out in 1992 and, for so many local birders and conservation organisations, this became an indispensable reference. More than 30 years later, an update of the ‘bible’ of Cypriot ornithology was much needed. Those years had seen an increase of available data on the status of the species recorded on the island, much of which has come from regular observations from local birders and organised surveys from both conservation and academic organisations island-wide.…

GEORGIA has a wide range of habitats and a spectacular degree of biodiversity, which includes a high level of endemism. This new book is compact but packs a huge amount in. It has an introduction containing a general overview of the country, some practical points on topography and climate, and a selection of suggested itineraries. The following section on flora and fauna covers birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, dragonflies, butterflies and plants, highlighting the many special species that Georgia has to offer. The main section is broken down into the different regions of The North: High Caucasus, The East, The South and The West. Within those, the author includes detailed advice on how to reach specific sites, with instructions on where and how to look for key species. These are backed…

NEWLY published research has provided insight into the status of two Siberian Phylloscopus warblers in Europe. Yellow-browed Warbler and Siberian Chiffchaff occurrences have increased in Europe in recent years. Ornithologists have pondered as to whether these birds are vagrants or regular migrants using a new route. Yellow-browed is a particularly well-discussed case, with thousands of individuals being observed in Europe every autumn and previous papers suggesting that this change in occurrence may result from the emergence of a new migration route. However, information on the age-ratio of Yellow-browed Warbler in Europe is lacking because the species is notoriously difficult to age. In the study, Paul Dufour and his team assessed the ages of hundreds of Yellow-browed Warblers and Siberian Chiffchaffs across Europe, comparing them to Common Chiffchaff. Curiously, they found…