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.

No, really - full on proper vis-mig.  Not just Woodpigeons chuffiing over all about the place that may or may not be from round here but summer birds moving in a southerly direction one after the other.

Swallows they were too, which are pretty unusual in this locale, making it more special.  First six flew over Hurlingham Park to Wandsworth park, then three, then one then three more and two more.  That's like, loads.

Proper visible migration at the end of September.  Lovely.

What do you do if you know where to find Sparrowhawks in your patch?   Easily.  Well, if you are me, you just keep going to go and watch them. At every available moment.  So I did again yesterday, and have done so already this morning. I mean why not? What’s not to like about watching a couple of raptors in your patch? What could be better? Not much is the answer. Not much at all. Still not seen a definite toid boid, but I'm hoping that it is only a matter of time before a parent pops up with some food while I'm there.  Either way,  the two regulars are still well worth the effort. Yesterday lunchtime they were pretty static, but again this morning the Magpies were giving it some (do Magpies prefer mobbing in the morning?) and they were flying about lots and calling all the while.


Other than this excellent bit of patch birderism, there was an Egyptian Goose on the Thames this morning and a Common Sandpiper yesterday. Haven’t seen a Swift for ages, which is a bummer.

Have a picture.

I went to see a man last week right, and we had a chat about some stuff. He liked what I said, and I was intrigued by what he said. “We should have another chat” he said. “That’s a good idea” I said. So earlier this week, suitably attired, I went and had another chat with him. Another man was there too. We all chatted for, like, ages yeah? Then the other chap showed me around this place that we were at, which was nice of him.

Subsequent to all this chatting and stuff, they only went and offered me a bloody job. With money and benefits and stuff. I've only then gone and accepted the bloody job.

Way.

There is still the due diligence and what not to go through, but essentially I'm hired.  Professionally this really is very good news. But this blog is not about my chosen profession. Never has been, never will be. It’s about patch birding, and largely about the inadequacies of this particular patch by the Thames in Fulham. But it cannot be thus for ever dear reader, and nor will it be. This new job, you see, is nowhere near Fulham and thus nowhere near this patch. So I will need to go somewhere in the breaks between the times when I'm not contractually obliged to be sitting behind a desk or pointing at things and telling people to do stuff (I believe they call it 'managing').

“Now just hang on one cotton pickin' minute...” I hear you cry dear reader “...your patch isn’t that bad really, what with it being by the river and everything. Will you have anywhere to go in your new job? What could possibly be right outside the front door of your new place of employment that could compare? How lucky can one person get? I mean really, what’s the likelihood of finding something like that somewhere else?”

Exactly.  Life isn't like that.  I'm supposed to be resigned to the futility of modern life, in that I am forced to work for 'the man' and take the tainted dollar and abandoning what little morality I have left for the sake of an easy life.  I couldn't realistically apply for a job based on how close the birds are at lunchtime, that would be silly and financially I don't think it entirely sensible.  But what if it works out that both job and birding can reach some convenient geographical integration.  Yeah, right.  What are the chances of that happening, eh?  What are the real chances of being a hundred yards or so from somewhere worth watching on a daily basis?

Oh, I dunno.

Maybe this picture of the new patch answers the question...

And now on Radio 4, it’s Woman’s Hour – CLICK!


I had to take Mrs Thing to the University Of Essex and then wait for a number of hours before leaving the University Of Essex.

“What will you do for four hours?” said Mrs Thing. “Oh, don’t you worry about that...”.

For those that don’t know, The University Of Essex is one of those post-war out of town campuses, and is situated in the middle of Wivenhoe Park near Colchester. Which is a park like area on the outskirts of a large town that is next to the countryside. Terribly convenient for someone such as myself with a penchant for staring into trees with lots of time to kill. I could have done a bit of research to try and find out in advance what to expect and where to focus my energies, but that’s no fun and doesn’t leave much space for exploration which is of course half the fun of going to new places. So with the radio turned off, the doors closed and locked I headed off to wander round the campus. And it was totally pissing down with rain. And it rained really hard, and then started to rain harder. After an hour this began to annoy me as all I had seen was some very wet waterbirds doing very little. Having to stand underneath trees to try and get some shelter while smoking wet fags was quite wearing so I decided that I was going to brave the full ravages of the weather anyway so set off again, and then the rain stopped and the sun came out. Which was very nice.

I don't get it.  I really don't get it.

After drying off a bit, I headed downhill to see what was on offer there. More grassland, more Swallows, half a dozen Swifts and an overflying Shelduck. I then spotted (towards the train line) what looked like reeds. Not only did they look like reeds, but when I got there they were reeds. Not only that but there was a few Reed Warblers knocking about too! In this area in this photo!

