counting coots

The putative Willet by Wandsworth Bridge from yesterday will go unsubmitted as I forgot my camera yesterday, so even if I had found something rare or photogenic there was no way of recording it. I did manage to glimpse a Little Grebe and a Grey Wagtail, but it was a largely uneventful day bird wise.

There is a Dunnock that has found it's voice as the light rises (well I can hardly describe it as the sun coming up these days) and it is improvising - if I didn't know that it was the only singing passerine in the area, I'd be hunting it down to find out what it was with the inevitable 'oh, it's a Dunnock'. Good sounding healthy bird though.

So lets have another bizarre bird name readers!

Following on from yesterday, there are other species that begin with 'Mrs' - Mrs Swinhoe's Sunbird, Mrs Gould's Sunbird, Mrs Sage's Blood Pheasant (sounds like a Fanny Craddock recipe) and Mrs Vernay's (I think) Blood Pheasant, but they are not pressing my humour button.

Today's offering is possibly the most convoluted one I could find and the least field friendly - as soon as the first cry of identification goes up everyone will look to the sky for an eagle and by the time you've finished naming it the bloody thing will have gone back into the scrub that it came from....

Verreaux's Grey-headed Puffback Flycatcher Batis minima.

Stick that one on your pager suckers!

The irony of the binomial in the Latin name is not lost...