Red Kites

It’s more or less impossible not to see Red Kites flying overhead while driving on the motorways to the west of London these days. These distinctive birds of prey, recognisable by their forked tails, have become a ubiquitous sight but it was not always so, for they are one of British nature’s great success stories of the past forty years. 

When I was a kid, the bird books all said that the Red Kite (Milvus milvus) had been hunted almost to extinction in Britain, and the only place you had a chance of seeing them was in the hills of central Wales where a few pairs still bred. They’d been a common sight in London in Tudor times, when they were disliked (Shakespeare used the word “kite” as an insult) but tolerated because, being primarily scavengers, they helped to keep the streets clean of carrion (dead animals). In the centuries that followed, though, they were treated as vermin and hunted accordingly, until by the twentieth century they only existed in their Welsh stronghold. 

This changed in 1989, when a rewilding project started in the Chilterns. A few birds (some from Wales, some from Scandinavia) were released — and since then, they’ve thrived, especially along the M4 and M40 corridors. The reason? The motorways, mostly; they provide a lot of roadkill, and as Red Kites eat mostly carrion, that’s why they can be seen soaring above them. 

They have since spread out along the major roads; in the past couple of months, I’ve seen them while driving along the A1 in Northumberland and the A2 in Kent. I even saw one when I went to Spain earlier this year. 

So often do I see them while driving that they have become one of my favourite birds. I have yet to see one within the North Circular, but I presume it’s only a matter of time before I do. 

Kentish Choughs…?

I first saw a Chough a few years ago, in Cornwall. These elegant members of the crow family, recognisable by their glossy black plumage and red beak and feet, started to recolonise the clifftops of Cornwall in the early twenty-first century after an absence of many years. It’s the county bird there, due in part to its association with the King Arthur legend. Officially speaking, the Chough of which I talk is known as the Red-billed Chough, and it’s pronounced “chuff”. Although I knew the bird when I saw it, I only knew it from books and had to ask someone how it is pronounced. 

The Chough also has associations with Kent. Somehow, it also became involved in the legends surrounding Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in his own cathedral in 1170 — one of the most notorious events in English history, which led to Canterbury becoming a major pilgrimage destination in the Middle Ages. Some time after his murder and subsequent canonisation, Becket was retrospectively given a coat-of-arms depicting three Choughs, and this in turn has become the coat-of-arms of the City of Canterbury. 

Quite why a clergyman who was born in London and died in Kent should have a Cornish bird associated with him is unclear; according to legend, one of them is supposed to have wandered into Canterbury Cathedral shortly after the murder. 

I’ve been to Kent a few times for work over the past month, visiting Canterbury and also Dover, principally the castle as far as the latter is concerned but also taking in the National Trust’s site atop the White Cliffs, just along from the castle which is managed by English Heritage. 

The views from the White Cliffs are amazing — the Port of Dover is laid out before and below you, Dover Castle (witter the church and the Roman lighthouse distinct from the central keep) on the horizon and the prospect of seeing France (just 21 miles away) on a clear day. It’s usually windy though! In terms of birds, there are plenty of gulls (particularly Herring Gulls) and crows (particularly Jackdaws), but also Blackbirds and Robins which are quite vocal and on one occasion I spotted a male Kestrel hovering in the wind, visible from the visitor centre. 

And then there are the Choughs.

A very recent rewilding project has seen Choughs from Cornwall being reintroduced to the chalk cliffs of Kent, where they died out over two centuries ago as a result of habitat loss and persecution. With the chalk grassland having been restored in recent years through the work of organisations like the Kent Wildlife Trust and the National Trust, the habitat to support them in Kent is in place. A chick was hatched last year and managed to fledge, but was sadly lost in strong winds. Rewilding always has its ups and downs, but as was the case from my visit to Edinburgh the other month, it’s great to see that efforts are being made on a local level the country to help give nature as good a future as it can have. 

