Played for and didn't get....

I must be mad. I deliberately got up at 4:30am this morning and went to Rainham.

The Plan:
5am-6am: Get Little Owl and Tawny Owl
6am-6:30am: Move on to Sea Wall, view the Great White Egret coming in from roost
6:30-7am: Find first Wheatear of the year in the Ant Field.
7am-7:15am: Pick up Little Ringed Plover on Purfleet Scrape.
7:30am-10:30am: Breakfast in the Visitor Centre.
10:30am-11:30am: Refind the Pendulines in the Reed Bed, take marvellous photos of them.
11:30am-1pm: Raptor Watch on the Sea Wall; Red Kite and Osprey.

It was a resounding failure in every respect, apart from the getting up at 4:30am bit which went off without a hitch. Penduline, Schmenduline. Best bird was a Greenshank, which I didn't even see, and there was also a Blackcap in the Cordite. Both year ticks, but hardly consolation for the antisocial start time. The curious thing is that I'd be raving about what an amazing day it had been if I'd got the Little Owl, which is a really rather common bird, except at Rainham, and especially not today. The story - that of finding zero migrants - was one repeated across the land. Patch workers everywhere are on tenterhooks, waiting for that first Sand Martin to flit through their bins, that first white flash of a Wheatear's backside. They (ok, me) will have looked back through their notes, and remarked to themselves (to myself) that their earlist ever summer migrant was a whatever on the such and such of so and so back in the year such and such (Wheatear, 15th March, 2008 & 2009) and be wondering if they can beat that by a day this year (I couldn't - unless you count the Greenshank, which seeing as I saw one on Jan 3rd at Mersea, would be rather odd)

Meanwhile life goes on, normal people do normal things. Mothers celebrate Mother's Day alone, children wonder where their fathers are, things like that.

In addition to failing dismally at every part of the plan, I took some photos. As I was hitting my stride with a very accomodating Reed Bunting on the northern boardwalk, my battery died, neatly summing-up my day. Rather than me continue moaning, here are some of them. I'll try again tomorrow. A jubilant post is surely not too far away....

One of those Days

I've just had one of those days where everything goes wrong - on the bird front at least. First off was that I elected to go round Wanstead Flats this morning instead of Rainham. Wanstead Flats netted me nothing of significance beyond another dead Crow, whilst Rainham hosted a Great White Egret. When H kindly phoned with the news, I hurried home, but the Egret departed high east roughly when I got to my front door, so I had some breaskfast instead.


I did eventually get to Rainham, but bar another (or the same) Glaucous Gull, it was fairly quiet. Or so I thought. I left mid-afternoon, and was nearing Barking when Howard called again. Penduline Tit in the reed mace near the Bus Stop, and a Little Ringed Plover from the MDZ. Piss, as they say. Paul and I had been outside the Centre having a bit of chat whilst some visitors were happily watching the Penduline about 150 metres away. Even I could have got there in under a minute. By the time it was reported, we, and it, were gone. Looking at the stationary traffic on the North Circular, I turned around and headed back to Rainham, only to get stuck in a different jam on the A13 going back the way I had just come. The Penduline Tit never returned, and the Little Ringed Plover couldn't be found, so in that sense the 45 minute traffic delay was irrelevant, but it did little to improve my mood. In fact I'd say the opposite was true....


Anyway, that was my day. Before I went to Rainham, I met up with the ITN people, and did what will no doubt be a highly entertaining and thought-provoking piece to camera about exactly how I came across the birds in a bucket. Prepare to be underwhelmed. On the plus side, I got to talk to Keith of the Epping Forest staff, so now I have some better bird numbers - better as in more accurate, and also lower, at only 79. I say only, but that is still an awful lot. The majority are Crows, and it is only one Greylag, not two. Whilst I was there I spotted another dead bird in the water, a Moorhen this time, and then commented to the others present that one of the Pigeons didn't look at all well. This proved to be correct, and within a few minutes it was flapping its last on the bank, whilst a group of male Pigeons thoughtfully mated with it as it lay there helpless. The film crew were there to capture it's final moments, and showed Keith with green gloves on picking it up. Actually seeing a Pigeon croaking is probably very pleasing to many Londoners, so they were clearly going for the popular vote. Top TV!

