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

297 : White-throated Robin

White-throated Robin - Irania gutturalis

I am not a good birder because I don't get my backside out of bed to walk a local patch for 20 minutes each morning just to see what is about. I am reading a book called "A Patch Made in Heaven" by Dominic Cousins about the joy of birding a single small, say square kilometre, and recording what turns up, moves through, breeds and so on. That level of focus on a single space forces you to concentrate on detail to stay interested - behaviour, numbers, oddities, patterns. Its time as ever. My routine involves getting up at 6 am - or not ! -  bit of news and facebook catch up - 6.30 am we have a new commitment to sit at the table together for breakfast - 7 am I do the school run for one of our boys to Dubai College -  I get back about 7.20 am and then write this blog - then its the gym for 30-40 minutes to try and lose some weight and then its work - trying to arrive before 9 am and then I am straight through until perhaps 7 pm on most days. I could I guess write this blog in the evening and perhaps try and stop at a patch on the way back from school drop for say 20 minutes ? Its a plan - but I am not sure I could get wedded to a patch of scrub in Dubai - a local park ? a desert edge. There might be a compromise in there with a patch watch 2 or 3 times a week. Its a thought for the New Year as I run out of bird pictures to post !

Back to Oman - my patch is the World for The Task ! For 2 mornings my local patch was a series of dry valleys (with evidence of running water at times) up from our camp site nestled in the Hajar mountains. Some robin like birds were defying any identification - flitting between bushes and boulders and feeding on the ground mostly. They were localised to a small valley and seem to operate as a small flock.

I have never had to share a patch with a camel before - the chomping noise at times was off-putting. I don't understand whether camels are entirely benign or perhaps a bit risky to be around so I tried to give this one a wide berth !

I have worked hard at the identification since the New Year and I think this is the Winter plumage or Juvenile (first Winter) plumage for White-throated Robin. Other likely candidates fall short so it is as much a process of elimination as anything. The throat, eye pattern and general shape and behaviour put this as a "robin" for me. I reserve the right to amend the identification if it is pulled up but it is the result of a good 2 hours of bookwork.

A lot can depend on how a bird is sitting, in shade or catching the sun. The warmth or otherwise of plumage varies considerably (this is the same bird and all of the warmer reddy brown tones are missing because of the light).

The same light that played on the mountains right through the day producing a fabulous backdrop to these small birds.

Now with an interlude for work emails, a longer blog, no visit to the gym my daily boot up has gone right off schedule ! Still its January 7th and I have logged up 6 birds so the Daily Bird is almost living up to its name.

White-throated Robin, Irania gutturalis
Oman, Hajar Mountains
30 December 2013 -1 January 2014

296 : Blue Tit

Blue Tit - Cyanistes caeruleus

I am not sure how I got to bird number 296 without posting up a Blue Tit. Well we don't have them in Dubai for starters so I was always waiting to get a shot in the UK while on a trip. Or perhaps I was saving this one up as they are "always there". For most people in Europe these are a common or garden bird - but unlike say a starling or a pigeon generally appreciated because of their beautiful appearance. There are over 25,000,000 pairs across Europe. 

It is the Blue Tits ability to utilise every conceivable nesting opportunity created by man that has underpinned that success. Postboxes get closed, old containers on shelfs in garages overrun, crevices in brickwork or eaves of houses colonised. Despite their ingenuity we still help them with an estimated 4 million nest boxes in British gardens. Breeding takes places usually on a timed basis for the appearance of the small soft green caterpillars that in turn appear with the first flushes of bright green on native trees. Silver Birches are a favourite from my observation as well as native oaks and indeed any native species of tree supporting native insects. They are of course well used to exploiting bird feeders - the importance of which had increased dramatically. Breeding is usually around a polygamous male who holds a small territory with perhaps 2 or 3 females. Broods vary from 6-16 eggs and dependant on the year a couple of broods can be fledged. 

In the Winter the birds will gather in large and often mixed flocks. A favourite wood of mine when I lived in the North West consisted of damp ground in the Winter and silver birch and alder. The wood would often hold a mixed Winter feeding flock with blue, great and coal tit, nuthatch, treecreeper, goldcrest and if I was super lucky a lesser spotted woodpecker. All gathered together for security. The more pairs of eyes to spot a marauding Sparrowhawk the better Always look at a tit flock in Winter. Don't stop at the third blue tit and scan from the bottom of the tree to the top. You never know what you will find but as you get to the canopy you may find blue tits like christmas baubles hanging off the branches - so many acrobats in a small brightly coloured troupe. 

I was looking at a piece about blue tit nesting habits and have just read a piece about a blue tit nesting in the skull of a decomposed hanged man in medieval times ! Nice ! They really are wedded to us. 