I’m told that the best place to see the Kentish Choughs is in the area between the White Cliffs car park and the castle, and although I have yet to lay eyes on them in Kent I remain optimistic that I will do so at some point. Early morning is the best time apparently, although as I’m on a schedule for my visits to Kent I’m not usually there until the afternoon! 

Swifts and Swallows

 A trip out to Wiltshire on Thursday for work took me to Lacock, the well-preserved old village that’s owned by the National Trust. While there, I looked up and saw my first Swift of 2025, followed seconds later by my first Swallow! A great start to the month of May. After a very warm April, summer is most definitely almost here.

How does this compare with previous first sightings of these wonderful summer visitors? Well, I keep track of this sort of thing, so I can say that as far as the Swifts are concerned, my first sighting of them in 2024 was 12th May (in East Finchley), compared with 11th May in 2023 (also East Finchley) and 5th May in 2022 (Burford). For Swallows, my first sighting of them last year was 28th April (at the Stonehenge visitor centre), 9th April in 2023 (East Finchley) and 28th April in 2022 (Pembroke). This must be the first time I’ve had my first sighting of both in the same place and on the same day!

The Blue Tit (birds of East Finchley, part 5)

This little garden bird, several of which I can hear calling to each other as I sit in the garden writing this, has always been one of my favourite birds. Back when I first got into birding, the Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruelus, internationally known as the Eurasian Blue Tit to distinguish it from the almost-identical African Blue Tit) was the one that, with its colourful blue and yellow plumage, really stood out among the sparrows, finches and starlings. I was thrilled whenever I saw one on the bird feeder then, and I still am now.

Perhaps it is this bird’s somewhat cheeky reputation; when I was a Young Ornithologist (back then, the RSPB’s youth wing gloried in the rather long-winded name of the Young Ornithologists Club, and had a very smart badge depicting a Kestrel) it was known to be in the habit of pecking at foil milk-bottle tops to get at the cream underneath, although I don’t recall ever seeing any evidence of this myself; the rising popularity of semi-skimmed milk in the 1980s put a stop to it (no cream to be had under the red foil caps) even before home milk deliveries were all but killed off in the early 1990s when supermarkets were finally allowed to sell the stuff. 

Perhaps it’s also because the Blue Tit is a clever, adaptable bird (the milk-bottle top thing is an example of this more than cheekiness, from the bird’s point of view at least). Another birding memory from the 1980s is of a BBC TV documentary called Bird Brain of Britain in which a young Simon King showed how Blue Tits (and Great Tits as well) could solve simple puzzles in order to get food; for example, figuring out that if they tapped the top of a small box, a peanut would come out of the bottom. 

It’s also one of few birds whose call I have always been able to recognise. I once had a cassette of bird calls and songs; I never got very far with it but the Blue Tit was the first one to be mentioned on the tape, so it stuck! 

So yes, the Blue Tit. Definitely one of my favourite birds! 

Coldfall Wood

At some point last year, I purchased a book called Birdwatching London. Written by David Darrell-Lambert and published in 2018 in association with the London Wildlife Trust, it is all about where you can go to watch birds in the London area. 38 places to be exact; big venues like the London Wetland Centre and the RSPB reserve at Rainham Marshes, and plenty of reservoirs (out by Heathrow and along the Lea Valley), parks, woods and so on — some in Central London, others out in the suburbs (and a couple outside of what could be reasonably defined as London, such as Southend-on-Sea). Brent Reservoir is conspicuous by its absence, but I’m not going to quibble about what should and should not be included in a very useful book. 

Some of the places in the book I have been to before, like Crystal Palace Park and Richmond Park (both visited when I walked the Capital Ring a few years ago). There are a few old favourites of mine in there, like Hampstead Heath, Hyde Park, the East India Dock Basin and the aforementioned Rainham Marshes. There are places I’d like to visit (and I went to one such last year — Woodberry Wetlands, a new nature reserve that’s a ten-minute walk from Manor Park Tube station; it too is on the Capital Ring but has been redeveloped as a nature reserve since I did that, and very nice it is too). And there are a couple that are very local, even more so than the Heath.

