314 : Western Tanager

Western Tanager - Piranga Ludoviciana

My definition of a "win-win" is a trip to a botanical garden on holiday. The kids perhaps have to raise their game a bit but if there are outdoor sculptures and a maze and a decent foodie cafe then its not a hardship. For Mrs C the Van Dusen Botanical Garden  was a delight and I craftily picked up a couple of birds. I am quite a fan of ornamental vegetable gardens in any event - they even had bees. As a morning out then a bit of a slam dunk.

It even had a great bookshop where I picked up the "100 mile diet" which is a Vancouver book I had not heard of before but a really good read for foodies coming out of the food miles movement. I always come back off holiday with ideas as well as photos but I am not sure that that one will fly in Dubai. I have posted the link to the original blog - the book that resulted has been a catalyst in the local food movement. I am hooked anyway for a number of reasons on questioning my food chain.

The general premise is that you only buy or eat food that has been (including its ingredients !!) created within 100 miles of your home. A challenge even in Hippie Vancouver as there was no wheat or sugar grown so its all potatoes, chick peas and honey ! They did have organic pinot noir and wild salmon so I wouldn't pity them too much. Living in Dubai that would be challenging. A move way from processed foods and ones as close to home as can be achieved has got to be a health winner though. Jane has a thing about "sugar" at the moment. I think the Al Barsha villa might be about to go Hillbilly - if it wasn't already a small island of home grown tomatoes in a suburb of Sodom and Gomorrah. It would be nice to have a run to Hadleigh this morning or tomorrow (half way home in Suffolk) and look at the seeds anyway and the books in the second hand bookshop. It never hurts and it usually marks the end of my "Summer" at least. I say this every year but then get distracted - I would like to grow and make more of my own food. Bread, vegetables - still to make a sausage in anger and no Crossley hen has ever yet delivered an egg. Chickens - now there is a thought. Air conditioned Egglu ? I think I should start with one bean - thats a quote stolen from a hippie again but everybody should plant a bean in any event and everybody who wants to eat meat should keep 1 animal as  a minimum. I am facing a move to Jebel Ali and a goat and a chicken and a small allotment. Perhaps I just buy a fishing rod ??

Back to Tanagers as its a whole new family for the Daily Bird - Thraupidae. We are catching them at the very North of their range in Vancouver which is mostly South and Central America - 283 species in all of beautiful colourful passerines. They could become a real favourite. "Orange-headed", "Flame-Crested", "Paradise", "Black-goggled", "Masked Crimson", "Lemon Rumped" - that's quite a nice door that has just been opened ! Roll on the Tanagers - "Emerald", "Gilt-edged", "Burnished Buff". Saying the names is fun of itself. Time to have a look at some old Audabon prints ! On the colour front the North Americans really outdo the UK for birds - Golden Oriole, Kingfisher ? Some of the Tits - We have nothing on say a Northern Cardinal though - Just think crimson finch with a black bib. Even their goldfinch was a show stopper.  They even had humming birds in Canada with metallic green tail feathers and orangey plumage (sadly my camera stayed at my side and my jaw dropped and away it zipped).

Even the adult male breeding bird of the Western Tanager picks up a scarlet head through the Summer months so this is either female caught above or a non-breeding male ( I guess that's a juvenile bird). There were quite a few flitting about but I didn't notice any bright red heads. A new world of colour though - or color.

Western Tanager, Piranga ludoviciana
Van Dusen Botancial Garden, Vancouver, British Columbia
12 August 2014

313 : Belted Kingfisher

Belted Kingfisher - Ceryle alcyon

I am back in Vancouver City itself after a week of paradise at Tofino on Vancouver Island. I am not sure I really pounded the birds - e.g. I dipped out on hiring a guide who might have wracked me up 40 or 50 species in an afternoon. I was content to just fit the birds around the family holiday. It's not as if they didn't make an appearance and its not as if I won't go back at some point in my life. Thats mentally booked in for a passage season when the huge flocks of wildfowl and waders are pulsing through from the Arctic.

We went on a bear watching boat trip one afternoon on a smaller less commercial boat skippered by a nice guy called Mike. The bears around the islands and coast near to Vancouver island are mostly the younger bears who will have been separated from their mothers after about 18 months. The larger adult bears tend to trek up into the mountains. On the shorelines the black bears (not a threat to people really - just a nuisance at times) feed on barnacles, small crabs (that they uncover by rolling over large stones with their paws), berries and even grass. They are truly omnivorous.

They were great fun to watch - not as big as I thought but clearly powerful animals.

This was a mother bear - much bulkier and filling out its fur if that makes sense.

A smaller cub just separated from its Mum that season. The Mum turned up and chased him or her off a couple of times - no longer wanted as the cub was cramping Mum's style and a risk if a big male bear turned up.

Belted kingfishers seems to be a relatively common and widespread. I got a few half decent shots but its hard on a moving boat as ever !

Belted Kingfisher, Ceryle alcyon
Tofino, Bear Watch Cruise, British Columbia
6 August 2014

312 : Marbled Murrelet

Marbled Murrelet - Brachyramphus marmoratus

This was a lovely reward for a long walk down a board walk through a rain forest from the Kwisitis information centre in the Pacific Rim National Park. The "Long Beach" section of the park has miles and miles of unspoilt coast. There are heaps of driftwood, rock pools, birds, and pristine rain forest down to the waters edge.

The link between the Marbled Murrelet and the old growth rain forest with stands of trees 5-800 years old is a strong one as unlike any other Auk these birds nest in the trees sometimes 15-20 km inland. Once old growth rain forest of Red Cedar, Western Hemlock and Douglas Fir is logged and then cleared again every 50-100 years it is useless to these birds. These birds have then become a front line in the battleground against logging the old growth forest.

The British Columbia environmental authority has produced this fact sheet. 

Marbled Murrelet, Brachyramphus marmoratus
Pacific Rim National Park, Vancouver Island, British Columbia
6 August 2014

311 : Great Northern Diver

Great Northern Diver - Gavia Immer

In my Sibley the name is Common Loon but I am going to stick with the naming from the Handbook of the Birds of the World. Latin names usually correspond apart from when there is a difference of opinion as to whether something is a separate species or not.

These are enigmatic birds - beautiful, sleek, carefully plumaged. I have seen these perhaps 15 years ago on a large reservoir in West London. The days when a day out for me was a walk around a reservoir. I loved my birding then - really dug for my birds. I was a year lister as well as a life lister so every year every bird was new and up for grabs. I no longer have the same competitive concern to see say a Bullfinch every year of my life. These days its a decent shot and a moment with a bird - up goes the page and its logged.

I remember a children's nature programme that was on during the long Summer holidays - a bloke who seemed to paddle up and down a big lake looking at beavers a lot -  at the end a sunset over a conifer fringed lake and the haunting echoing cries of "Loons".

My Loon was in a small bay after a walk through a tribal first nations landscape with descriptive boards detailing the peoples relationship with the land.  I would love to come back here in the Spring to hear their haunting cries - perhaps paddle down a great lake.

Great Northern Diver, Gavia Immer
Pacific Rim National Park, Vancouver Island, British Columbia Canada
5 August 2014

310 : Chestnut-backed Chickadee

Chestnut-backed Chickadee - Poecile rufescens

I have very sore feet this evening having perhaps only walked 5-6 miles or so. I don't have very good walking boots with me and a poor decision on the way back from a national park trail to our car left us walking along a hard roadside for about 2 miles. The irony of long birding walks is that more often than not some of the nicest birds you see are hanging around the car park albeit in this case a very nice conifer lined car park in a national park.

So the North Americans call a Tit a Chickadee. This a western specialist of the pine forests - its range hugging the Pacific coast from Alaska all the way down to Northern California. The twittering sounds reminded me of long tailed tits and the flock seemed to be 10 birds or more strong.

Completely off subject but my aching feet do seem to be reacting to the restorative qualities of a Brufen,  two panadol and the first few glasses of my "growler" of the Tofino Brewing Company's session ale. Jane has opted for a smaller "Growlita" of the Spruce beer - doctored with fresh spruce tips. I love the idea of your local brewery where you just pop in and fill up your Growler on the way home and the staff are all happy and the clientele is lined up at the bar in this case discussing surf and beer. It may be Canada but Tofino is very much a surf town and people are turned off and tuned in or whatever the expression is. People here are very nice. The sense of humour is great - we ate beautiful food last night at the Wickanish Inn - the best I have eaten in a long while. Interesting flavours and great produce. Even fish and chips from a van is made beautifully - sustainable Pacific cod. Don't get me on British Columbian wine - too little to export - I had a Chardonnay last night that I felt was as nice as a decent Burgundy - Quail's landing was the producer. They also made a desert Reisling that went very well with my British Columbian artisan cheeses. This place is just to die for really.

Back to my beer ! So a growler is the bottle you purchase with your first order of beer from your local craft brewery (a kind of non-refundable deposit system) and then your next fill up is half the price. Its a great system and a good business model. The more you drink the cheaper it gets. The man behind the bar told me that eventually he would be paying me to drink the stuff. Very witty.

More Chickadees !

So there we have it ! Growlers are a new one on me but once you are over (in my case) the $12 deposit for the bottle you are locked in for refills at just $12 for 2 litres which seems quite reasonable - 4 pints of so for 8 pounds. Four very nice pints that is and straight from the brewery. 

I really am falling in love with this place - it is charming and so are the people. The guy who introduced  my main course last night at the Wick laughed with me at the description of my "rasped" egg on warm salmon. They really don't take themselves so seriously. They take their food, wine and beer quite seriously though - they do seem to have a craft. 

Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Poecile Rufescens

Pacific Rim National Park, Vancouver Island, British Columbia

5 August 2014 

309 : American Goldfinch

American Goldfinch - Carduelis tristis

What a joy these small finches are and all the more so for feeding on these photogenic thistles. They are almost at the Northerly edge of their range here on Vancouver island and typically belong in more deciduous landscapes.

Yesterday was the foggiest day we have had on holiday - a huge bank of fog blanketing the beach and landscape for most of the day. Unsuccessful whale watching was carried out in a pea-souper, although we did see a Sea Otter which was charming. Rafting in a small forest of kelp, when he saw our boat slow down he cruised off with his (or her) backwards stroke. Paws penitently held together and hind paws more like flippers held akimbo in the air. A truly charming creature almost wiped out by the fur trade in the last century.

Like furry Klondike backwoodsman having his first bath in 6 months - tangled beard covering his face. - reclined in the back room of some saloon.

So no Grey whales - although we have a voucher valid for a year for a new trip (such was the utter embarrassment of the whale watching outfit). I think thats a bitt harsh myself - wildlife is wildlife - if I could guarantee my birds what would they be worth ? I am sorely tempted but more for the seabirds that were proving very difficult to photograph. so I have a bunch of blurred auks to contend with in my files as well but a voucher for another foggy pelagic. Time permitting. The rain forest awaits.

Amercian Golfinch, Carduelis tristis
Pettinger Point, Tofino, Vancouver Island, British Columbia
5 August 2014

308 : Bald Eagle

Bald Eagle - Haliaeetus leucocephalus

I popped into Tofino yesterday afternoon to do a bit of shopping and this handsome bird was sat in a tree near to the Co-Op. That's the UK equivalent of a Golden Eagle sat on a contoneaster outside of Tescos or in UAE terms where I live a Great Spotted Eagle sat on a palm tree next to Spinney's. It gets better - I had ran down the road from the little car park as I had seen two birds fly off into the distance. A couple of minutes before I had been wondering, out loud unfortunately like a ranting mad birder whether this was the best shot I was going to achieve of these wonderful eagles.

The Bald Eagle is doing well along the North West coast of the American continent with perhaps 100,000 birds in British Columbia and Alaska. Compare that to main part of the US where there are possibly only 4,000 birds in all (a rise from just 1,118 birds counted in 1980). Clearly these eagles were heavily persecuted, shot a competing fisherman. In Alaska a bounty was placed on the birds and 150,000 were shot between 1900 and 1945. It does make you wonder why a nation would choose to adopt such a magnificent bird to appear on flags, coins, crests and so on but simultaneously blast it from every inch of its skies. I seem to remember that it appears on a carpet in the oval office. I wonder if Reagan ever bothered to ask how many were left in 1980. I expect Jimmy Carter would have.

So these birds feed on birds (waterfowl) as well as fish. Huge numbers gather to feed on the dying salmon after the spawning runs - gatherings of 1000' s of birds in certain rivers. I went zip lining yesterday down the Fraser River canyon and our guide told us that the river system is considered "dead" as there are only currently 400 spawning salmon making the run. A cannery had been situated at the end of the river that fed half of the caught salmon for North America at one point. There must have been millions of salmon taken out of the river. I didn't see any fish as I zipped down the river.

As well s fish the eagles take birds and will knock a whole Canada Goose out of the air. That must be a sight. I am off whale watching today - I am looking forward to trying to see Orcas and Grey Whales in particular. Fingers crossed they are just floating off the maritime equivalent of Sainsbury somewhere.

I am not sure why Bald Eagles are bald - I will leave that as a mystery to be googled another time.

Bald Eagle, Haliaeetus Leucocephalus
Tofino, Vancouver Island, British Columbia
3 August 2014

307 : White-winged Scoter

White-winged Scoter - Mellanita Fusca

Being alive to the possibilities and the detail is always a good idea when you are birding. On my 6 am session this morning I came across a raft of sea ducks. The first few blow ups showed me quite categorically that I had stumbled across a Pacific bird the Surf Scoter (clink on the link to review and pay attention to the bill and wing colour and then navigate back here).

So nothing prevents sea ducks from hanging out in mixed flocks just in the same way that ducks on a lake would mingle So the bill here is just orange and black with no white. We have a distinctive tear shaped white mark behind the eye and a white secondaries visible.  Compare to the Surf Scoter which does not have white wing panel and therefore would need show a white wing bar when not in flight.

Two ducks for the price of one.

Torfino, Vancouver Island, British Columbia
2 August 2014

306 : Warbling Vireo

Warbling Vireo - Vireo gilvus

I could be so wrong with this its ridiculous but I have done the best I can - From bookwork. My Sibley (the equivalent of say Collins Bird Guide for the UK) is just awash with small yellowy birds - I have ignored a slew of wood warblers - well not ignored them but just discounted by range and likelihood. I need a kind North American birder to drop past and point me in the right direction.

Basically yellow below and grey and olive above with quite a plain face.The alternative is a Yellow Warbler (?) - a juvenile which can show the grey and yellow (?)

