The sky’s the limit

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Today was a gorgeous gorgeous day!
I awoke at 5.30am and got myself down to The Scrubs at 6am to be greeted by around 1,000 Rose-ringed Parakeets that were leaving their roadside roost in flocks of 100 plus birds at a time. It’s a wonder that the noise doesn’t disturb the locals. Around 10 minutes later fellow Scrubber, Roy Nuttall showed up. We proceeded to walk the realm.
You may remember me getting very excited about a pair of Skylark that were sniffing around the grassland, showing more than just a passing interest in the area. Since then, a couple of observers have reported hearing and seeing the male in song flight – an occurrence that has never been reported here before. Imagine my delight when I heard its trickling, rippling notes at my urban patch. At first it was nowhere to be seen and we suspected that it was singing from the ground. We left the area, returning a while later and this time we located the male fluttering at a great height in the blue sky. What a sight!
I still don’t think that they will stay though. There’s just too much disturbance. I’ll keep you up do date on my Skylark saga.
I’m off to Gateshead, South Shields for the next three days to shoot that The One Show piece I’ve been going on about for the last million years. Tonight, I’ve been trying on loads of gear to see what kind of look to achieve.
Any ideas?

Twitter

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A female Mallard, South Norwood Country Park, south London or is it Croydon?
Over the last couple of days I was gently eased into the world of ‘Twitter’. Initially, I was told about it by the woman who guided my birth into the blogging ether, Clare Evans (check her blog, she’s one of my followers). After a long gestation period of deliberation I was finally induced by Fiona Barclay at Birdguides – who’s quickly becoming my own private IT support.
I’m now a partially fledged Twitterer. To be honest, the jury is still out. I don’t really see the point of it at the moment. I mean, do people, strangers at that, really want to know that I’ve just had sex, been to the loo or in the midst of contemplative navel gazing? I think not!
Needless to say, I shall persevere with it for a little while to see how I feel a little further down the line.
Today, I enjoyed some of the ornithological delights of Croydon in south London (or is it Surrey?) as research for my forthcoming piece in Bird Watching magazine. I loved discovering a drumming and calling Lesser Spotted Woodpecker in Selsdon Wood, a soaring Peregrine over Riddlesdown and an array of commoner species in South Norwood Country Park including at least 7 nervous Fieldfares. I love Fieldfares. In Spain they call them Royal Thrushes. They should be renamed Royal Thrush – as I feel that there is something definitely regal about them. Well, having said that, they look pretty manky on their breeding grounds and have a crap song!
I best get on with my article – the deadline was last Tuesday!

The BBC

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My first ever The One Show Shoot: Parakeets – Valeria Fabbri-Kennedy
Yesterday, a tripped down to cloudy Bristol in the west country to have a few meetings at the BBC Natural History Unit along with my lovely agent Jo. The idea was to raise my work potential at The One Show and Springwatch. I will let you know what the eventual outcomes are when I know them.
Today was a day of paperwork, but I did nip down to see the illustrious Fiona Barclay at Birdguides in order for her to launch me into the world of twitter. After 8 hours I had 40 followers. Not bad eh?

I still find it weird writing a blog. Not so much the fact that I am spilling part of my heart out into the ether for all to examine (or at least for those bothered enough to read them) but because there has been several occasions when sleep has claimed me before I had even finished writing.

My problem is that I leave it until last thing at night whilst sitting in my bed. I’m winding down from an invariably heavy day, it’s a late hour and my eyes are beginingg todcm xz.lkl[,s p;z zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……………………….

Thetford visit

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Graham Appleton with The Urban Birder at the BTO HQ in Thetford
After being picked up at East Acton Station by the ever lovely Fiona from Birdguides, we drove to The British Trust for Ornithology’s HQ in Thetford, Norfolk in order for me to award the talented Dean Eades with the Birdguides 2008 Photograph of the Year Award.
Dean is a really lovely, down to earth bloke and his girlfriend was lovely too. We spent time wandering around the Trust’s offices filming the occasion.

The Urban Birder outside my old office

Shooting at The Nunnery Lakes

Larks ascending….

