Bird Information

What's reddish and greyish and can go unseenish for two months...?

Birding has been somewhat - how can we put this - just a touch dull of late. There's just not been very much movement. Which given that we're in the coldest part of the year and still a few months away from Spring is not all that surprising. Waxwings are lovely of course (though by the weekend of 2nd/3rd they were looking increasingly like they were heading for the exit door - or the east coast as it's more usually known) and Smews are icy cool (on the Saturday we logged over 80 of them, a number oddly not much higher than that claimed for overwintering Siberian Chiffchaffs!) but it's getting to the point now that what everyone needed was a surprise of some sorts, something unusual, something to get the pulses racing - and if only it could be something stuck on an island that looked like it might just stay around for a while...

How likely is that though in late January?

Well, birding is (thankfully) nothing if not full of surprises so let's cut to the chase and talk about Friday 1st when a bird that while not technically as 'rare' as the Murloch American Coot (still in Co Galway) was teasingly identified from photographs taken a few days before in a garden near Collafirth, Shetland as something far more sought-after: an immature Pine Grosbeak. Now that's a bird to get the juices on the move again...

"So farewell then old friends"

Even if it's simply so that we had something new to write about this week it would be great to report that migration - or any sort of movement - is underway, but this week's highlights look pretty much like last week's which in turn closely resembled the week's before. There were a few comings and goings but considering the snow and below freezing nighttime temperatures it's perhaps a little surprising that the week began once again with the overwintering - and commuting - Buff-bellied Pipit/s at either Berkshire's Queen Mother Reservoir or the nearby Kingsmead Quarry, the (presumably) overwintering Pallas's Warbler spending its days in the willows at Berkshire's Moor Green Lakes NR, the certainly overwintering female Desert Wheatear still surviving a bracing seaside holiday at Aberdeenshire's Rattray Head, and the surely now 'staying put until it moults' young Rose-coloured Starling which has staked a claim on a small tree along Milbury Lane in the Devon village of Exminster.

"Winter's here - normality restored - let's go build a snowman..."

We don't normally talk about the weather in these reviews, as we figure that most birders are a) quite capable of looking out of the window and working it out for themselves, or b) will be checking the forecasts before they plan their birding anyway. But, it has to be said that the weather has been a major talking-point this week (and will be again next week). It has been cold. Very cold. It's been cold enough for Nature Reserves to close, for schools to close, for race-courses to close, for the Daily Mail to close (just joking unfortunately), but have we stopped birding? No we have not. Plucky Brit year-listers have been out risking frostbite or disappearing into a white-out never to be seen again just to flush a befuddled and numbed Jack Snipe or Woodcock onto their year list.

Which is what January birding is all about of course, so three cheers for birders and no more mention of the snow (though I might take a quick swipe at Bonkers Boris, Mayor of London, who claimed that actually the climate isn't warming because he found a snowflake in one of his flower pots...though why bother, the man is probably seriously blinded by his desire to cover the Thames Estuary with concrete and build the largest airport in Europe, so let's move on.)

Where were we? Ah, yes, a weekly review. Before we get into the highlights though (which apart from a potential 1st for Britain are a little 'light' this week) no doubt we're all wishing Spring would get here, so just to cheer ourselves up a bit let's look ahead to migrants arriving. I've been looking through our old logs: have a guess on which date you think the following sightings were all recorded: