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

[Richard Tarleton]

Thanks john, great article. I was involved with this line of work for a season 40 years ago (see my contribution to Lat's motor cycle thread recently), and knew one or two of the people mentioned including the late Derek Radcliffe (with whom I corresponded when he was writing his book on The Peregrine Falcon, pub. 1980).

[Vox Humana]

For some reason, this article from the New Yorker sprung into my mind today and I thought I would go dig it out. I first read it about 5 years back, about the hunt for illegal egg collectors in the UK. It's lengthy but as with most pieces in the NY, well worth spending some time on, at least I thought so. I thought folk on this thread might find it interesting.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...eration-easter

Fascinating, John. Thanks for posting that. I remember the Devon Red-backed Shrikes well. Contrary to the article, the presence and location of the birds was well broadcast amongst birders until it was realised that they were nesting (about a week after they arrived, after which things became far more circumspect), so it's no surprise that the eggers knew too. As the saying goes, "They walk amongst us". Very many years ago I saw a TV programme which made it very clear indeed that the egging community was far better clued up about the location of rare birds' nests than your average twitcher. Personally I don't think there's all that much difference between the mentalities of dedicated twitchers (i.e. birders who travel to see rare birds) and eggers. Both are collectors. One collects sightings (and, increasingly these days, photos); the other collects eggs. At least twitchers, generally speaking, don't do the birds much harm.

[Richard Tarleton]

Fascinating, John. Thanks for posting that. I remember the Devon Red-backed Shrikes well. Contrary to the article, the presence and location of the birds was well broadcast amongst birders until it was realised that they were nesting (about a week after they arrived, after which things became far more circumspect), so it's no surprise that the eggers knew too. As the saying goes, "They walk amongst us". Very many years ago I saw a TV programme which made it very clear indeed that the egging community was far better clued up about the location of rare birds' nests than your average twitcher. Personally I don't think there's all that much difference between the mentalities of dedicated twitchers (i.e. birders who travel to see rare birds) and eggers. Both are collectors. One collects sightings (and, increasingly these days, photos); the other collects eggs. At least twitchers, generally speaking, don't do the birds much harm.

Spot on. Many ornithologists of an earlier generation began as egg collectors, and developed excellent field skills from there. The great Bill Oddie (who's not that old ) wrote about it in one of his columns in Birdwatch magazine, confessing to his past as a pre-teen egg collector. He points out how it's a perversion of twitching -

But there are, sadly, and almost unbelievably, still grown men - it's always men, not women - who do collect eggs, and an appalling, destructive activity it is, especially because they are obsessed with rarities. Logically, therefore, it is almost in their interests to reduce a species to extinction: the last egg would be the most valuable.

The lengths people went to to rob Scotland's (for a while) only osprey nest was a case in point. Vox will know about this chap who remains a divisive figure.

[vinteuil]

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... a distressing sight this morning, walking over Hammersmith Bridge at low tide - a heron, mobbed by seagulls, with a fledgling in its beak : the heron repeatedly dunked the fledgling in the water to drown it - eventually the mobbing of the seagulls forced the heron to fly off, dropping the fledgling en route - which (sadly) sank beneath the waves.

I know nature is r in t and c, but still - this was raw. Somehow I don't mind herons getting fish - or even birds taking others' eggs - but this was hard to watch...

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[Vox Humana]

Vox will know about this chap who remains a divisive figure.

Indeed. I have the book he and his wife wrote: Waders: their breeding haunts and watchers. It's a really interesting read. He had a really deep knowledge about the birds.

[Vox Humana]

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... a distressing sight this morning, walking over Hammersmith Bridge at low tide - a heron, mobbed by seagulls, with a fledgling in its beak : the heron repeatedly dunked the fledgling in the water to drown it - eventually the mobbing of the seagulls forced the heron to fly off, dropping the fledgling en route - which (sadly) sank beneath the waves.

I know nature is r in t and c, but still - this was raw. Somehow I don't mind herons getting fish - or even birds taking others' eggs - but this was hard to watch...

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Yet it's no different to the gulls themselves predating e.g. wader and tern chicks. Tit for tat. Nature is completely unbiased like that. I suppose there are some extremely primitive forms of sea life that exist simply by absorbing nutrients for the oceans, but otherwise it seems to me that every form of animal life has evolved to eat other forms of life. It's one of the things that convinces me that life on earth is utterly random.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yet it's no different to the gulls themselves predating e.g. wader and tern chicks. Tit for tat. Nature is completely unbiased like that. I suppose there are some extremely primitive forms of sea life that exist simply by absorbing nutrients for the oceans, but otherwise it seems to me that every form of animal life has evolved to eat other forms of life. It's one of the things that convinces me that life on earth is utterly random.

Or auto-preservative to the point of reproduction; but that same evolutionary survival chain produced us too, along with the best of our values.

[Vox Humana]

Or auto-preservative to the point of reproduction; but that same evolutionary survival chain produced us too, along with the best of our values.

Perhaps I should have written "survival". There is survival of the fittest, of course, but what determines how fit an individual animal is may be random (e.g. which animals suffer birth defects, or which individuals in a herd happen to pick up a disease which makes them weaker than their companions).

