Mr Grumpy

I had a brief conversation with Mrs L last night about last night's blog post. I recounted the broad theme of historical eBird lists with child participants, and also mentioned how I'd had to reread some of the very old posts from well over ten years ago in order to confirm that kiddo had indeed been present. I also threw in, off hand, that my life had been such fun then, full of happiness and joie de vivre. What had changed, I mused? I cannot remember Mrs L's exact response but it was along the following lines.

Yeah you're a grumpy git now and have been for ages.

There is nothing quite like the marital telling it like it is is there? Not that I expected anything different mind you. It is not as if I am unhappy now, but the point is that I was definitely really happy back then. Back when this blog was actually good I was in a pretty decent place, and this shone through in my writing. Or at least I think it did anyway. 

Mrs L did not offer any pearls as to how this state of mind might be recaptured other than to say that exercise and being outdoors a lot more than I am now would definitely help. She may have a point, but back then I could be outdoors the entire day because I didn't have a job. Now I do, and there's definitely an argument to say that this is a contributing factor to being Mr Grumpy. It's a state of mind I think. In my job I am required to be extremely serious, comport myself with gravitas and a high degree of professionalism, and generally be a no-nonsense semi-autocratic voice of reason. This does not translate well into any definition of fun that I am aware of. My point is you cannot simply shake this off on a Friday night and switch it back on on Monday morning, it just doesn't work like that. The person you are at work, the person you are required to be, inevitably becomes part of you whether you like it or not. I am me at work if that makes any sense, I do not pretend to be anyone else, but the lines between me and me have been irrevocably blurred by so many years of doing what I do. I don't think that was the case in my twenties and thirties, my incredible immaturity managed to seep through regardless, but now, in my forties (just...) and with different levels of responsibilities than earlier in my career it has been edged out and this is who I now am. A shame, but I am not sure there is a great deal I can do about it.

Mr Grumpy is probably here to stay.

I knew it would come in useful one day

Remarkably my son now has an eBird account. I genuinely did not think this would ever happen, I felt sure that all of the birding trips I took him on, starting from when he was about six years old, would put him off for life. Well not for life, but certainly for many years. I am not sure what  exactly changed, but it seems that one of new friends at University is getting into birding and dragging Henry along too. This guy is stunned that somehow Henry knows what he is looking at and what is more can identify some birds on call alone. Now this I did forsee, but not in this context. I thought that he would be walking along one day with some friends and unconsciously point out a Goldfinch or something, whereupon his mates would look at him aghast etc, and he would have to confess it wasn't his fault and so on.

I suppose that in some ways this is the scenario playing out, although without the "oh my God you freak" part. I knew about the little excursions he has been going on, but I did not know about eBird until this weekend when we went on a family trip to the Peak District. The weather was essentially disgusting throughout, but mid morning on Sunday a short respite allowed us to walk to the top of Mam Tor without getting totally soaked. Instead we got soaked walking down again, with lots of slipping over, mud, various minor injuries and a huge amount of water. Drying off in a local cafe I went through the inevitable eBird list I had made, and somehow this led to the monumental news that Henry had an eBird account that he uses for he and his mate to work out where to go locally.

And so to the title of this blog post. Throughout the childrens' childhoods I maintained a list of the notable birds that they had seen, but not really ever expecting that these would see the light of day. B-o-ring!! Until now. Back home today, I dug them out and sent his to him. There are some absolute gems on there I have to say, and I am sure that he will remember at least some of them. Trumpeter Finch in Norfolk, ooof. Even though this covers 2009 through to about 2014 I have eBird lists for all of them, retrospectively entered during a particularly bloody-minded period I went through a few years ago that coincided with a pandemic that predented me from leaving the house.... Would he like me to share these with him I enquired? Go on then came the reply. I was flabbergasted and delighted in equal measure, and have spent a bit of time working out which eg Hoopoe it was that he saw. This blog has been supremely helpful in this respect as back in the day I used to publish up to the minute views of what I had been up to (rather than half-arsed trip reports nine months in arrears) and in many cases I can line up the eBird list with a post that confirms that he came along. Sorry, what I meant was that I dragged him along against his will, but that now fifteen years later he is pleased that he came. Or at least that he didn't resist. It is also quite interesting to have a read of some of old 'parenting' posts - what a fun time that was. These days fun is in distinctly short supply it seems but back then I was having a whale of a time. I wonder what the difference could be?