One of those is Coldfall Wood, a small area of ancient woodland on the border between East Finchley and Muswell Hill (actually a hundred yards or so into the latter, if the local authority signage is any guide). I used to go and birdwatch there every so often after Allison and I first moved to East Finchley, but what with one thing or another I’d not been there for several years until I noticed that it was in this book. I therefore decided to return and see what I could see. After all, it’s in walking distance from my house, so why not?

By ‘ancient woodland’, I mean in this case a remnant of the old Forest of Middlesex that used to cover much of what is now suburban North London (a clue that the area used to be woodland can even be seen in place names like, well, Finchley, which means a lea (clearing in the woods) where finches were known to gather); other remnants also exist, like Highgate Wood and Queen’s Wood — both of which are also included in Birdwatching London. 

Coldfall Wood, which has been designated as a local nature reserve since 2013, is 35 acres (14 hectares) in size and is bordered by residential streets, allotments, a municipal cemetery and the Muswell Hill Playing Fields. I entered the wood via one of the streets, Creighton Avenue. 

Although the sounds of the suburbs permeated the woodland — car alarms, the roar of traffic on the North Circular — stepping into Coldfall Wood does feel like going back in time to something more primal; the woodland here actually does date back thousands of years. Maybe I’m being overly imaginative, but I think there’s something about woodland that connects us to our ancient ancestors. Although they had wolves to contend with, where I had to deal with dogs and their walkers, potentially scaring the birds away!

Actually, one dog-walking couple did stop to chat, and told me that a walking group had seen a pair of Firecrests here recently. None of those for me (this time at least) — my sightings had begun with a Jay and continued with Carrion Crows (lots of those), Ring-necked Parakeets, a male Great Spotted Woodpecker, a Stock Dove and, unlike my recent visit to the Heath, plenty of small birds. 

A Wren entertained me with its singing (such a big voice for such a small bird!), a Nuthatch flew by with a beak full of food, an uncharacteristically lone Long-tailed Tit perched on a nearby twig, not far from one of its Blue cousins. A small flock of finches flew away at the sound of a nearby dog; I was just about able to identify them as female Chaffinches before they disappeared from view. A small brown bird identified itself as a Chiffchaff with its distinctive song. Add to that two Robins, a Dunnock and a Great Tit. There were also a few Blackbirds and four Redwings; can’t be long before the latter return to Scandinavia for the summer. 

An hour well spent! I should come here more often. 

A walk on the Heath

Spring is here! It looked like it was going to be a lovely day today, so what better thing to do in North London than go for a walk on the Heath?

Over 800 acres of meadow and woodland, Hampstead Heath is one of London’s iconic green spaces. It’s one of my favourite places in London too — I enjoy the occasional swim in the Men’s Pond (I love wild swimming, but I’m not brave or crazy enough to do so regularly all year round), Kenwood House is a nice place to visit, there are some lovely pubs on the edges (my two favourites are the two Flasks, one in Hampstead and the other in Highgate; the ‘Flask to Flask’ walk in either direction is a good one) and I love walking there — even when the Heath gets busy (and it does), there’s always a quiet bench somewhere to get away from the numbers. Sometimes I even indulge in a bit of tree climbing, just because I can. 

The bird life there’s fantastic too. I’ve seen Kestrels there, woodpeckers of the Green and Great Spotted varieties as well as lots of water birds on the Heath’s many ponds. The information boards say that Sparrowhawks hunt there, which I can well believe although I’ve never seen one (not there, anyway) and I have heard Tawny Owls when I’ve been there at night (indeed, my main motivation for being there after dark, which I’ve done a few times over the years, was to try and spot owls in the grey pre-dawn; no such luck). One thing I never seem to see much of on the Heath is the smaller birds; there tend to be too many people (and dogs) to allow for those to be seen easily. 

It was a lovely spring day, weatherwise; no rain, cloudy with sunny intervals and enough of a breeze to make you know that summer’s not here yet. I took the Tube to Belsize Park and walked up Parliament Hill for the view over London, and then meandered north. 