I will stick with my Vireo almost as my 80 % place marker and I am sure that if there is an error the great teacher - time in the field - will help me out in due course. Its not unknown for whole pages to be relabelled retrospectively on this site. It is confidently though the 305 th bird in the collection - whatever the hell it is !

I have to finish with a picture to give you some idea of the sea mists here which are spectacular. One just rolled in like a great cotton wool bank and smothered the whole place for two hours. I caught this earlier today from the promontory rolling across the bay into Chesterman Beach. Cold sea and warmer air. Makes for good wine as well.

Warbling Vireo, Vireo gilvus
Torfino, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
2 August 2014

305 : Northwestern Crow

Northwestern Crow - Corvus caurinus

Its such a special part of the world it turns out it has its own species of crow. Not a subspecies but a whole separate split from the American Crow. This really is a specialist restricted to the temperate rainforest coast of the Pacific North-West. In the main it forages on the intertidal mudflats and rocks for clams, mussels and crabs.

It looks as if the American Crow is expanding into its range though and will literally breed it out. It only exists now on the islands and less densely populated coastlines. The notes I have read suggest that DNA sampling is needed to "test" the extent to which the population is holding out. Where towns build up and the opportunities with rubbish and so on the American less specialist crows move in and the truly wild Northwestern crows get squeezed out. I would like to think that here just next to the Pacific Rim National Park this crow perched above some mussel covered rocks is a true representative of the specialist species. They are certainly everywhere on the coast - hacking away at shell fish and bouncing through the stranded kelp.

I will leave you with sunset from last night. The same promontory I walked out along to catch my Surf Scoters this morning. The light here at all times of day is striking. As I am typing a sea mist is rolling in off the beach swirling past the beach houses - the clouds of vapour visible between the pine branches. It's Jurassic.

Northwestern Crow, Corvus caurinus
Torfino, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
2 August 2014

304 : Surf Scoter

Surf Scoter - Melanitta perspicillata

We have arrived as a family at Tofino on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. The vast Pacific lies on the doorstep of our glass-fronted beach house. The water is cold and clear and its a different ocean let alone a different continent to bird.

Jet-lag is still hanging around so I woke this morning at 5.50 am (its getting better) having stayed up until 10.30 pm. I almost don't want to go birding sometimes - its a faff getting equipment sorted - I don't know what anything looks like. I will miss all the shots. I wasn't very optimistic when I headed out shortly after 6 am, hungry, sore feet, tripod mounted with the bird canon.

The lichen and fern filled stands of conifers were filled with the little peeps of alien birds. Its a recipe for  neck ache and frustration. Thank god for the open water. Sea watching is something you do when you are not really birding. You scan the water in the hope of seeing a few black dots ! The Pacific was obliging.

This is what we call a "raft" of ducks. A good 1/2 kilometre away plus with a the lens on full 400 mm zoom. I knew they probably some form of sea duck - probably scoters but this type of view wasn't going to get an ID. I picked my way out along a rocky promontory, twisting ankles and clattering tripods and over balancing. I am not a mountain goat.

I started to get some better views and the views through my new 10 x 42 Avians clinched it or did it. Surf Scoters (these are my first) have a strange roman type nose (see the first shot) with a bright orange and white bill. The bird in the first shot is certainly a Surf Scoter. It has a multi-coloured bill with black running down the top edge. Also there is no white in the wing feathers - that could be a clincher for another tick if I post again later today. I do love a bit of book work on new birds.

So what are ducks doing out on the sea ? These birds breed on boreal lakes - plenty of those around in British Columbia. Typically though they Winter on the sea. I would guess that breeding is now complete and the birds have dispersed out onto the Pacific. There diet in the Winter consists of blue mussels and a walk along the beach yesterday evening turned up hundreds of smashed large mussel shells the size of a small hand. The birds dive down to the bottom - perhaps for 30 seconds or so and grab and smash the bivalves. I observed a few ducks swimming along with their head under the water before upending and diving down. They do tend to dive together. They rest for a couple of minutes then the whole raft will disappear and pop up like a bunch of corks.

I think is the first sea duck species on the Daily Bird. More to come.

Surf Scoter, Melanitta perspicillata
Pacific Sands Resort, Chesterman Beach, Nr Tofino, Vancouver Isaland, British Columbia, Canada
2 August 2014

303 : American Wood Duck

American Wood Duck - Aix Sponsa

The Daily Bird really is depleted - all its vital signs are at the lowest on record so I guess I should use my jet lag and early morning wakefulness to catch up a bit. All of course dependant on getting the shots. Here a delightful North American Duck that frequents beaver lakes as a preference. One of those Northern arboreal ducks that nests in tree holes. I caught up with this female with ducklings on the Beaver Pond in Stanley Park. I had a great fly past with the ducklings at no more than 2-3 metres.

