counting coots

Yep, 67 - that is now the stunning year's total for 2010.  A stunning 4 more more species than last year, and the remainder of October to add to the total.

The Wheatear yesterday was a complete surprise.  Although it was moving with determination southwards, I was lucky enough to see it close in (and without optical aids - naked birding I believe it is called) as it first came past.  That's a Wheatear I said to myself.  Bloody hell, I also thought.

Apropos nothing at all, have a picture of a gull that won't load properly.

If you look at the Birdguides reports of rarities that are knocking about these fair isles, you will occasionally see that there are entries for Yellow Legged Gulls.  That means that they are unusual.  So I should make more of a song and dance about this bird as it is still hanging about in Fulham and seen yesterday.

On Wednesday morning I found the Yellow Legged Gull again so it is looking like it is doing what it normally does and should hang about for a month or so. Which is nice. It briefly showed yesterday lunchtime. That’s the steady bit. The only interest has come from Gulls. I had quite a long look over a flock yesterday lunchtime, and it was quite varied. Black-headed Gulls loafing, including a couple of juvs, there were a few juvenile Herrrings, some of which would be classed as first winter types as well as other summer or winter 'types'. There was also a big 2nd summer GBB, and nearly every variation of LBB on show including a cracking looking 3rd winter type – nice fresh feathers on all but the secondaries. Peachy. Did I say interesting? Well, if you don’t dig gulls it is was pretty boring I guess. Your loss.

While we are on the subject of books, I have two things that I just have to get off my chest. Firstly, The Big Gull Book (which really is brilliant) is a bit disappointing with some of the coverage of argenteus Herring Gulls – it’s really good for argentatus and all the rest but we don’t have them much over here. I just find it disappointing, and a little annoying that a book that is obviously going to sell very well in blighty is a bit light on one of the trickier ID’s and a bit 'Scando-centric'. So there.

Secondly, in that Big Year book about the mad twitchers rare bird enthusiasts, right, the author reckons that Al Levantin (one of the three protagonists) cannot smell. He was evidently an industrial chemist and after many years in the lab his nose packed up. This meant that when he went to a place called Brownsville Dump to look for Tamaulipas Crows (whatever they are) he had a distinct advantage over the other birders because he couldn’t smell the detritus that was attracting the crows. However, earlier in the book he was on a pelagic and could smell the cod liver oil and chum as it went over the side. Now, either he could smell or he couldn’t. Which one is it? How do you expect me to believe all the other tales in the book if you can't tell me if for sure if a mans nose works or not? Eh?  Answer that for me.

There, I feel better already.

Have a picture of some gulls.  On a beach.

After all of last week’s patch tick craziness, it is back to normal. The days roll on, the tide rises and falls, and the same birds fly about a bit when they can be bothered. 

Admittedly I did briefly see a Common Sandpiper again on Monday but that is by far and away the most interesting thing that has happened. There does seem to be a small increase in the amount of Woodpigeons flying through, and yesterday I heard a Robin sing – now that was a novelty. Due to recent reports of a Med Gull in the vicinity, every single gull in the patch has been getting a lot of attention. Normally optics need not be raised to eliminate the flying Black Headed from a Med search, but as most of them are moulting, most of the secondaries are all over the place at the moment so the wing profile is a bit wrong. So I have been birding furiously, but to no avail.


On Sunday I was watching Red Kites. This was very enjoyable. While I was in the area there was a Jackdaw with no tail. When in flight it looked like a small black owl. This also was enjoyable.

Maybe that's over-egging it a bit.  Maybe a mile-pebble.  Or a yard-stone.  I'll explain in a bit.  Firstly, birds...

Like many other London birders yesterday I was hoping for some migrant action yesterday.  Specifically I was hoping for a singing Blackcap and possibly a hirundine.  I failed miserably on both as you might have expected.  There was a brief and excellent view of a male Sparrowhawk which may well be nesting in the same place as last year as the female has been seen intermittently too.  Other than that there was a Black-headed Gull.  Just the one.  And just the once.   The numbers have been steadily going down and now all I am left with is the stragglers.  Of course when the gulls leave the patch for the summer they are replaced by...well nothing actually.  I just lose about 60-70% of the physical numbers of birds which can be annoying when the remainder are in trees or are Coots. 