I saw Carrion Crows (lots of those, the most seen at any one point was 39), Magipes, the inevitable Ring-necked Parakeets, Feral Pigeons and Woodpigeons. A few Jackdaws and a Jay. For the smaller ones, I heard several Robins before I actually saw one and then clocked a couple of  Great Tits on one of the feeders in the fenced-off area by the Bird Sanctuary Pond. 

On the nearby Model Boating Pond (when did anyone last sail model boats on it, I wonder) there was plenty of waterfowl — Mallards, Tufted Ducks (described by someone within my earshot as “the most duck-like ducks”, which I think is a wonderful quote that sums them up), a pair of Great Crested Grebes (not indulging in their elaborate mating ritual, alas), a pair of Mute Swans and (also) a pair of loud Egyptian Geese that were honking at anything that went near them. 

Over on the Men’s Pond, there were plenty of gulls — Herring, Black-headed and Lesser Black-backed, and a couple of Cormorants. 

I finished by wandering up to Kenwood House, browsing the second-hand bookshop there (a hardback copy of Birds Britannica was too tempting to resist, and I look forward to perusing it!) before walking up to Highgate to get the bus home. Twenty species seen in total. A good day’s walk on a good day for walking. 

The Carrion Crow (birds of East Finchley, part 4)

A regular one, this. My birding log for 2024 states that I saw this bird in my local neighbourhood every month in that year. It was the same in 2023, and if it’s not the same this year I will be very surprised indeed; heck, if I don’t manage to see at least one Carrion Crow (Corvus corone, also known as, well, a crow) every time I go out for a walk, the reason is probably because I’ve not been paying attention. Rather like the pigeons and the parakeets!

If you look up, chances are you’ll see one, either flying over or perched on a rooftop. The weathervane atop the spire of the local church is a popular spot. 

Although widespread in Britain, they’re very territorial, often spending their whole lives in the same area. It’s generally considered a sociable bird, especially when compared to its close relative the Rook; in his book The Birds of London (a book which no self-respecting London birder should be without), Andrew Self notes that there are winter roosts in the London area where they number in the hundreds, or even the thousands in some cases. It’s also worth noting that young Carrion Crows have been known to hang around and help their parents to feed the chicks in the next brood. 

Like other members of the crow family, they’re intelligent birds as their capacity for complex social arrangements (as shown by the above fact and also that old fable about the crow and the pitcher — unable to get at the water in the pitcher, the crow fills it with stones until the water level rises enough to enable it to drink the water). 

They are very similar in nature to other crow species like the Hooded Crow (which used to be considered to be a sub-species of the Carrion Crow), the American Crow (which I’ve seen in Canada) and the Pied Crow (which I remember seeing a lot of on my African travels, two decades ago). Quite why the collective noun for them is a murder of crows is a mystery to me; as the name implies, they do eat carrion and they do sometimes steal eggs, but they eat just about anything and are by nature scavengers, which must go a long way towards explaining why they can happily co-exist alongside people. 

The Starling (birds of East Finchley, part 3)

Continuing with my bird-by-bird look at the avian life of East Finchley (and yes, we will get to the finches at some point!), I’m looking at Starlings this time. Glossy black and speckled (more so in the autumn), and rather gregarious, the Common Starling (Sturnus vulgaris, also known as the European Starling in North America) always strikes me as being a winter bird even though it is in fact a resident here in Britain. 

It’s also on the RSPB’s red list according to my bird book (the RSPB Handbook of British Birds, 2021 edition) as the British Starling population has experienced a strong decline, although from what I can see (ie. Starlings most days when I go for a walk or look at the feeder in my front garden) they’re a regular sight. Unlike the smaller birds that visit, they’re not afraid of the parakeets!

Numbers have actually declined in much of Western Europe over the past few decades, due largely to changes in farming meaning that there are fewer invertebrates for them to feed on. Worldwide, though, they have been deemed to be of Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (this being what you see when you look up a bird species on Wikipedia). They were introduced into North America in the nineteenth century, notably in 1890 when a chap called Eugene Schliffen released sixty of them in New York’s Central Park, although the notion that he had a plan (sorry, couldn’t resist!) to introduce every bird species mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare into the US appears to be an urban myth. 

Back here in Britain, the Starling is a resident bird s as though numbers do indeed swell in the winter as we get an influx of visitors from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. 

Starlings are the great mimics of the bird world. Their song (and it’s mostly the males who do the singing) can be melodical and it can be mechanical, and they can imitate other birds as well as man-made sounds like car alarms. A general rule of thumb that I have with birdsong is that if I can’t figure out what it is, it’s safe to assume that it may be a Starling.

Perhaps that’s why I hear a lot of Starlings!

I cannot mention Starlings without mentioning murmurations — those close-formation swarms of large numbers of flying Starlings, synchronised yet random in terms of direction. It’s a sight to behold but I have only ever seen it once, at dusk on the seafront at Aberystwyth (where, incidentally, there’s a pub called the Starling Cloud, although that’s quite a way inland; best pub in Aber is the Glengower which is right on the esplanade). It was quite the sight! How, I wonder, are they able to do that?

January round-up

A quiet month, mostly seeing what I could see in East Finchley. A few good sightings — a Coal Tit and a male Blackcap came to the garden feeder in addition to the regular visitors like Starlings, Ring-necked Parakeets, Blue Tits and Feral Pigeons. Further afield in East Finchley, there were a few Magpies and Robins, and the House Sparrows of Kitchener Road are in good voice. Most populous were the Starlings, their numbers do swell in the winter.

The one birding trip beyond London N2 was to Brent Reservoir for the local RSPB group’s monthly walk, where 29 different species were seen — Coots, Black-headed Gulls and Tufted Ducks galore, more Common Gulls than we had any right to expect and a few Teal, some elusive Pochard and a solo Little Grebe.

In total, 37 species seen this month. A slow but steady start to 2025. 

Big Garden Birdwatch

 I always make sure that I take part in this annual RSPB event, and I never usually have much to report as a result. Back when we lived in a flat above the shops on the High Road, I would go and do the requisite hour in Cherry Tree Wood, which I always felt was a bit of a cheat but the RSPB has always said that people who don’t have gardens can do that. Now that we have a garden (make that gardens, plural, as we have a front one and a back one) I can watch the feeder from either the table or the armchair, and as far as the Big Garden Birdwatch is concerned, the morning of the Sunday is my preferred time to do it.

Before settling down to start recording who visited, I had to attract the birds, of course. I’m out of peanuts but there are the remnants of a suet block out there, and I also had more seed mix (supermarket bird seed mixed with nijer seeds) and some kitchen scraps (cheese rind) to put out. What suburban bird could resist?

Clearly not a Woodpigeon, who swooped in early and gobbled up all the cheese. 

Next up, a Feral Pigeon (one of three) who looked around for anything the Woodpigeon might have missed, and unlike said Woodpigeon he was OK with sharing the feeding-station with a Starling. Add to that a Magpie on the ground, and that was that.

Not much, all told. Although as the RSPB’s website told me after I uploaded my results, it’s all part of a much bigger picture.

I’d like to add the Blue Tit, Great Tit and make Blackcap who visited this morning, but that really would be cheating!

2024 highlights

Looking back on the year, as you do at this time, several birding highlights stand out for me.

First, by some distance, was a trip to Wales in May, during which I went on a boat trip out of Tenby, going around Caldey Island. Just off Caldey is St Margaret’s Island, which is home to a large seabird colony. There were Cormorants, there were Guillemots, there were Razorbills, there were Kittiwakes — but best of all, there were Puffins. It wasn’t the first time I’d done that boat trip, but it was the first time I have ever seen Puffins, and that made the whole thing worthwhile. They had abandoned the island a few years ago thanks to a rat infestation (as they nest in burrows atop cliffs, Puffins are very vulnerable to this), but they have returned although they’re now using rock fissures which precludes this particular colony (only a handful of breeding pairs) from expanding. Puffins have been on my birding wish-list for a while, so getting to see them was incredibly gratifying. 

