Innehållsförteckning för December 2018 från Bird Watching

Bird Watching |December 2018

OUR CONTRIBUTORS

With only 40 or so British breeding pairs, the Black Redstart is a bird in trouble over here, as Ian Parsons explains on page 28 Seen bird and wildlife art on a street wall near you and wondered what’s going on? Matt Swaine meets street artist ATM on page 34 Some birding moments are never forgotten, such as when Ruth Miller was amazed by the sight of a huge flock of waders in north Norfolk. Page 66 The seemingly average Redshank is indeed average in many ways, but still utterly fascinating, suggests Dominic Couzens. P 70 David Lindo marvels at raptor migration and other great birds in Batumi, in Georgia. Join him ‘looking up’ on page 92…

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Bird Watching |December 2018

FIVE TO FIND IN DECEMBER

1 RED-NECKED GREBE The Red-necked Grebe is a pretty scarce bird in the UK, most frequently encountered on seawatches from the east or south coast, but occasionally turning up at inland sites. It is a little smaller than the Great Crested Grebe and always appears darker. The bill is dark with a yellow base (pink in Great Crested) and the black of the crown extends down to the eye (there is white above the eye in Great Crested Grebe). The face generally looks darker than GCG and the thicker neck lacks the extensive white of the larger species. 2 WATER RAIL The freeze of winter provides perhaps the best opportunity to see the secretive, reedbed dwelling Water Rail in the open. And it is well worth seeing these beautiful rails,…

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Bird Watching |December 2018

Welcome

A huge part of the joy of birding is in the happy accidents that occur – those birds that turn up when and where you least expect it. Black Redstarts, the subject of our species profile on page 28, seem to feature regularly in that respect, because they’re relatively unobtrusive and, in this country, often live in noisy, busy urban sites. Read on, and you might just find one yourself. If you can’t add that tick to your #My200BirdYear list, then turn to page 20, because we’ve got a host of other great birds to look for as the year draws to a close. Whatever your favourite species or family of birds, winter birdwatching is about making every precious minute of daylight count, so there are plenty of ideas there…

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Bird Watching |December 2018

RARITY PREDICTOR

GREATER YELLOWLEGS There have been more than 50 records of this North American ‘equivalent’ of the Greenshank. But several of these refer to the same birds, moving to ‘nearby’ sites, reducing the total to more like 40. It is still a very rare bird. They are Greenshank-like, but with yellow legs and square white rump. LITTLE BUSTARD In December 2014 (into January 2015), there was a mini-influx of this rare bustard species into the country, with individuals in East Yorkshire, East Sussex, Dorset and one even found shot in Norfolk. The chances of a repeat of this are admittedly slim, but you’ve got to dream! GREAT BLUE HERON There have only ever been two accepted records of this large North American heron in the UK. Both were from St Mary’s,…

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Bird Watching |December 2018

TREMENDOUS TREECREEPER

The Treecreeper is one of those birds that everybody loves. It is in many ways adorable: tiny, famously mouse-like, nicely patterned and very distinctive in its shape and behaviour. Who could resist watching one of these little curve-billed, woodpecker-tailed cuties spiralling round a vertical trunk? It is also one of those birds which are much more often heard than seen, though many birdwatchers are either unaware of the calls and song or are incapable of hearing such high-pitched sounds. The call is a very high-pitched, repeated, almost buzzing ‘ srreee’ (which sounds like it is made of many individual notes squeezed into one). The song is a short ditty which has almost the tone of a Blue Tit and the pattern of a Willow Warbler’s song, descending…

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Bird Watching |December 2018

GREEN WOODPECKER POOP

An old favourite, this one, but surely worth a repeat viewing. Green Woodpeckers make some of the most distinctive, interesting poops of all our birds. Contrary to non-birdwatchers’ expectations, Green Woodpeckers are predominantly terrestrial rather than arboreal feeders; spending much of their time hopping about on grassy habitats hoovering up ants with their long sticky tongues. Their little droppings appear white and cylindrical, a bit like discarded roll-up cigarettes, usually on the ground and sometimes on anthills. Initially soft, they soon harden and when like this can be crumbled to reveal the contents (and so what the woodpecker has eaten). Under the white crust, the main dark mass invariably consists of a compacted mass of chitinous insect exoskeletons (almost always ants), mixed with sandy grains and plant fibres ingested as…

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What first sparked your interest in birdwatching, and when? My father encouraged me to watch birds when I was a child. We lived near a forest and that made things easier. After a while, I got a pair of binoculars and convinced the boy next door to wander through nature on Wednesday afternoon. I still remember going to the River Scheldt near Antwerp with my father on a dull Sunday. There, I saw Avocets for the first time. Wonderful birds! It became the best Sunday ever. Since then, I’m fascinated by shorebirds: at times easy to see, but also hard to identify. Who was your birdwatching inspiration or mentor? My father brought me to a bird hide somewhere in Holland to meet a birder, named Johan. He was obsessed with…

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