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I discovered 3 Skylarks in the pipit breeding area on The Scrubs last Friday. In itself it was nothing too unusual, especially given that a lot of things are on the move at the moment. What struck me though was the fact that 2 of the birds were showing definite ‘prospecting’ behaviour. They were actively flying up around 3 feet above the grassland, fluttering as if they were surveying the terrain.

Normally, we only get to see Skylarks at The Scrubs if we flush them out of the grass or if they fly over, so seeing these birds made my heart flutter somewhat. Yesterday morning, whilst I was leading a walk in Southwark, my fellow Scrubbers noted that a Skylark was singing over the grassland. I was very excited, as this was the first time ever that its streaming song had filled the air at The Scrubs. 
My heart sank when realism kicked in. There is little chance that they would settle down because being an urban site that is traversed by almost every dog alive in the area, they would be too disturbed. I hope that I am wrong.
My Southwark walk was with a group of teenagers involved with the Bankside Urban Forest Project. Together with their group leader, Ruby, we walked the Southwark streets from the Tate Modern to end up in a tiny cemetery. It was here that they came to grips with their first singing Great Tit and Goldfinch.
It was wonderful to see that the birds that us birders barely look at were the complete object of fascination to these kids who previously thought that London’s avifauna consisted of pigeons and some more pigeons.

Plans and stuff

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Black-legged Kittiwake – Dawn Balmer

With my brush with the law out of the way, life returned to its normal law abiding way. 

Yesterday afternoon, I motored leisurely over to the Birdguides offices in Acton, west London to meet with Fiona Barclay and Max Whitby. We were convening to discuss a schedule for some films that I want to shoot this year. My plans included a trip to the Orkneys in late July to ring seabirds with the BTO and a return journey to Paris to cover the emerging birding scene. 
Fiona very kindly downloaded their ‘iDentify’ cd containing the calls of over 500 European species onto my new Crackberry. Not that I’m into product placements but you guys should try it, the calls sound great through the phone – especially the displaying Great Bustard!
Football this morning was successful. We won 8-3.

Police and Thieves

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Think of ducks….
Last night I visited an good friend of mine who lives in a council estate around the corner from me. It was her 65th birthday and my best friend and I paid her a visit laden with some cakes and presents. We left her place at 9.30pm and as we headed down the stairs to the car we walked past some dodgy looking characters milling around on the stairwell. The estate is renown for its edginess.
As we drove out of the estate to head to a cashpoint a few streets away, I noticed that we were being tailed by a police car. I thought it odd because I was observing the speed limits and driving properly. Anyway, as I turned into a side street and alongside the cash machine the police pulled up behind and a female and two male cops jumped out. They proceeded to accuse us of being drug dealers- in fact one of them said that I had been driving like a drug dealer. What does a drug dealer drive like?
After being body searched in the street and the car checked over they realised that this was not going to be a Miami Vice moment for them, so after doing their paperwork they left us in peace. 
I have not been stopped by the law for years. One of the last times was in the 80’s when I was peering through some iron railings looking for Ring Ouzel in an allotment near Brent Reservoir, north London. All of a sudden a police car screeched to a halt by me and an unpleasant officer barked at me demanding to know what I was doing. When I told him that I was birding he made me name the types of bird that I was looking for. He and his mate began to glaze over when I started reeling of Aquatic Warbler, Brunnich’s Guillemot and Stone Curlew. They abruptly sped off.
The moral of the story? 
If you are ever stopped by the police and accused of drug dealing, think of farmyard ducks. That way, you will never loose your cool and become agitated like a true drug dealer.
Well, it worked for me!

Spooks

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Black-headed Gull

My alarm went off at 5.50am this morning. I peered through the blinds to be greeted by a dark and grimy looking day. Despite all my hopeful thinking last night you know, about finding a totally unusual Larid pacing around the football pitches at The Scrubs, I thought ‘what the hell’ and jumped back into bed. ‘I’ll find that weird gull tomorrow’ I thought as I closed my eyes whilst snuggling up in my lovely warm bed.

Literally ten minutes later my little electric heater that I have had to employ recently to fend off the nippy evenings, suddenly switched itself on. I woke up with a start. You see, last night I switched the thing off but left it plugged in. So how did it turn itself on again? It was a spooky moment, but I saw it as a sign that I needed to get dressed, don my bins and head down to the patch. And so I did.
Unfortunately, I didn’t find a Siberian Thrush (although one did show up at in Norfolk today). No, instead I had to make do with 4 Greylags flying over (rare here), 3 Stonechats, 350 Carrion Crows, c400 Black-headed Gulls and at least 57 Redwings. 
So much for the sign!

