Spring's over - summer's here. It's official.

Bit of recent birding - went down to Cornwall over the Easter weekend (I know, a long time back, but I've been nose-to-the-grindstone ever since). Ringed at a friend's site, catching a good number of these:

Chiffchaff

and these:

Willow Warbler

as well as a few Blackcaps and standard local bits & bobs. Nice way to spend Easter, though perhaps camping wasn't the best idea in the world - a sharp frost on Easter morning left us feeling a wee bit sleep-deprived. C'est la vie. Afternoons were spent wandering the clifftops in glorious sunshine, on one occasion being surrounded by a crowd of curious locals:

Miniature highland cattle, no less, looking as if they're about to release a new album (moosic! Ha! couldn't resist that - sorry...)

Anyway, the weather and the views were fantastic - this is Cape Cornwall from Kenidjack valley:



This a more zoomed-out view of the same bit. The perceptive amongst you will have noticed the air ambulance lurking at the bottom of the cliffs, where they carefully dropped in to rescue a rather luckless woman who appeared to have broken her leg. Was a very impressive bit of helicoptering to get in and out again safely.

Back to the scenery - this is Land's End from the cliffs at Porthgwarra, looking absolutely stunning. The gorse seemed overloaded with flower this year, which made the air seem sticky with the scent of coconut when we were traipsing past banks of the stuff in the valleys.

Since then, I've been out on breeding bird atlas duty, finding a rather satisfying 47 species on the one square, including a couple of Woodlark, Little Owl and Bullfinch doing some rather intimate courtship, as well as a singing Redwing - assume that's a bird that can't be arsed going back north yet. Never know though - I'll be keeping an eye on that one!

Yesterday was a breeding wader survey on my standard Somerset site, producing the trad. pair of Lapwing, a couple of Snipe and a small pack of Whimbrel feeding up on their way to the tundra. I also had a couple of singing Lesser Whitethroat, with several fields liberally spattered with Yellow Wagtails. Always amazes me how they glow when they are in fresh spring plumage - something like the way adult Gannets always appear to have just come out of a washing-powder advert, they're so crisp and clean-looking. Anyway... The first Swift of the year was a welcome sight as well.

Today was a chance to spend some time birding for the sake of it again, so headed up to Yarner with a friend to scout out some migrants. We did nicely in the end, with Blackcap, Willow Warbler and Chiffchaff all singing their heads off (messy), a Garden Warbler providing a bit of cool melody, Wood Warblers spinning coins incessantly in the trees, a handful of Pied Flycatchers, a cuckooing Cuckoo, Swallows, House Martins and the odd Tree Pipit here and there. Birds of the day (for one of us, anyhow!) were probably a trio of Mandarin that hurtled north over us at the Trendlebeare carpark, shortly followed by a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker headed in the other direction! Again, a single Swift rounded the day off quite pleasurably... That's two, so summer's official now (sorry Mark!)

Anyway, the final bit of news for the time being is that the spring weather at Easter quite turned my head, to the point of offering to make an honest woman of the mysterious 'N', who was daft enough to accept my offer. Not sure if it's yet sunk in, but I'm quite looking forward to a new chapter in life now...

Finally, before I forget, my friend Nik's off to 'work' in Australia for a year: apparently no shackles are involved, so this seems like a good place to wish you the best of luck whilst you're out there... Will keep you posted here on Devon happenings. Occasionally.

Surveys and sun

A bit of a change in the weather allowed me to do some surveys this last week: both tetrads for the bird atlas and roosting gulls on the Exe. The atlas squares were unremarkable in the main, though it was great to hear Woodlark singing so early in the year on the first tetrad. The better weather also allowed me to get some ringing going in the garden, with a control Greenfinch as a very pleasant surprise to kick the year off with! (For those who don't know and want to, a control is a bird ringed by someone else that you've caught. The general rule is that it has to have travelled more than 5km to count as a control, to factor out the local movements that our birds potter through as a matter of course - in this case, none of my neighbouring ringers are admitting to having ringed this bird, so it should be the first proper control for the garden!)

Pre-survey birding on Saturday produced about 10 colour-ringed Brents on the estuary, although one of those had lost one colour ring, so is no longer individually identifiable. Pity... The others were mainly birds I've seen earlier in the winter, although one of them I hadn't seen since 2004, so it's good to know it's been lurking somewhere! The sour note of the day came later, when something went wrong with the steering on the car... Nothing obviously broken, and nothing leaking, but I bet it costs a pretty penny to fix!

The gull survey involved lurking at the confluence of the Clyst and Exe, counting the gulls coming from the northeast to roost overnight on the Exe. Not a great number of birds on our section; only a few hundreds, in fact, but those watching the Exe must have had a busy time of it - a fair stream of birds was passing downriver behind us for about an hour and a half. Will be interesting to see the combined results eventually. The evening was made by one of those sunsets that looks as if it's been photographed through one of those Cadbury's Roses red cellophane chocolate wrappers:

Looking from the end of the Clyst down the Exe towards Dawlish Warren

Sunday was, in it's own minor way, a quite exciting day: a ringing tick in the form of Siskin (yes, I know...) and a very pleasant wander along Exminster Marshes to Turf Locks. A colour-ringed Avocet (not the bird below, that's just an example of an Avocet) was nice, but judging by past results, I'll never hear anything about its origins. Bloody ringers...! The two Cattle Egrets were showing nicely in the sunshine, but not really worthy of photographs. Not much else of note on the river, although a flyby Peacock butterfly was pleasant to see. First butterfly for the year, and all that malarkey...

Male Siskin Carduelis spinus.

(Pied) Avocet Recurvirostra avosetta from Turf Locks Hotel, through the telescope

Atlassing

The stunning weather this morning tempted me away from this machine and out to do my first tetrad for the new British bird atlas project. This is the is the first to combine breeding and wintering birds. The previous two breeding bird atlases covered 1968-1972 and 1998-1992, and the sole wintering atlas fell to the winters 1981/82 to 1983/84. The great bonus of this atlas is the ability to sign up for tetrads and enter data online, meaning some demonstration stats can be run continually - for instance, the number of tetrads covered, signed up for and visited, the percentage of expected species found and so on... If you want more information, search http://www.bto.org/ and if you're able to take part, DO SO! Again, through that link...

The system runs basically along these lines: two winter visits, minimum 1 hour each, one in the early winter and one in the late winter. Breeding is covered by the same system, one visit in the earlier spring and one in the later spring/early summer. There are options to continue on for longer and gain more detail about the use of the tetrad by the birds there, but those are the minima. Pretty simple, really!

This morning's visit was to a fairly uniform area of farmland near home. Most of the fields are pasture, winter cereals or stubbles, and the bulk of the hedges are cropped fairly tight with flails over the autumn. Despite this, I managed to find a respectable 28 species in the hour's visit, including Woodlark, Red-legged Partridge and Kingfisher. I missed out on at least 8-10 species that I know will occur in the area, so some further roaming will be required to confirm their presence.

Other interesting finds: a rubber dragonfly in the hedge, some late Red Admiral butterflies taking advantage of the ivy nectar and a fly-tipped washing machine...