Ticking and zooming

It is all rather non-stop at the moment, I am living my best life. My diary between now and Christmas is quite absurd but I think I am up to the challenge. I've not been at home much, work and travel, and also work travel (a rare event) have seen me all over the place. November continues to look rather full and as for December, well good grief, but there are some fun things in there. And lots of social events as well which is nice, too many perhaps, and mostly wine related. I will be exhausted by the time the holidays actually arrive. And there is scope for another emergency trip to the US in there as well although currently this is far from certain.

Despite being all over the place I've suprised myself with a pretty decent Wanstead patch list for 2024. This now stands at 117, the latest being a Red-crested Pochard on Heronry. Classic timing arriving in a cold snap, and also classic timing arriving just as I departed for Germany. But it was a short trip and was still there when I got back so I nipped to see it before heading off to the Peak District. 117 is my fourth highest total ever recorded, and just one more will equal the third highest, so it is all still to play for with just over a month remaining. 

The biggest impediment is simply not being here very much between now and the end of the year. As ever I have slightly over-extended myself, and what seemed like good ideas at the time are now things all else being equal I'd rather not do. But do them I will, I signed up and need to go through with it as originally envisaged. And just like twitching, whilst it seems like a massive drag at the time a couple of days later the stress and hassle is all forgotten and you are glad you've done it. And this will no doubt be the case here as well.

Fife, looking east down the Forth.

Slovenia - May 2024 - A weekend birding break

I spent a weekend in Slovenia in mid-May this year, mainly because I'd never been and so it was a country tick, but also to go birding in southern Europe which I hadn't done for a while. It was a painfully early departure from Heathrow on a Saturday morning but the tube runs all night so it wasn't a problem getting there, it just meant very little sleep. To try and rectify this I slept the whole flight and by 10am I was on the ground and birding, with a Buzzard at Ljubljana airport. The approximate route I drove is below.

I picked up my car and made for the nearest pin, Hrase ponds which is just south of the airport, to stretch my legs and get in the right frame of mind. I didn't go far, just up and down a track on one side of the water. Here there were singing Icterine Warblers, a Red-backed Shrike, Marsh Tit and a Spotted Flycatcher. A positive start.

My next stop was the western part of Ljubljana Marsh, south of the city. Things became distinctly more European here with Golden Orioles and Cuckoos singing, a Hoopoe and three Red-backed Shrikes. Then on the eastern side of this patchwork of fields and ditches I came across both Hobby and Red-footed Falcon, Nightingale, Serin, yet more Icterine Warblers and an excellent dung heap with all three Wagtails and a handful of Tree Sparrow.

Lake Cerknica

My desination for the evening was Lake Cerknica, about an hour south of Ljubljana. I'd booked a room in the nearby village of Dolenje Jezero and planned to explore both on foot and in the car from there. It is a vast area of reedbeds and shallow water with fantastic birding on offer. I initially walked down the track as it said no cars, but then I noticed that everyone else was driving straight through, so after a while I went back to the village and picked it up and was thus able to go a lot further along the southern side of the lake. The full list is above, but the highlights were a pair of Garganey in flight, a White Stork, a Squacco Heron, nearly 30 Great White Egret and a Marsh Harrier. A scope is essential here as the lake is enormous, and as the sides are mostly reeds the actual water is some distance away. A small squall dropped some hirundines in late on, and about half way along this edge there is a tower hide that affords great views of the lake. The water finally peters out at the village of Gorenje Jezero, and there is more good birding just before here, especially along a causeway that leads to the village. There was a singing Corncrake here, more White Stork, Whinchat, Fieldfare, Reed Bunting and lots of Sedge Warblers.

I was up early the next morning for a repeat, again walking on foot from the village to the start of the lake. The same birds all over again, but no people at all, and this seemed to amplify the Golden Orioles and Cuckoos. The plan today was to head down to the coast via some good birding spots. The first stop was at Krajinkski Park where a well wooded valley held Black Woodpecker and Short-toed Treecreeper amongst other birds, and then I continued to Dolenja Vas a bit further southwest. This was excellent, a grassland valley with steep sides and filled with birds. A Quail sang, and Woodlarks song-flighted over the slopes, meanwhile each bush seemed to have a Red-backed Shrike in it, and both Corn Bunting and Yellowhammer were belting it out.