Believe it or not this is the 300th post on this blog, no honestly.  To mark this rather dubious milestone I've added some more birdy blog links on the birdy blog links on the birdy blog bit on the right.  It includes the excellent Tower 42 project, some patch birders local and not so, an Amurkn and Ray.  My mother thinks Ray is amusing.  I think he's a bit bonkers, in a nice way.  Feel free to make your own mind up...

Here is your utterly relevant picture.

If you are not interested in the finer details of large gull identification, you may as well quit this post now.  Come back tomorrow, there is nothing for you here...

I arrived at the Wandle yesterday, and there were two Lesser Black-backed Gulls (LBB) on a post.  As you may know, the LBB doesn't have a black back unless it is a fuscus fuscus so the more accurate name for it should be Lesser in-the-top-half-of-the-Kodak-gray-scale-chart-backed Gull.  Anyway, it is not uncommon to find slightly different shades on the back of these gulls in this area, and I usually (and sensibly) dismiss them as individual differences, but there was a third bird yesterday that I thought was dark enough to warrant further investigation.  You never know, I might find a continental intermedius on the patch.  So I peered at it for a bit, took some photos, came to no conclusion at all and left. 

Later that day, I pulled out the big scary gull book to see if I had a graellsii or an intermedius.  It was all quite inconclusive as the shades of gray differ and there is a certain amount of interbreeding between the two subspecies.  That was until I stumbled on the killer bit of ID factness.

And there it is, plain to see.

What do you get if you cross a flock of loafing Gulls with two overflying Chinooks?

Dread.  Technically.

I've mentioned the prescence of helicopters in the area before (Battersea Heliport is nearby).  Every so often, a Chinook will use the Thames as a navigation aid as it moves further into the city.  Every so often, there are two together and I have seen three fly over.  And what a bloody racket they make.  Friday lunchtime, two flew over and all the Gulls just freaked right out.  The Herring Gulls seemed to take particular offence to the noise and countered the big noisy flying things by flying around and being noisy for 10 minutes or so.  None of the other birds seemed to mind that much.

I have misidentified gulls.  I think most (if not all) birders have misidentified gulls.  Now if you do happen to have a manky Black-headed on your patch that you have told everyone is a Bonaparte's (just for example) then you can blame your misidentification on radioactive waste.  No really.

Europe's most contaminated industrial site is in Cumbria.  It is called Sellafield. You may know this.   Being near the coast, there are a fair few seabirds around, and being a nuclear installation they produce waste.  Unfortunately these two things combine.  The waste goes into open pools of water for storage, and the gulls go and sit in the pools (because it's what they do) and then they die.  The people at Sellafield then have to store the carcasses as nuclear waste - they are described as 'putrescent', which I like.  They currently have about 350 animal carcasses in a special freezer on site (which I assume is a long way from the catering facilities) which will eventually be put into landfill on site.  What I don't understand about all this is that they haven't covered the pools with some chicken wire or something.  I've done science and stuff and I know that the wire over the pool is not going to glow or dissolve or anything like that, so why not replace the very expensive pest control company with some preventitive measure?

Stick with it dear reader, I'm getting somewhere.   Now I can only assume that not every gull that lands in said pools dies instantly (radiation doesn't work like that) which means that it may have been able to leave the pool, fly off, and if it escapes the hands of the pest controllers it can enter the wider population.  It is here that exposure to radiation can take effect if it breeds as it's progeny might then produce strangeness due to corruption of mytochondria or sperm or ova or whatever else.  What could the effects be?  Primaries without the expected P5 tongue?  Beady eyes? Abnormal carpal bars?  Beaks that are straighter than you might expect? An absence of a prominent gonys?  Yellowy legs?  Super long tibia? 

You get the picture.  Remember this the next time you tell someone that you have found a cracking Larid and are told that it is not a cracking Larid at all and that you are very silly indeed.  It's probably a radioactive bird you can say - you'll be able to get away with anything.  You heard it here first.

Before I stop for today, the the Thing household was in a state of Ren & Stimpy like joy last night as Mrs Thing got some degree results yesterday, and was awarded 80% in her scientific dissertation.  Eighty bloody per cent.  That's officially outstanding.  Good on you kiddo.

That is a complete sentence from a book I was reading last night.  It tickled me.

Not as much as the Kingfisher that I saw by the Wandle yesterday, nor the 7 Linnets that were close by.  I wouldn't have got as close to them as I did if it wasn't for the splendid new path thingy.

