To count or not to count

26 March 2012

I read a number of birding blogs as well as writing this one very so often.  One of the blogs I read is from Fleetwood Birder.  He regularly says he visits his feeding station and when he does he counts the number and species of birds that visit it.  I sit here reading those figures and marvel at them.  But always at the back of my mind is the thought that the Mighty Fleetwood Birder hasn’t really seen 197 tree sparrows in one birding session.  Now don’t get me wrong here my fellow birders.  I’m not saying that MFB is telling porkies … oh no, certainly not!  What I am thinking and therefore saying is that MFB is actually counting the number of visits to his feeding station by tree sparrows, rather than individual birds. 

Before we had to move back here to Dorktown 3 years ago we used to live in Atherton, Manchester.  We were only a couple of miles from Pennington Flash and would go for birding session down there fairly often.  But I noticed that as we sat in one particular hide where the feeding station was, I would see a bird come to a feeder, grab a nut or seed and fly off.  I watched where he would go and saw him sit on a branch or twig before returning to the feeder again.  Now that counts as two visits, not two birds.  See what I mean? 

I’ve been thinking about all this for some time now and in this morning’s post there’s a copy of a new magazine published the BTO called Volunteer – and guesses what one of the articles is about – yes, counting birds.  Having read it I’m still not sure about how it works.  The   writer speaks of how important it is count the birds we see while out birding.  Fine if you are at a reserve and can count all the black headed gulls you can see from each hide or as you walk along the paths.  But I would suggest that counting visits to bird feeding station is not all that accurate. 

Another issue along these lines is the surveys that BTO does.  Jan and I agreed to take part in   survey of tawny owls a few years.  We were given two tetrads to cover which where a good way out from our home but still in Warwickshire.  That’s no problem.  During our survey period we actually went to the two tetrads a lot more often than we expected to.  Sadly we didn’t find any tawny owls.  When I phoned the results in a comment was made about tawny owls being in trouble in our county.  But were/are they?  At the same time as we were doing our survey our son who lived not far from birding site in our town said her saw them on a regular basis at that site.  And there lies another problem for BTO – the lack of volunteers, hence the reason for the new mag methinks.  Sadly we can’t do any surveys now because of continued ill health, which is doubly sad because even though we didn’t hear our target bird, we still enjoyed being out and about.

 
So I don’t fully understand how counting visits to a feeding station can equate to counting actual individual birds, but keep at it MFB – you are doing a great job by the sounds of it!              


Here's a photo of a pied wagtail taken in Dorktown town centre - the town is not toally devoid of beauty I suppose.

The maddnes in birding

21 March 2012

Have you read the latest blog from TUB, David Lindo?  Well, he managed to hit my the nerve of my bad tooth, my hobby horse tooth, the twitcher.  I find these people to be in need of help.  A drunk or a gambler who has time off work because of their addiction would be encouraged to go and get help to get over it.  But when it is the 'harmless' birdwatching that all us birders enjoy, then that is not seen as serious problem.  But think about it ...

Did you see that show on telly about twitchers, it had Lee Evans on it too?  Well, at one point a load of guys were standing around on a dock somewhere waiting for boat so they could get over to one of the Scottish Isles to see a sand hill crane or something.  Whatever ... a lot of those guys turned their backs to the camera.  One of those who had agreed to be filmed explained that a lot of them had thrown a sickie to go up to see this bird and didn't want their bass to see them. 

But think about it a bit - how much did that crane cost Britain?  Did these men commit a criminal offence by going as they did - fraud at least?  How does it impact on family life, cost and time away from wife and kids?  That makes the whole hobby look shabby and shameful to my mind. 

It won't stop me going birding of course.  I shall still go out in my scooter with my bins and scope and see what I can find.  The chance of me finding a rarity is about zero because my ID skills are not up to scratch.  Besides, I'm happy watching coots paddling about.  I remember once speaking to the wife of David Cormack once at an introduction to birding thingy they had on at Rutland Water one time.  Anyway, David's wife, sorry I can't remember her name,                  told me of the time they had gone off a twitch to see one particular bird.  They arrive on site and started looking but got so tied up with all the other birds in the area, they completely forgot about the one they had gone to find. 

Years ago a cattle egret was spotted a few miles outside Dorktown, a first for Warwickshire.  It was our first year as birders so living only a few miles away we made our way up there to see it.  And see it we did.  I went up a couple of days later and it was still there but while I was there a guy came running up and said, "Well, where is it?"  I pointed it out.  He lifted his bins and focused; made a note of the time and was gone that quickly.  That was my first experience of a twitcher.  Late that day another guy came along and looked at it too.  Then he scanned around and finally approached me.  "Do you know how I can get to Blithfield Reservoir from here please?" he asked.  I shook my head so he spoke again, "There's a med gull there and I haven't got a med gull in Staffordshire yet so I need to get over there today, I'm back to work tomorrow."  I could help.  Two in one day ... amazing!  When I told Jan about it she nearly fell off her chair laughing.

Well, enough of my ramblings for now.  Jan thins she's feeding the whole neighbourhoods green finches on her feeder.  I don't know, every time I look out of the window I don't see any birds at all.         

Minsmere

1 March 2012

Jan has fancied going to Minsmere for some time now so yesterday we were at 6am (middle of the night for us!), and off we went at around 7am with Jan at the wheel.  The way we work things is that whoever is sat in the front passenger seat does the birding and keeps the list, so the job fell to me.  There was little to do really seeing as we had a fairly thick fog on the way down the A14 until we arrived at the Little Chef just after the A14 joins the A11 but I still get to list woodpigeon and magpie.  Two slices of toast and a cuppa later we were on our way again with me at the wheel.  The birds started to show up then with Jan adding crow, rook, kestrel (the only raptor we saw all day), magpie, pheasant, jackdaw, greater black backed gull, skylark, black bird.  Things started to turn a little grey when we arrived at the village of Westleton; the road through it was closed because it was being resurfaced. 

I don't know if you aware of it but Minsmere is having a lot of dosh spent on it at the moment.  The visitor centre is being revamped and a lot of other bits n bobs too.  They think it will be ready towards the end of this month.  Anyway, off we went to see what we could see.  Our scooters are not very heavy nor are them they all that comfortable on rough surfaces so being shaken up a lot on the paths at bird reserves is nothing new to us.  Out biggest disappointment came fairly quickly when we tried to get along the North Wall.  There was no way our scooters was going to work on the soft sand along there.  So we had to head back and start again after pushing, pulling and finally having to walk the scooters back to a decent (in the loosest of terms), path.  Not only that, but one of my batteries failed while we tried getting along the wall.  I'm hoping it's just the fuse that's gone otherwise we need to find nearly £200 for a new set up.  However, before we left the North Wall we did get two birds, a red throated diver, which turned out to be a life tick and greater blacked backed gull too.  So it wasn't a total wash out up there.

I was really disappointed by not being able to get along North Wall so it's quite likely that I missed any birds that might have shown as we made our way towards the North Hide.  There was a lot of birds there in the Scrape.  However, I was starting to struggle again, but this time with sun directly in my eyes.  We still get a good few birds there though.  After maybe 20 minutes we made our way along to the West hide - much better indeed and we could see a lot better too without having to squint into the sun.  Eventually we headed off to the South Hide.  We decided to try go and have a look at the Sluice in case there was anything decent there; there wasn't.  One look at the bank up towards the North Wall and we knew the scooter wouldn't make that at all.  So we headed off to get to the Bittern Hide.

I suggested to Jan on the way that after that one we go back to the car for lunch.  Jan then realized that we had forgotten to pack out butties.  Not only that but my scooter was getting slower and slower and I was getting concerned that it wouldn't make it back the temporary visitor centre, let alone to the Bittern Hide and then back to the centre.  So we cut it and headed straight back the centre where we bought lunch.

So, in one way or another we didn't have the best of days, yet we still enjoyed being out and about.  Our list from Minsmere was OK too, even with our limitations.  We got, chaffinch, black headed gull, greater black backed gull, blackbird, red throated diver, lapwing, pintail, Canada goose, barnacle goose, graylag goose, magpie, white fronted goose, blue tit, long tailed goose, wren, goldfinch, great tits, pheasant, shoveller, whooper swan, avocet, coot, mallard, snipe, starling, shellduck, tufted duck, gadwall, redshank, teal, common sandpiper, mute swan, robin, collared dove, grey partridge, moorhen; which actually added 5 our year's list with one being a lifer. 

Things picked up a lot when we were driving away though.  We went a different route and I saw a pub sign I don't have in my photo collection, The Ell's foot it was called, and Adnams pub.  We stooped to get a shot of the sign but decided we needed a pint.  I had a pint of Gunhill, Jan had her usual Smirnoff Ice.  Not a bad pint in a so-so pub be we were ready for it.  We will of course go back the Minsmere and now that we know about not being able to do the North Wall, we have a much better day I'm sure ;-)))