Guernsey birds and moths

birds : Abigail's Christmas present was a trip to Yorkshire to visit her grandma and her cousins, so her and I flew to Manchester on Sunday morning for a four-day trip. Birding was not a priority but I did manage a few hours in the field. On Monday morning, Dad and I visited our old haunt of Fairburn Ings. It was such a cold day that almost the whole reserve was frozen over, with just a few ice-free areas of water. Most of the wildfowl had clearly left for deeper waters but there was still more duck than I usually see. Two Goldeneye were the first I'd seen for quite a while and a Water Rail scurried through the reeds.

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a fully-iced Fairburn Ings

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The other bit of birding that I managed to squeeze in was around the village where my sister lives, after we stayed the night on Monday. The village is Wold Newton on the Yorkshire Wolds and it was still a very snowy scene, just like winters used to be when I was a boy.

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Ye Olde Winter birding at Wold Newton

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I took the lane north out of the village and up the hill into the fields, sliding on the ice as I went. The commonest species in these fields was Yellowhammer, and there was a decent-sized flock that I came across. Also with these were some Corn Buntings and Tree Sparrows, and other species present included Rooks, Common Gulls and Hares - all species which I rarely see. I really enjoyed this walk with the ice cold frost on my face and the icy snow crunching beneath my feet - it took me back to my winter birding of years gone by.   

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Yellowhammer

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Corn Bunting

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The highlight though was an excellent day-flying Barn Owl which hunted along a hedge as I made my way up the hillside. On the way back down, I saw it again perched in the roadside bushes, and managed to stalk it relatively close, and get some satisfactory photos. Nicola and Duncan see this bird regularly around the village.

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Barn Owl

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Back in the garden, Tree Sparrows are regular visitors to the bird feeders and some came to feed whilst we visited. They were far too close for digiscoping through the kitchen window but I made an attempt. So no rarities seen on the trip but enough to make it interesting, and a few species I hadn't seen for quite a while.

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Tree Sparrow

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birds : My plans to lop off all the tarts that I still need for my 2009 year list were suddenly scuppered when my car decided to kaput on the first day of the holidays. It was finally repaired yesterday and I managed a few hours out birding down the west coast this morning. At Fort le Crocq, the Water Pipit that I had found in October was finally behaving itself and I stayed a while there because I thought that I'd had 2 different birds - a browner one and a greyer one, but I couldn't be sure. I managed a few record shots despite the dull weather and the speed of the bird.

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Water Pipit, Fort le Crocq

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Whilst there I also had two Black Redstarts, 4 Lapwing heading over and a young Peregrine fly in - it shows the success of the latter that I do not even write it in my notebooks any more.

Down at L'Eree there were good numbers of Lapwing on the Aerodrome - about 250 in total. They only arrive on the island in numbers when the weather is freezing further east in Europe. It's a species you really appreciate when you don't see it very often, with its wacky plumage and flight action. There were about 50 Golden Plovers with them and a small group of Gadwall were on the salt marsh, an uncommon visitor to the island.

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Lapwing, Old Aerodrome

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Gadwall, Old Aerodrome

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There wasn't much time to look at many other places. A Marsh Harrier was seen near Perelle and there were a couple of Tufted Duck and a Firecrest at the Reservoir east arm. I had to finish my Christmas shopping at the Bridge and these two tame Turnstones decided to say hello as I parked up - no zoom required.

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Turnstones, St. Sampsons Harbour wall

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nonsense : The main bit of nonsense was my ridiculous decision to ignore that my car was sounding like a 20 yr old tractor and trying to get it to limp through to the Xmas break to get it serviced. Luckily it gave up the ghost in the driveway rather than in a lane somewhere, so it was just a case of towing it round the block to the local garage. I didn't have a tow rope of course and was sure that the tatty bit of rope I found in the shed was going to snap half way there, but it didn't thank goodness. After inspecting the engine, the mechanics were amazed that it had managed to survive with so little oil in it. The scene in the garage sounded like one of those hospital dramas where the doctors are just about to turn the life-support machines off when they notice the patient twitch his little finger. My surprised comment that the oil warning light hadn't come on was met by derisory glances from the grease monkeys, explaining that only a dipstick wouldn't check the oil level regularly. But it has survived, thank god and it's all good in the hood - literally!

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Well Christmas is upon us, and in a few hours some old geezer will be emptying his sack in the front room. Abigail seems to be at least 155X more excited than she has ever been before and Aidan is getting into the spirit too.  Have a cool Yule folks!

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birds : Nothing new appearing in the last week on the island, but with the wind swinging to a cold NE in the last day or so, we may get some continental species arriving. The main troubles I've had were with divers - well one in particular. Stopping at Rousse on the way home on Tuesday, there was a distant diver on the far side of Grandes Havres and I was happy it was Great Northern, although it was too dull and dingy to be sure. Then on Wednesday, I saw it again, and again it was dull and distant by Chouet and it looked very different this time - more like Black-throated. Then today I had it close in off Rousse and it was clearly a Great Northern Diver. Although two birds is not that unlikely. A Black Redstart visited the garden at the weekend and there was a juvenile Brent Goose sitting around on the grass by Rousse kiosk on Tuesday. I thought I was going to have to call the Animal Shelter but when I approached it, it flew away strongly although it's leg seemed a bit manky.

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dull, distant diver

British Birds had a couple of interesting articles this month. First was an update on the Ruddy Duck cull and a summary of the reasons behind the shootings. They seem to have really decimated the population and it will be extinct soon it seems. The emotional response is how terrible it is killing so many creatures but it is difficult to argue against the reasons why. Ruddy Duck will slowly extend its range all across Europe and swamp the White-headed Duck genes and make that species extinct without a doubt, so why not stop it whilst we can. Millions of birds are shot for fun every year, not to mention the multi-million killed by cats, so a few thousand birds isn't a lot. We used to get flocks of c.300 Ruddies at Swillington Ings when I used to watch there, one of the most important sites for the species in the country, but I feel no love for them. I find them quite ugly and displeasing to the eye. The other article was about a Baikal Teal shot in the UK about 100 years ago. Analysing the proportion of Hydrogen isotopes in the feathers of the specimen proved that the newer wing feathers were grown in western Europe whilst the older juvenile feathers were grown in Siberia, so a genuine vagrant. It's astounding that you can prove this after so many years. I think that they should dramatise this 'cold case' on TV in an episode of "Waking the Dead".

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nonsense : Aidan was still recovering from his virus earlier this week. We tried returning him to school early but he fell asleep there! He spent 2 days on the sofa without eating hardly anything and refused to take any medicine. He seems to have recovered now which is good since he seems a natural "lolloper", genes he has clearly inherited from me (according to Rosie!).

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Natural-born lolloper

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Since it is the last week of the school term, nothing much useful happens. Everyone seems to stop doing any work and just go through the motions, and some teachers start showing dvds with a week still to go. So the ones of us who still set them work to do get it in the ear that we are actually The Grinch. In fact I have changed the "word-of-the-week" poster in my room to "HUMBUG" and have banned decorations in my classroom. But we have decorated the other classroom that I register my form in, since there is a house competition for the best decorated form room, and my year 7's wanted to do it. As well as the usual trimmings we have made lots of Pantomime posters of the pupils and mine is shown below! Abigail's school are also Xmassing it up and they had a party the other day. It was a pirate-theme and Abigail won the prize for the best Pirate costume! I think it was mainly because of the gigantic kick-ass pirate hat I made her out of card and silver paint, which was about 5X bigger than her head. The home-made fancy-dress is a dying art since nearly everyone else just bought cheap crap pirate costumes from a shop. I don't see the point of fancy dress if you are just buying it - any fancy-dress should be made yourself. (btw, two of my pet hates - Pantomimes and Fancy Dress!). So last day of school tomorrow - yeeee-hah!

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Oh no he bloody isn't!                                                         To err is human, to arr is pirate.

birds : On Tuesday after work, I called in at Pulias as Tony had seen an unusually large group of Black Redstarts on the beach there. I counted 8 birds which is double my previous largest flock size. And they were actually behaving as a proper flock, sallying for insects from the boulders above the beach - quite nice to watch, especially since one bird was a superb male, with a jet black face and striking white wing patch. It was so nice, I popped there again the next day with my camera and managed a reasonable shot in the poor light - one of my favourite species of bird.

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Black Redstart, Pulias

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I received the latest issue of Birding World today and was really pleased to see my photo of the Lesser Scaup as a half-page picture.

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nonsense : I was very surprised to take a phone call last night from someone from Channel Television to ask if I'd like to be interviewed about the Copenhagen Summit and how climate change will effect the wildlife of Guernsey - (Jamie had very decently suggested me to them since I had authored a paper on the subject in the recent 'Planet Guernsey' book). The young lady was audibly shocked when I said "I don't really fancy being on the tele' thanks". She said to Jamie - (who did a typically super job of the interview in the end) - that I was "possibly the most reluctant interviewee ever!", which tickled me somewhat! I suppose in this fame-hungry world we live in, people usually fall over themselves to get aminute in the spotlight and so people rarely turn her down.

   I decided a while ago that I would avoid at all costs any appearance on the TV, Radio or Newspapers - I have no interest in the media and I mostly look down on journalists as superfluous, self-important, unscientific, self-serving and irresponsible. I'm sure that's not true at all on a personal level, but that is the impression I get when reading/watching/listening the content that they produce.

   It may stem from way back in 1996 when I went to twitch a White-billed Diver on the River Witham in Lincolnshire. The bird had been around a few days and it was quiet and I rather reluctantly agreed to an interview for a Calendar TV News reporter. I told him about where the bird had come from, how rare it was in the UK, how unusual it was to get one inland, etc. When I saw myself on TV that evening, I saw that my expert analysis had been cut to two seconds of me saying "it's a good one for the list!", like a no-good bloney tick-merchant!

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my photo of the White-billed Diver in Lincolnshire in 1996 - "a good one for the . . . . for the list!"

birds : I was hoping to plug a few gaps in my year list during the weekend, but due to circumstance I didn't get out birding at all. I did see a diver fly out of Perelle Bay which was probably a Black-throated, but it was too distant in the bins to be sure.

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moths : Not much activity in these chilly months, but I have had another Mediterranean Flour Moth, a regular sighting in the kitchen nowadays. Also at the window this weekend was this rather fresh Winter Moth.

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Winter Moth

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nonsense : The weekend was an unmitigated disaster zone. Due to their illness and mixed-up sleeping patterns, the little ones decided that the middle of the night was in fact morning, so a 3.30 start for me. Then at breakfast time Anais smuggled a whole tub of Olivio spread past me and decided that it would look good all over Aidan's bedroom. So Saturday morning was spent with a bowl of soapy water removing the slime from everything in the room. After lunch we had our football match against the top of the league, and the heavy pitch and various freakish goals resulted in a 7 - 1 loss, our worst result for 2 seasons. Then at bedtime, Aidan started to develop some kind of rash all over his body and he woke up at 10 30 crying with massive 'wheels' all over him. I had to call Rosie back from her night out and she took him up the hospital to get it checked out. It was just a side effect of his illness apparently but he was very troubled by the "scrapes" as he called the itching. So my early night turned into a late night, but he was quickly recovered. The next morning I had the joy of attending a Church service since Abigail was doing a few songs with her school choir. It was nice to see her singing but sitting through the rest of it was painful in the extreme. If people like to go to church every Sunday then that's fine but it's certainly not for me. The low point was the Hymns - it must be quite difficult to write songs that sound exactly the same. Then by lunchtime, it became clear that Rosie was now ill and that was the end of the weekend.

birds : The winds finally turned North this week and so it was time to seawatch and pull out a Leach's. Not me of course though 'cos I had to be at work! I did manage a few brief efforts from Pulias and saw plenty of Kittiwakes each day. On Thursday I also saw two distant skuas which were probably Poms but I didn't have my 'scope that day. It was very frustrating because that day looked excellent for seabirds and other people did indeed pull out a couple of petrels.

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nonsense : Swine flu melodrama as both Aidan and Anais were sent home from school this week because they 'apparently' had a temperature. They didn't look very ill at all but this evening they were both asleep by tea time so they probably are sick. It is Anais' birthday today - 4 years old already.

