Woolston Eyes, Risley Moss, Rixton Claypits - exploring the local patch - 27th July 2014

I have been sick this week with some kind of summer flu bug. Thursday and Friday I was laid up in bed reading bird books. Saturday I managed to get the energy to look into the nearest nature reserves to us but I didn't manage to get up early like I planned and we didn't leave until lunchtime, by which time it was boiling. A thoroughly unpleasant time was had by us both. Despite walking for about an hour from the gate at Woolston Eyes we never even managed to find the reserve!! Instead we saw mute swans and a few mallard ducks on the Manchester Ship Canal and a Buzzard overhead. Exhausted, thirsty and tired we gave up and thrashed our way through some bushes and down a small ridge (we were very lost by this point!!) to eventually get back to the car and go home.

After some respite at home we set off again for Risley Moss, which I have visited three times now and really liked. I don't know if it was because it was a warm summer Saturday afternoon or what but we were thwarted by weirdos walking their wet dogs (which kept rubbing against us) at every turn.  After we sought refuge in the tower hide thinking we had finally shook them off unfortunately they (and their three big wet dogs) came up there and it was impossible to see anything with all that racket going on so we just left without seeing anything.

Thinking third time lucky, we tried Rixton Claypits with only 45 minutes to go before it closed for the day. We had a pleasant walk and René managed to get a photo of a bird we couldn't identify. It turned out to be a Reed Bunting which was a new "lifer" for me so that cheered me up a bit but all in all for all the effort we put in today, that was a pretty poor show!

On Sunday we went back to Rixton Claypits in the morning and explored it more fully by walking the acorn signposted route right around the lake. Saw nothing new whatsoever, apart from a load more chavs+scary dogs. List total stays at 69.

Marshside RSPB, Southport - 20th July 2014

Warm, overcast, humid on a sunday afternoon. Saw Lapwings, Woodpigeons, Kestrel, Buzzard, Dunlin, Redshank, Reed Warbler (European), Canada Geese, Pink-Footed Goose, Coot Moorhen, Sedge Warbler. Borrowed a friends Canon camera as we have sold our Nikon  on eBay now and are deciding between a couple of models.

Lapwing

Male Blackbird

Pink-Footed Goose

Redshank

Reed Warbler

South Stacks, Anglesey, Wales - 13th July 2014, Puffin, Guillemot, Razorbill and Little Owl

As the title says, 4 more new birds for my list on this visit to South Stacks Cliffs. I worked for them as there are about 300 rough hewn steps to walk down (and even worse, back up!). It was a hot, sunny day in the afternoon. The drive to the reserve from Warrington took about 2 hours, just before getting to the reserve I saw my first ever Little Owl in the wild, perched casually on a telephone wire going across some fields, in broad daylight. We were driving so I couldn't grab the camera but that was probably the highlight of the day for me.

In addition once at the reserve we saw 3 or 4 puffins and birds which I couldn't tell if they were Guillemots or Razorbills. Quite disappointed I just added 2 species to my list but luckily as René had taken such nice photos I was able to zoom right in and see we had seen Guillemots AND Razorbills. Not a bad day at all, 4 added to the 2014 and life lists!

The Lighthouse

Guillemots are chocolate brown on the back and have pointy beaks... not like Razorbills at all!

Mystery Gull. In the end I assumed it was a young (first winter second summer or whatever) Herring Gull. No idea really though!

Atlantic Puffins

And these are nothing like Guillemots!! (once zoomed in on computer after getting camera home - through my binoculars I had no idea).

Pennington Flash

I am slowly getting around my local patch reserves. This is Pennington Flash which I was expecting great things from, having read about all kinds of birds being sighted there. On the day we went we heard Chiff Chaffs (possibly seen one too but couldn't tell between that and all the other brown birds in the book since it kept quiet at the time of looking at it!), saw swifts, song thrush and the only ones new for my list Common Tern.

More Garden photos

Collared Dove waiting for Fat Pigeon to get off the feeder

Comma butterfly on the buddlia

Female Blackbird

Greenfinch

Eurasian Robin

Fat Wood Pigeon sitting on the food to guard it

Young Starling

Goldfinch

 

I'm now keeping three lists. My life list, my year list and a garden list. Goldfinches are one of the most common visitors to my garden, they love the black niger seed and ever since I started putting that out a few years ago, they visit us regularly. This is a small 3 square metre patch of paved garden in the middle of a housing estate in Warrington, NW England.