A date with the rain

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Tonight, I’m sitting on my bed listening to the Rolling Stones as the rain, teaming from the heavens, lashes on my bedroom window. It’s been raining all night, seemingly a natural continuation of today’s dismally grey and depressing day.

I spent some of my day compiling and writing the February London UK Bird report for Bird Watching magazine. It involved trawling through the London records and picking out the most interesting sightings. This is easy enough, until you take into consideration that you have only 200 words to play with and you can only say ‘London Wetland Centre’ so many times. It is a challenge!
Tomorrow, if the rains cease, I’m going to head off to The Scrubs with the sole aim of finding and identifying an interesting gull species. I’m hoping for Yellow-legged. Yes, I’m setting my sights low as I probably have more chance of meeting the Pope on The Scrubs than I have of seeing a wayward Ivory Gull.
But stranger things have happened…….

Wembley

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A Peregrine at the Tate Modern

At last I’m getting into some semblance of a routine. I’m retraining my body to get up in the morning and go birding. I really have to force myself during the winter months because The Scrubs often has little to show for itself during the cold dark months of winter. Of course, things do show up but because the area has no standing water, I can’t even entertain the idea of finding a weird duck.

By training myself now, I will be totally ready for spring; eyes and ear peeled and my mind filled with wishful thinking. This morning I recorded the first Chiffchaff of the spring as it called plaintively from the wood in the north east corner. It felt almost spring-like this morning so the Chiffy wasn’t a major surprise. Two pairs of Great Spotted Woodpeckers gleefully chased each other around as fellow Scrubbers, Roy Nuttall, Kim Dixon and I set about deciphering the many gulls that were congregating on the football pitches. Nothing unusual was to be seen, though c600 Black-headed Gulls and around 50 Common Gulls was exceptional. The bird of the moment was a overflying, calling male Reed Bunting that dropped into the grassland from the south.
Later this afternoon I visited my mother who lives in Wembley (north west London) before heading off to Wembley Stadium with my best mate to watch Manchester United play Tottenham Hotspur in the Carling Cup Final. We had seats right in the rafters, right at the back behind the goal. 
It was 0 – 0, 80 minutes had gone and we were at our wits end. Were United ever going to score? Whilst staring up into the heavens in despair, I briefly glimpsed a raptor soaring and circling in the bit of sky viewable through the stadium roof. In true urban birder style, I ignored the game (it was only a cup final!) grabbed my binoculars and started staring at what was now apparent as a falcon. It wheeled back into view and was joined by a second, slightly bigger bird. They were both Peregrines!
We eventually won on penalties and I saw a unexpected great bird. Result!

Eclipse plumage

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God bless its electrical soul

The postman’s supposed to ring twice, right?

Well, round where I live they don’t even bother ringing. It’s often a wonder that you get any letters at all. After coming back from an early morning Scrubs visit I waited in like a plum for the postman to deliver my new phone. I was kinda desperate because part of my life had regressed to the pre-seventies. My current phone had quit on me and I needed to make some calls, answer some important football texts and generally feel safe in the knowledge that I had my mobile close at hand.
Not to be. The delivery cut off time of 1pm had been and gone. I checked my letterbox and to my horror there was one of those ‘I tried to deliver’ notes stuffed through the door. The geezer hadn’t even bothered to ring the doorbell. Of course, I was straight onto the Royal Mail customer complaints who added insult to injury by saying that the collection office had just closed for the day!
Then I checked myself. I thought, ‘hey, you’ve got two legs, you’re still breathing and you’re not in a coma’. That was a great leveller. Plus, it meant that I would have no one bugging me for the duration of me being flightless – yeah, that’s it! Being phoneless is like being flightless. I’m currently in eclipse plumage!
I had no alarm this morning (that’s how much I rely on my phone!) but incredibly, I woke myself up at 6am and half-an-hour later I was watching hundreds of squawking Rose-ringed Parakeets fly over my head in the pre-dawn light at The Scrubs. I was joined by fellow Scrubber, Roy Nuttall. Together we walked the circuit and managed 4 Stonechat for our trouble.
Needless to say, I also didn’t receive the sack load of letters from the kids at the local school, but I did get an email from the organisors of the Birdfair at Rutland, inviting me to give a talk on Urban Birding. So if you’re not up to much over the second last weekend of August, come down and check me out.
Now it’s time for me to sit back and drift away whilst Herbie Hancock tinkles the ivories on the wonderful jazz funky tune, Chameleon.

