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

[Vox Humana]

Not the call of the mistle thrush, by any chance? Perhaps a drier sound than you are describing.

Yes. Not too dissimilar to a football rattle.

I'm stuck on this one too.

[gradus]

Just found the nest box camera for the peregrines that nested at the top of a building in Ipswich, fascinating.

http://www.ipswichhavenmarina.co.uk/Peregrine_Falcons/

[doversoul1]

Hmmm, struggling with this one! You'll just have to stake it out, dover, when all the leaves have blown off.....
Not the call of the mistle thrush, by any chance? Perhaps a drier sound than you are describing.

The call is distinctly on-note trills but muffled, lasting normal length of most common garden bird songs per phrase. It is just possible that this is not a bird but then, what else can it be? I’ll update when the trees are bare, if it still here.

[Vox Humana]

The call is distinctly on-note trills but muffled, lasting normal length of most common garden bird songs per phrase.

Greenfinch? It's a bit late for them to be singing though, I'd have thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xin6eYRzM0w

[doversoul1]

Greenfinch? It's a bit late for them to be singing though, I'd have thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xin6eYRzM0w

No, this is too staccato and there is a twee at the end of every ‘phrase’, where as ‘my’ bird, if it is a bird, sings in soft/muffled trills and nothing else. I am still leaving the possibility open that this isn’t a bird at all but then what can it be?

(just to ensure: it is audible to other people too )

[Vox Humana]

I've never been much of a twitcher (chaser of rare birds), but I succumbed today and collected the first new addition to my UK list for five years: a Blyth's Reed Warbler (which looks pretty much identical to a Reed Warbler except for some subtle differences). Frankly I don't know why I did it: it was exactly the sort of birding I detest: staring at a clump of bushes for hours, putting together a 600-piece jigsaw with a live bird as the subject from fleeting glimpses every half-hour or so. It really is a pastime for the masochist and I take my hat off to the chap who had the tenacity to identify the thing - I certainly couldn't have done it. Still, I'm delighted to have seen a bird which wasn't quite so unidentifiable as I feared it would be. I even managed to get one or two passable photos of it.

I must admit to feeling more than a little jealous of those chaps on the east coast who zealously watch the sea from certain headlands. Yesterday they managed to track a Black-browed Albatross as it moved southwards down Yorkshire - someone even managed to photograph it - and today probably the same bird has been seen a couple of times off the north Norfolk coast. Albatrosses are southern ocean birds. Being supreme gliders, the doldrums tend to act as a barrier to them crossing the equator, but every now and again one makes it.

September and October is the best time of year for rare birds and this year is shaping up to be very interesting indeed.

[Richard Tarleton]

Not a great photo (snatched through a window) but I was struck by the bold juxtaposition of colours as this male bullfinch fed among the ice plant seed heads in the garden.

[Padraig]

Thank you, Richard - a great catch. I've ever only had a pair of bullfinches in my garden about two or three years ago, and that was something!
But, today 'my' goldfinches arrived. A true Christmas present. I had not seen them since Spring. I have no photo, but if you have time later I'm putting a poem in the Poetry thread.

[Vox Humana]

At last, after a very quiet spring and summer, our small apology for a garden is returning to normal. We are being visited regularly by up to 14 Goldfinches, four or five Chaffinches, about half a dozen House Sparrows (which is probably the whole local population; they're very scarce around here), a couple of Dunnocks, Robin, Wren, up to five Blackbirds. Also, rather belatedly, I have just seen our first Blackcap of the winter, a male.

I've never been a great twitcher, but I did succumb the other day and went to see a Desert Wheatear which had taken up residence on a south-coast beach - which was presumably the nearest thing it could find to the Sahara Desert. A lovely little bird and very obliging. There was also a fine Black Redstart there, but little else. Here's a snap I took of the wheatear.

http://i.imgur.com/l88u1hF.jpg

[Richard Tarleton]

Stunning picture Vox - I love wheatears. We had an autumn Isabelline around here 2-3 years ago (I managed a spring one on Lesvos a few years back).....I remember the thrill of my first black-eared, in Mallorca in 1982.

[Vox Humana]

Stunning picture Vox - I love wheatears. We had an autumn Isabelline around here 2-3 years ago (I managed a spring one on Lesvos a few years back).....I remember the thrill of my first black-eared, in Mallorca in 1982.

Thanks, Richard. I love them too. There's nothing quite like the first Wheatear in March (even late February sometimes) to lift the spirits with the realisation that Spring is on the way. I've seen a couple of Black-eared Wheatears, both in Cornwall many years ago, and both of them totally stunning males. I have seen two Isabelline Wheatears, both October birds on Scilly, but I think I'm due another Pied Wheatear: the only one I have seen was so long ago that I can barely remember it. Funnily, I have never seen any wheatear of any sort when I've been on holiday abroad.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks, Richard. I love them too. There's nothing quite like the first Wheatear in March (even late February sometimes) to lift the spirits with the realisation that Spring is on the way. I've seen a couple of Black-eared Wheatears, both in Cornwall many years ago, and both of them totally stunning males. I have seen two Isabelline Wheatears, both October birds on Scilly, but I think I'm due another Pied Wheatear: the only one I have seen was so long ago that I can barely remember it. Funnily, I have never seen any wheatear of any sort when I've been on holiday abroad.

Is the Wheatear a type of Wagtail? It looks very much like one!

[Vox Humana]

Is the Wheatear a type of Wagtail? It looks very much like one!

Not really. It's a "chat", so more closely related to our Robin. Scientifically the wheatears and the Robin all belong to the family "Turdidae", which also includes the thrushes, so they are also reasonably closely related to our Blackbird.

[Richard Tarleton]

I love them too. There's nothing quite like the first Wheatear in March (even late February sometimes) to lift the spirits with the realisation that Spring is on the way.

Indeed, my feelings precisely. And happy memories of Black wheatears perched on snowy white buildings under a searing blue sky in Almería in SE Spain (the area a sort of continuation of the Sahara)....

[Bryn]

A couple of days ago, a whole host of lapwings in the fields of Shaw and Clayhall farms as I drove along Albert Road from Old Windsor to Windsor. Good to see them passing through.