My maiden voyage into birdwatching - A Hobby

OK when I first heard of the listing competition that birders have, I listed out my species seen this year and it was about 30. Things like (Eurasian versions) Robin, Magpie, Goldfinch, Blackbird. I did struggle.

Normally I spend my weekends playing computer games, reading or watching films. Now I am on a mission and the last two months my husband and I have had more outings than probably the last two years!

My husband is not into nature at all, especially not birdwatching. He is heavily into technology and computer games (we even met through a computer game back in 2003 when it was even more weird to do that than it is now!). He moved here from Holland after we met so he doesn't have a load of mates to go to the pub with so I am lucky that we spend a lot of time together.

Although he is not at all into birdwatching, he is very supportive of everything I do and so bought me my first ever pair of binoculars for my birthday in late June. We also joined the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) so we get entry into a nationwide network of nature reserves

I had booked the week of my birthday off from work but René (the husband) was working still. When I'd booked the week off I had expected to use it going shopping, playing on my xbox, reading and relaxing. Instead I surprised myself when I asked René to drop me off at the Risley Moss nature reserve in Warrington so I could try out my new binoculars.

It was sunny and I had a lovely couple of hours wandering around the reserve. It was free to get into which was a nice start and very quiet on a weekday. I did feel exhilarated to be alone in the woods and a little bit afraid when I did spy someone through the tree canopy, so I tried to avoid them when I could.

When coming to the bird hide I had been following signs for, there was a single man there, looking through his binoculars. I wanted to turn around and leave but he saw me and said the now familiar birding greeting "seen much?". I said I hadn't and then got into conversation with him. He was very friendly and talking to him made me feel less like he was going to murder me in the woods so we had quite a pleasant chat about Peregrine Falcons in Manchester city centre and other bird related things.

During our conversation a bird flew across the field in front of us and he pointed out it was a Great Spotted Woodpecker. I was excited as it was new for my year list, I watched it for a while running around the trunk of the tree and asked the guy how he had known what it was when it was flying so fast - maybe the colours? He answered that he was actually colour blind so recognised birds instead by their jizz. To me, "jizz" was usually a word I took as quite rude in English slang (eg. "he jizzed all over her face")  so I was a bit taken aback by this and started to wonder if I had misread the situation and in fact this guy was some old pervert in the woods, as I'd initially feared.

I soldiered on though and was relieved when a couple shortly turned up and started the "seen much?" conversation so I could I make my excuses and hurriedly leave.

After a brisk walk I eventually came to another hide, this time overlooking the woodland, I settled down to see what I could see. The answer was nothing by the time a different older man came in and "seen much"ed me again. I asked him the same question and he told me he had seen a Hobby at the third hide, that I had not yet visited. I had never seen this bird of prey and was still slightly creeped out so made a quick getaway from the hide using my excuse of seeing a Hobby for the first time as my reason for not indulging in conversation.


As I began to hotfoot it away from the hide however the old man shouted for me to wait, when he caught me up he said that since it was my first time, he would help me to identify the Hobby. As we got close to the hide he wondered aloud if the old guy he had been talking to was still there. Apparently that even-older guy had been asking my man here questions but was deaf as a post and couldn't hear the answers so my new friend here was also on the run from someone.

We passed the older-old guy on the way up to the next viewing point. We didn't go in the hide but instead sat on a picnic table and waited and watched for a Hobby.

We could see the rubbish dump in the distance with hundreds of different gulls, swifts but no Hobby.

I got quite excited at one point and stood up training my binoculars on a passing bird in the distance, just a second too late I realised it was no Hobby as my old friend disdainfully said "that's just a wood pigeon!!". All my street cred in the birding scene evaporated but at least he now knew what he was dealing with.

Eventually, just as my eyes were starting to water from looking into the bright sky for so long my old guy told me he had found one and showed me where it was. I watched the Hobby for around fifteen minutes as it jetted around in the sky, swirling and diving.  The old man told me the latin name for Hobby is Subuteo Subuteo and when he saw tears coming from my stinging eyes I think he thought I was overcome with emotion and so told me how he still remembers seeing his first Hobby as a child and he hopes I will remember this for the rest of my life too. I thanked him, wiping my eyes as he left. I might not have been crying with happiness but it was a pretty good day indeed.

