Tuesday
23rd August,
Here’s a fun way of seeing how your birding id
skill is improving, by comparing counts year on year. It was suggested to me by
Bryan Barnacle, the Chairman of DOS.
The idea is that you have to see how far you can
get in a calendar year, before the number of lapsed days is more than
the number of species you have seen. Simple? Read it again! You can appreciate that you will be well ahead of the game on the 31st January, because
you will have seen more than 31 species, but as the year passes the number of
lapsed days gets ever closer to the number of species seen!
Looking back on my records for the last 3 years …
In 2014, it was 157 days before lapsed days =
species, in other words 6th June.
A reasonably good year
In 2015, lapsed days caught species sightings on
the 145th day = 25th May. Not as good as 2014
In 2016, it was 170 species = 19th June.
Numbers sadly distorted by my operation… I had done 170 at the 18th
May
Just a bit of fun, but a way of checking progress =
improving knowledge.
Wednesday 24th
August, and I had a
cracking hour, once again at Attenborough Gravel Pits. I met up with Gill, a birding
friend from Nottingham and after the swapping of medical symptoms and advise
over a coffee, we ambled down, and up, to the Tower Hide. Sure as eggs, the guy
with scope welcomed us with the traditional greeting, “you should have been
here 10 minutes ago – there was Wood Sandpiper on the scrape”. Marvellous, a
bird I wanted for my 2016 list. BUT NOT NOW.
Anyway, we settled down for the planned hour or so,
and almost immediately heard the song I had been waiting to see (I had
heard it already), a Green Woodpecker. It buzzed around a bit, then settled on the grass so
we could see it hunting for ants. Good, that’s 173.
Being in the same hide as 12 days ago, to-day I had
views of 2 Little Egrets, a couple of Ringed Plovers, a Snipe and a single
Barnacle Goose (Feral). I didn’t discourage the chap who said it was the first
time he had seen a great White Egret, nor did I point out the yellow feet, but
I do know the size of Little Egrets can vary enormously.
When there was no one
around, we stood on the balcony of the tower hide which puts you above the
bushes canopy and where you can more readily see birds popping in and out. A
Cetti Warbler was briefly very visible, a year tick I think for Gill, but the
best was yet to come.
In front of the hide there is a very substantial
reedbed, good for Bitterns and Water Rails, but the reedbed is not very old,
and there are still a lot of posts and netting spread around. Our delight was
to see 2 Kingfishers to the left on posts, and also one to the right, appearing
to be swinging on the netting. As we watched, all 3 were taking it in turn to
dive, and at 12 o’clock, it was all I could do to tear myself away!!
I have recounted a couple of wow moments in
previous posts, and I’m sure Gill will allow me to recount her wow moment which
I had published, amongst others, in the Derby Telegraph in 2013. To quote her
words:-
“When I was about nine, I had a small bedroom with
my bed under the window and slept with the curtains open and the streetlight
casting a window outline on the opposite wall.
Something woke me one night and, facing away from
the window, I could see the outline of a head on the opposite wall. Thinking
that a burglar may be outside on a ladder, I slowly sat up, turned round and
found a Tawny Owl just 4ft away. The Owl turned its head right round to look at
me. Our eyes locked – it felt like
information exchange.
That Tawny Owl became my mascot bird, and
demonstrates the enchantment that people feel when they see owls.”
If anyone has a wow moment to share, please put a
comment on my blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment