Gloss Finish

I have been having a few nagging patch feelings of late. I had been picking up and ticking on other patcher’s finds for a while, but feelings of not contributing significantly to the patch year list have been building.

However…

Today I had an induction/shadowing morning at Rye Meads RSPB, as myself and another person are due to become once-a-month leaders in their 'Messy Welly' pre-school group. (thanks Sue)

As there have been a few interesting London birds around lately I took my birding gear, I thought that on my way back down to Hackney Downs I’d jump off the train at Tottenham Hale and scoot round to the Lockwood and see what the rain might have brought in.

I almost went straight on to Hackney, but I didn’t, and jumped out at Tottenham. I had my bike, so I figured a quick dash along the road to see nothing and dash back couldn’t hurt.

I saw that the last sighting in the log book was on the 18^th. That spurred me on a little. The place hadn’t been checked over for a few days and, with the weather, something could be waiting to be seen.

As I approached the southern tip of Lockwood I could see that the water level of the reservoir was at the lowest I had ever seen and that the edges all around were very busy with birds. There was exposed mud at nearly all the edges which are normally submerged.

I immediately saw a Little Egret feeding along the southern edge and thought that a bit unusual. So I took a snap, thinking that that might be the most interesting bit of my visit.

But then, I looked at the Egret again and worked backwards to find...a GLOSSY IBIS doing a similar bit of feeding.

photo 1

I snapped two photos through the rain and then watched it as it took flight northwards and seemed to settle halfway up the east side of Lockwood.

photo 2

I tweeted out the two pics to #londonbirds and @WildWalthamstow. I couldn’t call any of the patchers as I had lost my phone recently and my new phone had no numbers in it.

I sat down behind the southern Lockwood tower and wondered what to do next...when @birdingprof called...then @LolBodini called...next thing we were all walking up the west side of Lockwood, scanning the east side, @StuartFisher16 joined us.

There was no sign of the bird but fortunately, a short while later the GLOSSY IBIS was relocated in the drainage channel just north of Lockwood. @JW_Davies soon joined us along with Lol C. and I passed Mike M on my way out. 

Happy Days!

I duly recorded the sighting in the reservoir log book.

After scribbling the sighting down, the Thames water guys told me that they were locking up, I sheepishly informed them that there were a number of birders quite far up on the site checking out a rare bird. They had to give me their emergency number to text on to the people left up on Lockwood. I saw a few make it out. But there might be a few left up there...

GH - @leevalleybirder

postscript:

This is the first new addition to the patchlist #247 since 22nd Mar 2012, long expected, but all credit to Graham for plugging away and getting it, and getting the news out too! Some of my dodgy shots below. PW

Birder. He wrote.

As most of the locals are working/sickening/Scillying etc. I guess it behoves me to keep the blog alive, at least for this week, after that I’m off to Scilly myself and what do I care:-)

I’ve strategically taken off days throughout September and October in order to whizz off and see the fabulous Birds being found during the autumn. Unfortunately the Birds had a slightly different strategy and apart from a certain Phalarope my days off have coincided with nothing, nada, nil. We don’t talk about the Acadian Flycatcher, which due to a disastrous mix up arrived a day too early. Today was one of those days that was supposed to see me gadding off to Norfolk for a haul of Rare, or at least a large haul of Scarce, but again the Birds were seemingly not copied in to the memo.

So Reservoirs it was then. (I shan’t bore you with the ‘overnight rain, strong winds, must be dripping in Waders’ nonsense, so let’s move swiftly on) I thought I would check the log book in the Fisherman’s permit room in case there was anything new recorded and was delighted to find this well considered observation; I later bumped into the Community Engagement Officer for the Walthamstow Wetlands project, I wonder if she will take the suggestions on-board.

Thanks Mr. Miluck (is that rhyming slang?)

Stepping past the untidy gateway, and making sure I didn’t ingest any of the clearly dangerous water, I proceeded towards the Lockwood to see what the Wild Trust had released into the aviary today.

A 2^nd winter Yellow-legged Gull on the weir by the Low Maynard is what, and amazingly it didn’t flush on first sighting me, like everything usually does from here, oh no, it waited until I had set up tripod, scope, phone adaptor, glasses and started to focus, then it did the off:-(

A Skylark flew over the Lockwood and a there was a fine 1^st winter male Wheatear along the East side. A passing Lol joined himself to me and we continued on to the South side.