Marsh Tit

I was at the coast before 10am, birding Skocjanski Marsh. This is a proper nature reserve with trails around the outer edge and various screens and hides. It's pretty popular with non-birders as well, but I didn't mind that and did a complete circuit whilst dodging joggers and pushchairs. I added a ton of new birds for the trip here, Black-winged Stilt, LRP, Redshank, Greenshank, Little Tern, Whiskered Tern and Common Tern. Great Reed Warblers, absent at Cerknica, were all over the place with their outsized grunts and wheezes. 

I went up to the Crnotice Plateau to try for Bobwhite - a naturalised population here - but failed to find any. Sardinian Warbler and a flock of Swift were new for the trip though. I then drove as far east as I could, right to the border with Croatia at Rakitovec, hoping I could sneak another country in. The track was a bit dicey but I made it all the way to the end and then carried on on foot, however the border wasn't accessible so I had to make do with making an eBird list of birds that were clearly over the other side, which included Short-toed Eagle and Griffon Vulture which did the decent thing and sailed over me and into Slovenia. Borders don't apply to birds. There was also a Rock Bunting singing here. Retracing my steps to the plateau I found a vantage point from which to look down at the large quarry at Crni Kal, adding House Martin, Alpine Swift, Linnet, another Rock Bunting, Black Redstart and a Blue Rock Thrush. 

I then went to the Saltpans at Secovlje. Access was a lot harder than I anticipated without actually going in so I contented myself with scoping parts of it, adding Avocet, Shelduck, Spoonbill and Zitting Cisticola. By now approaching 6pm it was time to head back towards the airport. I figured I just had time to take in Lake Bled and Vintgar Gorge to the northwest of Ljubljana, about two hours away. I cannot now remember why I was going there, but there was something good in the gorge that I didn't see as it turned out to be closed by the time I arrived at about 8pm. Lake Bled itself was heaving with people having an evening stroll, and it wasn't remotely possible to even stop the car anywhere to take the same photographs that everyone else takes. Shame.

I ended the weekend on 113 species having had a thoroughly good time. The country is tiny, easily doable in just a weekend, and seems mostly to be used as a corridor by German tourists seeking to skirt around the Alps and access the coast near Trieste or down into Croatia. There is a good variety of habitats and birding stops are not all that far from each other, and I'd definitely recommend it for a spring break.

Ticking over

So that was the USA from April, and now I am only seven months behind. It was made easier and quicker because I barely took any photographs, it was all about birding. I should be able to bash out my May trip to Slovenia pretty quickly as well as that was only a weekend, and looking in my folders I can see I saved just 18 photographs of four species. Way to go!

I am not yet ready to write about the US Presidential election. It is too traumatic to even think about. And crazy, crazy to think that even after the chaotic first term, even after the "Stop the Steal!", the Capitol riots, even after court cases, one of which concluded with a guilty verdict, that this could happen. That Americans could be so short-sighted. He's a lying criminal, a misogynist pig, surrounded by vacuous acolytes made in his own image - the family give me the creeps. And he has four more years in which to dismantle America's great institutions, and this time I think he'll do it, no holding back. That people who are genuinely struggling could vote for him thinking that he will change their fortunes is incredible. But then what did the Democrats do for those people? Herein lies the problem. But anyway, this is for another post whilst I compose myself. I note that even a slight reference to it in my recent trip report drew the immediate ire of a reader, how dare I mention politics on my own blog etc etc, so this promises to be a lot of fun once I can summon the energy.

So what's been happening then? Not a great deal, it has been a busy period at work and I've burned the candle at both ends to the extent that I am now ill, some lurgy picked up on public transport no doubt. Tis the season. I've not been out with the new lens again, the weather has been particularly grey and miserable, but I've watched endless YouTube videos about how the camera functions and I have high hopes that the next time the sun makes an appearance and I am not dying or working I may be able to see if I have learned anything. 

