Friday, March 19, 2010
...and one that has stayed for a while.
Remember this chap?
Yup - the partially albino/leucistic Blackbird is now in his fourth year and looking quite perky. Well he looks perky in real life - in this picture he just looks like a fuzzy blob.
The ones that got away? 4 ducks flew over yesterday in the direction of Barnes, but the light wasn't good. My best guess was Shoveler. Unfortunately I couldn't be positive on the ID. Strangely one of the birds had legs trailing prominently behind the tail - which I don't know of being an ID feature of any of our ducks but in the brief time I had I was rather fixated on this point. So it may have been a Shoveler with a short tail. Either way. No tick.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
I know that this is not the best picture ever, but it is actually of the bird that I am about to yack on about (and no, there is not much going on in the patch over the last few days).
It's a Blackbird. And it has been doing subsong. I thoroughly enjoy catching this behaviour - I feel that I've been let back stage into a Blackbird rehearsal room. This one is an immature bird. No black head feathers yet, no yellow bill yet - but he has started to sing. Probably not ready to launch with the full version at full volume because he'll attract attention and will end up scrapping, but for now he is finding his feet and snatching a little rehearsal time here and there.
A Blackbird doing singing, but really quietly...
Friday, July 10, 2009
One of the delights of patch birding is watching the way the natural world unfolds, and pointing your efforts in the right place to get the most of what is going on around you, and ultimately the birds. On this patch, the birds that I am able to see are often dictated by the tidal flow of the Thames as the exposed foreshore means that birds are more likely to be about. I don't often consult tide tables, but work out what today will be like at a certain time based on the tidal situation yesterday. When I went out yesterday, I reckoned that I had a good chance of a little foreshore and the possibility of something interesting turning up (even if it was more Black-headed Gulls than the day before). I arrived at the river, and I was right - just a little left before the incoming tide covered it all (there is a five metre height difference here between high and low tide generally).
Just as I got to the area I was planning to hang about in a ruddy great barge sounded it's horn. Not just a little horn, this is loud enough for the whole of SW London to hear. A little bit of overkill to remind a pleasure boat to get the fuck out of the way. This alarmed most of the birds in the area (and probably killed a couple of pensioners through shock) and many left. Immediately after this a low flying Chinook flew down the river, which would have shaken the teeth out of the remaining live pensioners and sent the remaining birds on the river off to the wetland centre.
Thank you very bloody much. I had to entertain myself with the mundane again. 'Oh look, that Greenfinch is on a wall, not a tree! I wonder when the last time I saw a Greenfinch on a wall was?' FFS.
The most interesting thing that happened was this blackbird. He has been on the blog before, and yesterday he was giving me evils.
A Blackbird doing semi-albinism
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Eat these facts!
Fact - there was a Blackcap singing in the trees by the Hurlingham Club at lunchtime.
Fact - I have never heard or seen them in this area before.
Fact - that makes it a patch tick.
Fact - that makes it 72 for the patch. Seventy two!
Fact - that makes it 50 for the year.
Fact - er, result.
Fact - um...
Fact - this semi-albinistic Blackbird has held it's territory from last year.
That'll do on the facts I reckon.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Rather than getting fixated on a dodgy gull I actually did some birding today and the signs of spring are present and correct! Well, singular rather than plural.
This Blackbird was singing! Not the full blown lungful, but I think he was fooled by the sun, which made a miraculous appearance at lunchtime. Or practicing.
As well as the ‘sign’ of spring there were the malingerers from winter. Ten Tufties, 16 Gadwall (a patch high count), 2 Goldcrests (perhaps three, but they were pretty mobile) and a Chiffchaff which I even managed to get a shite photo of...
All of this rounded off by hearing a Greenfinch, and seeing a Kingfisher bombing it down the Wandle (no picture of that of course) which brings it up to 42 on the patch for the year.
Just as I finished loading the pictures up, Obama is being sworn in. Cool huh?
