The Story of Stuff...

Whilst this is very North America-centric, it's a pretty interesting video - particularly around the 12-minute mark. It will take a while to load, even on ADSL, but it's worth watching, whether you'd agree with the message or not. I'm not trying to say I agree or disagree, merely that it's quite a comment on our society. Runs for about 20 minutes, so perhaps a coffee- or lunch-break fillum!

www.storyofstuff.com

Long time no postings...

Seems like a long time since writing anything. Quick roundup: lots of Siskins ringed in the garden now: 48 and counting so far, with a very low retrap rate; suggesting plenty of birds moving through. Other local ringers have accounted for another 250-odd and no-one appears to have caught anyone else's bird as yet. Plenty of Siskins around, and all of a sudden. None of us are complaining!

Attended the Southwest Ringers' Conference in Exeter last Saturday, which was pretty good. A range of interesting talks, particularly about the use of ringing as a tool for conservation and monitoring as well as the chance to put a few names to faces and do some schmoozing...

Sunday found me attempting to ring in the garden, then when the weather caught up with me, finally giving in to the temptation to go and see Devon's first King Eider Somateria spectabilis. The bird is (at the time of writing) in North Devon, at the mouth of the Taw-Torridge estuary complex. It's not the best-looking, as it's a first-winter drake (should be S. unspectabilis, really!) , and the views I had would be comfortably described as atrocious, but it's my first new bird in the county for over a year. I didn't take any pictures, so if you want to see a similar bird, check out this link. The photos there are, would you believe, a tad better than the views I had, but it is 'just' a King Eider! The sweeping rain and biting north wind didn't help; nor did the fact that I'd packed only one glove... Otherwise the highlight was an interesting - leucistic? - Rook Corvus frugilegus, which I did photograph and post the obligatory cruddy picture below.



Here's another Rook looking thoroughly miserable in the grotty weather:


I had intended to get to Trew Plantation on the way back to search for Great Grey Shrike, but unaccountably couldn't find the site on my roadmap, so gave in and had a go for the one on Dartmoor instead. Inevitably I got there a touch late in the day and the presence of a noisy crowd of kiddiewinks didn't help. Great that they're thundering round the countryside and getting some quality exercise in, but it's a bit of a bummer when they trash your birding. Ah well... that's life. I did manage to find a smart male Dartford Warbler Sylvia undata before the kids got there! Rounded off the day with a pleasant sunset and a nice chat with a fellow birder who was also shrike-seeking. I was also slightly startled to see the quantity of frogspawn present at such a high point on the moors - some of it will inevitably be frozen and killed, but that also leaves more resources for the survivors. Life's a bitch...!

Sunset at Warren House Inn

Warming picture & a quiet weekend

Such a quiet weekend... the only birds worth noting were a Peregrine and a pair of Raven over the Blackdown Hills (E Devon) whilst I was helping a friend trim their hedge. Sunday was a dead loss - a walk on Black Down Common with a different friend & her dog produced 2 Song Thrush and a Carrion Crow. With a thorough drenching thrown in to boot... Yuk. So bad that I'm posting a nice warming picture...

Toasty.

Website images update

As an addemdum to the last post, I've finally managed to reorganise a bunch of the photos on my website, now got them in a larger format to make them a tad more attractive. Kenya pictures are also updated, having scanned in a swathe of prints...

Have fun!

www.jerbarker.co.uk

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

Fossil fossicking

Late, but none the worse for it. Last Wednesday (16th) I travelled with my cousin Pete down to Lyme Regis to search for fossils. We took a brief look along the beach at Seaton first, in driving rain and generally grim weather and came away with little to show for it beyond a handful of Rock Pipits 'psit'-ing, some funky waves breaking on the beach and regular chunks of rock falling off the cliffs. We moved on to Lyme, which immediately proved it's superiority - a nice male Black Redstart on the beach in front of us...

We stomped up the beach along with the falling tide, and found an incredible number of ammonites, some clam-type fossils and various other odss & sods, including a rather fine cockle-shell (below). Keep scrolling for some more views of some fossils! Must do that again sometime...

Weekend birding - Jan 5th-6th

More Exe-based pottering this weekend, though it doesn't count as patch-based work, as I visit many sites around the river. Saturday morning was spent watching the Lapland Bunting (Longspur, if you prefer) at Orcombe Point, Exmouth. Only the second I've seen in the county, it was lurking in the midst of a reasonably large flock of Skylark - about 150 birds - with a couple of Woodlark and a good smattering of alba wagtails, Linnet, Meadow Pipits and Chaffinch. The birds were fairly flightly, in part due to the attentions of a female Sparrowhawk, which pitched into the flock a couple of times.

Moving on, I managed a quick Slav Grebe at the river mouth, then half a dozen colour-ringed Black-tailed Godwit were found at Bowling Green Marsh - the dowitcher wasn't evident though, as the tide was still rather too low.

Final birding was a repeat visit to Exminster Marshes, where up to 5 Water Pipit were skulking around a couple of ponds on-site. Nice birds, and good to be getting my eye back in on winter birds...

Sunday's birding was pretty much a repeat trip with Judith & her dog, though we failed to see a great deal - the Surf Scoter off the mouth of the Exe and a single Water Pipit being the scarce bird highlight. We did manage to pull 9 colour-marked Brent Geese out of a flock of c.200 birds feeding on Exminster, one of which was ringed on the Taimyr peninsula a few years back. A Green Sandpiper on Bowling Green was also interesting; we don't have too many of them through the winter.

Lapland Bunting Calcarius lapponicus; one I photographed earlier