Bird-wise the vizmig season seems to be drawing to an end, there is not nearly as much movement. Highlights locally include yet another Great White Egret over the Flats, my eighth since the first in 2018, as well as a lone Lapwing courtesy of Tony and a Short-eared Owl sent my way by Marco. This puts me on 116 for the year with not much, if anything, left to come. A Yellow-legged Gull perhaps? It's either that or an arctic blast. 

So, to Slovenia then.

Southeastern USA - Trip List

Well that was a lot of fun. My only trip to the USA in 2024, normally I go a lot more often but time is as ever on the short side and I had had other things that I had wanted to do. The full eBird trip list is here, with all checklists and locations. Since Bradders had joined me we had seen 177 species, of which five were ABA ticks. As usual I've also prepared the below summary, but rather than day by day I've done it State by State which has been one of the major reasons for the trip in the first place. We visited ten if you count Texas at the beginning and New York at the end. Top honours went to Arkansas with 88 species, followed by Louisiana with 77 and Alabama with 75. Of the core eight States I'd been birding in Illinois before, and visited Kentucky on a non-birding trip, but the other six were completely new to me and thus I've managed to fill in another big block of the eBird map which I am so keen on. I've now birded in 36 States, and visited 40, so it's going reasonably well. If you look at the map below, with the exception of Alaska the grey ones are in blocks and look doable in exactly this kind of trip. I do worry about Iowa though!

 

Southeastern USA - April 2024 - Day 5 - Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and home

We were in a big hurry today, our last day of birding, and in reality only a morning as the flight from Nashville to New York left early afternoon. Today more than ever we would need immense discipline to stay on track. We planned an early morning session in Illinois, a bit of time just over the river in Kentucky, and then to get across to Tennessee and bird there for as long as had left after the two and a half hour drive to Nashville.

We started birding at 5.56am in Fort Massac State Park on the banks of the Ohio River. Our progress here was stymied by floods, the road we had planned to walk unpassable. But in this flooded landscape we found our one and only Hooded Merganser of the trip, and the only Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Woodpeckers were very good here, with four Pileated Woodpecker, two Downy Woodpecker, and one each of Red-headed and Red-bellied Woodpeckers. As we took a smaller path inland we picked up something we did not think we had heard yet, and Merlin told us we were looking for (appropriately enough, given where we were) a Kentucky Warbler, which we soon found in small tree. Also here were yet more Prothonotary Warblers, Parulas, a Pine Warbler and a Yellow-throated Warbler. An hour and a quarter zipped by and it was time to leave.

Northern Parula

Just over the river we stopped at Stuart Nelson Park to start our Kentucky list. We were not sure quite how far we should go given our extremely tight schedule, so leaving our car near some baseball pitches we walked along a wooded path and then over a small creek before following a vegetated ditch alongside the trees. A small pond just after the bridge had some Canada Geese in it, as well as two Solitary Sandpiper. The ditch itself was really good birding, with all sorts of things hiding in it including a Northern Waterthrush, a Common Yellowthroat, an Eastern Towhee and a Chipping Sparrow. Eastern Bluebirds dashed through the trees, Cardinals were everywhere, and we also found only our second Cedar Waxwing. On a hill behind the ditch a couple of Eastern Meadowlark sang. We managed 33 species here in about an hour and then got on the road.

We continued birding as we drove southeast towards Tennessee which we reached in about an hour having closed our Kentucky account on 39. But of course the fun part about this trip was that we also had a Tennessee list that had been temporarilty halted on 35 a couple of days previously, and when we crossed the State Line we were able to pick it up again. Our final destination was Shelby Bottoms on the north side of the Cumberland River and only a short hop from the airport. We arrived at almost exactly 11am and felt that we could safely bird for an hour before having to pack up and go. We walked a loop of about a mile, first of all through some low woodland, and then back along the river edge. Yellow-rumped Warbler were very common here, but whilst we managed to get Tennessee up to 56 in our short visit we didn't get anything new at this point. Back at the car we packed up pretty quickly, dismantling all the gear and stowing it away, and then made the short hop to Nashville Airport. Unfortunately there was no time to stop at the Grand Ole Opry which would have been rather a pligrimage for me. We had also driven right past the boyhood home of Johnny Cash in Arkansas which had been just north of Wapanocca. In fact we had done nothing cultural at all, just birded from dawn until dusk! Next time!

Prothonotary Warbler