Lol hadn’t seen the Black-necked Grebe and I was happy to see if I could improve my picture of it from Sunday, it was still there, but the light did not lend itself to successful photography.

Bad

Better

Best(?)

A Water Rail was calling from the Northern Reedbed, I had a, presumably different, Bird in the Southern Reedbed on Sunday. The Stonechats also seen on Sunday had now split up with 1 still on the West Warwick and 2 on the East Warwick.

Having a chat

Singing Cetti’s Warblers were on No’s. 1 & 2. A dozen House Martins, possibly locals, were around the Filter Beds and the female Goosander was still on No.4. I think it is oiled as, it is constantly preening and, it’s stayed on the same reservoir for days, they are normally so flighty. Siskins and Goldcrests were much in evidence, the former as flyovers and the latter invisible but vocal in various corners of the patch.

Goosander (or as it's a female should that be Goosegoose)

Nothing to set the notebook alight but 63 species was not bad and would have made a great set of padders if only we had had the big one for which to pad.

@birdingprof

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before

So I understand that the Coal Tit is a rare bird on the patch, and therefore I understand the pressure of reporting one. I also recall the phrase about buses, something like you wait for one and then... anyway... I saw another Coal Tit today. This time, the delightful @suzehu was with me. We stood predictably against the wooden fenceline waxing lyrical about the imminent deluge of autumn vagrants in the south and east.

I binned a bird that emerged from the thickets by the hides.  It wasn't a Great Tit, neither was it a Blue Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Marsh Tit, Willow Tit, Sombre Tit, Azure Tit..... it looked like a Coal Tit. Then it landed and it called, twice, and it sounded like a Coal Tit, an unflourished uncomplicated 'pees-pees' it said, which I thought was rather rude. Maybe the same bird frequenting our local environs, whatever, I just want this craziness to stop.

Such a lovely day and in good company, the sun shone brightly, and out of the breeze it was discernibly balmy. Good weather generally means a dearth of birds, but it turned out to be a pretty decent day.

Aside from the Coal Tit, a Redpoll called as it flew north . A Spotted Flycatcher then appeared which was to be joined by a second bird later in trees by the wooden canoe. It was a joy watching their feeding sorties in the bright sunshine. In the same area, a Goldcrest called and then flew over.





A wander over to the hide, where a Kingfisher was actively feeding, circulating round the beds and at times settling allowing great views. A Peregrine flew low over and away to the north, and two Reed Warbler flitted low on the reeds at the back of Bed 15. Three Shoveler were on Bed 13, two eclipse male and a female, and a Cetti's Warbler exploded into song somewhere close by.

Later, another Redpoll again flew north calling, and a Common Buzzard appeared high from the south before heading east. It was warm by now but the hope for more large raptors didn't materialise.

Three Little Egret flew up the relief channel.

Also of note were the number of Migrant Hawker on the wing, at least six enjoying the warm and Hobby-less conditions. A couple of Common Darter were also present.

@randombirder

Oscillate Wildly

A stark contrast to the persistent rain of yesterday, the morning was bathed in warm autumnal sunshine tempered slightly by a cool moderate breeze, but it was a most agreeable day to be out.

So another late morning arrival down at the Waterworks and another couple of hours spent staring up at the sky hoping for a flyover something, something that might ignite a bit of something into a September that has been a little ordinary.

In recent days the first bird I have noted has been Siskin, usually alerted by it's mournful call. Today there were a total of six flyovers, and three Meadow Pipit heading north.

Standing in my usual spot, propped up against the wooden fenceline along the main path, I heard a familiar call. Familiar in general terms but definitely not a familiar call for the Waterworks. I scanned the top of a Poplar to see a Coal Tit that had settled there briefly before flying over my head and into the woodland on the southside,

I am aware that this is something of a local rarity, some might say mega, but it does validate the basis of contextual birding in making the usual unusual.

Also of note, a flyover Jackdaw, another bird distinguished by its relative scarcity. A Kingfisher posed briefly on Bed 13, a Shoveler flew over the hides, and a total of 12 Gadwall were present on Bed 15. A small group of House Martin passed overhead, around half a dozen Chiffchaff were active along the treeline, two Sparrowhawk were on the hunt, and a Cetti's Warbler was again vocal from the reedbed.