I’ve been to Suffolk a couple of times this year. While there in March, I went to Minsmere (one of the finest RSPB reserves in the country) and had a wonderful time. No Bitterns, alas, but in one of the hides a volunteer pointed out a rare sighting indeed — Lesser Scaup. Had I not had the benefit of his wisdom, doubtless I would have logged it was a funny-looking Tufted Duck! Only afterwards did it occur to me that I should have asked how he knew it was that and not a regular Scaup (which is still rare but at least it has its own page in the RSPB Handbook of British Birds (fifth edition), unlike the Lesser Scaup which is listed in tye ‘Rarities’ section at the back.

In September I was back in Suffolk, staying at Southwold. While there, I went for a few bike rides, exploring some of the local churches as well as birding. The highlight in terms of the latter was a Yellow Wagtail in the fields between Southwold (the town) and Southwold Harbour, and six Spoonbills on the Blyth Estuary (specifically, seen from the bird hide a short walk out of Blythburgh; said hide contained an abandoned Swallow’s nest, interestingly enough). 

Closer to home, the bird walks at Brent Reservoir with my local RSPB group yielded some good sightings. The reservoir itself was drained earlier this year, and as a result we saw Water Rail and Snipe from the hide, as well as a the head of a Tawney Owl poking out from a tree-hollow and a Peregrine perched atop a nearby block of flats. I would like to do these walls more often, if my diary allows!

In Barcelona in a sweltering July, I visited the amazing Sagrada Familia, an amazing building which, from a purely birding perspective, is home to Crag Martins which nest in the towers! Also in Barcelona were many Monk Parakeets, which (unlike the Ring-necked Parakeets we get here in London) are originally from South America. 

And then, in October, there was Canada, of which the birding highlight had to be the Hawk Watch in Toronto’s High Park.

An enjoyable birding year! I look forward to seeing what 2025 brings. 

December round-up

Not a bad month, birding-wise.

Only one excursion, to the East India Dock Basin early in the month. Other than that, I’ve kept it local!

Locally, quite a few sightings, and plenty of action on the feeder — Stalings, Blue Tits, Goldfinches, Great Tits, the occasional Coal Tit and (inevitably) Ring-necked Parakeets, with Feral Pigeons and Woodpigeons going for whatever falls to the ground. As well as peanuts and suet blocks, we have some regular assorted bird seed into which I am mixing extra nyjer seeds. The latter is very popular, and is usually finished within a day or so! The squirrel-baffler continues to do its job. 

Elsewhere in East Finchley, there have been what I like to call the regulars — Carrion Crows, Magpies and overflying Black-headed Gulls in addition to the above. Lots of Starlings in the trees, and a very obliging Robin near the Tube station who hung around for long enough for me to take a photo, with the surrounding branches framing him rather well.

Redwings continue to be spotted, and I’ve seen a couple of Pied Wagtails near the cafe in Cherry Tree Wood. There was the occasional Jay, and a male Blackcap a few Long-tailed Tits. 

Finally, a trip out to the Cotswolds for work added Red Kites, Pheasants, Rooks, Jackdaws and a Buzzard on my sole trip beyond the M25 this month!

As the year reaches its end, my mind wanders back to the birding highlights of 2024, looks forward to new birding adventures in 2025 and contemplates the unread bird-related books on my shelves!

The Black-headed Gull (birds of East Finchley, part 2)

I continue with the Black-headed Gull, or Chroicocephalus ridibundus to use its Latin name. No reason, it was just the next one that came to mind. This has been a common sight inland as well as by the coast for as long as I’ve been watching birds. To me, it’s one of those birds that always seems to be, well, just there. 

These are the ones that are as common a sight in cities as they are in the countryside, where they follow the ploughs so see what’s been turned up, and they also frequent rubbish dumps as well. They’ll forage anywhere, it seems, which probably explains why you’ll see them just about anywhere.