Enjoying this area took up some more time, and beside it there looked like there was a big chunk of decidiuous woodland, so I ambled over there. Thankfully some nice people had put a nice path right through the middle of it. So I walked down the path, with some more Blackcaps singing, a couple of Chiffchaffs giving it some, Chaffinches, Tits, etc. Eventually it gave way to a couple of fields of rapeseed, where I heard a distant Skylark and a coughing Pheasant. The path looked very much like this...

Nice, huh?

Once I had walked up it, I walked back down it.  And that was about it. Best part of four hours walking round a new site and very good it was too. Plenty of habitat, a good spot for raptor watching (had the weather been better) and plenty of interest for a patch birder. 38 species in all for me but I suspect that there are more to get normally (no House Martin, Nuthatch, Treecreeper, House Sparrow, Willow Warbler etc).

A nice little patch on the whole.

Did I mention that there were Coots? You must have expected this...

Essex Coots doing wet.

Living in London can be a bit noisy, what with all the planes flying over and all that.  The patch is on one of the flight lines to Heathrow, which means that there is almost always a large plane flying over or about to fly over.  Noisily.  This means that apart from the disproportionately loud song of the local Wrens, you cannot hear a bird singing unless it is sitting on your head.  Many of you will know that due to the ashen belching of the splendidly named Eyjafjallajoekull there are no planes flying over.  At all.  With this in mind, I took up a vantage point on the river bank yesterday to listen for distant song (hoping for a Blackcap again) and to see if the lack of air traffic would increase the amount of raptor activity from zero to one. 

Folly.

Why I continue to think that the patch will produce like this, I don't know.  But it is what you do as a patch birder.  Hope, dream, expect.  My raptor watch produced nearby Gulls, Crows and Cormorants.  Pigeons too.  The hardcore skywatching produced distant Gulls, Crows and Cormorants.  Pigeons too.

A bit like this.

As far as I am concerned, trying to connect with birds on a familiar patch is not twitching.  Going to a local patch, hoping that something good is going to be there is not twitching.

However, going to a local patch to try and see mental looking chinese ducks and not seeing them is dipping.  Going to a local patch, looking in the book to see what has been seen, finding out that the female Scaup is still knocking about and that there was a drake Goldeneye there in the morning and not seeing either of them is dipping.  They look(ed) like this.

So there you have the brief synopsis of a small amount of birding over the weekend.  Dipping.

Anyone noticed how tasty the Tufties are looking at the moment?

Patch birding can be monotonous.  Blogging about patch birding can be monotonous (regulars to this blog will be acutely aware of this).  Once in a while, patch birding is not monotonous, in fact it can be verging on the orgasmic.  The species that I am about to detail are not unusual in their own right.  Indeed, I have already seen them all more than once this year before the star appearance in the patch - but that is not the point.  This is a mainly urban patch in London, hence the excitement.

I got to the Wandle yesterday lunchtime, thinking that I might have increased duck numbers and might want to watch the Pintail for a bit as they are nice.  As I looked over the little delta area I did see a male Pintail.  And then I saw a male Teal.  Bloody hell I thought, that's a male Teal.  I hadn't seen a Teal here in 2009 so this single bird made the trip worthwhile.  This Teal then swam past another male Teal.  And then I noticed another two male Teal.  Four male Teal in one little area.  I said the word 'nice' out loud.  I carried on with a metaphorical spring in my step.

As I wondered down the new path bit I was looking into a tree where a Chaffinch was pinking and a bloody Lapwing flew past, and then another.  Lapwing.  In Fulham.  I swore out loud.  I have seen Lapwing here once before, about three years ago, when there was thick pea-souper and it was flying upriver just after dawn.  This is a patch mega - no doubt about it. About twenty minutes later, one of them flew in the opposite direction and drifted over Wandsworth.  I swore out loud again.

But that is not all dear reader, the title of the post details a patch tick.  That's right - just after I had decided to leave the area (having barked all this excitment down the phone to Mrs Thing when she innocently phoned me about the weather) two smaller birds flew low over my head, and one of them made a quite destinctive call.  I swore out loud.  Again.  Skylarks.  Sorry, that should have read SKYLARKS!!   I could hardly believe it.  Patch tick 75.  This cold weather is ace.

So I am now three ticks up on last year, and have only been in the patch for two days.  This is very, very good.

My normal sojourn this week is at the time when the Thames is high.  As I have stated ad nauseum this is not good for birds.  Actually it's probably ok for the birds as it happens, it's just a bit rubbish for a big bloke that wants to see some of them.  So I'm getting a bit desperate for some action.  So desperate in fact that when I found three Chaffinches feeding in a tree today, I was terribly excited because I thought that they may have been a patch year tick.