The postman better knock

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Yesterday’s mystery photo raised a lot of comment not only on this blog but also on email and text. As I said earlier, the vast majority of people fancied it as a Chiffchaff, despite the dark face, lack of supercilium and leggy appearance. Such is the excitement of birding.

My crackberry finally collapsed. A month ago I dropped it in a cup of hot chocolate and despite facing a certain death, it came back to life like Lazarus. There was a price to pay though. The Cadbury’s hot chocolate had disintergrated the microphone on the phone, so I could only use it with  a headset. That was fine until today. Thankfully, a swift call to T-mobile resulted in a super-duper upgrade being despatched to arrive tomorrow morning. How easy is life sometimes?
I did a talk at a primary school to 60 eight year old kids a couple weeks ago and I received an email from their teacher today saying that they really enjoyed it. In fact, they had written a load of thank you letters and they were being shipped over to my address for the morning.
Ahhh!

Chiffchaff or a first for the Western Palearctic?

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Is this a Chiffchaff?
I woke up to another grey day in London.
Before heading out of the door to do a voiceover for Birdguides, I checked my emails and came across one sent by a good birding mate of mine containing the above displayed picture. It was taken by a non-birder on holiday in southern Spain last week. My friend was flummoxed. He was thinking that it was an aberrant female Black Redstart. My first thought was a Blackstart – but they are grey with black tails. Then my imagination started running wild and I was conjuring images of me discovering the Western Palearctic’s first Familiar Chat – an African denizen!
Anyway, I circulated the picture to the people who should know better and the vast majority plumped for Chiffchaff.
What do you think?
Well, the voiceover went well. I was laying down the voice for the Birdguides promotional film on how to use their many services. Jeez, those guys are really high tech!
In the afternoon, I had a lengthy meeting with my lovely agent, Jo, at her offices in Shepherds Bush, west London. We have a good plan to put into action and I will let you know how I get on!

Urban birding

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A handsome Redwing

A failed internet connection, a late night and downright laziness all contributed to my lack of entries over the past few days. Of course, I had offers from some very kindly folk to use their offices (including my good mate Fiona Barclay – she of Birdguides fame). I decided to suffer and spend the time screaming down the phone at British Telecom instead.

To recap, on Sunday morning I was watching 3 cute little Stonechats, a solitary Redwing and the first returning Linnets at my beloved Wormwood Scrubs. Later that morning, I was in Southwark in south London – Bermondsey to be exact, to lead a walk through the streets for the council. The idea was that I’d take members of the public on a truly urban bird walk. Well that was the plan. In reality only one person turned up thus she had a complete one-on-one. The best bird was a high flying Sparrowhawk being mobbed by Carrion Crows over the drab cityscape that I had found myself in. We ended up back at her house after an hour in the cold, slurping tea with her partner chatting about Carmine Bee-eaters!
Yesterday morning I was Kensington Gardens taking part in a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the demise of the House Sparrow. I was chatting about their general decline across Britain and specifically in Kensington Gardens where in 1975 over 2500 were counted whilst in 2000 there were none. And there’s been none since apart from a lone female that showed up for a few hours in 2003.
Later, I was delighted to receive an email from the venerable Hugh Harrop who agreed to me using a couple of his images for a piece on my website. You should check some of his photos out as they are wicked www.hughharrop.com.
Tomorrow, I meet with my lovely agent for a spot of plotting and planning.

Final score

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6-2 was the final score this morning and I was voted man of the match by a few of my fellow team mates. I was well happy!

The skies were blue (quite a change from the recent gloom) and whilst standing in between the sticks my birding urges twinged when I noticed several parties of Carrion Crows passing overhead. For some reason, I had the spring urge. You know the one. It’s when you can’t sleep at night, willing the dawn to arrive so that you can experience the first rays of the spring sunshine on your face as you search the bushes in your local patch for the first returning migrants. 
What more motivation do I need to go to The Scrubs more often?