The male is a handsome individual something akin to a Mandarin if you know that species but sadly at this time of year likely to be in eclipse plumage. In layman's terms eclipse is a mess of a plumage the male (most noticeably) adopts during molt and after breeding - it is typically something drabber like the female plumage and has the advantage of affording better camouflage while the bird is less able to escape a predator during molt (they can't fly very well while wing feathers replace). Jolly inconvenient it is though as typically eclipse plumages coincide with Summer holidays in the Northern hemisphere. All ducks become a mess and life turns brown ! It makes identifying ducks a right royal pain.

Easier to identify was this work of engineering at the North end of Stanley Park linking across to the "mainland" (it is hard not to think of Vancouver City as an island even though is is only surrounded by water on 3 sides). The Lion's Gate Bridge.

Hard to photograph bridges without a wide angle lens and since the second camera body is playing up at the moment I had to try and jam it into the frame as I couldn't be bothered to swap lenses while on a trek (not so for a bird :-)). I think this was built in 1910 or so ?

Bridges always look better with a boat going under them in my humble opinion if you are aiming for a photograph that sets them off. .

I am not sure of the length of this bridge - jumping on the the internet I find is it 1,823 m in length. That's impressive - over a mile of optimistic Edwardian steel laid across the Sound shortly before the First World War.

Other things of beauty encountered on our first day of holiday were perhaps a bit controversial. I get that the Vancouver Aquarium is a very worthy not for profit organisation that funds a huge amount of research into cetaceans, marine wildlife, study of fish stocks and so on. I am not sure how they justify having 2 Beluga Whales in captivity though. Eiry ghost like creatures with a strange bulbous form. One Whale really was doing a circuit that struck as me as something like a bear pacing. We had a short debate as to why a white whale was not an albino whale. They do need this camouflage - polar bears will have a go evidently !

I read somewhere (or made up in a dream let night ?) that the Russians were training these highly intelligent whales to attach limpet mines to NATO ships during the cold war. All very Soviet. I expect they had striking cold war code names and little decorations like Xmas baubles. Again a quick search of the net discovers that the US were doing it as well with over 100 whales and dolphins enlisted to perform various tasks including retrieving equipment and guarding boats at anchor during the Vietnam War ! So the dolphin shows of today were the military drills of yesterday. I wonder if these two Belugas are reformed communists or honest to goodness capitalists ?

If you have ever seen the the film of the book "Dune" they reminded me of a "Navigator" - the strange spice sniffing  pilots that bend space to equip mankind for interstellar travel. They are "out of this world" but sadly I concluded they very much belong in the Arctic and not a "zoo" however worthy the institute.

One whale would swim upside down a lot revealing a very strange pelvic bone. The forms of nature are strange.

Back to the ducks - free and getting ready to fly South no doubt for the Winter  - breeding successfully - I counted  a total of 5 ducklings in total.

American Wood Duck, Aix Sponsa
Stanley Park, Beaver Lake, Vancouver, British Columbia
30 July 2014

302 : Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron - Ardea Herodias

The Daily Bird has been closed for 5 months - but I am firing it back up now that I am on family holiday for 2014 in Canada. I am currently in Vancouver (City) for now on the Pacific Coast of British Columbia for a couple of days and then heading over on the ferry to Vancouver Island on Friday.  I have done very little birding on the North American continent so you would think that pickings would be good - we'll see.

There is a peninsula that comprises "downtown" Vancouver itself surrounded on 3 sides by estuary. At the end of the peninsula is Stanley Park - the largest urban green space in North America  bigger than New York's Central Park. The Park itself has a sea wall that runs around its edge for about 10 km - we walked half of it this morning and my feet really feel it ! We then cut back across its middle to experience conifer forest and more importantly to find the world famous aquarium to stop the children rebelling.

So on our way back across the middle of Stanley Park we came across the crocus covered "Beaver Lake" - a nice clearing in the old growth rain forest. Pretty soon a local favourite decided to show up and gave some great views.

I didn't manage to get properly set up for a flight shot.

The lights here is beautiful - we are quite far North - it reminds me of Scotland. It is getting dark around 9/9.30 pm and the sun is rising just after 6 am.

Great Blue Heron, Ardea Herodias
30 June 2014
Stanley Park, Vancouver, Britsh Colunbia, Canada

301 : Clamorous Reed-warbler

Clamorous Reed-warbler - Acrocephalus stentoreous

I haven only been out in the field a couple of times in the last few weeks - I feel a bit daunted by grinding out life photo ticks in Dubai. It is hard work. One of my favourite places, the Pivot fields has had all its turf ripped up to be re-seeded. A drive around that site, otherwise known as the Plant Souk turned up very slim pickings. Another favourite site was hard work as well - the lake at Warsan. There were a couple of Marsh Harriers floating about which was good to see but very few ducks and just the odd egret way off in the distance. I wondering if numbers of birds at the site are higher in the Winter. I expect the Marsh Harriers are going to breed - they are certainly a pair and there is sufficient habitat.

