Bird journal

Santa Clara County, June 2000

Wood-pewee, warbling vireo, common merganser (aka goosander), great-tailed grackle, black swift and black-throated grey warbler put the list at 158. Living as I was at the top of Page Mill Road, my San Mateo total also used to inch along and began to look a little respectable on 88, especially after a July 8 visit:

“I [...]

2000: Hooded Oriole, Santa Clara

The missing description for my May 27 Los Altos Hills bird:

“Is this possible? I caught a glimpse of a large (i.e. bigger than a finch) lemon yellow bird with black foreparts flying over my house just now. I immediately thought of an oriole but the only one that fits that description is Scott’s. I notice that hooded may be yellowish but this bird was definitely very yellow. I guess that meadowlark is also a possibility but even with my brief look I’m sure I would have noticed the yellow chin.”

Finally more…

Corn Bunting, Dyrham Park

It’s been a good few weeks for this species: first, one up in East Yorkshire; then near Martin Mere; now, not quite on the National Trust estate but by the road down to Marshfield, which is their local stronghold. Another bunting, a yellowhammer also showed, for only the third time this year – a far cry from my Angus days when they filled the fields round Auchmithie. In fact, they even came to my feeders there.

I was in South Gloucestershire to check for more…

Spotted Flycatcher, RSPB Ham Wall

Another new species for my Somerset list with an adult feeding two juveniles yesterday evening. Technically Lytes Cary should have the honour because a spotfly was hawking near the pictured bits of topiary late afternoon. In the name of efficiency though I’ll not add that National Trust house to my site inventory, unless it comes up with a real stonker some time.

Not that more…

2008: Walpole-Nornalup National Park

My honeyeater tally rose to seven, with another lifer no less: western spinebill. Three families separate scrubbirds and honeyeaters at this prehistoric end of the taxonomic spectrum: bowerbirds; Australasian treecreepers; Australasian wrens. This last family then contributed lifer number 885 in the form of a more…

Red Kites, Devil's Bridge

These birds are really branching out from their Rhayader stronghold. The last time I was up the Ceredigion coast, albeit back in 1998 at RSPB Ynys-hir, I had no record of them. Now you’d be hard put to miss the species. Ones and twos all the way down from Machynlleth to Aberystwyth, then inland to Devil’s Bridge, where six were in view at one time. Over the Cambrian Mountains to the birds’ highest density round Rhayader itself and on almost to the Brecon Beacons. Kites, kites, kites.

It was marvellous, just like more…

Goat Fell, Arran

Golden eagle would sound nice as the star species of an ascent of the island’s highest point but consider this: the 2007 Arran Bird Report notes only half a dozen sightings from thousands of contributions. These may not be all the submitted records and certainly they don’t include the known nest sites. Quite right too: persecution in Scotland is an ongoing problem.

In any case, what chance more…