Not quite Shetland


While hordes of middle-aged men are in Shetland, wading through beds of Yellow Iris and allowing rare locustella warblers to crawl all over them, some of us are still working at the rock-face of cutting edge field ornithology (mixed metaphors there!). We are plying our ornithological trade by grilling nondescript inland sites, mostly without water - and neither with a track record for rarities - and are trying to defy the law of averages (and our common sense that is screaming at us to "go north old man!") We may be self-deluded, or simple, or happy with our lot (or even all three!!) but the nation can breathe a sigh of relief that we are counting our Dunnocks, Chaffinches and Blackbirds while those who have scarpered off northwards dedicate their time to the so-called 'rares'... they used to be 'rarities' in my time. Just don't say BOOM!...

Epsom and Walton Downs seem to be my places of choice at the moment. Under-watched, with potential, and pleasant places to boot. This morning revealed just a little, but the weather was glorious and it was no hardship having to walk field edges, hedgerows and copses. Bottom line were: 31 Canada Goose, 9 Greyalg Goose, 3 Common Buzzard, 1 Sparrowhawk, 1 Kestrel, 175 Stock Dove, 7 Skylark, 6 Meadow Pipit, 2 Swallow, 1 House Martin, 3 Stonechat, 1 Wheatear, 2 Redwing, 24 Chiffchaff.

A few butterflies were on the wing, including Small White, Comma, Red Admiral and Small Copper.


Comments

Dylan Wrathall said…
Steve - not deluded; just old! We're now in a position where reality and rarity are of equal billing - so what does a Shetland "locustella" matter when you've just recorded your first "patch" autumn Redwing? (I had one this morning as I walked to work!) - Dyl
3 October 2016 at 20:11
Steve Gale said…
Cheers Dyl, nice to have another 'old boy' putting things into perspective!!
3 October 2016 at 22:03
Jonathan Lethbridge said…
Get yerself up here, it's great fun!! 42 Yellow-browed Warblers....
4 October 2016 at 19:30
Steve Gale said…
Can you send one of them to me please Jono?
5 October 2016 at 07:17
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more