Whilst birding the lower areas of the Raydah Escarpment in late March I saw a number of African species. Birds seen included African Grey Hornbill, Violet-backed Starling, Black-crowned Tchagra, Bruce’s Green Pigeon and White-browed Coucal. Bruce’s Green Pigeon is an interesting species as it only eats the fruit of a single type of fig tree. […]
Tag: Chiffchaff
Pennington Marsh – 7th April
This first half of April has been fantastic, like mid-summer come early, after an early morning breeding bird survey where the highlights were a couple of Song Thrush and a Willow Warbler I spent a couple of hours at Pennington Marsh. Spring really is here and there wereBlackcap singing from the scrub, fair numbers of […]
Winter visitors and passage migrants – Haradh
Phil Roberts and I went to Haradh recently and found plenty of good birds despite the temperature being 1 degrees Celsius the coldest day for many years in the region as well as a bitingly cold northerly wind. Some birds were winter visitors such as Mallard, Northern Lapwing, Desert Wheatear, Eastern Imperial Eagle and Tawny […]
5 bars! Eastern Crowned Warbler!
Phew, what a day that was. Yesterday evening the news of an Eastern Crowned Warbler at Bempton Cliffs broke. I had planned a morning’s birding with Terry a long time ago, which I didn’t want to give up, plus I had stuff to do in the afternoon, so I peacefully (or not?) accepted that I […]
Portland Bluethroat and Sub Warbler
We had quite a drive this morning for a day on Portland birding for spring migrants. Having set off early we we in the obs garden at 7.30am but there was no news of yesterdays Bluethroat or Western Subalpine Warbler. I headed off up the hill into the fields in search of anything that might […]
Beaulieu Road Station and Pennington Marsh
I had worked a long week despite the Bank Holiday and so on Friday 1st April I finished at 14:00 and headed to Beaulieu Road Station for a walk. I parked at Shatterford and walked south, along Bishop’s Dyke and back via Denny Wood. Stonechat numbers seemed to be up, with 12 birds seen, returning […]
Ringing abietinus type Chiffchaff – Sabkhat Al Fasl
Whilst ringing at Sabkhat Al Fasl in January I trapped a quite grey/brown looking Chiffchaff with few greenish tones. Unfortunately, with Chiffchaffs, things get complicated in the Middle East. With Mountain Chiffchaffs nearby, which look quite like Siberian Chiffchaff tristis, and a series of taxa with intriguing combinations of abietinus or intermediate plumage but tristis-like […]