Dusky Thrush (no not that one!)

More drivel today I'm afraid, blame this mild winter weather. Don't worry it's nowhere near in length as my last post! Oh and thanks for the responses to that one, been great to read all the honest accounts of Birding Blunders. 

You may remember a couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how a 'grumpy birder' had logged on to the Bird ID page on Facebook and basically had a good moan about being asked to ID common birds. There were many phrases within his long rant like "buy a bird book" and "banging my head against a brick wall".  Here's my original post: http://stevesbirdingblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/helping-others.html.

Go forward fifteen days (to 15:35 on Sunday 4th) and on the very same Facebook page a lovely lady called Rachel from Derbyshire posts three photos with a simple...

 "Just three for you today 😄 thankyou!"

Photo one shows a Starling, and would you believe it, the third photo is a good picture of a regular every day Blackbird.  Oh dear, 'Grumpy birder' would not be happy about this one bit. Rachel buy yourself a bird book and start working things out for yourself.  Unbelievable. 'Bangs head against brick wall'.

Oh yes, of course, there was also photo number two...

Photo (c) Rachel Jones

I have to be honest and say when I first saw this photo I wasn't sure if it was a wind up or not. But I told Rachel what the three species were, and she replied with two further photos of this absolute mega - a Dusky Thrush. It was no wind up.  And within a few minutes the Facebook Bird ID page went absolutely mental.

Fast forward two days and many happy twitchers and birders have seen this bird thanks to all the work put in by Rachel in sorting the access and parking arrangements. And of course because she felt comfortable enough to post this photo, with her two others of common birds, on Facebook.

So 'grumpy birder', and all others who think it's a good idea to go to places designed to help those who want help, only to have a good moan about the very people asking for help, well let this be a valuable lesson. If you take the time to encourage, who knows what will come of it one day.

Although personally I am not fussed about seeing this fantastic bird, I do have one question... Can I count it as a find tick??

A Cornish Surprise

Not many updates on here of late, again - but I haven't seen anything!  I have tried my best to get Waxwing on my patch list, I've gone out whenever I've had the chance. Many hours of searching though haven't produced the goods. Yet... (I hope!).

So why this update - well today I have seen something of note, although it wasn't on patch.

This is my third month of bird surveying and monitoring at a site on the Tamar Estuary (the Cornwall side), and on the way back from my survey site there's a wonderful looking area called St John's Creek, which always screams RARE at me.  There's always Teal here, last month I saw well over a hundred, and I always make an effort to go through them. Today it was quite easy, because there were only about 25 of them. c24 Eurasion Teal. And....

Just what I wanted!!

  

I couldn't believe it!  A bloody Green-winged Teal!  Yes it would have been a lot sweeter had it been on the Axe (hopefully this will happen), but I was still thrilled with this find!  

At first I was slightly concerned about an apparent buffish tinge to the edge of the green head stripe going up from the bill, but when the light got a bit better this disappeared and the difference between the Green-winged's head and the Eurasion's head was actually quite obvious.  

All the photos of it are rubbish (I just had the Lumix super-zoom with me), and none as rubbish as what I am about to post. It does though just about show the difference in head pattern between the yank and two common cousins...

Note the golden line around the green eye flash, or not when it comes to the vertical-striped fella :-)

I got the news out as quick as possible (god love twitter), and hope others get to see it.  The Teal can be bloody elusive here though, as there are lots of deep channels, I reckon on a falling or rising tide would be best.

Hopefully this has fired me up to find something rare on patch...