#77 The Larch Crow

#78, Moorhen

Dull of Wanstead

A very dull day in Chateau Lethbridge. Our cleaner used to come on a Friday, and the house used to sparkle and smell of various products well into Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon it would of course be back to normal, but that brief period on Friday evening and Saturday morning was much relished. These days, I am in charge, and whilst neither Mrs L nor I are under any illusions as to my capabilities in this area, I struggle to make an impression. I spent over two hours SLAVING today, and the house still looks awful. Part of the kitchen looks better than it did, but the overall impression is one of chaos. I'm hoping to go out birding tomorrow, and by the time I come back, the house will no doubt look worse than when I started.

Task - Brownie Points earned

4 Loads of Washing - 0 points
3 Loads of Washing hung up - 0 points
1 Load of Washing not hung up - minus 15 points
Asked question about potential wool item before including it - plus 1 point
Dishwasher cycle completed - 0 points
Washing-up done - 0 points
Recycling taken out - 0 points
1/3rd of kitchen cleaned, with pink spray - 0 points
Upstairs vacuumed - 0 points
Dinner cooked (for 5) - 0 points
Clean washing not put away - minus 25 points

TOTAL SCORE: minus 39 points.
Current Balance: -432

I face an impossible task, and with Spring just around the corner I am in trouble. And I have made no effort on the potty-training front either. That is a task that could well have earned me some serious points, but each time I think about starting it, something else comes up. For each week I delay it I probably lose points, so when I finally get around to it, it could well be a zero-sum gain. The trouble is I don't enjoy any of the things that could earn me those precious BPs, and I seem to spend all my time doing things that are essential, but have zero BP potential. Like cleaning and cooking. And birding.

Fast-forwarding to tomorrow, I am going to meet a reporter from ITN on Wanstead Flats for a piece they are running on the bird deaths. Unless something more interesting happens in the meantime that is, possibly involving a Z-list celebrity's cat... Almost unbelievably, they are even going to pay me for using that photo of the dead Crows in a bucket, whereas you, dear reader, get it for free (although contributions are of course welcome). Over the years I have spent a small fortune on large, heavy and cumbersome camera equipment, and never earned a single penny from it. On Tuesday morning it was all sat safe at home, well away from all the muggers, and I used my 105g 0.25 pixel phone to photograph the Crows. The photo ranks amongst the worst I have ever taken, and yet that's the one they want to pay money for. I have plenty of high quality photos of living Crows. Really nice ones, but all with a critical flaw - they are all alive, and not head down in a bucket. I don't know if I'm being interviewed, or if I'm just providing them with background info. If the former, no doubt I'll have flocked to the scene, all in a flutter....

I have no more information than I did yesterday about the poisoning. When I do, I'll post it here, or it will be on the News At Ten. One or the other. To lighten the mood though, I found this at Tescos. A piece of ginger shaped like a Scorpion. Well pleased. Don't Las Vegas Casinos buy this kind of stuff for silly money? On Ebay tomorrow....

£100,000 ovno

Worse than I feared

The whole of Alexandra Lake has been cordoned off. I had wondered if this was an over-reaction, but having just bumped into one of the Epping Forest Keepers, the news is dire. It is a deliberate case of bird-poisoning, and the eight Crows I found were just the start. They have been falling out of the trees almost constantly since Tuesday. I don't have the exact figures yet, but so far the deaths include over 100 Crows, many Canada Geese, Coots, and particularly Moorhens, 2 Greylags, and some Pigeons. In all hundreds of birds have died, and indeed when I looked at the area from the car today, it seemed very empty. The Keeper I spoke to has been picking up Crows and putting them together whilst they die, the whole thing sounds horrible. And it does not stop there - a lady has lost her Alsatian as well. Whilst dog-walkers and their dogs are the bane of my [birding] life, I would not wish any of them harm. I can't believe that this has happened on my patch - it's disgusting that there are people out there who would do this. The Police Wildlife Unit and the Environment Agency are both investigating, but how you find whoever has done this without actually catching them in the act I have no idea.

