Your birding
birding in numbers
40 month
million
The number of Starlings which have disappeared from the European Union (including the UK) since 1980. The species was added to the Red List in 2002.
When, where and how to see more birds
fieldcraft
Setting up your binoculars – the basics Many novice birdwatchers haven’t a clue how best to use their binoculars, so here is a point-bypoint guide to basic binocular set-up and use. Twist or pull the eyecups until you get a wide field of view and no black bits coming into view (vignetting). If you wear glasses, eyecups are best shortened to the minimum. While looking through the binoculars, fold/unfold the barrels until you have a single, circular field of view (not a ‘movie’ two barrel effect). Set the dioptre (setting to compensate for differences between the strength of your eyes) by covering one eye, looking through the other and focusing on a fixed middleclose distance object using the centre focus. Then cover the other eye and use the dioptre adjuster to focus on the same object. Both eyes should now match. Look at your subject with your naked eyes, then while still looking straight at it, lift the binoculars to your eyes. The subject should be still in the centre of the view.
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Check the sunny side first
6 Bird Watching 2012
Nigel Blake
In late summer, warblers and flycatchers may gather to feed up prior to migration, and you can get mixed flocks of Phylloscopus and Sylvia warblers gathered around patches of blackberries or insect-rich hedges or trees, feeding together. Getting up early is a good idea, particularly on sunny mornings. Be at favoured sites as the sun rises and watch the side that faces the sun. Birds may bask in the warming beams, but will also feed on insects warmed by the early sunshine.
Time in equals birds out This is an adage many top birdfinders follow. It means, the more time you spend in the field, the more birds you will find and see, or the more you will get out of the experience. Stay at home staring at the TV or computer screen and you are missing an opportunity to go and find birds, so get out there!
Find a birding walk near you in Go Birding, starting on page 51
jargon buster Suppression With the possible exception of stringing (telling tall tales about birds you’ve seen), no greater stigma is attached to a birding term than ‘suppression’ – keeping information about a bird secret. Birders from certain areas of the country have acquired reputations as suppressors, tarnishing whole region’s birding communities. These include, for example, certain areas of Norfolk, Kent and Cornwall. Indeed, the suppression of a long-staying Semipalmated Plover in Cornwall was one of the major causes of overheating of the last couple of years. Suppression can be a result of keeping a sensitive breeding bird secret, or protecting habitat from invading twitchers. What riles birders most is when it is perceived to be done in order to keep a bird unseen for selfish ticking, blocking and one-upmanship.
birding top ten Ice creams and lollies 1 Rum ‘n’ Raven 2 Twitey Fritey 3 Choc Iceland Gull 4 Cornetto Bunting 5 Swallero 6 Minivet Milk 7 Smewball 8 Craked Owlaska 9 Mr Swifty 10 Wren and Jenny’s
Your birding
month
4 for the list Zoonar GmBH (Alamy)
David Tipling (Alamy)
Ruff
Lesser Whitethroat
Ruffs are traps for the unwary. They have extremely variable plumage and bill and leg colours, a situation exacerbated by the huge size difference between the larger males and the females. In late summer into autumn, juveniles (above) present new confusion: being neatly patterned and golden, drawing the unitiated towards Buff-breasted Sandpiper and Pectoral Sandpiper. Watch them, learn them, enjoy them.
During the spring, Lesser Whitethroats are very unobtrusive, often only giving brief glimpses as they pass from bush to bush within large dense hedges. Come the late summer, and juveniles as well as adults emerge from the woodwork and seek blackberries or other fruits to supplement insect food to fatten upward for migration. This is the best time to seek our most grey (but still attractive) Sylvia warbler. David Tipling (Alamy)
Steve Round (Alamy)
Wood Warbler
Honey Buzzard
Arguably our most beautiful breeding warbler, the bright green, yellow and white colours of the Wood Warbler make even late summer’s bright yellow Willow Warblers look a little downmarket. Combined with super-long elegant wings, the whole is a very pleasing little bird. Wood Warblers are birds of western woodlands, but appear in small numbers on passage in late summer and can turn up in mixed warbler feeding flocks.
One of the great prizes for those of us who love skywatching for migrating raptors. Though there is confusion with Buzzard, a well-seen Honey Buzzard is quite a distinctive bird. The wings and tail are long, with bulging secondaries, the head is small and the pattern of the underwing and tail diagnostic. Perhaps even more distinctive is the flight style, with gliding wings ‘forced’ downwards and forwards, not held in a V, and with deep, lazy wingbeats. birdwatching.co.uk 7
corn bunting
Corn Bunting with dangling legs – what’s that all about, then?
Watch a singing male, then see what happens when he flies off
Alan Williams
The dangling is one of those bird displays that we overlook because it doesn’t look like a display. When a Woodpigeon lands and raises its tail and drops it slowly it would seem to be balancing itself, while in fact it is confirming its presence to all around. Similarly, the Corn Bunting could, perhaps, just be neglecting to raise its undercarriage until well airborne, but no. Instead the dangling is a display of presence and possibly dominance. Only a territory-holder performs it, and it is always intentional. Once we are aware that it is a territorial tic, all kinds of assumptions come on stream. Presumably, some males dangle their legs in display more often than others, or perhaps they even do it better, with greater allure? Certainly the songs of individual Corn Buntings vary, so presumably the accompaniment is similarly changeable, although nobody has yet quantified it for this species. One thing that the scientists have quantified, though, is that certain male Corn Buntings are very much better in quality than others, and their breeding stats exhibit this in quite spectacular fashion. What has raised eyebrows as much as anything else is the high disparity between success and failure seen among different male Corn
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