Not Just Gulls

OK, what I am about to write here could be seen in some quarters as sacrilege, or, in others, a sophisticated and convoluted means of aiming a wrecking ball at my own credibility. I assure anyone who may read this that neither is the case. In birding circles, while there is an acknowledgement that mistakes can be, and are, made, and that (at least in theory) everyone is always learning, it is also true that it can be a cut-throat world, where honest to goodness errors of judgement can be held against someone, or people go around scared of even offering opinions lest they be proven wrong and this to damage their reputations. Now, reputation is important, to an extent. It's what makes birders go and twitch one's rare bird claims even before seeing documentary evidence or sussing the details out. And I am not advocating that anyone should just decide to throw away a solid reputation out of sheer devilment. But I wonder if it is time that us birders ask the daring question: if pr

When I visited Spurn back in May, I recall being told that an Iberian Chiffchaff in Lancashire was still lingering. I was unable to divert to the site before getting a train from Preston on my way back, however, and I soon forgot about this bird, assuming that it had departed. I was woken out of this facile assumption, however, on the morning of Monday 3rd June, when I saw a post on social media linking to a blog post about someone having seen the bird the weekend just gone. At that stage, I had made plans to visit my friend Seán Ronayne in Catalunya for the coming weekend, so I started to peruse train and bus timetables online and see if I could divert on my way to Manchester Airport. As this proved feasible, I made the necessary arrangements, and eagerly got a bus from Lancaster to Pilling early on the morning of 7th June. The bus passed directly by the amenity area where this Iberian Chiffchaff has been holding territory, and, indeed, within 2 minutes or less of being dropped off,

The concept of mimicry within the vocabulary of certain birds is something that is ingrained within most human beings from a very young age. We've all grown up with talking parrots on film and TV, at least, and, beyond that, those who watch wildlife documentaries will know of a few others, especially the rightly famous footage of a Superb Lyrebird captured by BBC cameras some years ago. In terms of more 'local' birds for those of us living in Europe, those among us who become birders quickly become familiar with a few breeding birds which are quite adept at copying sounds. Common Starlings, for one thing, regularly include mimicry within their otherwise disjointed songs: given that mynas are starlings, this is hardly too surprising. Marsh Warbler, also, is famous for its mimicry, to the extent that, in areas where this species is scarce to rare and Reed Warblers are common, any mimetic unstreaked Acrocephalus  will attract attention. And Marsh Warblers are extremely mim

In spite of having owned this book for just over a week, it is only in the last day or two that I have engaged in depth with it. First impressions, naturally, are that this is a very impressive and in-depth work, it looks great and the majority of images used range from very good to excellent, as one might expect in this day and age of quality digital cameras. The majority of taxa mentioned in the text are represented by at least one image, though some (including such a familiar bird to me as  hibernicus  Coal Tit) are merely described. That said, concentrating merely on the 'superficial' (not that I'd describe anything about this book as superficial), it would be possible to be 'blinded with science'.      Despite all the nice images, however, a book such as this stands or falls on the quality of the information contained within. As is to be expected given the authors, ageing and sexing are dealt with thoroughly and authoritatively, complementing Svensson's 

OK, for want of something topical to post, allow me to present a few images of juvenile and 1st-winter michahellis  type Yellow-legged Gulls taken here in Ireland. Even when greater concentrations of gulls were found at various rubbish tips throughout Ireland, and when Yellow-legged Gulls seemed easier to find as a result, it seemed that both juveniles in late summer/early autumn and 1st-winters remaining to overwinter were unaccountably rare in Ireland compared to other age classes. When one considers that juveniles make up a large proportion of the late summer influx to other north-western European countries, it does seem strange that the same should not be the case here. Now, of course, the low observer numbers in Ireland, and even lower number of dedicated larophiles, can't help the situation, especially as birds of these age classes are more difficult to pick up in the first place than adult types. But those of us who were watching gulls intently rarely seemed to find them ei