So there is now something newsworthy in Wanstead, though whether the general populace will find it more interesting than Susan Boyle's cat's residential status is unknown at this stage.

How dare somebody poison my birds! The more I sit here typing about it, the more angry I am becoming. On the plus side, no Gulls have been affected. Nor any Wildfowl, though many of the wintering birds have gone. There are a pair of Little Grebe on there, as well as several Mute Swan and a load of Mallard, but they seem to have escaped unharmed at present.

Sorry this post is unhumourous, and contains no Gull faux pas. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

"I might be dead now"

On Not Year-listing

This year I am not year-listing. This is why I have only seen 173 species this year. Last year on March 10th, when I was year-listing, I had seen 180 species. This conscious desire not to chase around for different species has resulted in a frankly massive difference of seven species. Eh? This is not supposed to be happening! It all goes to prove that achieving a high year-list is not remotely difficult. I've not even seen a Sanderling yet, or a Snow Bunting. Nor a Crane. A single trip to Norfolk would likely net me another ten species, which would put me above last year. So what has gone wrong?

Running away from my year list

Rainham is one reason. It's too good. I've been chasing a Rainham list, with a bit of healthy team competition thrown in, so I've been over there quite a lot, and have seen 107 species there this year. It's an amazing site, 125 species recorded by all comers so far. When you add regular Wanstead woodland stuff not found at Rainham, things like Lesser Spot, Bullfinch, Siskin and the like, that accounts for 117 species.

Twitching long-distance for lifers has added a further fifteen unnecessary birds excluding the targets. For instance I would not have seen a Dipper had I not been to Wales for the Black Kite, nor a Long-tailed Duck had I not been up north for the Black-throated Thrush. That's still over 150 species though if you take off those trips.

Admittedly I have been chasing round London slightly, and this is where the real damage has been done. I've seen 145 species here this year so far, including all the Grebes, two Divers, two Swans, two Scoters, all of the non-vagrant Geese, Glaucous Gull, Great Skua, Serin, and the small matter of a Dusky Warbler. There is talk of the London year-list record, but as I've said before, to get to 200 is one thing, to get to 217 is a several levels of effort above that, with a large slice of luck thrown in. Or as Dom put it yesterday, those 17 species are the difference between marriage and divorce. Luckily for Mrs L, or perhaps unluckily depending on your point of view, I'm telling you now that I'm too lazy to see it through. Far too lazy. Er, and very busy. Very very busy. Cleaning, that sort of thing. The only danger is that London's rich vein of form continues into Spring, and by the end of May, 200 species isn't actually very far away. Then I might feel duty-bound to continue, just in case. I reckon if you're going to do it though, you would have to commit yourself very early on, go for everything, and stick at it. And never leave London in case you missed something, which will be highly problematic when that Bluethroat turns up at Minsmere. In fact this has already casued me to miss Whooper Swan and Hen Harrier by being inconveniently placed in North Yorkshire, and then as I mentioned, I've missed out on Lapland Bunting by being too lazy to go to Beddington. So don't watch this space, as it were. I'm not being coy; whilst 145 might be a lot by this point in the year, I honestly don't see myself being able to sustain it without getting peeved off by the whole thing. So there you go.

But whilst not year-listing, I bet I still get to 200 nationally by the end of April. Somewhere out there is a Snow Bunting with my name on it.

Whodunnit?

A proper murder mystery on Wanstead Flats this morning. I was towards the end of my circuit and had just finished counting the wildfowl on Alexandra Lake when this bizarre sight greeted me.