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birds : Rain, rain, rain! It's not even thinking of stopping at the moment. It has rained on 26 of the 28 days this month apparently and often heavy. Every time I've had a thought of popping out for a bit of birding at lunchtimes it has been teeming down. I have checked the bays from the car but nothing doing. The most notable bird item was at school on Friday when I noticed a Rabbit on the playing fields. I pointed it out to Dan and Chris, then Maddie came in and showed her year 7 class, who all came to look at it out of the window. I said under my breath "I wouldn't have done that if I were you - I've a feeling those gulls are gonna peck its eyes out!". No sooner had I said it than a Great Black-backed Gull strolled over to the dopey bunny, picked it up in its bill and hurled in in the air. The girl's "awwwws" soon turned into terrified squeals as they witnessed the anticipated bloodbath. Dan and I ran out in the pouring rain and scared the gulls off and luckily the rabbit was still alive, although clearly quite "mixi". The Animal Shelter took it away and we were temporary heroes.

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With my new improved Photoshop skills I have recently started to convert my old slides to digital. There are probably more professional ways of doing it but I am placing the slide on a piece of white perspex on top of my microscope base which has the bright bulb underneath, then with my scope adapter attached to the camera, placing it over the slide and getting ok results after photoshopping. Well actually most of them are of a pretty poor quality but it is the photo rather than the technique! Looking back at my pre-digital photos they are pretty crap even though I thought they were ace at the time! Here are a selection from Israel in 1993-1994. 

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Little Green Bee-eater                                                            'Caucasian' Stonechat (variegata)

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baby Ibex

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Striated Scops Owl

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Blackstart

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a handsome young chap rings a Graceful Warbler

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nonsense : With all this rain, football was cancelled again, but our coach managed to organise a last-minute friendly on the astroturf at St Sampsons School. It was a great game and we won quite easily. The smooth surface suits my game a lot better - proper football rather than the thuggish variety we sometimes get - so I played pretty well with some trademark Brazilian flicks and tricks despite the constant rain! Whilst there we were surprised and quite disgusted to see Snow White and Cinderella sneaking a crafty fag outside the fire exit (Christmas parade in Town today - It will never as good as when I was Bashful the Dwarf a couple of years ago! - there was talk of a BAFTA. . .). Below is something I found - especially for any fellow Pulp Fiction fans.

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birds : The weather continues to batter us. It belts down every day and the wind seems continuously from the South which isn't much use to us. There are plenty of rare and uncommon seabirds in the UK it seems, perhaps when the wind swings at the weekend we may get some benefit. Top marks to my mate John though who only goes and pulls out a Black/White-bellied Storm-Petrel at Severn Beach of all places!! It has been great reading his emails about the excitement of his top find - I just hope he can pin it down to species, but it sounds unlikely.

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I have been busy with work this week, catching up with stuff I didn't do when I was feeling grotty. Had a Black Redstart at Rousse today and a colour-ringed Pied Wagtail trotted on the playground outside my classroom earlier in the week. As well as a silver ring it appeared to have a single red one on both legs, although I had no bins and I was supposed to be teaching my year 9s about the phases of the Moon at the time!

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Phil Alexander has taken a very useful shot of one of the Lesser Scaups (which are still there it seems) which shows the underwing pattern very well. Lesser Scaup shows bright white wing-linings (axillaries and lesser and median coverts) which contrast quite a bit with dull greyish flight feathers and greater coverts. And the photo appears to match this pattern - thanks Phil!

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Lesser Scaup, Grande Mare (c) Phil Alexander

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nonsense : As I said, I've been catching up with work a bit this week so not much time for nonsense. The wild weather sends the kids at school wild as well but I managed to get through my annual "Performance Management" lesson observation unscathed (that phrase translates in my head as "management making me perform, jumping through their hoops to tick their boxes"). I think in my 'Professional Development' interview my targets will be 1. to invent a time machine so that I actually have enough time to do my job properly, 2. to have cosmetic surgery to remove the black rings under my eyes and 3. to lobby for the new school uniform to include Chuck Norris "Action Jeans" because they look chuffin' awesome!!

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birds : Since football was cancelled due to a waterlogged pitch, I managed to pop down to the Mare this aftenoon to check out the scaups again. Unfortunately there was a tournament on and this meant that the birds were just sleeping in the middle of the large lake. It also started raining and was very dull, so my plans of getting superb photos were dashed. Nevertheless I waited patiently with the camera for a wing-stretch which was quite tricky with crap golfers peppering the area with golf balls. Julian arrived and we were asked to leave by the course owner, but since Julian is much more charming than me, he persuaded the woman to let us stay for a while to try and confirm the ID. I was there at least an hour overall and one bird stretched its wing once and I snapped a shot (or I "captured an image" as people seem to say nowadays - what's all that about!?). It is a very poor photo, but to me it clearly identifies the bird as Lesser Scaup - score!

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The money shot!

birds : I had another chance to go look at the mystery Aythya at lunchtime, which has since been joined by a second bird. I suspect that there have been two birds all along, and on Tuesday I briefly saw a second duck on the main lake which I didn't have chance to look at. No-one has sent me any more photos of the birds so I was keen to get snaps of the second bird and hoped for any wing pattern to show. When I arrived, both birds were together on the small pond showing well.

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Aythya sp., Grande Mare

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As can be seen from the above photo, the second bird removed any doubts of Tufted Duck as it had grey feathers appearing on the mantle indicating a first-winter male scaup sp. The vermiculations on these feathers, and the ones on the flanks seemed quite strong - Lesser Scaup is more strongly marked than Greater on the grey areas.

Just as I set up the scope, this bird stretched its wing out briefly and I had a quick glimpse of the wing-bar. I know it is difficult to tell on one short view but it did strike me as being Lesser Scaup-like, with the secondaries being bright white, but the primaries being dusky with no white (see the photos below I found in the internet).

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Lesser Scaup wing pattern                            Greater Scaup wing pattern

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Of course, I needed to see the wing a few times to be convinced, but it didn't stretch it out again whilst I was there. It did sort of half stretch when I had the camera out as you can see in the photo below. Even on this photo, only the first 6 or 7 secondaries seem clearly white and the outer couple of secondaries look dull and slightly greyish.

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Structurally, this second bird was very similar to the first, but probably showed a more obvious peak on the rear crown. I would certainly say Lesser Scaup is at the moment the top of my list of possibilities, but unless I get a pic of the wing pattern, I have a feeling that it will be left as unidentified. Hopefully this weekend I can get a chance to get the money shot!

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both birds together

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nonsense : On Wednesday I went down to watch the France v Ireland world cup play-off match with a couple of my irish mates and we were literally incandescent with rage at the cheating French. First of all there was the blatent cheating by Platini to suddenly decide that France should be seeded and then Henry's double-handball was bad news. I know there's nothing that can be done about it now but Henry should be banned from the first matches of the World Cup for deliberately cheating. It must be time for video replays - I am sure supporters would prefer accuracy rather than worry about short breaks in the play. And to make it worse there was a table of Frenchmen next to us who clearly don't understand winning with dignity. It's a good job this was Guernsey as elsewhere they would have been pulped - and they made a hasty exit anyway. And they wonder why the British are suspicious about closer ties with Europe - it's the French!

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shame on you Thierry!   

birds : On Monday I received an email from Tony Bisson that he had found an interesting Aythya duck on the lake at Grande Mare Golf Course. He thought it was a juvenile female Scaup but he wasn't totally happy with the ID. When he sent me some photos later that day it did indeed look interesting and I immediately thought it was a potential candidate for Lesser Scaup, but of course the ID of the species is not straightforward.

So today I whizzed out at lunchtime, shoved on my wellies and found the bird on the small pond swimming with Mallards. I watched it for about 20 minutes and took some photos, but I am not much nearer an identification!

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Aythya sp., Grande Mare

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One of the problems is that the bird seems to be a first-winter and so any plumage features are not obvious. The bird did not appear very large in the field but there were no other Aythyas to compare it to. The head seems to be relatively small, unlike the big blobby head of a Greater Scaup, and the head shape looked quite close to Lesser Scaup, peaking behind the eye. A Tufted Duck will often show a white blaize around the bill but should show some longer feathers on the rear crown. This bird shows some degree of 'shagginess' on the crown and I wonder if this is a sign of Tufted Duck.

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On an adult bird, the bill pattern should distinguish whether it is a scaup species or not, but with this young bird, the bill is pretty uniformly greyish and of little help. The bill does not seem big and fat enough for Greater Scaup though. From what I have seen, I am pretty convinced that the bird is not a Greater Scaup just on structure alone, but I am not convinced that it is not a Tufted Duck. Of course the key thing is to get a photo or a good view of the wing pattern which is the main ID feature, so hopefully it will stay ages and we can get it sorted.

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birds : I felt much better today and so late afternoon I ventured out in the gales to see if there were any seabirds sheltering in the bays. The gales were in the wrong direction though and so it wasn't hugely likely - I had a Sandwich Tern at Jaonneuse and the first Great Crested Grebe of the winter in Grandes Havres. It was high tide though and it was very nice watching the waves crashing in. I may have been able to see some seabirds with the scope but I didn't fancy getting out of the car!

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moths : I noticed that the Brown-tail moth larvae must have had a good time this summer judging from the number of webs on the Blackthorn in the Jaonneuse area. The bushes there were covered.

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Brown-tail moth larval webs

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When I got home I was reading about Brown-tail moths on the interweb, and as I google-imaged the species I noticed one of my photos came up which is always nice to see. But then I didn't recognise the website name so I clicked through and discovered it was a website from the Spurn area. And I was shocked to see someone else's name below my photo! Now I don't mind anyone using any of my photos so long as they aren't making any money from it or are a private company, but to claim a photo as yours when it isn't . . . shame on you! I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it is just a mistake, but I have sent an email letting them know I ain't happy!

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nonsense : Well it has been a pig of a week. This has to be officially the longest-lasting cold I've ever had and it's sticking in my head, refusing to leave. I've had a headache for at least a week and its been bed-kids-work-kids-bed for ages, so definitely no chance of birding, especially with the totally crappy weather too. A female-type Black Redstart seen twice in the school courtyard bringing a small bit of cheer to my miserable week. And of course as soon as any male get ill we hear cries of "Man-flu!!" from the female population, telling us to stop lollaping about and get on with it like they do. Well I have been doing some scientific theorising and have proved that us men-folk do in fact have a worse time of it when we are ill and do need more sympathy. My theory is based on that women's "wellness" is far more variable than men's because of their more cyclical hormonal changes, they get used to feeling "unwell" on a regular basis. Whereas men's "wellness" is pretty constant on average and so when they get an illness episode it is more of a shock to the system and have not developed the same coping mechanisms as women. I think that this is obvious if you look at the charts below. So, next time you are getting stick from your females when you are sick refer them to "Lawlor's Man-flu Theorem" and quote the equation to them - I'm sure they'll appreciate that.

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Since my year 10 class were studying bacteria and other microbes, I used the opportunity to culture some of my cold germs on the agar plate - for some reason the pupils decided that I was disgusting sticking cotton buds up my nose and wiping them on the jelly! It was good to see that my arm pits were seemingly bacteria free and my eye brows too. The class also discovered that teenage boys have much more bacteria than teenage girls,and the person in the class with the least bacteria was the teacher of course.

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moths : I have had a heavy cold all week and the weather conditions have been terrible to venture out so things are pretty quiet on the wildlife front. I did have the trap out last Friday night for probably the last time until Easter. I don't generally bother with the winter months at all as the catches are not worth the time and effort. Two Feathered Thorns were actucally a new species for the garden, which was quite a surprise when I checked. The most spectacular sighting though was the next day when a giant bug was on the front window, which I saw was a Western Conifer Seed Bug, a recent coloniser to Britain and quite a brute! Also early yesterday morning, a tiny moth flying in the kitchen revealed itself to be a Phyllonorycter trifasciata, another new species for the house list. It mines Honeysuckle leaves, which there are plenty of nearby.

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Feathered Thorn

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Oak Rustic - a late Autumn speciality of Guernsey

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Tawny Cockroach - a regular species in the garden                                                    Western Conifer Seed Bug

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nonsense : To go with my current sickness-induced melancholy, below is perhaps the saddest cartoon ever I've ever seen. I guess it is commenting on the over-prescription of Ritalin to schoolchildren in America over the last 15 years or so.   

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN  and  HAPPY BIRTHDAY AIDAN   -   five years old today.

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