I could make out the sounds of some type of noisy warbler coming out of the thick, and quite dry reed beds all around the sides of both lakes. If you have tried to watch birds in a reed bed then you already know what a thankless task it is. The birds can sing from half way up a reed stem right in the middle of the bed - unless they shimmy up and make themselves seen you haven't got a chance. I really wanted that picture. After about forty minutes of trying different angles and views from the sloping sandy edges of the lake I pretty much gave up. I then had one view of a bird flying up the wall edge and disappearing off to the other smaller lake close to the break in the security fence.

Another stake out for perhaps 10 minutes eventually paid dividends. One bird was clearly singing to attract a mate and in plain view stuck out on a broken over reed hanging across the water.

A great big stocky Acrocephalus type warbler with a long rounded off tail and a long hatchet-like bill. A little bit of book work in the Handbook of the Birds of the World Online - especially the loud scratchy song confirmed the identification. I would estimate there are 4 or 5 singing males at the Warsan lake complex at the moment.

A Little Grebe was fishing close to where I was staking out the Clamorous Reed-warbler. This is a male coming into breeding plumage. I am not sure how fish get into the pond (which is really a lake on an old building site which has become overgrown) but clearly there are small fish as Cormorants, Herons and Egrets all seem to love the place. Photo evidence here. Fish can as I understand it stock a new body of water through their eggs being carried in mud sticking to the feet of wading or swimming birds. It make sense - how else does a new body of water get colonised ?

I expect at some point this site will be torn apart, bulldozed of concreted over (I note the building works going on right next to Ras al Khor to make a few luxury homes with a view of the flamingoes. For now though it is a beautiful oasis of nature - butterflies were on the wing - I could have been in France rather than in Dubai or perhaps next to the Nile where there are tens of thousands of these chunky warblers inhabiting the stands of Papyrus. They probably woke up the Pharoes in their palaces.

Clamorous Reed-warbler, Acrocephalus stentoreous
Warsan Lake, Dubai
1 March 2014

300 : Song Thrush

Song Thrush - Turdus philomelos

After all that agonising about going out and finding a spectacular 300th bird for the site I got to thinking I couldn't wait until the weekend. I realised I took some shots of a Song Thrush on Boxing Day while in the UK and that by some miracle I had not posted up a picture of this truly common or garden bird. I will check back again but I think, again surprisingly, its one of those "I can get that anytime birds". So that's 300 - the wagons still rolling along very slowly - its only a few months until the site is 3 year's old. I have a little ritual at the centenaries which involves updating the Top Ten and at some point changing the extra page that carries other wildlife. Top Ten is going to get harder and harder - at 400 I might allow myself 15. I am getting ahead of myself - first some words about Song Thrushes.

I have been listening to some wonderful Radio 4 podcasts called Tweet of the Day. There are hundreds of these little 1-2 minute bird cameos that have been broadcast to date narrated in particular by David Attenborough. A 30 minute session on a cross trainer gets me through 15 at a go. I was listening yesterday to one the Song Thrush- they usually start with recording of the song itself which goes on with few thoughts or facts. In this case a quote from Robert Browning - "Thats the wise thrush he repeats each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture, that first fine careless rapture" from a poem "Home Thoughts From Abroad". Well it reminded me that I had stopped and sat on a rather damp stone to try and take a series of shots while this bird was feeding at Conwy RSPB. And they do repeat each song phrase 2-3 times - each bird has a repetoire of around a hundred phrases that are mixed and matched to produce its song.

This brings me on to my second recent podcast habit - The Best of BBC Wildlife podcasts. There is a rich mine of material going right back to 2010 (almost like this site :-) ) and one of the first 30 minute episodes of "Saving Species" I listened to was basically a short magazine programme with one section on "Vis Mig" or visable migration to you non-birders. It was great to hear the voice of Ian Wallace who is a grand old duke of British Birding - a writer and  a quite a splendid bird artist - detailing the great London migration count for the Autumn I think of 1965. A group of birders took up spots across London in a human chain every weekday for 30 minutes and at the weekend for an hour. His post was on Kite Hill in Regents Park - a place he could get out to from his office at lunchtime. Anyway by a fairly scientific process they reckoned that 20 million birds flew over London that Autumn representing some 70 species. So heres the thing - it not just Swallows, Reed Warblers and so on - the obvious Summer migrants who migrate. Its not the obvious Winter Migrants also like geese, ducks and Winter Thrushes such as Redwings and Fieldfares. Many many species migrate - perhaps not huge journeys but perhaps just across from a frozen continental Europe a few hundred miles South and East towards the milder weather. Ordinary birds as well - chaffinches, wood pigeons, blackbirds.. yes and you guessed it Song Thrushes.

