White-rumped Sandpiper

Found this about a mile from my house. A few record shots below.

Crap record shots of a decent bird

I stumbled across this on the way back from Windmill Farm today. I seem to have a habit of stumbling across birds when driving back from Windmill Farm. One of these days I'll actually find something when I'm not in the car. Another of these days I'll get a a decent photo.

Thailand, Australia and a Hoopoe on the patch

Welcome back readers. Sorry for not posting for long, but I've been away and very busy since returning. Below are a few snaps from my trip from Thailand. Not many bird photos I'm afraid, but I managed some better ones from Australia (scroll down). I also scored Gurney's Pitta and Spoon-billed Sandpiper. You can download a full trip report for Thailand here. I haven't done one for Australia, but I'll leave you with some video footage of Superb Lyrebird. How many species cab you hear it imitate? Can you spot the Eurasian Blackbird in there?

Since returning, I've felt a bit birded out, but I did as the Spring season approaches, I'm slowly gaining the enthusiasm again. I went out to the Lizard today for a stroll around Windmill Farm. Driving back I saw a Hoopoe, which was very nice. It flew across the road towards Predannack Airfield.

Thailand (from top to bottom): Pacific Reef Egret (Koh Phi Phi), Scaly Thrush (Doi Inthanon), Dragonfly and Spider (Doi Inthanon and Khao Pra Bang Kram) sunrise and sunset (Doi Inthanon), Hill tribe kids near Chiang Mai.

Australia (from top to bottom): Rainbow Bee-eater and Bush Bronzewing  (near Bendigo), Koala (French Island), Grey Butcherbird, Laughing Kookaburra and Rainbow Lorikeets (Mornington Peninsula) and Wallaby and Superb Lyrebirds (Sherbrooke Forest).

Late Autumn specials

As a former east coast birder, I’m used to November comprising of Little Auks, but nothing much else of note. Fortunately, autumn comes later in the south west and as the rest of the country freezes, the birds head down hear en-masse to seek refuge in the sheltered valleys where insects still thrive.

The birding over the last week or so on the Lizard has been superb. Late autumn started well with a spate of good seabirds including a Sabine’s Gull and a cracking Long-tailed Skua off Bass Point. Regular scouring of the most sheltered valleys is starting to pay dividends though. I stumbled across two Yellow-browed Warblers in two days without really trying last week, with a supporting cast of Siberian Chiffchaff and numerous Blackcaps, Firecrests and Chiffchaffs. While out doing fieldwork yesterday I had a fly over large pipit. Unlike most, this obligingly landed in front of me and called. Richard’s rather than one of the rarer ones, but great nonetheless.

I’m off to bird in the orient and Australia from next week, so won’t be doing much Lizard birding. Back towards the end of January, so sayonara readers (what few you are). I’ll try and update my blog while I’m away. I’ll leave you with this superb photograph taken by Thor Veen. (Un?)fortunately, not an example of Lizard suppression, just one to hope for on the Lizard next Autumn. This one was photographed in Canada recently. That said, Brian’s probably had one or two in his garden without telling anyone;-)......... 

Pied Wheatear find

Two days later than anticipated, due to flight-cancellation, Thor Veen, Arjen VantHoff and myself finally managed to board a flight to the Scillies. My first visit there – so I was quite excited. On Tuesday the 12^th of October, Thor and I set off to circumnavigate the great Isle of St Mary’s (Arjen had already returned home by that stage). Avoiding crowds of people as much as possible, but nevertheless stumbling across the RB Fly and Little Buntings without really trying, we were reminded of just how much easier it is to twitch birds than find them yourself.

By mid-afternoon, the previous week of non-stop birding and a dose of man-flu were taking their toll on me and I stopped to restock on caffeine and food while the Thorminator continued his quest to scour every bush and blade of grass on St Mary’s.  Perhaps inevitably if you believe in Karma, but certainly confirmation the expression “no pain no gain”, I received a phone call from Thor stating he’d briefly seen a possible Pied Wheatear on the Golf Course, but hadn’t been able to clinch it before flew off north towards the BBC mast.  At that time, he was wholly unaware of the reports of a possible from the same area, although I’d managed to glean the gist of the story from a mate. At his request, I pegged it down in a taxi ASAP to offer help relocating it.  Fortunately we were able to do so as, after half an hour or so, the bird obligingly popped up in front of Thor. After reeling off a few photos as the bird happily fed a few metres away from us, and offering scope views to some of the lucky birders who happened to be nearby but without scope, we phoned it out and anticipated the impending pandemonium with amusement. I was particularly impressed with the guy in the bright red jacket who waddled towards it as fast as his lard-arse would carry him and promptly re-phoned RBA in an authoritative voice confirming the identity and location. Evidently, young rapscallions such as ourselves, can't be trusted to impart such information correctly.

Cracking find and cracking photo by Thor. Good work fella!

The multi-coloured megalarious

There seems to be a lot of debate surrounding the merits of punkbirder twaddlespeak at the moment (see here and here).  Here’s a brief insight into our experience of using such language on unsuspecting passers-by:

Random passer-by at Cot Valley: what are you looking for?

Me: nothing in particular, we’re just seeing what’s about.

Random passer-by at Cot Valley: that’s nice.

Thor (in Dutch-accented, punkbirder speak): Mega rare!

Random passer-by at Cot Valley: really? Where is that from then?

Thor:  America.....

Random passer-by at Cot Valley: really. What colour is it then?

Thor:..or Siberia, hopefully

Random passer-by at Cot Valley (to husband): here - they're looking...what did you call it again? A megalarious? Apparently it's brightly coloured.
Me: hmmm...I don’t think he meant one particularly species...he was referring to rare birds in general.
Random passer-by at Cot Valley: Oh. I see. Well that's a big lens you've got!

Anyway. Needless to say, we didn't find the multi-coloured megalarious, and had to settle for some more more drabbly coloured mesolarious instead:

Found at about 8am in 60 foot cover at Porthgwarra. Also needless to say, given that these photos are really pretty good, Thor took them.

Bird ID quiz

We all love great photos. Here is some cracking ones of some recent arrivals on the Lizard. But lets face it, most birding, especially in Autumn, involves damp conditions, piss-poor views, bad light, and distant birds. Here's a a few  to remind you that it's easier to identify birds on the internet than it is in real life. These should all be gettable quite easily, but if you can do them from the ones on the left, I'll be impressed!

Easy:

Harder:

Even harder: