White-necked
Heron

Great Egret

Little Blue Heron

Snowy Egret

Cattle Egret

Striated Heron

Yellow-crowned
Night Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron

White-faced
Whistling Duck

White-cheeked
Pintail

Scarlet
Ibis

Roseate Spoonbill

Turkey Vulture

Black Vulture

Osprey

Roadside Hawk

Short-tailed
Hawk

Southern
Caracara

Yellow-headed
Caracara

American Kestrel

Common Moorhen

Southern
Lapwing

Semipamated Plover

Greater Yellowlegs

Kelp Gull

Royal Tern

‘Cayenne’ Tern

Black Skimmer

Feral Pigeon

Picazuro
Pigeon

Ruddy Ground Dove

Blue-winged
Parrotlet

Plain
Parakeet

Squirrel
Cuckoo

Smooth-billed Ani

Burrowing Owl

White-collared Swift

Sapphire-spangled
Emerald

Ringed
Kingfisher

Amazon
Kingfisher

Green Kingfisher

White-spotted
Woodpecker

Narrow-billed
Woodcreeper

Rufous
Hornero

Yellow-olive
Flycatcher

Masked
Water Tyrant

Short-crested
Flycatcher

Great Kiskadee

Tropical Kingbird

White-rumped
Swallow

Blue-and
white Swallow

Southern
House Wren

Chalk-browed
Mockingbird

Rufous-bellied
Thrush

Pale-breasted
Thrush

Rufous-collared
Sparrow

Saffron
Finch

Brazilian
Tanager

Sayaca
Tanagar

Banaquit

Bicoloured Conebil

Golden-crowned
Warbler

Rufous-browed
Peppershrike

Epaulet
Oriole

Shiny Cowbird

Just got back to my hotel room after attending the opening of the Avistar 2012 Brazil Bird Fair. Held in a classy auditorium close to the fair venue I must say that I was taken by the professionalism displayed by organisor Guto Carvalho and his team. It wasn’t just straight presentations illustrated by images of birds, oh, no. There was a blind man who came on stage with his guide dog to present a superb soundscape that he had recorded. A woman came on and proceeded to get the audience to imitate bird calls. Plus, another fella came on an presented his film on the scenery around the Atlantic forests accompanied by a live seven piece orchestra. Impressive. The only downer for me was that the entire night was conducted in Portuguese.

I arrived in Sao Paulo, a tired migrant, at 7.30am after a knackering 11.5 hour flight. Any birding was restricted to the park in which the fair was being held. Had a few new species including Rufous-bellied Thrush, a species that looked like a bulky female Blackbird but with a delightful ruddy wash on its undercarriage. Later, before going to the opening, I took a short walk around the corner from my hotel to explore Sao Paulo University Campus. There were a few good urban birds here including plentiful Southern Lapwings that littered the mown grass. I also discovered a lone Burrowing Owl as it tried act cool standing on a rock with an eye trained on a bunch of students that unwittingly sat very close nearby.

Time to write my speech for the start of the fair tomorrow. Goodbye. 

We’ve had a fantastic couple of weeks at The Scrubs that has involved the discovery of great birds like Northern Wheatear, Common Redstart, Ring Ouzel, a Whimbrel feeding on the football pitches and a wayward Common Sandpiper. We had high hopes for the discovery of another great bird yesterday during the London Natural History Society bird walk that I was leading.

Nearly 50 people showed up on one of the nicest days of the year. The sun was absolutely beaming down. I instructed the group from the outset to be on big bird alert as conditions seemed favourable for a passing raptor. We were walking across the football pitches as I waxed lyrical about the importance of looking up when birding when I looked up and immediately saw a white-winged gull soaring high overhead with an accompanying Herring Gull. My heart raced as I shouted out ‘Iceland Gull!’ It looked like one to me apart from a slight niggle. For a second I thought that its head and beak looked too rugged for an Iceland. It just didn’t feel gentle enough. I dismissed that doubt in a heartbeat  and instead asked for anyone one in the group with a camera to start popping off some shots.

I was still celebrating the first Iceland Gull for the patch a few hours later when I recieved a text from my mate James Lowen. He asked me to consider the possibility of it being a leucistic Herring Gull. Alarm bells started to ring at full volume. Apparently, there is a leucistic bird that bears the ring SH1T that was originally controlled by the North London Ringing Group and has been doing the rounds at various sites both inside and outside London like Rainham Marshes and Beddington Farm. It has been leaving many confused folk in its wake and now it looks as though I have been added to the ‘Fake Iceland Gull Club’. Looking at the photographs you can see that the bird has a very typical Herring Gull structure and my Larid loving peers tell me that the wear on the primaries were not befitting those of a genuine Iceland Gull.

Ah well, we’re on 85 species for the year at The Scrubs thus far. Number 86 will have to come from elsewhere.

I must apologise for my complete lack of communication over the past days since my guided trip to Serbia – which was a complete success might I add!

We had a fantastic array of species including a Pallid Harrier, several Montagu’s Harriers including some fine males, truckloads of Marsh Harriers and during my recce before the guests arrived, a lovely female Hen Harrier and a late Merlin. Other bird of prey highlights during the course of the trip included brilliant views of a Long-legged Buzzard on the deck and fairly close up, several Osprey, Red-footed Falcon, Goshawk, stacks of Common Buzzard, Common Kestrel, a few Hobby, a couple Saker Falcons, a Peregine and a putative Honey Buzzard. Add to that mix the multitudes of Hawfinch, several migrating Golden Orioles, Cuckoos including a rare hepatic (rufous phased) female watched in the pouring rain, tons of migrant Wood Warblers – the list goes on.

The main reason why most people came on my trip was to witness Serbia’s incredible owl populations. We got to see many Long-eared Owls, Little Owl, heard Barn and Scops Owl’s plus watched a mighty Ural Owl emerge from its woodland nest box too. I was lucky enough to glimpse an even mightier Eagle Owl flap from its hidden, edge of woodland perch.

It was a fantastic trip and one that I will be repeating in May 2013 when even more of Serbia’s specialities will be on show. So get in touch if you fancy coming then. As a teaser, I will be running a long weekend trip to Serbia at the beginning of December 2012 to witness the truly unbelievable gatherings of Long-eared Owls in some of the villages in northern Serbia. How does the sight of nearly 200 of the blighters sitting in one tree grab you?

Keep checking my blog for further details.

A visit to Gunnersbury Triangle Local Nature Reserve in Chiswick, west London yesterday resulted in witnessing an unusual experience. This woodland reserve is under severe threat of being walled in by development. It’s currently bordered by industry, housing and a railway line – hardly an ideal setting for wildlife to flourish you would have thought. But there is plenty there…. at the moment. The local conservation group need signatures urgently for their online petition to stave off the developers http://handsoffourtriangle.wordpress.com.

Anyway, I was walking with Triangle stalwarts Marie Rabouhans and Jan Hewlett when we bumped into a couple of quantity surveyers along the path. One said he had just seen a ‘hawk take a Wood Pigeon’. To our surprise literally seven feet away we saw a large female Sparrowhawk spreadeagled on top of the woodland floor vegetation obviously pinning something down. A closer inspection revealed that its ‘prey’ was not a Wood Pigeon but another distinctly smaller female Sparrowhawk!

They grappled a bit more before the smaller bird managed to gain the ascendency and topple the larger bird on her back. They were aware of us during the whole process and without warning they disentangled and flew off. For the next hour we watched them chase themselves around the woodland.

I had never seen this kind of behaviour before but I assume that because females are a third bigger than the males perhaps they are the ones to settle territorial disputes?

A fantastic day was had spent in the semi-urban wilds of the Tagus Estuary on the doorstep of Lisbon. Aside from Azure-winged Magpies, Corn Buntings, Sardinian Warblers, Wood Sandpiper, loads of Greater Flamingoes and a vagrant Lesser Yellowlegs we had no less than 16 species of raptor.

We were treated to amazing views of Black-shouldered Kite, Short-toed Eagle, Booted Eagle, Bonelli’s Eagle, Black Kite, a male Montague’s Harrier, ringtail Hen Harriers, Marsh Harrier, Common Buzzard, Osprey, Sparrowhawk, Peregrine, Hobby, Kestrel and Merlin!

Mind blowing stuff! Tomorrow, it will be a more gentle touristy walk around the city before a bout of urban birding in Lisbon Gardens, a park in the shadow of the mighty Vasco da Gama Bridge.

Originally billed as kids bird walk, my excursion to Rainham this morning was more of an adult affair with few kids in attendance. No matter, I had a great time alongside the talented Howard Vaughan, the reserve’s Information Officer (Warden to you and I).

It was a misty, nippy start to the day but by 11am the sun had popped out and our recent spring heatwave continued. We recorded our first spring Sand Martins, Howard’s first Black Redstart in two years at the site – a fleeting glimpse of a fine male, a overflying Ruff and distant Buzzard. We also saw a drake Pintail, quite a few Wigeon and a performing Peregrine.

I do like Rainham as I have a long history with the area. As kid I used to venture into the Rainham Marsh of old – pre RSPB days – along with Alan, my then birding buddy who is now more famously known as Cornelious Ravenwing III. We saw many good birds whilst being occasionally shot at by unruly Essex boys. Yes, those were the days……