There are 20 million Song Thrushes across Europe or the Western Paleartic as we call the plate that broadly carves up one big bird area. Perhaps 14 million of those Song Thrushes (and this is my guess extrapolated from a study that showed that close to 70 % of British Song Thrushes migrate in some form - i.e. do not hold a territory all the time) migrate in some form. The map of Song Thrush distribution show a huge swathe of the Old World right up across Northern Europe, Scandinavia and across into Russia and Central Asia marked as Summer territories only for these birds. About half perhaps of the available land of the whole range hence my estimation that 70 % of the total population perhaps migrate is they are based in areas where digging up a worm is pretty difficult in a hard Winter.  These great Winter movements away from harsh weather happen in increments and every day. Sometimes in  great flurries and at other time are hardly noticeable. Great pulses of millions of birds flooding away from an icy death.

Iain Wallace has written a great book - illustrated by dozens of his paintings called "Beguiled by Birds". I frightened myself checking when my wife bought it for me just now - 2004 ! The year we moved from London up to Manchester - there is usually a little inscription in the front page of books bought as gifts - and this one has written " O to Twitch, perchance to sketch" - I think I was dabbling with trying to draw birds back then. Really me plus a set of childrens coloured pencils is quite a thing. I am very fond of some of my old illustrated bird notes but I think the camera is an improvement.

So as we journey on with this photographic journey we will come across 177 species of thrush if I get it right. Most of them are birds of our cold North - just 17 species - think about the opportunities to feed in the leaf litter for insects and worms and to gorge yourself on berries and it is self evident that the tropics are probably a better bet. The thing about the 300 hundred thing is that I just can't help having a small retrospective on how I am doing so - here are some thrushes I have captured on film so far click the links - a gorgeous Rock Thrush  at a mountain hotel in Al Ain - a secretive Orange-Headed Thrush in an ancient hill-top palace garden in Southern India and finally this Spotted Morning Thrush (Spotted Palm Thrush) from a game drive in Northern Tanzania. I would look again at thrushes - great migrants - great colouration - from the deepest Congo to mountains in the Andes - across to Australia - the deserts - the frozen North and the jungles of Asia. Time to get birding again. I see 2014 as a come back year after a poor 2013. A big fat Mistle Thrush is needed for starters - a Fieldfare and a Redwing.

Song Thrush, Turdus Philomelos
Conwy RSPB
Boxing Day 2013

299 : Cardinal Woodpecker

Cardinal Woodpecker - Dendropicos fuscescens

I was debating whether I can get out with my camera this week and when. It really is the business end of the youth rugby season here in the UAE so its all semi-finals and tournaments and so on. Thats just an excuse really. Anyway I am left scrabbling around in holiday photos trying to find the forgotten ones - little snaps that when blown up remind me that I did catch a glance of a new bird.

So here we have a Cardinal Woodpecker - a small green woodpecker of Sub-Saharan Africa told apart from the Nubian Woodpecker here  by the black/dark brown moustachial stripe rather than red. The colouration on the back is different as well with these creamy golden spots rather than fine barring/white spots. This is the female bird with a darker crown.

These are typical woodpeckers which busily feed in the canopy on beetles and insect larvae by probing and hammering at loose bark. So that's 299 and I really owe it to myself to make a special trip for 300 and to just try and cap off this set of 100 with a new discovery and post it on the day discovered. That will mean a road trip, planning and time.

I was listening to a radio 4 podcast - "The Infinite Monkey Cage" in the gym just now. I am now sure how that one passed me by but it is both funny and fascinating. Professor Brian Cox of "Wonders of.." fame and then the usual couple of comedians and scientists. They have a discussion about a scientific question each week and the topics vary -  I have listened to a couple so far and the topics have been paleantology and specifically what they can now work out about dinosaurs from different types of fossils (bio-mechanics from footprints etc.) but most recently a half hour discussion on bio-diversity called "Why do We Pander to Pandas". I never knew this but the Chinese basically rent out Pandas to the world's zoos and take a kick back which is then used to preserve the bamboo forest. They are obviously a pin-up conservation animal and the black and white logo was useful for the WWF but mostly are blessed with teddy bear good looks. Tigers, dolphins etc all poster boys for conservation but if we just focus on these we miss a trick. Whole eco-systems without a pin up animal are on the verge of disappearing.

There was a botanist on the show talking about plants and how we haven't discovered probably 20 % of what is out there still - on a recent trip she discovered 5 new plants. But as quickly as we are discovering new diverse niches of habitat we are recognising that they are under threat. Not just the amazon or rain forest but spiny forests, cloud forests, dry forests and so on. They still are finding new monkeys - little Tamarinds and then working out that most of where they used to live has been cleared and that there are only 200 left - what chance do they stand. If the emotional argument doesn't win out - i.e. what a shame to wipe out 1,000 unique plants and a species of our cousins then the practical arguments or selfish arguments get interesting. The bulk of new pharmacological compounds that are being discovered today are derived from plants - and with 20 % of plant species still unknown we have our best chance for finding cures to all sorts of illnesses that affect us. Big business needs to get involved.