@randombirder

Someone turned the tap off

           After two days of counting hirundines in the hundreds and even thousands, the migration simply stopped dead today over the reservoirs. It took me over two hours before I saw a pair of Swallows over the Lockwood - the only two I saw all day. They may be a potential split for bad time-keeping. House Martin migration was even less with the sole birds seen a couple of likely breeders over the filter beds. .
      I did manage to hear and see three Meadow Pipits going south and re-find the two Spotted Flycatchers on the Lea channel by the side of Lockwood which this time had the decency to hang around for Lol to walk round to see them. We couldn't find anything else on a short walk in the sunshine around East Warwick and up the central path - not a Common Tern nor single Common Sandpiper all day. Still it was an Indian Summer-style day and we may not have many more to enjoy.

@porthkillier

Split Infinity

A couple of weeks ago I tweeted something about splits and armchair ticks, this caused immediate, and understandable confusion amongst the myriad of tyro birders on the patch. By way of an apology I thought I would offer this quick guide to bird species and the listing thereof. 

Charles Darwin

Archbishop Ussher

According to the Genesis account Birds appeared during the fifth great epoch (n.b. not 24 hour day, which, thanks to being misled by the clergy of his day, led Darwin to his first wrong assumption and to write the dullest book in the world, I know I’ve read it) of creation, they were produced according to their kind (n.b. not species. The second spanner that the clergy of old threw into Darwin’s works) the writer offered no definition of a ‘kind’ but it would seem it was somewhere between what we now call an Order and a Genus (see Taxonomic Rank.)

Taxonomy

All was well and everyone knew what everything was but two things happened to throw the whole thing into a state of confusion. Micro Evolution: Birds didn’t stay the same; within their kinds they bred, spread abroad, became isolated and started to look a bit different. Paradise Lost: Man had a few problems and Birdwatching took a bit of a back seat. Listers (yes there have always been Listers) had to content themselves with just 4 ticks. Big Bird, Little Bird, Pretty Bird and Nice Sounding Bird. Note that identification was occasionally Aural but mostly Visual.

A couple of thousand years on and a new development occurred. Birds as food: This led to a doubling of the number of species. Now in addition to the original 4 another 4 were available to the keen Lister. Tastes Lovely, Tastes Alright, Tastes Funny (some authorities added Smelt Funny but not everyone got that) and Tastes Disgusting. Sharp-eyed readers will note this new advance in identification was partially Olfactory but mostly Gustatory, little used techniques amongst the Lister of the 21^st century.

'Tastes Lovely'

As part of their continuing slide into stupidity mankind developed more effective ways of catching and killing Birds, but this had an upside to the Lister. Now he (female Listers were not out of the closet at this stage) was seeing Birds close up and in the hand all sorts of variation was noticed and his list grew. Exponentially! As a corollary to this new development a new element to the hobby of listing was born: The List Police. Not everyone thought it was ethical to list dead Birds and this led to much wrangling within the burgeoning Birding community. Tactile identification was controversial.

The List Police

By the 18^th century things were swinging back to the Visual/Aural techniques of old, especially with the development of rudimentary visual enhancement devices. It was Gilbert White, who with his brand new pair of ‘Zeiff 5x25 binocularff’ became the father of the modern day Splitter. He noticed that the Bird previously known as the ‘Little Green Bird’ didn’t all make the same noise, some went ‘piu, piu, ptt, ptt, ptt, trrrrrrr’ others went ‘swi, swi, swi, wewewewee’ and others went ‘chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff’. He split the 1 Bird into 3, Listers went wild everywhere! The first he called Wood Warbler as it warbled in the Woods, the second he named Willow Warbler as it often chose to warble in a Willow, he wasn’t really sure what to call the third.

Gilbert White

Around the same time a Swedish Zoologist named Linnaeus decided to codify all this stuff and so invented Taxonomy (a sort of cross between stuffing animals and star-gazing). He decided that the smallest divisible element of Birds would be the species and there were quite a lot of them by now what with all the looking, shooting, touching, sniffing and cooking that had been going on over the centuries. The world list was somewhere around 1,000.

Carl Linnaeus

The 18^th century was of course a time of imperialist expansionism, this led to more travel, exposure to more birds, and also, a sort of pre-cursor to the cold war arms race but with Birds as the weapon of choice. By the time of the first World War there were 20,000 species of Bird as each empire had to have more than the other, Listers were ecstatic but things had clearly got out of hand, the Listing Police (in association with the League of Nations) stepped in and scaled the whole thing back down to 8,600.

