All is quiet on new years day

My search for a local patch continues and until I find one my birding forays will remain rather erratic to say the least. Still, spending the new year at good friends Jaffa and Helen down in Devon meant a wander around Jaffa's fantastic local patch at the Otter Estuary (photo below). Things were pretty slow, hindered further by the hoards of 'Jo' milling about, but 400 Wigeon was a good site count along with 7 Black-tailed Godwit, a Bar-tailed Godwit, 2 Dunlin, a male Gadwall and a female Goosander. On the sea there was a Great Northern Diver and a fairly decent movement of Red-throated Divers.

New Checklist of the Birds of REGUA

With 452 species now recorded at REGUA, this Brazilian Atlantic Forest reserve has some of the highest avian diversity of any single locality in South America outside of the east Andean slope. This is largely due to REGUA being one of the few places where the Atlantic Forest remains intact across the complete altitudinal range. This, together with the Atlantic Forest also being one of the world's top five biodiversity hotspots, makes REGUA an important reserve, protecting a high number of endemics.

I've just finished work on the new REGUA checklist of birds. Rather than just produce a simple list of birds found on the reserve I wanted to include data collected over the last four years (largely by REGUA's guides Adilei and Leonardo) on seasonal abundance and movements, and the new checklist is one of the first in the neotropics to include seasonal bar graphs for each species (click on images below to enlarge).

Early winter at the London Wetland Centre

Spent a couple of quiet hours at the London Wetland Centre. A Bittern in the reeds bordering the Main Lake showed well, but there was no sign of the reported Bearded Tits in the moderate south-westerly. A scan of the Grazing Marsh and Scrape for a Jack Snipe produced 11 Common Snipe and a Reed Bunting instead, and 56 Wigeon, 65 Shoveler, 40 Teal, 11 Gadwall and a Shelduck were amongst the wintering wildfowl.

Lapland Bunting

A wander around Otter Head this afternoon resulted in Jaffa finding a Lapland Bunting in amongst a flock of around 70 Skylarks. The bird was mainly seen in flight but we did manage to get some good views on the ground. The estuary produced much the same as yesterday with the Glossy Ibis seen again (albeit very distantly), 30 Redwings, 20 Curlew and 1-2 Kingfishers. At dusk around 5000 Starlings gave a spectacular display at the regular roost site, while trying to avoid falling prey to a couple of Sparrowhawks.

Back in the field!

A late autumn trip to Devon to visit good friends Jaffa (aka the Cream Tea Birder) and Helen seemed the perfect way to take a break from renovating the house. We spent most of today checking out Jaffa's patch. The coastal path around Budleigh Salterton was crawling with Goldcrests, but there was nothing of note on the sea despite the strong south-westerly. The Otter Estuary was also very quiet with just 25 Curlew, 1 Kingfisher, 1 Common Snipe, 1 Little Egret, 30 Teal and 15 Wigeon noted. However I did manage to catch up with the last of the flock of 20 Glossy Ibises that turned up in September. The bird showed ridiculously well in the morning sunlight, but this didn't make getting a decent digiscoped shot any easier, as the photo below clearly shows.

Potoo training

Spent the day at the Natural History Museum at Tring studying potoo skins. I was particularly interested in a feature I observed in the field on a couple of Long-tailed Potoos at REGUA in Brazil back in May. Unfortunately I found that this feature is not well preserved on the skins due to the way they are stored (which might explain why field guide illustrations do not show it), however, after inspecting 102 specimens of six species (including 14 Long-tailed Potoo specimens of two subspecies) and a whole bunch of photos, I found enough evidence to back up my theory that the feature is unique to Long-tailed Potoo (more on this later). This is the first time I have visited the museum at Tring and it was fascinating pulling out trays containing little known species. I couldn't resist taking this potoo family portrait (click to enlarge)! There's one species missing - any idea which one?

Birdfair 2010

For the forth year running, Rachel and I represented REGUA on the World Land Trust stand at the UK Birdfair. Once again we received a lot of interest and it was great to catch up with so many people that we had previously met out at REGUA and at past Birdfairs. Nick Baker visited the stand and Bill Oddie stopped by to the chat about his visit to REGUA earlier this year.

It was encouraging to see evidence that environmental considerations are, at last, beginning to become more prominant in the birding tourism industry. One or two tour companies are now stating that they prefer to use lodges that undertake habitat conservation, and at least two companies are now offsetting their CO2 emissions by planting trees at REGUA. Regardless of the merits of carbon offsetting, I find it surprising that birding companies have been so slow to adopt such schemes, especially considering that companies in the wider commercial world have been doing this for over half a decade now!

Once again I owe a huge thank you to the World Land Trust for allowing us to commandeer part of their stand and for making us feel part of the team.