Cock Pheasant (David Darrell Lambert)

Today was a great day!

Primarily because the Tower 42 Bird Study Group is about to be born. I had a very successful meeting with the management at the Tower, who totally love the idea of a bird observatory on the top of their building. The RSPB London office are getting involved and are requesting information on Peregrine sightings and returning Swifts. There’s even going to be a launch event towards the end of March to mark this historical occasion. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this must be the only inner city skycraper visible migration observation platform in the world.

I am so excited about this opportunity. I’ve said it before, but I really feel that our visits during spring and the autumn are going to reveal some interesting statistics – so keep reading this blog!

Back at home, I sent out my latest Scrubs report to my mailing list and generally responded to the multitudes of emails I am getting these days. One of them was a invitation to a press trip to Warsaw in June. That will be brill.

I also did a brief phone-in on BBC Radio 5 Live later in the evening. I was asked to comment on a rogue Pheasant that had got itself in the news today for it persistent assaults on members of the public in the village that it resided in up in Yorkshire. The ‘Unpleasant Pheasant’ as it was dubbed by the presenter has caused some consternation amongst the locals and particularly with the postman. I put it’s behaviour down to over zealously staking out it’s territory and mistaking humans for ginormous male pheasants.

I also sited the fact load noises can trigger aggressive reactions, a fact that the lady on the other line who hailed from the afflicted village agreed with.

I must say I’ve never heard of aggressive wild Pheasants. Perhaps this bird was shell-shocked after nearly coming to grief after being shot at or maybe he was a Capercaillie in a previous life?

Bit of a mixed day today.

Had a couple of meetings at the BBC today that although were ostensibly positive they left me feeling somewhat crest-fallen. It’s a tough business this telly business.

Later, I attended the Friends of The Scrubs AGM, as I am a committee member. Nothing much to report with usual subjects covered.

Came back home and to settle down behind the laptop screen.

A Highland cow – absolutely nothing to do with anything royalty!

I’ve been invited to Buckingham Palace!!

I’m quite getting into this book reviewing lark as they slowly begin to trickle through my door. Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt landed on my doormat over six months ago – and no, it hasn’t taken that long to review it. No, my proper review will be appearing within the pages of an up coming issue of Bird Watching Magazine.

I would describe Crow Planet as a cerebral voyage into our relationship with urban nature through the author’s relationship with American Crows. Lyanda speaks of her almost obsessive interest in these and other corvids after nursing one back to health years previously.

As I said, you can read my full review at a later date but I do think that you should try and lay your hands on a copy and have a read. It’s pretty interesting and raises some fundamental issues. Besides, any book that talks about urban wildlife and tries to encourage people to get involved cannot be bad!

My long awaited copy of the Bible arrived today courtesy of publishers Harper Collins whose offices are not too far from where I live. My previous copy was given to me in 2003 by my then long-term Slovakian girlfriend who wrote me a note in her native tongue at the front of the book that to this day I have never been able to translate. Any Slovak speakers out there?

The publication of the new Collins Bird Guide was probably the most eagerly awaited birding event in recent history. Well, maybe with the exception of the rediscovery of the Eskimo Curlew or the confirmation of the continued existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. So when the book arrived I spent the next hour going through it page by page looking out for the differences. There were a few differences. There were species included (mostly wheatears funnily enough) that I had never heard of like Seebohm’s Wheatear (which I previously knew as a subspecies of the Northern Wheatear), the Maghreb Wheatear and Kurdish Wheatear. Plus I had never heard of a ‘Basalt Wheatear’ (the black morph of the Mourning Wheatear).

I was very excited to now own a portable fieldguide that had entries for what I term as ‘black hole’ species like Caspian Gull and American Herring Gull – birds that hitherto were just after thoughts in the bird guides – the kind of birds that you previously had to spend a couple of hours trawling through gull tomes or surfing the net to glean the essential ID features. Staying with the gulls, I was impressed with the detail that the Herring Gull and Lesser Black-back entries had. All helpful stuff in the field.