On the opposite bank there was a film crew filming some lads in old skool tracksuits playing cricket on concrete near a graffiti splattered wall.   More than likely some minor plot device showing gritty realism that will occur in The Bill in the not too distant future.

I have pictures of dubious quality of all of the above.  Except the book.

Those pictures are on a camera that is several miles from this computer.

So have a picture that would have been better if I had been just a teeny bit further away from the subject.

Ok, that's enough of all this thinking for now, let's catch up on what little has been going on in the patch. 

Birds of note as follows.

Monday.  1 Teal, 10 Gadwall.
Tuesday.  4 Teal (Male), 7 Gadwall, 1 Pintail (Male), Grey Wagtail (patch year tick 43), 12 Chaffinch
Wednesday.  Zilch.

I seemed to have overlooked the staggering event that was the anniversary of the birth of this blog (two weeks ago now).  Yep, this has been going on for a year now, so happy birthday blog.  A teething and needy one year old  problem child with an occasional attitude problem.  But I still kinda like it.

Yes, gulls again.  Look I'd love to be able to tell you all about how mentally bonkers my Wrynecks were or how late the Stone Curlews are - but I can't.  But you know that.  Anyway here is some, er, ornithology.

The Mallards in part of the river spend their mornings (especially at lowish tide levels) sifting through the waters edge to the exclusion of all else.  The Gulls normally just do gull things.  However, yesterday morning there was a Black Headed Gull standing downstream of the Mallards picking off anything that they disturbed.  In a kind of Cattle Egret/Cattle situation.  Occasionally the Mallards took offence to this and tried to bite the gull.  I know that if someone was trying to muscle in on my breakfast, this would be my response that would be observed.

I've never seen this before -  the gulls are usually quite adept at finding enough food for themselves but it might be interesting to see if anymore of them learn this behaviour.  Unless of course they all do it and my observations of gulls has been less than first class.  No chance of that though, eh?

Or as you will perhaps see dear reader, how not to produce scientific data.

A modus operandi of Ornithological failure perhaps...

Go to a different part of the river.
Throw apple core towards random Crow. 
Watch Crow peck at apple.
Get stale bread from pocket.
Throw crumbs towards gulls.
See gulls peck at crumbs.
See Crow abandon apple.
See Crow follow crumbs.
And the gulls with crumbs.
See Common Gull pick up apple core.
See Common Gull drop apple core in river.
Utter word 'bugger' under ones breath.
See Crow leave.
Have no apple left.
Utter word 'arse' under ones breath.
Continue to feed gulls.

I reckon I'll do it in a slightly more controlled way today.

Yesterday in the patch, there was a couple of Jackdaws which is uncommon round here and a Sparrowhawk which was being mobbed by a Carrion Crow.  Peristently.  Interestingly there is an almost identical entry on the London Birders wiki which was much the same for the Westfield Centre.  (For those don't know what the Westfield Centre is you'll love it or hate it.  A shrine to the temple of greed and shopping.  Like a ruddy great Arndale centre pumped Ben Johnson like full of steroids). Unfortunately the time of the W12 sighting has not been entered, but I think that it is entirely feasible that the same birds could have been borough hopping during the course of the day.  If a Crow has got enough food inside it for the rest of the day, I can quite imagine it following a Sparrowhawk for hours, just because it can.

Other than that, it is mainly gulls at the moment.  Suprised aren't you?  Elsewhere, near the attentuation pond it looks like a path is being made.  Whether or not this is going to open for public use yet I don't know but if it does it will make following the river much much easier.

After the excitement of the Brown Shrike on Sunday, yesterday brought me back to the patch, and inevitably not much happened.  However, a salutory lesson in the extreme danger that we can put ourselves in manifested late in the day.  The Starling roost (or as they were not roosting, the Starling murmuration perhaps) was readying itself to go under Wandsworth Bridge.  Flying around.  Nearly landing on stuff.  Getting together.  All that stuff. 

They were nice and low and I could here the little calls that they made to each other and the sound of the air in their wings as several hundred flew over at a time.  Excellent stuff all round thought I.   It is at this point that two of the little darlings defecated on me.  Charming.  As it was my work clothes I wasn't entirely bothered, and as the deposits were almost entirely black the stain that is left resembles a small oil stain, so I can blame it on being in the workshop or something.  Sorted. 

So the lesson is, to avoid extreme wildlife danger don't view Starling flocks/murmurations from underneath.  No - don't thank me - I'm only too happy to spread this kind of information...

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.