Nightjar ringing

I was out last night ringing Nightjars. Having annually made the trip to see them in the right habitat for many years this was the first time seeing them so close and in the hand. They are crepuscular aerial insectivores so most active at dusk and dawn and it’s usually been a dusk trip for me to see them hawking over forest mixed with heather after moths and other flying insects often just a silhouette against a midsummer night sky. Their gu-wip call and wing-clapping are bizarre sounds which would be unnerving if you didn’t know what it was but their other enigmatic “churring” call resonates for considerable distance and seems somewhat mechanical. Their Latin name Caprimulgus means Goatsucker and originates from folklore that the birds suckled milk from goats which we now know is wrong, but the name sticks. However, I still find them and their habitat to ooze with mystery and this was reinforced yesterday by looking at their morphology. They are extremely wide-mouthed designed to catch insects in flight. Added to that they have whisker-like rictal bristles to extend that catching area whilst in flight. All that collision with insects means a messy face but their central front claw (on the inside) is serrated acting like a comb to clean their bristles. Those that have fed well have a solid lump in their lower stomach which is a compact “mothball”. These can be regurgitated for the young whilst in the nest. In the hand they also do a weird defense reflex of hissing and gawping and flaring their tail. Once ringed the birds were placed back on a log so that they could acclimatise to the night and carry on as usual, with the addition of a BTO ring, and in some cases a transmitter device which is designed only to stay on their central tail feather for a couple of weeks. What an amazing species.

Iceland Feb 2014: WP lister for a day

Iceland Feb 19-24

We’d planned a city-trip to Reykjavik for a couple of years and finally got round to it this month.  It just so happened that a Lincoln Sparrow had been nearby since early December 2013 so I’d been pensively watching news as the days counted down.  We flew from Manchester to Keflavik then got a coach into Reykjavik in the late afternoon.  It was bitterly cold; a low system that brought disruption to most of the UK had swung round and headed NW hitting the SW of Iceland for our arrival.  Luckily it blew through and the next day (which we/I had free to go twitching!) was fine.  We got two local buses to Harfnarfordur and walked the remaining out to Þöll on a frozen road but only for a couple of kilometres.  We arrived at the nursery which was four inches thick with ice but I recognized the bird table from images I’d seen on the internet.  We huddled in next to the timber chalet and waited.   After a couple of minutes a 4x4 truck pulled up and an old guy stepped out gingerly onto the ice and shuffled over to the chalet.  The door swung open and the chap from the nursery threw some bird-food out onto the ice and noticed us looking on; “Hi, you here for the sparrow? Come in”. What a welcome!   We went in to the nice warm chalet and were offered tea but politely declined.  We were offered a seat in the window looking out over the seeded area so I watched and waited.  “Yeah, it hasn’t been seen for two days you know, some Swedish birders missed it yesterday”.  “Agghh ok”, that’s not what you want to hear so I carried on looking watching the Redpoll complex get more complex and Snow Buntings flying around.  Something Dunnock-like scurried low down through the twiggy birch cover and out emerged the LINCOLN’S SPARROW Melospiza lincolnii. “It’s here” I was relieved to announce and the two guys kept sipping their tea and working their way through a tin of biscuits before we talked about more regular species and their ranges and recent changes in Iceland.  The older guy offered us a lift back into town (Harfnarfordur) so we gratefully accepted.  I’m not sure why we politely declined the tea but accepted a lift back to town but we were quite grateful for it.  On the drive in I noticed some Whooper Swans on Hamarkotslaekur Lake along Lækjargata so after we got dropped off I walked back to check them for rings, whilst Mrs S did her usual recce for the best place for lunch.  I spotted a UK ringed Whooper W01957 which later turned out to be its first sighting in Iceland. I’m not sure how but people mustn’t look that hard.  I clinched some photographs which did the trick and walked back to town to meet E for lunch at Glo Café, a great intro to some scandi healthy eating….followed by some cake!  We got the bus back into the city but got dropped off along Norðurströnd walking the remaining stretch to the docks where the AMERICAN WHITE WINGED SCOTER Melanitta deglandi deglandi had been reported.  It wasn’t that scenic but we saw the bird looking out to sea from behind some oil tanks and security walls covered in graffiti.  A nice flock of Snow Buntings roamed along the sea-defence boulders and onto the waste ground around the industrial units and Ravens patrolled overhead.  Walking through the harbour Northern Eider were showing very close and again at the back of the concert hall.  The rest of our stay was more a social affair, meeting up with friends in the city, doing the Golden Circle, swimming with the locals at …… etc.. Other birds around the city included more ducks and Whooper’s at the ice-free section of Tjörnin Lake.  with 3 consecutive nights chasing the Aurora borealis which gave best views on the final night. Truly magical. 

 Road to Þöll

 Lincoln's

 Snow bunts at Þöll

Clyde-ringed Whooper staying in Iceland for the winter

 Downtown Reykjavik

 Common Gull

 Northerns

 Redwing staying in town for the winter

 Magic

Scottish-ringed Whooper Swan over-wintering in Iceland

On a winter trip to Reykjavik I spotted a British-ringed Whooper Swan on an urban lake in Hafnarfjordur. It was ringed by Clyde Ringing Group as age 1st year , sex unknown on 23-Nov-2000 at Hogganfield Loch, Glasgow OS Map reference NS6467, co-ordinates 55deg 52min N 4deg 10min W.