Further into bird listing

I mentioned the "listing" aspect of birding in my last post. It seems to be mainly Americans and British people that are into this competitive sub-culture of bird watching.

There are approx. 10,000 birds in the world. New species get discovered every now and again (23 were discovered in the first 9 months of 2013) and of course sadly some disappear and become extinct. No one has ever achieved seeing every known living bird yet, but some people are getting close and there are now many people hunting that record, in the hope of becoming the first.

Most people don't have the time, money or inclination to pursue birding to this extreme though, so the more popular lists are things like "life list" (for all birds seen in your life), "garden list" (for all birds seen in or over your garden) and most competitive of all.. the year list per country/geographic region.

I live in North West England so the list I choose to compete in is the year list for the United Kingdom.

This involves me making a list of the birds I have seen, only in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the small islands around the UK which count as part of the United Kingdom), during 2014.

There are, of course, a few rules. The birds must be alive, wild and unrestrained. So things like birds in the zoo or falconry place would not count. The same goes for nan's pet budgie, domestic livestock like chickens or peacocks.

The UK is not one of the most bird-rich areas in the world (that would be somewhere in South America or Indonesia probably) but it's definitely not bad.

According to Wikipedia, there are 596 species of wild birds that have occurred in  Britain as of 5 December 2013. Of these, some will only visit for a few months each year. I am not sure how many are resident in the UK the whole year through, but probably less than half of those 596.

Last year the UK Champion lister was Lee GR Evans with 351. This year he is top of the pops again with rank 1 in Britain at the time of writing (27th July) and 292 birds seen. My figures are rank 287 with 69 species seen.

The last 2 months have seen me read many bird books, begin watching David Attenborough's Life Of Birds series, spend every weekend visiting several nature reserves and of course not forgetting my garden which gave me a greenfinch the other day so it is playing it's part too. I am hoping I can get to 150 for my 2014 year list (about half of Lee and the other Premiership Birders), let's see how I do.

Getting back into watching Birds and loving lists..

In early June 2014 I read the book of a true story about a couple from North Wales who sold their house, car and most of their possessions to raise enough money to go bird watching for a year, in an attempt to see as many of the world's 10,000 strong bird population as they could, hopefully breaking the world record for "Most Birds Seen in a Year" on the way.

What a crazy idea! Imagine jacking your life in - job/house etc. to pursue a passion. All or nothing, any of us could do it but not many of us do (including me!).

Well they did it, they saw over 4000 birds, which broke the record and now they make their living from writing about birds, taking people on bird tours and giving talks about their travels.

I've been reading a lot of other bird watching books since and it's got me back into a much loved hobby that I've had on the backburner ever since I turned into a teenager and became distracted.

I remember keeping a list aged 8 when I was a young girl, living on a council estate in Telford, England with a factory at the back of the house. There wasn't that much to see then but I still enjoyed trekking up "The Mount" (in reality a very small green hillock in the middle of the estate) to see if I could see a Golden Eagle (not surprisingly, I didn't).

My mother remarried when I was 11 and my new Stepfather knew a lot about birds, through him I was able to suddenly see a lot of the species I had only seen in my bird book (Buzzard, Barn Owl, Wagtails and lots beside.).

We moved to Lymm, in North West England which had a lovely lake I could walk around every day and I became familiar with a lot of water birds like Great Crested Grebe, Kingfisher, Canada Geese, Mute Swan. As I got into my mid-teens however my interest turned to boys, music and films and I stopped actively bird watching.

In my twenties, when I started to make enough money for a few extra treats each month I started to buy bird food, make my own lard cake and try to attract birds to the tiny garden of the house my husband and I are renting.

Now I'm in my early thirties and since June this year (when I was inspired by the books) I started keeping a list of the birds I have seen in 2014, in addition to a "life list" and a "garden list". I participate in a ranking of world birders on www.BuBO.org and I am starting to understand and enjoy more about birds each week. I'll explain more about listing another time but basically it can get quite competitive and has turned the simple joy of birdwatching into something akin to a sport. That could be good or bad, I'm not sure but I am finding it fun so far and this blog is going to be chronicling how I am getting on.