What birds (are you/have you been) watching? What birds have been watching you?

[cloughie]

Apparently it's 'A Nightingale sang in Berlin' rather than Berkeley Square according to Petroc on Breakfast this morning.
Here's a bit more about it from last year
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...garten-germany

Well that’s one story! Maschwitz lyricist of the song, was a German living in Birmingham - there is a reference to France from the original source and whilst I accept that the terrain in Berlin may be more favourable it has no link to the song. Stravinsky’s Rossignol had links to Hans Christian Andersen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nightingale_Sang_in_Berkeley_Square

[Vox Humana]

Swifts are back in our valley, bang on cue. Their return is always a joy.

[oddoneout]

I heard yesterday that our local heron had been spotted devouring one of the newly hatched ducklings.
That's just Nature, I guess.

Useful source of food for the herons when they are raising their own young I would think. It used to happen sometimes(probably still does) at the pond on the nearby common. Causes rather an upset when it's observed as the pond is alongside a playgound, and feeding the ducks and watching the fluffy young are all part of the child/grown-up pleasant outing thing. The duck population is most years far too high for the space available so the predation is useful, as are the losses when the gormless mother ducks take their offspring treks across the road to adjacent houses, but that is not a popular view. Strange as often it's the same folk who complain about the pond becoming smelly and dirty and the grass, seats and play equipment getting covered in duck excrement.

[LMcD]

..and Beersheba?

I guess the logical destination to follow BerKeley Square, BerLin and BerMuda would be BerNe.

[cloughie]

I guess the logical destination to follow BerKeley Square, BerLin and BerMuda would be BerNe.

Probably not BerWick!

[kernelbogey]

Swifts are back in our valley, bang on cue. Their return is always a joy.

When I lived in Winchester, they turned up year after year on the 6th.

Although I reported the other day hearing swifts, though sighting none, I have since neither seen nor heard them here, in a much smaller town. I guess they are semi-urban.

Circa 2000, I had cause to phone the RSPB (about a neighbour destroying house martin nests) and was told they had received many reports that year of familiar house-martin habitats becoming swift habitats, and vice-versa.

[Joseph K]

Need a bit of help with bird identification - does anyone know what variety of black bird this is? We had one in our garden yesterday that looked just like it -

[cloughie]

Need a bit of help with bird identification - does anyone know what variety of black bird this is? We had one in our garden yesterday that looked just like it -

Looks like an ordinary one on its way to having proper feathers!

[Bryn]

Looks like an ordinary one on its way to having proper feathers!

Yes, a juvenile Turdus merula I reckon, too. A pity the breast feathers are not in clear view to show the speckling. The beak looks right, though.

[Joseph K]

[jayne lee wilson]

Strikes me as more likely an adult female....(perhaps after a bath? Or protecting bare skin/feathers worn sparse from brooding "brood patch"?).... this year's juveniles, especially as early as May, would usually show a more buff-coloured head/breast etc.... and speckling shouldn't be so easily hidden...

https://www.google.com/search?q=BLACKBIRD+EUROPEAN++IMMATURE&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjEtoSEkaLpAhVRXxoKHY9zArAQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=BLACKBIRD+EUROPEAN++IMMATURE&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1DHfFiEgwFg04sBaABwAHgAgAE7iAHBApIBATaYAQCgAQGqAQtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZw&sclient=img&ei=CTK0XoSOHdG-aY_niYAL&bih=812&biw=1440&client=safari#imgrc=Uqj3BKWrUDlRPM

[Joseph K]

'Brood patch'?

Oh, and the other week I caught two birds mating on the path in front of me in the rain - wasn't sure what exactly I was seeing so I had to go near enough to disturb them, unfortunately.

[jayne lee wilson]

'Brood patch'?

Oh, and the other week I caught two birds mating on the path in front of me in the rain - wasn't sure what exactly I was seeing so I had to go near enough to disturb them, unfortunately.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_patch

[Joseph K]

[LezLee]

A poster on another forum has been seeing a mystery bird on her local river. Described thus:

‘A goose-like bird, mostly black, with conspicuous white wing tips. They show very clearly in flight and as a v shape on its back when on the water. It's not much bigger than a mallard but the bill is quite 'goosey', pale orangey-pink with big webbed feet, same colour. The head is a messy mix of black/grey/white. I can't find anything with such prominent white wing tips. It's not a tufted duck, which I see often, nor anything like an oyster catcher which turn up very occasionally. Possibly it's an escape, we did have a black swan paddling about some years ago.’

Can’t find anything like it in my books.