To get back to birds, it's difficult to see a small passerine bird from, say, Asia that has fetched up on Scilly or the west coast of Ireland, take off out into the Atlantic with no realistic hope of survival without seeing the whole process of survival as somewhat random. Yet there is a theory that this mis-orientation of apparently inexperienced juvenile birds on their first migration might not be quite so random as it appears. The argument states that a few of each year's new juveniles have deficient migration compasses that results in them dispersing in "wrong" directions and that this is beneficial in that it may enable a species to find new, viable habitats and thus expand its range - and this in turn may stand the species in good stead should the habitat in the original range somehow become unsuitable. (I think I've got that right, but I'm open to correction.) However, if there is any substance in this I guess it must work on a longer evolutionary timescale than I can detect. The range expansions of birds like Collared Dove and Great White Egret have other explanations.

[Richard Tarleton]

Perhaps I should have written "survival". There is survival of the fittest, of course, but what determines how fit an individual animal is may be random (e.g. which animals suffer birth defects, or which individuals in a herd happen to pick up a disease which makes them weaker than their companions).

To get back to birds, it's difficult to see a small passerine bird from, say, Asia that has fetched up on Scilly or the west coast of Ireland, take off out into the Atlantic with no realistic hope of survival without seeing the whole process of survival as somewhat random. Yet there is a theory that this mis-orientation of apparently inexperienced juvenile birds on their first migration might not be quite so random as it appears. The argument states that a few of each year's new juveniles have deficient migration compasses that results in them dispersing in "wrong" directions and that this is beneficial in that it may enable a species to find new, viable habitats and thus expand its range - and this in turn may stand the species in good stead should the habitat in the original range somehow become unsuitable. (I think I've got that right, but I'm open to correction.) However, if there is any substance in this I guess it must work on a longer evolutionary timescale than I can detect. The range expansions of birds like Collared Dove and Great White Egret have other explanations.

Sounds about right. Good article about Great White Egret range expansion here.

I was going to say to Vints that restricting herons to a fish-only diet is a bit harsh, when of course birds form an important part of the diet of our various heron species. How do you feel about them eating amphibians? I'm thinking particularly of an extremely rare ("mega") green heron from the USA which turned up in my MP's garden earlier in the year, and seemed to subsist largely on newts, which were definitely still wriggling when it swallowed them.

[vinteuil]

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... thanks for comments : I had not been aware of herons' predation on small birds.

https://www.bou.org.uk/grey-heron-diet.pdf

vox humana's #1403 - most interesting. The idea of occasional 'erroneous' migration having possible long-term evolutionary benefit is an attractive one.


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[Richard Tarleton]

Not a bird but named for its likeness to one - this hummingbird hawk moth visited my buddleia yesterday

[Vox Humana]

Mrs Humana decided she wanted a short break, so we're currently on the Isles of Scilly and not seeing much, though it's nice to see House Sparrows, Starlings and Song Thrushes doing well. Best sighting was from a hide at Porthellick Pool when, scanning the fields across the far side I caught a brief view of a Hoopoe in flight. We promptly decamped and traipsed round the pool to see if we could re-find it, only to discover that others had got there first. The bird was incredibly elusive. Despite searching for over an hour we only saw it three times in flight. The best of the rest has been a young Citrine Wagtail - I even managed some decent snaps of that. On the way down to Penzance we stopped off for a day or two in Cornwall and managed to connect with a one-day Booted Warbler - or perhaps it was the virtually identical Sykes's Warbler. I'll have to let others slug that one out.

[Richard Tarleton]

Booted/Sykes sounds like a game for ringers! And when did they stop being Hippolais and become Iduna? I'm very out of date, clearly. In the old days there were only 6 species of Hippolais, including Booted......All this splitting has worked to my advantage, but it gets a little wearing.....

My only autumn migrant of note has been an osprey on the river, not far from home. Oh, and a marsh harrier (we also get wintering ones).

[jayne lee wilson]

Not a bird but named for its likeness to one - this hummingbird hawk moth visited my buddleia yesterday

Lovely picture of one of my favourite little creatures. I haven't seen one here for quite a few years though. This summer was notable for an alarming scarcity of Butterflies, but at least - many more Dragonflies than usual: mostly, Emperor, Southern Darter and Common Darter. I saw an Emperor just a few days ago, but the smaller Darters tend to hang on into October. The later in the year, the closer approach they seem to allow, probably because they're reluctant to leave any precious patch of sunshine...

[Vox Humana]

Booted/Sykes sounds like a game for ringers! And when did they stop being Hippolais and become Iduna? I'm very out of date, clearly. In the old days there were only 6 species of Hippolais, including Booted......All this splitting has worked to my advantage, but it gets a little wearing.....

I think the hippolais/iduna split has been in place a few years now. I seem to remember that it was part of a wholesale upheaval that saw a lot of changes in the scientific names, including the reassignment of several gulls. I don't understand it and can't keep up with it all. I have to tug my forelock to those who understand DNA, but things seemed so much more logical when birds were assigned to genus on their appearance, voices and habits.