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

[Vox Humana]

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[Dave2002]

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Seconded

https://youtu.be/Kttgrzt5IW0

[Richard Tarleton]

Seconded

https://youtu.be/Kttgrzt5IW0

[ardcarp]

Thanks Vox and Vinteuil. Your posts made my day.

[ardcarp]

Mrs A paid a visit to Rutland Water last week and saw two great white egrets. On the posted-up list of species seen there by others that week was a bufflehead.

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

It had clearly taken a wrong turn somewhere.

[Vox Humana]

Mrs A paid a visit to Rutland Water last week and saw two great white egrets. On the posted-up list of species seen there by others that week was a bufflehead.

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

It had clearly taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Suspicion always looms over rare quackers that turn up away from the coast (and even coastal ones, come to that). This particular Bufflehead has been knocking around that area since June and has a ring that marks it as an escape from someone's collection. It's sometimes quite amusing to follow the online debates of twitchers when birds like this turn up. As a rule of thumb their views on whether a suspect duck is wild or not depends on how badly people need to add it to their lists!

At least no suspicion attends Great White Egrets. Lovely birds which are now turning up all over the place.

[ardcarp]

Thanks Vox. As Mrs A isn't of the twitching tendency (and hasn't 'got a little list') she was just glad to see this rather exotic bird.

PS Just been rapped over knuckles! Mrs A didn't actually 'see' the bufflehead...except by looking online afterwards.

[Vox Humana]

They are lovely little things, for sure.

[ardcarp]

Channel 4 News (7pm today) devoted a large part of the programme to environmental matters, detailing (among other things) how many of our UK bird species had drastically declined, largely due to intensive farming. Worth watching once the Brexit bits were done and dusted. It even had Jon Snow sitting on a straw bale, Chris Packham style.

Much more tomorrow on the programme, apparently. https://www.channel4.com/news/

[gradus]

We seem to have more and more magpies around here and fewer songbirds in the garden eg blackbirds are relatively scarce although blue and great tits still appear in numbers. The magpies voice is not beautiful and can be quite irritating so I would not regret a lessening of their numbers. Others living nearby have trapped them on occasion but I believe this is illegal and I wondered if anyone could suggest ways of dispersing them legally.

[Richard Tarleton]

We seem to have more and more magpies around here and fewer songbirds in the garden eg blackbirds are relatively scarce although blue and great tits still appear in numbers. The magpies voice is not beautiful and can be quite irritating so I would not regret a lessening of their numbers. Others living nearby have trapped them on occasion but I believe this is illegal and I wondered if anyone could suggest ways of dispersing them legally.

RSPB info on magpies here.

Decline of songbirds and magpie nos. not related. (Obviously we don't know where "here" is )

Yes, trapping is illegal. Magpies are hard to deter, they will occupy suitable ecological niches anyway. And why would you want to? Magnificent, characterful birds.

[Bryn]

RSPB info on magpies here.

Decline of songbirds and magpie nos. not related. (Obviously we don't know where "here" is )

Yes, trapping is illegal. Magpies are hard to deter, they will occupy suitable ecological niches anyway. And why would you want to? Magnificent, characterful birds.

I must admit that I made a point of frequent use of a ladder to get up into the holly tree situated just a few metres from my bedroom window when I suspected the early stages of nest-building by magpies a few years ago. They gave up and transferred their attentions to another holly tree towards the back of a neighbour's garden. As I have mentioned previously, the collared doves round here give the magpies short shrift. Magpies are indeed magnificent birds but they are a bit too raucous to make good neighbours.

[Bryn]

I should add that magpies are very good at clearing moss from my rood tiles while rooting out invertebrates for their sustenance.

[oddoneout]

In my neck of the woods magpie numbers fluctuate quite noticeably from year to year. The past couple of years there have been two quite large families in the gardens but this year only one pair, not much in evidence, and with only a couple of young. I know that last year one of the pairs was most put out at the felling of a large conifer, which I think they had previously used for nesting and certainly used a lot for general down time. When I still had my allotments up the road from my house some years there would be magpies nesting in the hollies in the field boundary, other years not, for no apparent reason. Many of the plotholders didn't like them. The numbers of small birds hasn't obviously suffered from their presence or otherwise. I think the absence of cats has had far more effect; even when active hunting doesn't occur the spook factor keeps the likes of the wrens, robins, tits away from previously favoured nesting sites. Within my block of 6 or so houses 6 cats are no longer around this year(due to house moves apart from one)and haven't so far been replaced.

[vinteuil]

Magpies are indeed magnificent birds but they are a bit too raucous to make good neighbours.

... yes, I like magpies a lot - but the chattering can get a bit much. There were quite a few of them using the gardens behind us earlier this year, and the three o' clock in the morning hubbub proved quite testing.

https://www.british-birdsongs.uk/common-magpie/

The other bird noise that was almost unbearable this year - staying with friends in the middle of nowhere in Italy this summer, regularly woken up with an insistent repeated - wip wip WIP - wip wip WIP - wip wip WIP.

Quails.

https://www.british-birdsongs.uk/common-quail/

.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/a-bird-in-the-hand-skye-gyngells-quail-recipes-2105888.html

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