Anticipating the usual flood of Kumlien’s-like gulls in the west and Thayer’s-like gulls in the east, I’ve put together a proposed thayeri-kumlieni-glaucoides scoring system at http://www.tertial.us/gulls/tkg.htm It’s a first draft cut to develop some consensus about how we talk about and evaluate these things. Feedback is welcome. (I’ve already got ideas to improve it, but [...]
Just heard this, thought it may be of interest to the list. An injured male American Wood Duck has been seen near the RNLI Lifeboat Station, Pollawaddy, Arranmore Island, Co. Donegal since last Friday. Injured wing. Not really approachable, but can’t fly, it spends a lot of time out of sight in a rushy area [...]
A total of 193 species was recorded on my Round Britain tour of last week with a mouth-watering list of species recorded, a whopping 14 species higher than on my trip in January 2011. Amongst the many highlights were Long-eared Owl, Lapland Bunting, Golden Pheasant, Grey Partridge, Scandinavian Arctic Redpoll, Spotted Redshank, Long-tailed Duck, Ross’s [...]
On Monday 28 November, Mark Golley discovered a small calidrid at Cley NWT Reserve in North Norfolk. It was consorting with a large group of Dunlin and was showing, reasonably well, on mud visible from Bishop Hide, overlooking Pat’s Pool. With its dark ear coverts and numerous retained dark-centred and somewhat anchor-shaped scapular feathers, it [...]
The autumn of 2011 has been one of the best year’s ever for vagrant HUME’S LEAF WARBLERS Phylloscopus humei, in Britain with over 18 individuals recorded so far (see Appendix 2 for details). It is a species that breeds from the Altai Mountains to western Mongolia, south through Tien Shan and the Pamirs to NE [...]