They were not.

Why the lack of posts? Basically there has been little noteworthy to report. So here is a brief summary of not much.

There has been a Caspian Gull noted further up river which I have dutifully been seeking but to no avail. This being a reasonably busy gull site it means that all the gulls need checking out, but none have revealed themselves to be anything other than variations on the existing species. I will persevere of course dear reader, and remain hopeful (I haven’t got a lot of choice really). Other than that, 2 Gadwall flying along the river, Grey Wagtails, Yellow Legged Gull, Wood Pigeon movement (small by some local standards) etc etc.  It’s November and the patch is in a period of stasis before the winter kicks in proper.


The only really notable thing happening is that Jackdaws have gone from being patch rarities to resident. This is being echoed elsewhere in London, and with a winter population of Carrion Crows that nearly hits a hundred they may find that they like it round here. Which is nice, because Jackdaws are cracking little birds.

The choice at the weekend was simple.  Drive like an eejit to tyneside to see a small greeny bird that was proper rare.  Or pop off to Staines to see a small brown bird that is proper rare, but I had seen already.  Or go to a patch.  Guess what won?

The patch of course!  What exactly did you expect?  Wasn't the longest visit, but it was worth it as there was a very showy Jack Snipe at Brent Res.  I say very showy but this is by Jack Snipe standards.  I explained to Mrs Thing that the normal view of a Jack Snipe is of one flying away from you.  This one however was so comfortable that it was even sleeping in the open.  Cracking little bird.  London tick.  There were also lots of ducks (Wigeon, Teal, Shoveler, Gadwall, Mallard), a fair few Little Grebes and loads of Coots.  Bloody hundreds of the things.  Was hoping to hear a Cetti's Warbler that had been there earlier in the week but if it was there it kept very quiet, or more accurately - silent.

You would of course like a picture the Jack Snipe wouldn't you.  I didn't take one.  It would have so blurry and small as to make it pointless.  With hindsight that wouldn't have made much difference to the quality of the blog would it?

A Damselfly doing delicate

A Black-headed Gull doing underrated.

Many of you may have bought the latest issue of 'Birdwatch' - the one with the egret on the front. It seems to have inadvertently become a tribute to Patch Birding. Which is good. The Punkbirder column is all about the importance of patch birding (the essence being 'who do you think finds the rarities in the daft places then?') and a chap called Rich Bonser has the first of two articles on 'Fringe Birding' which also leans towards birding in the less well trodden path (good it is too). Regular reader(s) will know that I am essentially a patch birder and will remain so, although I have been on twitches planned and otherwise, they are essentially unsatisfactory. With all this in mind I have dedicated this week as National Patch Birding Week. I'm sure you have to apply to some Quango to get these things verified, but sod it - it's not like anyone is going to read this...

So what will NPBW entail? Not much beyond the scope of this blog I reckon, but I will try to impart some of the magic of patch birding to the masses. I will update you on what is going on in my local patch, show how rewarding the local park can be, and introduce you to my first patch - Surlingham Church Marsh. I may even yack on about some important patch birders from history and maybe point out a few of the recent birds that have popped up in unlikely places (from memory, I'm not going to trawl through the interweb records to work it out). So there is plenty to er, look forward to dear reader. Hell, I might even go and see how the mentalist coots are doing on the shopping trolley.

So let's start with Fulham shall we? Although there was a misidentified gull last week (no bloody surprise there), which was reckoned to be a Yellow-legged Gull, it didn't reappear. However, the bird from the previous week (and I reckon the bird that was here for most of last Autumn) is still knocking about and being very yellow legged. These pictures were taken on Thursday, and the bird was also in the area on Friday.

A Yellow Legged Gull doing posing for the camera

A Yellow Legged Gull doing walking.

That's enough from me for now, there was a Purple Heron at the Wetland Centre over the weekend, I'd better go and see if it has decided that Fulham is a little nicer than Barnes...

A Blackbird doing semi-albinism

One thing that a patch birder faces is familiarity. The familiar birds that are seen every single day in exactly the same place. I'm not talking about the species here, it is the particular individual animals.

As this patch has limited wildlife friendly areas, and birds are fairly territorial right now there are very few interlopers being thrown into the mix. Yesterday there were three interlopers and they stood out a mile. Not just because the goose count was too high, but because they were freaks! Weird hybrid monster birds - escaped from the mad scientist's lair to reek havoc on the unsuspecting residents of Fulham...

Freak 3

These are somebody elses birds. Please take them back, they're not right.