I saw it on 20-Feb-2014 at Hamarkotslaekur, Hafnarfjordur, 4837 days after it was ringed, 1340 km from the ringing site. Interesting that it didn't migrate back to Scotland this winter.  Maybe it was mild, or maybe it knew it was raining in the UK!

To twitch or not to twitch, that is the question

There’s no judge-mongery going on here just a perusal over the pros and cons of twitching.  Admittedly there are worse things happening in the world but I’m just questioning the culture and self-moderation of twitching.  Why twitch? Simple- to see something you wouldn't usually see.  Something new, that you haven’t seen before.  Wow, that can’t happen very often so is undoubtedly worth doing from time to time.  Right?

I've often been asked “what do you do when you see what you've gone to see?”  Well; look at it, question the ID of the bird with the knowledge and more often the hunch I have, spend far too long digi-scoping it when I should be just watching it, taking it all in.  But twitching takes you to places you wouldn't necessarily go to for any other reason so a huge benefit can be just being or going somewhere new.  How many twitches have you been on when the place or weather is just as memorable as the ‘bird’ and what about mutual appreciation between fellow travelers and twitchers?  10 hours in a car, sometimes as little as 1 hour in the field, you either need to get along or be accepted as a mute in those environs, and split the costs in equal measures of course.

Not all twitches go to plan and 10 hours on a motorway can result in a ‘dip’; zero bird(s), £80 of fuel up in smoke, a £60 speeding ticket for doing 34mph in a 30 zone, a parking ticket for that extra 10 mins of searching effort, 4 hours sat in traffic, other perils of being on our roads; RTAs, etc., I’ve been there and worse and for those days you justify the good days getting you through.  A run of those days is hard to deal with.  The law of averages almost always balances out though and I’d guess over 65% of twitches I’ve been on were successful and I’ve forgotten about the other 35%, almost.

10hrs on the motorway 1hr in the field. Hmmm.  Doesn’t 10hrs in the field and 1hr in the car sound better?  How about 0hrs, 0 car, 11hrs in the field?  Admittedly that would result in less rarities seen but almost certainly not less birds. See ‘Footit’ or ‘PatchWorkChallenge’ as alternative birding initiatives to spending a day in the car.  As for money spent on fuel (or tax) to which we Brits just politely accept and pay, that £80 up in smoke bit bothers me too.  How could that £80 be better spent than on spending a day in a car gabling on seeing a one or two birds?  Joining a conservation organisation or two or three maybe?

I hold my hands up, I am a lister and bumbling towards 400, usually still adding a few ticks a year (should really be on 450+).  Undoubtedly the cost of travel is a big factor in the idling but also that time in field issue.  I shouldn't be idling, I should be trying to keep up with the ‘Joneses’ or Jones. Twitchers congratulate one another for ‘connecting’ with the target bird.  

Say again!  

You drove/flew/sailed from A to B and saw a bird. That one tick might have cost £5 or £500. Congratulations!  See the Llama’s take on that here: http://leicesterllama.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/congratulations.html

The biggest hit for me though has been on Yearlisting. Those timed trips to Norfolk and Scotland and chasing relatively local species just to see them that year has really has hit the buffers.  I don’t need to see them annually, that badly, contributing to potential negative impacts on them and their habitat.  I might however make the trip and bird an area making a few days of it, staying over, and spending money in the local economy but that is not compelled around year-listing and might happen once every few years.   

So if applying some idealisms the conscious conservationist mindset that many birders benefit from we would question the reasoning behind anything that would have a negative impact on the bird or its habitat including unnecessary travel.  The trouble here is the noticeable threat from travel or demands from travel on the environment which is easy to dismiss or at least not notice and easiest to turn a blind eye to.  Take the oil industry for example, to which we are almost all slaves to.  Where do you draw the line for necessary travel? Driving to see something 2 miles away, 200miles away or flying 2000miles just to add something on your WP list. Which is worse?  If I ever was able to afford it I hope I wouldn't get the urge to do the latter.

Play it cool:

A plea to the NGBs out there; I would just say don’t get too fixated on needing to see 1 bird after the next just to beef-up your country list. An 11 year old girl in Oz has just seen 3000 world species so you've lost that one before you get any ideas.  The need to see a bird can be addictive but this just becomes an indication of your tolerances of motorways, your age, spare cash and spare time.  They’re just birds and it’s just a tick.  See Mr Crake’s take on it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHXQp-NhFuE

If you’re really worried about listing then just worry about the potential blockers: sure if it’s something you think you’ll never see again then go but most things turn up again so for the less rare maybe hold off until there’s one closer or until you go somewhere for a week and are almost guaranteed to see it.  Self-finding has to be the way to go and is many more times more satisfying and often more educational.  That localisation of efforts has to be more beneficial to the environment too and has the added spin-off benefits of Birdtracking, Atlas’ing, and other local recording or research initiatives, or how about ‘volling’ at an obs or reserve.  I couldn't give a hoot if anyone has seen 200 or 500 species in Britain and no one should be bothered about my total, but if you've found a 'BB' or a local rarity then, you'll know which feels better.  Self-finding is the way to go.