Thursday, August 26, 2010
I’m going to miss a website. As the website is not closing that may sound a bit strange, but I will miss it because it will cease to be entirely relevant to my new patch and I will have little cause to read it.
The website is the Londonbirders Wiki.
You may think that as London is a generally a more frosty place to live on an interpersonal level that you would have more coherence amongst birders in the idyllic flatlands of Norfolk than you do in London. It is my opinion that the reverse is true. Londonbirders seem to be able to work better as a unit in spite of the difficulties that the city presents whereas the individuals in the Norfolk birding scene don’t seem to be able to get it together to maintain a project as good as the wiki, which is a pity. They have yahoo groups and what not but they don’t seem to be able to unite behind a common technowebical cause. As far as I know the most popular venue for discussion is a thread on Birdforum that is as long as it is chaotic, and I’m willing to be corrected. Yes, it is true that the Londonbirders mail group does have the odd barny, and a certain Mr Evans of the parish of Amersham has been, erm ‘deselected’ but that was a rarity. I suppose it could be that Norfolk birders are all out in the field seeing birds, and London birders are all keeping the interweb up to date rather than doing their employers will. Something that I would obviously have no truck with. No that would be very naughty indeed. The nub of my point is that the birders in London have got all this interweb thing all sorted and have an excellent resource. I will miss it.
Meanwhile in another land, a listers list is listed.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Eight miles. Two hours. Average speed 4mph. Not good.
Rather than listen to the traffic reports, which were basically bad mixed with very bad and an extra portion of bad thrown in, and sit there in a state of frustration and ire I turned the experience on it's head - turned the radio off, flicked a finger at fate and the RMT and turned the journey into a Bird Race! That's right kids - how many species can I see in the eight mile slog around west London's leafy suburbs? For those with an ornithological bent, it was basically one loooong transect.
And guess what? It didn't half make the journey more pleasurable. I started to look at specific habitat to try and pick up specific species and found myself trying to predict what I was going to see next as certain areas came into view.
I've got a green in about half a mile, might pick up a Pied Wag, got Blackbird, maybe a Mistle Thrush? Seen them round here before. Ok bridge - check the water! Greeeeeebe! etc
I had a couple of unexpecteds, and missed a few that I hoped for - never in my life have I looked so hard for a Blue Tit - and been so disappointed to not find one.
For the record here's the list.
Cormorant
Mallard
Wren - heard
Carrion Crow
Robin - heard
Herring Gull
Greenfinch - heard
Ring Necked Parakeet
Jackdaw
Blackcap - singing (nice tick)
Magpie
Swift
Blackbird
Coot (there had to be really)
Canada Goose
Feral Pigeon
Starling
Pied Wagtail
House Sparrow
Wood Pigeon
Chaffinch
Great Tit
LBBG
Grey Heron
Great Crested Grebe
Mute Swan
Crossbill
I didn't get the expected Blue Tit, Song or Mistle Thrush, Collared Dove, Dunnock or Goldfinch.
As the strike continues tonight, I shall take the same route and try and beat this score but to be perfectly honest, I'd rather get home in good time and not have time to look at the birds.
Ok, I lied about the Crossbill.
Nice, huh?
Friday, March 27, 2009
Yesterday was the day that all the passage birds came through my patch, and it will continue again today. The fly through Osprey, the Boney knocking about with the last of the Black Heads, the first singing Chiffchaff and of course the over shot Hoopoe. I know this will have happened because I didn't get out yesterday and nor will I today (thanks to the supervision of the removal of an RSJ yesterdayand a bidness lunch today).
So instead of an idiosynchratic take on what I have seen in the last 24 hours, have some pictures of a Heron from earlier in the week. My field craft was so awesome in my approach to this one, that I totally freaked out a bloke reading the paper in a quiet spot that he thought I was a wierd stalker and promptly upped sticks and farked orph.
They have been taken with my perhaps unique technique of Digi-monocularising™, or Digimonning™. This technique involves sticking the camera at the end of a monocular and taking two hundred photos in the hope that one is half decent.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Some of the more long standing, avid, or perhaps even dedicated readers of this blog might, perchance, remember me moaning (no shit, honestly) about the lack of irruptives in my life this winter and I presented to you the waxwing bush...
... which still has a berry on it, hope is not lost.
Well today I offer you another stunning area of habitat in my humble patch. Considering the inner city location of my patch this large, nay vast, area of reedbed is quite remarkable, and an asset to the local biodiversity - rivalling anything that the wonders of Norfolk can provide.
It is of course not yet the home to a resident population of Bearded Tits (yes, Tits - not bearded bloody reedlings), but I have great hopes for it. There is enough space for a booming bittern to hide itself, and there are plenty of rats here, so a Short Eared Owl may pass by just after the Marsh Harrier worries the Corncrake. If you look hard at the picture you can see, through the dense stems, the resident ducks, and it has even held a couple of Phylloscopus in the winter months.
Well what did you expect?
Monday, February 02, 2009
The blogoweb is obviously going to be full of people going apeshit because there has been a bit of snow and London has come to a standstill. Obviously, being totally hardcore, I made it to work.
Currently the tide is falling, exposing the foreshore, so for most of the birds it makes no difference what trouble the humans are having.
