counting coots

On the front of the Daily Mirror yesterday there was the inevitable tabloid reaction to a comment by Chris Packham "LET THE PANDAS DIE OUT" it screamed.  Subsequently it seems that he has half heartedly retracted the statement, but not really.  David Bellamy was one of the people that also came out to support the idea.  Lots of folk are saying that he shouldn't have said it and that he is irresponsible.  Yes he should, and no it isn't.

Obviously the intention was stir up debate, but there is good and valid logic inside the argument and largely pragmatic it is too I reckon.  The Panda is evidently the flagship species for conservation, the nonpareil of big endangered animals and thus should never be allowed to become extinct.  Ever.  Even though there isn't enough space for it any more.  It's pretty much doomed.  The same applies to the Tiger I guess.  Yes, there is no space for them anymore because of human activity and I'm not saying that humans have first dibs on everything but by our nature if we just run around breeding with a trail of destruction scattered all around us - there is a certain inevitability to the extinction of many many species.

The problem with conservation now is that the big organisations are based on 50 year old ideologies and tokenistic gestures that started the organisations, but the world has changed.  A lot.  Conservation bodies should be (as Packham says) focus on biodiversity hotspots, as biodiversity as a whole is far more important on a large scale than the protection of some dumb ass bear in China.  They don't have to do anything with the land, but buying it and stopping it being built on is good enough isn't it?

I doubt very much if this whole argument will change anything in the short term, the sun has yet to set on the wild Panda that much is sure.  But give it a decade or two and the consensus will be that we should have spent the money on rainforest instead.

Eleonora’s Falcon, Glossy Ibis, Yellow Browned Warbler, Spotted Crake, Buzzards, Harriers and Kites. All seen fairly local to here in the last day or so, power to the finders’ elbows and all that. Autumn is now in full flow.


So what is happening in Fulham? Well funny you should ask, I can tell you that the Mallard count was up to 52 on the river yesterday. Belting eh?


Here’s something new though.


As I've mentioned before, the Thames and its tributaries do have a fair bit of rubbish chucked into them – some of it just moves down and/or up stream. Some just sits in the mud and gets exposed a couple times a day. The ‘tutting’ list that I have in my head (I see it float by, I tut) has so far not included a handbag.


But now it does.

The weekend was dominated (ornithogically) by Little Owl, Yellow Wagtail, Red Kite, Goldcrest and Great Spotted Woodpecker.

The Owl and Kite for obvious reasons, the Yellow Wagtail was a London tick but perhaps most significantly the latter two.  Reader, in the space of 5 minutes on Saturday I picked up two Loo ticks, yes two.  There was a fair size flock of tits roaming around, with Goldfinches and Chaffinches and tagging along with them was a Goldcrest, which was nice.  While pondering on how nice this was, a Great Spotted Woodpecker entered stage left and landed in a tree.  Double nice.

No post would be complete without a picture, so here is a picture of a post.

We are an excitable lot aren't we?  The interweb has gone bonkers for Tufted Puffins.  Hardly suprising really.  Flippantly many London birders (including myself) stated that they would be staking out the Thames as the bird in Kent had been seen flying west (which is right up the mouth of the river for those with minimal geographical awareness), and I suspect that many would be checking out the river a little more intently than usual if they see it during the commute.  I cannot claim to be any different, I had a few minutes outside this morning and there were plenty of birds on the river.  Many of them were mainly dark, and some had white bits on them.  No matter how hard I looked at them they all seemed to steadfastly remain as Cormorants and Grebes. 

Until there was something dark in the distance.  Just moving round a bend in the river.  It dived, and was not like anything I had seen in the last couple of weeks here, nor anything that could be expected in that part of the river really.  Could it be?  Could it?

Yes it could.

Indeed.  They are Common Gulls, they are not Mew Gulls.  They are called Common Gulls because they have a habit of congregating on commons in the winter.  They are not called Mew Gulls because their call sounds nothing like anything that even vaguely looks like a fucking cat.

Here’s the science bit. To produce the incredible images that you see in this netblog, there are certain settings that need to be used on the camera, ISO speed, white balance, macro etc. The key however is NO ZOOM. This means vignetting occurs on every image which can be removed post production. The original adaptor did keep the lens front about 1.5mm from the lens which was not ideal. The new adaptor has rectified this.

Example one.

A gull doing looking with some vignetting.

Example two.

A different gull doing looking with less vignetting.

This incredible advance in digimonning is already producing photography of such an amazing standard, that it frankly beggars belief.

And then there was the Thames' interpretation of Dali's Persistence Of Memory.

No, not many birds yesterday.

A Common Gull doing passing through.

Hot on the heels of the last common juvenile bird, here comes another common juvenile bird, that is essentially rare on this patch.

The background is thus. Last year there was a small success with breeding of Great Crested Grebes, in that they raised one chick. This bird hung around with the resident pair for most of the winter until it was chased out of the patch. This year the breeding has been an unmitigated failure. In spring there was all that head wobbling and bobbing and the occasional bit of weed grabbing. All this courtship led to a nest on one of the few platforms that were available.

Which a pair of Swans commandeered.

The Grebes had a stab at a second nest after the Swan nest failed (you still with me?). This was however, pretty half hearted, and for the last month or so, all they have really done is feed up on high tide and then sleep it up on the Thames for the rest of the day.

So it was quite pleasing to find a juvenile at lunchtime. When I saw it in the distance initially I was hoping for something more exotic. But should have known better, as should you.

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Last night. And it was about a Med Gull, on my patch. It flew around, and then it landed. I shouted 'it landed!'. I got my optics on it and noticed that it had a ring on it. 'Bonus' I thought in my dream state. The ring then got really long and turned into other tubular things on it's leg and then the dream got reeeeaaalllly wierd.

I suspect that the more sarcaaastic and erudite readers are tempted to put on their best Freudian accent "Hmmm, dreamz eh? Tell me about your muzzer"

Well I'll tell you about my mother.

Yesterday was quite unusual on the patch dear reader, as there were actually some interesting birds. No, honestly, there was.

First thing in the morning there were two Swallows flying through. Very nice. And then a Grey Wagtail showed up. Since the successful breeding of this species earlier in the year they left, which makes me think that the habitat in the area is only just good enough to sustain a pair. They'll probably be back in the winter, so maybe they've just gone to the Wetland Centre to get fat for the winter.

Lunchtime was good too. On the Wandle there were two Kingfishers which flew downstream and onto the Thames, they flew directly over the attenuation ponds (remember them?) which makes them by far the most interesting species to 'use' the area. And then there was this.

It is not unusual for the 'wild' spaces that we treasure to be multi functional, especially here in the big smoke. A place like the Brent Reservoir is not only used by birds and birders, but is home to lots of blue green algae and a sailing club. There is an unwritten rule (or perhaps it is written - I'm happy to be corrected) that says that the birds stay by the hides and the boats stay at the other end. Birds and boats don't mix kids!

Once in a while an invader from one side of the divide intrudes into the other side.



And sometimes they invade a little further than they intended. Or perhaps they really did intend to scare every bloody bird on the marsh - for a laugh. Or maybe they were rubbish at steering a boat.



This invasion did indeed freak out a lot of birds, and yes, the sight of a few hundred coots running across the water in an orc like charge was quite amusing.




But it did flush out the Little Egret. Which was nice. But I couldn't find the Black Necked Grebe afterwards. Which was not.

A Little Egret doing a bit spooked.