Of course, I could be pernickety and find faults and moan about things like the Short-eared Owl painting depicting it with far narrower wings than on any I’ve seen in real life. Or that, in my view, the book follows that completely alien systematic family order that starts with swans. I’m old school, I get nose bleeds if my field guide doesn’t start with the divers. No, negativity is waste of time when there are so many positives in this book.

When I was a kid used to read Heinzel, Fitter & Parslow’s ‘The Birds of Britain and Europe with North Africa and the Middle East’ religiously. At home, at school, during lessons, in bed – in fact everywhere. It was my original bible and it’s amazing just how far things have come since then. I absolutely love reading and re-reading field guides subliminally soaking up facts and figures that sometimes come back to me when I see particular birds. I will certainly keeping this new Collins Bird Guide by my side at all times. I absolutely love it already, it was worth the wait!

The people at Harper Collins have asked me to mention that they are launching www.collinsbirds.com on February 2nd 2010. From what they say it sounds like it will be a very interesting site.

Anyway, it’s my bedtime now. Time to read the Bible.

Today was quite weird. This afternoon I was pretending to be a ‘Rasta Lion’ for an Orangina commercial. I had to don a special suit with sensors all over it and filmed by a suite of ‘motion capture’ cameras which animated my body to make it look like a dreadlocked lion – or something like that!

What’s more, I had to sit on a moped making out that I was riding it, nodding my head to some Studio One dub plate. It was great fun and before you ask; no I don’t know when it’s out but I do know that I will be on for a few seconds and probably will be totally unrecognisable!

I won’t be giving up the day job!

I just had to put these wonderful shots up taken by photographer Russell Spencer. They just totally capture the vibe of the island.

Well, I’m back in The Urban Birder Towers after splendid few days on Mull to find that I have been missing a few things back at home. Apart from the multitudes of Redwing and Fieldfare, Woodcocks have been pretty prevalent. I wonder if there were undiscovered birds lurking at The Scrubs.

Also reported was a Lapland Bunting that’s currently hanging out with Skylarks at Beddington Farm, down there in south London and up to 5 Bitterns at the London Wetland Centre.

Time to get my butt down on The Scrubs me thinks!

Mull has surprised me in a couple of ways. The first is the number of non-Mullets (immigrant Mull residents) on the island. Most people seemed to have hailed from the Midlands. Indeed, Russell my photographer dubbed the island ‘SoliMull’!

The remainder of people seemed to come from Yorkshire, Newcastle with a couple folk from the Big Smoke. The other nice thing about Mull is the friendliness of the people. Everyone’s got time for everyone.

My talk tonight was a classic example. I spoke about urban birding in Wormwood Scrubs and the Mull Bird Club audience seemed inspired to look at city birding in a different light. They very kindly gave me a bottle of wine after as a sign of appreciation.

Today we spied a pair of calling Golden Eagle soaring against the dramatic backdrop of a snow clad mountainside. It was an adult (probably a male) and an immature that was clearly bigger, thus presumably a female. A magical sight that was only my second Scottish Goldie in my life. We also saw a male and 2 female Hen Harriers, a Woodcock, a Jack Snipe (scarce on the island) and we dipped on a couple of Snow Buntings. Yesterday, we had White-tailed Eagles and I found a 1st winter Iceland Gull.

My RSPB guides, the lovely Debby Thorne and Dave Sexton also took me to Loch Beg a place were chief Otter spotter Dave found at least 3 frolicking by the coast. Nice!

Finally, on Monday whilst in Glasgow I hung out with 2 Glasgow City Council officers, Iain Gibson and Jim Coyle, who very kindly took me around showing me some of the city’s birding spots. We managed to see Tree Sparrows, Yellowhammer, Whooper Swan, Water Rail and a couple of Jack Snipe.