I hope you're not eating your breakfast, but yes, it's four dead Crows in a bucket. Inserted head-first into a catering mayonnaise tub in fact, and then placed on a bin. Not a frequent occurence around here. I called the rangers to report this, and whilst on the phone, noticed another dead bird behind me. It had no obvious external injuries, but five crows do not suddenly just fall out of a tree. Something is not right.


As I was poking this one with a stick, I noticed two others out on the playing fields, and then another. Eight dead Crows? What on earth had happened? I'm afraid I don't know, but it's likely to be poison. The birds didn't appear to have been shot, which was my initial fear, and, other than being dead, looked in perfect health. Alexandra Lake does suffer from a Rat problem, which itself stems from well-meaning but ultimately rather stupid people who put out grotesque quantities of food for the birds. More food than they can possibly eat, and as a result we have a large Rat population. Traps are not laid, but perhaps a local resident has put something down? The Corporation of London people arrived soon after and bagged all eight birds for analysis, so perhaps we'll find out.

On the way back home pondering all this I spied what I feared was a ninth bird. Luckily my ID skills had let me down once again....

The Score

The Gulls are winning, that much is clear. However, another minor victory today in a funny-looking Gull that had several pro-Caspian features and that, structurally, could have passed for one. I picked it out very quickly on the shore at Aveley Bay today. After careful study though, I eliminated Caspian and plumped for Lesser Black-backed, albeit a rather strange one versus what I would consider the norm. Would you like to see a photo? I knew you would, that's why you visit these pages after all. I get to make all the hideous and cringe-worthy errors in public, and the by-product is that everyone else gets better in private. Oh, and when I say photo, I mean that in the loosest possible sense of the word.

Field Notes: Viewing against the light, precise tones impossible to determine with accuracy, so used other nearby gulls as comparison.

size - HG
mantle - darker than HG and CG, approaching graellsii, but lighter than surrounding LBBs.
legs - as the photo, slim, long, could not really ascertain a colour. Did not match surrounding HG and LBB though, perhaps somewhere in between. A lot above the knee though.
eye - dark, small, beady, "casp-like"
head - appeared small
beak - slimmish (ie not chunky like GBB), and very long (in relation to the head), but did have a visible gonydeal angle (though the photo somehow makes it appear more bulbous than it actually was), which was red, rest of beak yellowy, though against the light difficult to get a shade.

I appreciate that this is probably dull as ditch water, and that you really needed to have been there to be able to enthusiastically go "ooooh, I see what you mean!" Still, for any of you who like me have been afraid of looking at Gulls since you began birding, but for whom they secretly hold a bit of an illicit thrill, I hope that these unscientific musings are of use. If they encourage you to also look at gulls, and to be unafraid of messing it up, well, that's the whole point. There is a new poll by the way, I've just set it up.

Which brings me to the last poll on that funny raptor. The overall score came out with Kestrel well-ahead, but Peregrine got more than a few votes. I suspect that part of this was that my photo wasn't the best, but nonetheless, on first impressions, there was more than a hint of Peregrine that got a few birders for whom I have the greatest of respect wondering. Thanks to all those who voted for Caspian Gull as well, I knew there would be a few.... I also put the photo on Bird-Forum; remarkably the post didn't degenerate into a pissing match, and it got quite a few votes for Peregrine on there too, including some excellent responses on plumage specifics that totally ruled Peregrine out and Kestrel in. Highly educational, and I learned a lot.

And that's the point. Birding holds many attractions: being outdoors a lot, communing with nature; respect in the wider community and pithy chat. But above all, for me, it's about constant learning. I'm aware that this sounds unduly pious, but there you go. I am not a pious person, far from it. My contribution to the futhering of human knowledge about birds (or anything, in fact) is precisely nil, but inexplicably I'm enjoying it a lot. But it can't all be about learning though, as I learned a lot at school too, didn't enjoy any of it, and have now forgotten most of it. So what is it about birding that's different? I don't know. Ask me in a few years.

Gull antidote photo