Blue Tit, Cyanistes caeruleus 

Conwy RSPB, North Wales

Boxing Day 

295 : Brown-necked Raven

Brown-necked Raven - Corvus ruficollis

I will really need to come back and post better.

Camping again at New Year again, a pair of Brown-necked Ravens would come and circle the camp first thing in the morning while I was boiling water to make the tea. You would hear them before you saw them - their deep rolling croaks echoing off of the canyon walls. I thought they were remarkably nosy ! They really did check out what we were doing each day but I guess they were looking for scraps of food.

These are a slightly smaller Raven than the Common Raven in the North - still sporting the cruciform look and the diamond shaped tale but perhaps 20 % smaller. The Common Raven gets down as far as Southern Iraq but not really into the Arabian Peninsula proper. So another life tick.

I will hunt some down and get a better picture soon !

Oman, Hajar Mountains
30 December 2013

294 : Scrub Warbler

Scrub Warbler - Scotocerca inquieta 

On the final morning of camping in Oman we went on a big looped walk around a series of valleys. I fell back on one occasion to try and get some pictures of a buzzing small warbler that reminded me of a Graceful Prinia. It had a similar shape and a cocking tail but a bright orange tail, a pale supercilium (stripe above the eye) and a darker stripe through the eye. It also had some light streaking on the breast and a warmer colouring on the sides of its breast and flanks.

Like so many new birds the identification escaped me until I was back in Dubai with my books but turned out to be quite simple.

A life tick but probably quite a common bird in the region.

Definitely a characterful bird to end the camping trip with.

All sorts of resolutions were made this weekend including pushing the Daily Bird through 300 and on to 400 as quickly as possible. The 300 celebration should chalk up this week inshalla and the retrospective. 2 1/2 years of the Daily Bird and 300 mostly new birds chalked up is an achievement even if a slow one.

Scrub Warbler, Scotocerca inquieta
Oman, Hajar Mountains
5 January 2013

293 : Rusty-tailed Wheatear

Rusty-tailed Wheatear - Oenanthe chrysopygia

Another shot from New Year's camping in Oman. After quite a bit of book work I am settling on Rusty-tailed Wheatear. These birds are supposed to overwinter in Oman, South Iran and the UAE. They are therefore in Winter plumage which is never going to be as bright as their Summer outfits. I have had a good trawl through the Wheatear section of Birds of the Western Paleartic ("BWP") which has some great wheatear diagnostic plates. There is a species split from Red-tailed Wheatear or Chestnut-rumped Wheatear depending on what naming system you use -  the ''xanthoprrymna". These birds were not quite on the mark for the original species and a lot of bookwork throws up the species split. You can see a lot more of the rusty red colour in the rump etc. on this shot. I think this is a female bird.

Some of my textbooks have this as a separate species and some not - my online "HBW" does and that far more up to date that Birds of the Middle East or BWP.

These birds were feeding mostly on the ground and then zipping along and up onto low branches of the acacia and Ghaf trees scattered over the hill side. Most of the time it was hard to make out any detail due to the bleaching out effect of the strong sun. It was nice to get back to tricky birds and scrabbling through rocks and a little bit of patience in getting the shots - even if they are slightly blurred. They were taken on the 1-400m at some distance at times. The monopole would have been a welcome addition to the kit that came along.

Two days in the Hajar mountains was a real shot in the arm even if its a lot of work packing and unpacking etc. to camp. The peace and stillness is a real antidote to Dubai. I watched the firworks on the television when I got back but this New Year I was happy to substitute a good sunset - I was in bed by 10.30 pm on 31st. I haven't done that for quite a few years ! The sunset on the 30 th was lovely.

This was the final view of the sun on 31 December 2013 for me.

Rusty-tailed Wheatear, Oeanthe Chrsopygia
30/31 December 2013 and 1 January 2014
Hajar Mountains, Oman

292 : White-eyed Bulbul

White-eyed Bulbul - Pycnonotus xanthopygos

The start of a New Year for the Task and we head off to Oman where I caught with a few new bird species while camping for a couple of nights in the Hajar mountain range. The loveliest thing about camping is that you are bound to wake up early wanting to leave the tent and then buzzing all around you are usually birds on tap. I almost didn't give this Bulbul a second look and then noticed something slightly different about it - no white panel on the cheek. I am used to seeing White-cheeked (Himalayan) and Red-vented in abundance just outside my patio doors in Dubai.

From our campsite which was lovely and off the beaten track I took a stroll up a dry valley which probably floods every so often at about 7 am. The sun was just clearing the mountains. Great big crags of some sort of sandstones or other deposited materials heaved up into all kinds of weird and wonderful shapes. Really stunning in different lights.

I have a number of shots of birds that I haven't yet identified. My online Handbook of the Birds of the World is proving very useful. A new Bulbul to kick off a new year.

Oman, Hajar Mountains
31 December 2013