As the rest of London shuffles knee deep in delightful Whinchats, we at The Scrubs were crying into our peppermint teas lamenting at the non-appearance of our archetypal autumnal migrants. In days gone by we used to regularly host up to 20 birds on our grassland. Back then, we were the London terminus for this denizen of the wilder spots of Britain before they continued on south.

So how happy were we to have discovered one this morning!

The most likely answer is that they were both Common Terns. Why? Well, they are both adult birds moulting into their winter plumages. Arctic Terns moult in their winter quarters, so are rarely seen in that plumage in the UK. Furthermore, they would not show so much black in the wing and have darker shorter bills. Sandwich Terns are altogether larger birds with longer black legs. Roseate Terns should display longer tail streamers and longer legs. Finally, the plumage and larger size is totally wrong for Black Tern.

All that said, I still have a problem with them, particularly tern no.2. Some people have said that the legs appear shorter because the belly feathers are fluffed out. Even if that was the case, how does that explain their thin appearance?

I’m still not wholly convinced of their identity, but hey, that is the beauty of birding: nothing ever looks exactly as they do in the books!

Not like this lovely Ruddy Turnstone – a lot more straight forward.

Recently, I have managed to squeeze in reading a few books in between my usual mix of birding, writing, tour leading with perhaps a bit of sleep thrown in for good measure.

Petrels, Albatrosses & Storm Petrels of North America by Steve Howell was one book that I didn’t expect to get into as much as I did. This is a group of birds that I have relatively little experience of compared with the raptors or thrushes and chats. I found the book utterly fascinating. I loved the author’s comparison of the world’s seas with deserts, forests and other more terrestrial habitats. It never really occurred to me to think in those terms. Indeed, he went into great detail about the different oceananic weather systems and how birds reacted to them. Fascinating stuff. All this before I even started to read the species accounts.

Of course, North America is infinitely bigger than the UK and as such had a far larger array of petrels, shearwaters and albatrosses than us. Nonetheless, the species accounts were both informative and readable. The field identification sections were of particular interest as I was learning things about some of the familiar species that I had hitherto no knowledge of. I never knew, for instance, that female Sooty Shearwaters had smaller bills than the males. For a tubenose afficionado those kinds of details must be highly useful. Which brought me to my next thought: was the author a merman? How could he know so much about a group of birds that most of us only ever see swinging past some blustery headland on a cold autumnal morning.

Negatives? I wished that I lived in an area with easy access to many species of these birds. One day?

Yesterday, I was standing on the path facing the embankment area at The Scrubs when I became aware of a Song Thrush around 70 yards away standing bolt upright and stock still. When I scrutinised it I was amazed to see that it was being mesmerised by a Weasel that was sprinting back and forth across the path each time getting a little closer to the thrush.

The inevitable did not happen however. Just when I thought the thrush would meet it’s end a Sparrowhawk shot overhead sending everyone scurrying. It was an amazing sequence of events that I had never witnessed before. Even more amazing was to see a Weasel on my home patch within London, a mammal that I so rarely see at the best of times.

 The Scrubs looking east a couple of mornings ago. Can you see now why I love the place so much?

It feels like it has been a thousand years since my last entry and a lot has changed in the world. We are in the throes of the London Olympics; an event that I openly admit to initially doubting its relevance. How wrong was I? I think that they have been brilliant thus far, not least for bringing us Brits together as a cosmopolitan nation united in emotion and pride while we support our sporting heroes.

Closer to home, I have also been busy visiting my patch, The Scrubs, in the vain hope of seeing something ultra unusual to pump up our year list. We are currently sitting on 87 species and I’m determined to raise that total to 100 by the end of the year even if I have find them all myself.

Some may say to achieve that on a site with no water will be an Olympian task. My retort would be: watch this space!

Urban birder Paul Davis sent me this selection of images taken of a weird bird that he could not recognise coming to his feeder in his Mitcham garden in south London.

At first I thought it was some strange escaped weaver species but closer examination, especially of its upperparts, left me thinking that it could be a melanistic male House Sparrow. Melanism is the opposite of albinoism and is rare in House Sparrows. In all my decades of watching them I have never seen a melanistic one, although I have seen albinoism and partial albinos. The grey patch on the crown of the depicted bird is totally consistant with that of a normal male House Sparrow. Furthermore, a search on the net resulted in me finding footage of another similarly plumaged bird on the continent. Paste http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NgENqvdGcY and see what you think.

So, is it a House Sparrow?

Let me know what you think.

Atlantic Puffin (David Fettes)

It has taken me two days to sufficiently warm up after a stupendous week on The Shetlands. I never really appreciated just how far north these islands were – literally just 200 miles east of Norway. Nor did I fully comprehend just how big the main island was – some 100 miles long by 30 miles wide, or something like that. But what I didn’t account for in any way was how cold it would be. Despite the sun shining on some of the days a merciless wind sometimes blew to duly freeze me. I had to resort to wearing two pairs of trousers, three t-shirts, a jumper, jean jacket and raincoat plus two pairs of hats and some gloves!!

During my week I visited Fetlar, Yell, Unst as well as circumnavigating the main island. I picked up all the usual suspects that you would expect to uncover on these magical isles including a single female Red-necked Phalarope, Puffins, Black & Common Guillemots, Razorbills, Kittiwakes, Great Black-backs, Common Gulls, Arctic Terns, one pair of Common Terns, Arctic Skuas, Bonxies, Greylags, Eiders, orgies of Shags, Great Northern & Red-throated Divers, Lapwings, Curlews, Whimbrels, Dunlins, Sanderlings, Ringed Plovers, Twites, Starlings, Hooded Crows and plenty of House Sparrows amongst other species.

Of course, The Shetlands are famed for the number of hot rarities that it attracts. Well, I managed to dip on a Yellow-billed Diver, Black-headed Bunting (which would have been my first in 25 years) and was turned the other way speaking on my mobile when an adult Long-tailed Skua flew past. But did manage to see a lingering Icterine Warbler and discover a Short-toed Lark along the road outside my hotel on Unst plus find and co-find two seperate female Golden Orioles above and around my wooded adopted local patch on Unst. Coupled with those discoveries I also enjoyed watching Shetland scarcities like Wood Pigeon, Hobby, Sparrowhawk, Carrion Crow and a Dunnock.

Every birder in the UK and beyond must come and visit these islands at least once in their birding lives. It’s like being a football fan and going to a big game at Wembley or going to Buck Palace and meeting the Queen. They are things that we just have to do.

My gratitute goes out to Shetland Wildlife for facilitating my visit and making me feel so welcome.