Bird Watching Thread

been a while since i've had a first-time sighting in my garden:


Phoenicurus phoenicurus

called a Common redstart, but far less common to us than the Black redstart.

 

last sunday i had a beautiful afternoon working in the backyard, with blackcaps singing away (probably the most melodic birds in these parts), chiffchaffs darting around and a robin perched over me the whole time.

then monday morning was completely different, skies gray and lowering (but temp very pleasant) and while stopped at a light a flock of starlings flew over me; not as dense as when they are in a murmuring (thx to whoever here turned me onto that word) , but very evenly spaced and flying due north, , no more than 50m high... they covered my whole view of the sky from rooftop to rooftop, and the display went on uninterruptedly for at least 30 seconds. awesome.

in a little cycle path through some shrubbery closer to work i raised a group of about a dozen magpies, that was impressive too, and fit the mood perfectly.

when i got to the parking lot at the factory i saw probably the same (or mostly the same, they break up and rejoin groups constantly) starlings: higher up, and with a more open view of the sky i could count them very roughly: between 15 and 25 thousand birds. it's been a loooong time since numbers like this have been seen in the region (they are ruthlessly hounded as pests) and i'm looking forward to some nice exhibitions in winter evenings to come.

 

i don't know why you say "however": i don't know the chipping sparrow myself but the pics i find of it show a crown just as red as a house finch. if you saw the black eyeband too then it looks pretty clear to me.

how bright colors look can be influenced by lighting, the surrounding environment, sunglasses...

 

there's a hullaballoo going on right now in southwest france over the capture of chaffinches and bramblings (Fringilla coelebs and Fringilla montifringilla).

in the Landes department these are considered a delicacy and trapping them in november a "tradition".
this has of course been illegal for as long as songbirds have been protected but the folks down that way don't see it that way. the local good ol' boy authorities have long turned a blind eye to this but in the past 2-3 there's been big pressure from Brussels, not to enact laws against this, but just to enforce those already in the book (and obeyed in every other region of france).

chaffinches are not a particularly rare bird, (though bramblings are in our climes). the problem is that the cages they trap these birds in also catch tits, robins, goldfinches... just about every songbird that appreciates sunflower seeds (meaning almost all).

another problem is that they only do this for one month, they do it in the very month that the birds are migrating massively through the region (obviously not by coincidence) so the effect on populations is far from negligable.

this is a repeat of a similar brouhaha concerning ortolan buntings that came to a head a few years ago. here the problem was even worse because large nets were used to trap them... and everything else flying through. when you consider that between 50,000 and 80,000 ortolans were being LEGALLY sold per year in france (a special regional dispensation for this existed until 1999), and bird counts in scandinavian nesting grounds had dropped to less than 8,000 pairs, the coming disaster was so obvious that even the regional authorities took notice.

but just as the most boneheaded of trappers keep trapping ortolans (the league for protection of birds found and communicated to authorities the GPS coordinates of over 100 trapping points in the area just this last spring) hunters in southwest france have vowed to defy authorities to uphold their "traditions", pointing to the dispensation that the spanish government has asked for from brussels (not obtained i believe, they just act as if it has... what else to expect from a nation where slaughtering bulls makes the sports pages and chucking goats from village church steeples is considered a holiday activity like our easter egg hunts?)

more on the subject generally:

http://www.komitee.de/en/homepage
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/songbird-migration/franzen-text

 

the LPO (Ligue de Protection des Oiseaux) here carries out commando operations to free both ortolans and finches. it's no picnics since the guilty parties get very aggressive, and the gendarmerie in the region tends to side with the trappers. even a mayor of a small town has been caught red-handed (and got off with a slap on the wrist). the LPO still frees the birds they find, but instead of destroying the traps like they used to , they now just gather info (names, license plates, GPS coordinates) and sends them, not to the gendarmes, but directly to brussels. there are TWO ministers in charge of the gendarmerie (interior and defense) and neither will take kindly to a relative handful of good old boys who roll their R's making the french republic look like a banana republic in front of the EC.

 

walking the dog this evening i saw what i thought was a sparrowhawk; i saw talons out, but only got a split-second look before it dipped behind a building, and it was more gliding than diving, so i thought it might have been one of the two wood pigeons i had seen just before.

15 minutes later i was looking at the magnificent dusky sky and about 60-80m up... this time there's no two ways about it: unmistakeable silhouette, and what speed! flying straight horizontal but with a good wind at her back; she comes at a group of crows like lightning and hits one in midair with such force! they both tumble, and to get airworthy again she needs to let go but the crow just falls like a rock.

not sure she found it on the ground because a couple of minutes later i see a sparrowhawk flying back against the wind to where she'd come from. could have been her mate though, it was a bit dark to be sure.

 

tired of winter already? umm... scouse... it hasn't started yet. just trying to cheer you up! but rememeber that winter is great for bird-watching!

my wisteria is finally taking off about 4 years after I planted it on my neither deck nor veranda... i guess you'd call it a patio. unfortunately i don't have any good pics but it's an awesome place to hang out... i'll share next spring!