League of Nations

Listers were not to be outdone, they (a few women had joined the men, now they had been emancipated. In fact it was often thought, mistakenly, that Emily Davison had thrown herself in protest under the Kings Horse when in fact she had spotted a rarity on the other side of Epsom racecourse that she needed for her London List) worked surreptitiously on new technologies and new techniques that would ensure future growth to their pared down Lists.

Emily Davison

One surprisingly obvious ‘new’ development was to actually go and look for Birds, Birdwatching evolved into Birding, Birders went to stay at Bird Observatories, all the better to observe Birds. Lists grew, but more was needed! New areas were pioneered, Scilly, Shetland, Boats, the Zoo (don’t worry the Listing Police were all over that, if you can’t tick dead stuff you certainly can’t tick stuff behind bars, stuff recently escaped from behind bars still causes problems) but List growth was stalling.

Questar

Two things happened almost simultaneously, 1) Birders commandeered Astronomical Telescopes, e.g. Questars and, 2) Guru’s were invented. Legendary Birders such as Peter Grant, Killian Mullarney and, more recently, the famed Ma-tan Ga’ana started to notice, with these superior optics, that there were whole tracts of feathers that nobody previously had realised existed. Many of these tracts were actually ever so (ever so) slightly different from those of Birds that had formerly been considered the same species, the Split was well and truly here to stay.

  Ma-tan Ga'ana

Similar progress has been made in the Aural department with the likes of the Sound Approach gang leading the way in espousing that, ‘stuff that sounds different probably is different.’  Split, Split, Split. But. ‘Of course’, I hear you say, ‘this is all the same old same old, If it looks different, sounds different (okay, not much has been done with the whole sniff & scratch approach lately but I’m sure it’s due a resurgence) blah, blah, blah’. But wait!

The Sound Approach

Up until now most of this Splitting lark (not Splitting Lark) has relied on tangible perceptions of what Birds are but modern technology has stepped in with the likes of Prof. Martin Collinson and his ilk who made the Watsonian, or should that be Crickian(?) discovery that if you chop Birds in two it reveals a barcode (such is my understanding) that rather like Blackpool Rock tells you what the Bird actually is, and guess what, yes, loads of identical stuff is in reality totally different. Splitters were euphoric and apoplectic in equal measure, the goal of 20,000 ticks seemed as if it were within reach again but, by a cruel twist of fate, no one would be able to reach it without the assistance of a crazed scientist.

Dr. Strangelove

Prof. Martin Collinson

Wither to now, you ask? I suspect that a large leap forward in technology is our only hope, someone needs to invent a Birdscanning device capable of detecting minute differences between hither to undifferentiated species. 40,000 species awaits, will you rise to the challenge?

@birdingprof

Oh, and as for Armchair Ticks, you can get fumigation products to sort them out #rentokill

and still they keep coming...

        By the time I got to Lockwood at 7-30 am, SF had already done a half-circuit and had picked up three Yellow Wagtails, 15 Meadow Pipits and a few Siskins going over at dawn. There were also plenty of hirundines with House Martins feeding largely up high and a steady beat of Swallows moving north-west again low over the reservoir. We had several hundred of both before Stuart departed - and certainly more Sand Martins (c30) than were around yesterday. But around 9 am the migration pretty well stopped completely except for the odd party of Swallows during the rest of the day which were just as likely to be going south as north. Whether this was the time or because the sun came out, the day warmed up and the insects and presumably the birds went even higher, I don't know.
       But the sunshine certainly led to more activity along the Lea on the west side of Lockwood with a few Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs, a surprise Sedge Warbler (my first for months), a Lesser Whitethroat and two Spotted Flycatchers which fed from the willows about midway. I was quite pleased with the pictures from my pocket camera until I saw Jonathan's from yesterday.....
         They had typically disappeared by the time Lol joined me but he found another by the meccano bridge as we started down the path between No 1 and No 2. A walk round East Warwick produced little except for a couple more Meadow Pipits to add to the four I had on the bank at Lockwood earlier. With six more heading north later, it took to a healthy 25-plus recorded today. I also had my first Goldcrest of the autumn and perhaps my last Willow Warbler as well. No sign of any terns so autumn is moving on.

 @porthkillier