Croydon

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The view above Croydon

The next city to fall under my urban birding gaze will be…………Croydon.

For those not familiar with this major commercial settlement in south London, it is the birthplace of non other than Kate Moss and a few other notable Croydonians – who’s names currently escape me. Interestingly, I never knew that Croydon was a settlement in 1086 and was only amalgamated with London as recently as 1965. Ignorantly, I thought that they built Croydon and its high rise cityscape in the 60’s. Clearly not.
The great thing about Croydon is that it is much derided by practically everyone outside it’s city limits and that is what’s great. It’s an overlooked jewel (at least I hope). Thinking about it, I saw my first ever Pied-billed Grebe in South Norwood Country Park, Croydon in 1987.
Anyway, aside from dreaming of discovering a major birding oasis on a Croydon street corner, this evening was spent revelling at the brilliance of Paul Scholes’ performance in last night’s Manchester United game whilst trying to think up ideas for The One Show.
It’s a hard life…..

Days like this

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The morning I missed at The Scrubs

A quiet day today. I tried to get up early to hit The Scrubs, but instead I hit the pillow again with a definite thud!

Today was a day of paperwork and emails, but I wont bore you.
In the evening, I attended the Friends of The Scrubs AGM, which was funnily enough in a community hall right by The Scrubs. That’s as interesting as it got!

Pussy cats

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I had a call from the producer of the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 out of the blue today. He asked if I would like to come into the studio to talk about the effect that domestic cats are having on Britain’s wildlife on Jeremy’s show.

I agreed to it, but stressed that both the RSPB and the BTO were undecided as to the general effect that cats have had because the research is lacking. Whilst waiting to go on air I got chatting with Jools Holland, who was also in the same room. I told him that I first met him 5 years previously whilst at a party in Mick Hucknall’s house – as you do. Now, before you cry ‘name dropper!’, I must stress that I gatecrashed that party because I was on a mission.
You see, I knew that the late George Best was attending with his wife Alex. My cunning plan was to ask George if he minded signing a photo of himself for my mate. He was only too happy to oblige. Mr Hucknall, however, wasn’t best pleased and took great exception to what he wrongly thought as his guests being harassed. He duly asked me to leave. I didn’t like his party anyway!
Jeremy Vine was a nice fellow and my time on air was shared with a lady on the phone line who ran a cattery. I explained to listeners that I had nothing against cat owners and that I welcomed some research into their impact on birds.
The cattery woman also claimed that foxes actively attacked cats. I found that hard to believe.

Does whatever a spider can

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An early morning trip to The Scrubs resulted in my first Bullfinch record for several months. A fine male flew along the embankment and dipped into Chats Paddock. There used to be two pairs of this scarce finch breeding on my patch, but some careless habitat ‘management’ during June one year put paid to one of the pairs. So it’s always nice when one pops up.

Aside from that, at least three Goldcrests, a couple of flyover Greylags (scarce here) and a solitary Meadow Pipit were the only other birds of note.
Back at The Urban Birder Towers more work was done on the computer and later, I had a meeting with my camera operator. We made plans about shooting more short birding films for broadcast on the Birdguides website and elsewhere. 
After she left, I got engrossed watching Spiderman 3 on Sky…..well we all need a bit of time off now and again!

Crushed by the wheels of industry

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Two natural hearts
Whilst most people were busy making plans for their loved ones on this, one of the most commercial money making days of the year, I was toiling in front of my laptop. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a heart and I have been known to give ladies bunches of flowers, I feel that love can be expressed all year round and not just on one given day.
At football this morning, it was amusing to watch some of the lads rush of promptly at 11am in order to fulfill promises made about time keeping with their loved ones. Some of the fellas didn’t even show up this morning. I had visions of them being shackled to a heavy piece of furniture in order to prevent them from nipping out for a game of footie! The score was 5-5 in the end, by the way.
This afternoon I popped into Soho for some bits and bobs and noticed a Sparrowhawk drifting high overhead.
I wondered how many people in the crowded streets were aware of that magnificent bird?