Overall though I have to say that I sympathised with the description of us as mammalian weeds - that we just come and strangle whole tracks of beautiful land and turn it to monoculture. If there are hundreds of thousands of plants we use only 8 as a basis for 80 % of our calorific intake.  Rice, Wheat, Palm Oil, Potato - I cannot guess the rest but I assume those 4 make a good start.

Compare walking in a field of freshly sprayed oil seed rape with walking in a piece of pristine habitat even in the UK in the Spring when butterflies, birds, beetles, trees and plants are all exploding - or a rich piece of African Savannah. Another argument was raised that without physical and natural diversity we just will lose our imaginations - language even - poetry.

I keep coming back to the same place - that there is little I can do except try and be a good citizen with my rubbish and consumption (but fail) - try and give as I go along to conservation groups and hopefully one day try and give back to some little corner and preserve a little piece of poetry. By saving the Panda the Chinese have also saved the Red Panda - and no doubt a few birds, and beetles and a species of bamboo - and even a louse that specialises on pandas !  Its the whole shooting match we are playing for. I think I will just buy a wood and dig a pond and have done with it and as my circle collapses in spend a good ten years just logging everything that is there from a rabbit down to a buttercup. I can't think of a better way to spend a few years - thats a website and a half.

300 next - that might be this weekend if I can defeat my urge to camp on sofas !

Cardinal Woodpecker, Dendropicos fuscescens
Tanzania, Ruaha National Park
July 2013

298 : Lesser Whitethroat

Lesser Whitethroat - Sylvia curraca

I think this is the last of my new to Crossley photo-science birds from a camping trip to Oman at New Year. This bird is lacking the white eye ring and on the basis of the distribution information I have seen I would hazard an uneducated guess at Lesser Whitethroat. Well I would say that wouldn't I as I already listed Whitethroat a goodly while back at the start of the Daily Bird.

I think distribution information is very good with similar species - if my book tells me something is "rare" in Oman but that a similar species "overwinters" then I think we are on the money. Equally there is a subspecies "Desert Lesser Whitethroat" which is a "Winter visitor occurring in much of Arabia" in "Acacia and Semi-desert". Well here we are in an Acacia in a semi-desert. You can tell I am not sure but I hope I am not "stringing" this. To string a bird is to make it into something it isn't to suit a ticking purpose if that makes sense - to a birder its a well known syndrome. You want so much for something to be something else you make it so.

I fully intend to go back for a better shot. I was never clear of the absolute diagnostic differences between Whitethroat and Lesser in the UK. I am clear though that this bird lacks the much warmer brown colouring to upper wing coverts and the edges of the secondaries that are required for a Whitethroat. Through the magic of the Daily Bird you can zoom back in time to a cliff top in the North West for this picture of a Whitethroat here . This bird is grey and white not grey brown and white and in my rather simplistic way I settle the issue. There is something about a flatter and rounder head as well if that makes sense. I will get more scientific at some point if challenged. I have to say the recent picture of a whitethroat on the older post is a much better picture of a warbler. I have to get used to using a tripod or monopod again with the long lens. Just a smidgeon of shake upsets the photo.

I often wonder if a miracle occurred and I actually made it to some photographic record for bird species if somebody would delve back into my earlier years to overturn the record. Lets hope some of these can stand up to the professional birding scrutiny that would be heaped upon my head on the day of judgement.

I think I really am out of new pictures now - I may have to have a delve about but we are at the bottom of the barrel which is probably a good thing. Time to get in the field and its right that I have should have to work hard for my "300".  Lots of Spartan cries and shouting and gore as I head off to the desert to claim 3 more prizes !

On a less shouty note camping was fun and very rewarding in the round.  Fun to sit in a chair and watch these mad English and South African people scrambling up this lot ! I think they bulked at the matterhorn like final ascent. These mountains are properly big !

I am hopefully going back in the next few weeks - I also have a trip on a Dhow up the North Oman/Musandam coast planned for half term. March is a business trip to Las Vegas - if I could get a days US birding sorted somewhere that could be rich pickings. The big Summer trip is likely to be Canada - somewhere the family has decided would be a nice chilly antidote to two years of safaris. Hopefully no "Polar Vortex" in June ! A friend told me we will have to wear "bear bells" to let the bears know we are coming. I am used to being in a vehicle with a guide when there are large "eaty" things about. I guess thats the way forward - getting down on the ground. As if by magic a copy of Sibley on North American birds appeared this Xmas in my stocking. A nice new chunky continent with a few hundred new birds should get some gas in the tank for this year.

Meanwhile one of my clear objectives for 2014 is to log more birds than in 2012 which was the biggest year for the site last year. 2013 was a bit of a damp squib. I got out of the habit of just putting myself out for my birds. It does take an investment of time. Not everything will fall into my lap while on family trips or business trips.

Lesser Whitethroat, Sylvia Curraca
Oman, Hajar Mountains (Near Hatta)
31 December 2013