Bird Watching November 2012

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Your birding

birding in numbers what’s

month 9047 When, where and how to see more birds

The number of species seen by British ultra-lister Tom Gullick, 81, who has now decided that his twitching days are over. See page 14 for the full story.

fieldcraft

Basic gull aging expertise is to understand the different age groupings so at least we can all squawk from the same gull hymn sheet. The first rule is that, in general, the smaller the gull the fewer years it takes to reach maturity. Little or Black-headed Gulls only take a couple of years to reach adult plumage, while larger gulls may take five years. Juvenile plumage is usually the muckiest, brownest, greyest, scaliest plumage, followed by these stages:

The winter period sees the emergence of large numbers of hardcore gull enthusiasts, crowding around monstrous municipal dumps or visiting freezing ugly reservoirs where gulls come to roost. Gulls are without doubt among the most challenging groups of birds to get to grips with. But for the dedicated larophile, there is nothing like a day trying to pick out a rare gull from the hideous mass of noisy brutes. The first step on the slippery slope to gull

Neil Hardwick (Alamy)

Kit Day (Alamy)

First-winter Mediterranean Gull

First-summer Mediterranean Gull

in a name?

Fulmar The Fulmar is our most widely distributed tubenose, found all round our coasts, with a breeding population of more than half a million pairs. Though gull-like in plumage, it is a petrel, betrayed by its stiff-winged flight and ‘tube-nosed’ bill, which combined with the shaded dark eye gives it the appearance of a mini-albatross. The name derives from Old Norse, with ‘full’ meaning foul and ‘mar’ meaning gull. This comes from their habit of defending the nest by the projectile vomiting of fishy/oily stomach contents.

birding top ten Comedians

First-summer: Most first-summer gulls resemble first-winters, and they are best told from

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6 Bird Watching 2012

first-winter birds by their head patterns (which may be clean white or black-hooded depending on the species). Second-winter: The wings and tail are moulted along with the body feathers to produce a progressively more adult look. In Little Gulls or Mediterranean Gulls, for instance, this looks like the adult plumage, but a few

3

FLPA (Alamy)

First-winter: After a partial moult in the late summer or autumn, the body and head get a cleaner look, with whiter underparts and greyer upperparts, but the tail and flight feathers are retained from the juvenile plumage.

1

Alan Williams

Second-summer Mediterranean Gull

Adult winter Mediterranean Gull

black feathers still occur in the primaries (clean white in adults). In larger gulls such as Herring Gulls, there is much more grey in the mantle (though with browner wing coverts), the spread wings are generally paler and the bill starts to be paler with a dark band near the tip. In white-winged gulls, this plumage can be very pale accompanied by the pale

eyes typical of older birds. Third-winter, fourth-winter etc Smaller gulls are adults by this age, but larger gulls progressively become more like adults, with fewer odd dark feathers betraying their immaturity, and usually few if any white mirrors in the wing tips. The bill usually has a dark tip and lacks the clean yellow and red of an adult bill.

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1. Dudley Moorhen 2. Peter Cuckoo 3. Graham Garden Warbler 4. Ronnie Corvid 5. Sarah Pelican 6. Eric Shrikes 7. Frank Skimmer 8. Russell Brant 9. Griffon Rheas Jones 10. Peter Serinfinowicz Thanks to Margaret Heaton, John Hague, Steve Boyce, Brian Clews and everyone else who took part. Next time, we want your birding American politicans, such as Franklin D Gooseveld and Abe Bobolinkoln. Email your puns to birdwatching@ bauermedia.co.uk


Your birding

month

4 for the list November is the end of autumn and the beginning of the cold months of winter. Though October has been and gone, bird movement never really stops and there is always potential to pick up something interesting passing through. Here are four desirable scarce birds to search for. They may not be at a site near you, but they will be somewhere in the country. Go looking! Mike Lane (Alamy)

FLPA (Alamy)

Slavonian Grebe

Shore Lark This very attractive black-and-yellow-faced lark is essentially a shore creeper, picking up morsels on shingle or sandy beaches. They are generally scarce winter visitors, but in good years could number hundreds. They are mainly an east coast speciality, but a few find their way inland on occasion. One or two north Norfolk sites (eg Salthouse and Holkham Gap) are renowned for them.

This small grebe is a very rare breeder in the Highlands, with fewer than 50 pairs on inland lochs each year. Numbers are boosted in winter, though it is still quite scarce, with only about 1,000 individuals around the coast. Winter birds are black and white and look similar to Black-necked Grebes. Largest concentrations are in areas such as the Moray Firth and the Firth of Forth and southern sites such as off Pagham Harbour, West Sussex.

These tiny swimming waders are essentially Arctic breeders which winter far out in the open sea, picking morsels from the water surface. Each year, though, birds get relocated by storms which drive them to the coasts and to some inland sites. Usually, only a few hundred are recorded in a good year. Storm-driven birds can turn up just about anywhere. Look for a Dunlin-sized, pale grey and white bird with a black mask swimming or picking rapidly on a shoreline.

David Chapman

Mike Read (Alamy)

Grey Phalarope

Cattle Egret The last decade or so has seen a marked increase in previously very scarce heron species. This has led to the recent confirmed breeding of Great White Egret, Purple Heron, Little Bittern and of course Cattle Egret. The latter species has become almost an expected visitor in small numbers across the country instead of the substantial rarity it once was. They are slightly smaller and chunkier than Little Egrets, with obvious bright yellow-orange bills. They are nearly always seen in fields with cattle or horses. birdwatching.co.uk 7




little owl

EvEryday Exotics They’ve become a part of the British landscape, but Little Owls have been struggling. Luke Massey watched them bouncing back ittle Owls occupy a unique place in the birdlife of Britain. Introduced from the Continent only in the 19th Century, they’ve escaped the bad press which most nonnative species get, seemingly managing to occupy a hitherto unfilled niche in our natural world. The fact that they’re highly photogenic probably helps, too – the ‘frowning’ expression on their faces, and their habit of bobbing up and down when alarmed both create a rather comic impression. In recent years, though, they’ve been in decline – Breeding Bird Survey data suggests that the UK population reduced by

L

24% between 1995 and 2008. Loss of habitat, particularly the scrubby hedges, orchards and copses that they like, may be largely to blame, although a lack of large insect food may be significant, too (although they do also eat small mammals and birds, their diet is often largely made up of beetles and worms). Given that, and the poor breeding season suffered by many species this year because of the wet, cold summer we had, it’s heartening to hear any tale of breeding success, and young Hertfordshire photographer Luke Massey has exactly that to tell.

LittLE owL FactFiLE Scientific name: athene noctua Where to find them: england and Wales, mainly (they are most common in central, southern and south-eastern england, plus the Welsh borders), with small numbers in southern Scotland. 34 Bird Watching 2012

they like lowland farmland, with hedges and copses, parkland and orchards. When to See them: Year-round. they’re most active at dawn and dusk. diet: Beetles and other large insects, worms, small mammals and birds.


little owl

birdwatching.co.uk 35


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