The first thing everyone who’s into birds knows about these gulls, of course, is that they don’t actually have black heads. Their heads are in fact brown, but only in the summer. Quite why they were not named as being brown-headed I do not know, although there is another (closely related) species of gull called the Brown-headed Gull which can be found in Asia. That said, our Black-headed Gull was classified first so it can’t be said that they got their name because the more accurate one was already taken. The best explanation I’ve found is that they look black from a distance, although that doesn’t really make sense, especially when you consider that there are three more gull species which actually do have black heads (and that’s just limiting it to the gulls listed in British bird books; elsewhere in the world, there are others). 

Anyway, these small gulls can be encountered in most locations, usually in groups and especially in the winter months when their numbers in Britain, already considerable, swell with visitors from continental Europe. In the winter, of course, their heads are neither black nor brown, but white with what looks like a slight smudge behind the eye. 

They always seem like quite sociable birds to me, by which I mean that they’re usually seen in groups. I may see individual ones flying overhead, but when they’re on the ground they almost always seem to be in groups. Big groups, more often than not; Many is the time when I have resorted to simply writing “lots” in my notes after the entry for “BH gull”.

Their call always reminds me (for some reason) of the noise made by a group of children when they’re all trying to talk at once, leading all of them to be louder in order to make themselves heard. Everyone has something to say, at the same time! The bird book renders it as kree-aaa, which sounds somewhat harsh to me as I think their call, even when there’s a lot of them, comes across as less harsh than that of the larger gulls.

In East Finchley I can almost guarantee that I will see them in the local park, Cherry Tree Wood. Not in particularly big groups, though, as said park is fairly small in the grand scheme of things (and it only gets a water feature on a temporary basis, when it’s been raining a lot).

I think that Black-headed Gulls are, like Feral Pigeons and Carrion Crows and Starlings and Magpies, the sort of birds we tend to take for granted, purely because they’re always around, and usually in large numbers. Maybe it’s a good thing that there are some species of bird that can be regarded thusly. 

Their numbers, especially in terms of the ones who come here for the winter, have apparently slightly declined over the past few years (which is probably why the RSPB has them on the ‘amber’ list). The residents population is stable, though, so hopefully they’ll be around, with something to say, for a while yet.

The Robin (birds of East Finchley, part 1)

One thing I’ve noticed about birdwatching is how it’s the rarities that get all of the attention, which leads the birds you see every day to be overlooked. I’m guilty of this myself; going through my notes of what I’ve seen this year, the stand-out ones are a Lesser Scaup that was pointed out to me at Minsmere (I regret not asking the volunteer how he knew it was that and not a regular Scaup), the Puffins on St Margaret’s Island on the boat trip out from Tenby (a first-time sighting of these wonderful birds for me) and the various birds that you don’t get in Britain which I saw in Barcelona and Canada. All some way from East Finchley! So I thought I should turn my attention to the everyday birds, one at a time.

By everyday birds, I mean the ones on my ‘home’ patch, East Finchley. Since I’ve logged over thirty different species in East Finchley during the last couple of years, that ought to keep me occupied for a while. 

Since it is nearly Christmas, I shall begin with a bird I see more often than not on my wanderings around my local neighbourhood — the Robin (Erithacus rubecula). I’ve even got pretty good at identifying them by sound (which has long been my birdwatching weak spot although what with that Simon Barnes book, hopefully that will improve). That said, it’s pretty much a given that if a songbird is making a noise really early in the morning, chances are it’s a Robin. I saw one this morning, singing in a tree near our front garden. 

The same goes for birdsong in the winter months. Songbirds tend to sing mostly in spring, when they’re trying to attract a mate; by contrast, Robins sing in the winter too; since the bathroom window is permanently slightly open in our house, I usually hear them while I’m shaving in the morning, even when it’s still dark outside. As it happens, they only go (comparatively) quiet at the height of summer, when they’re moulting, but come autumn they’ve started up again and are in full voice when winter kicks in. 

Perhaps that’s a reason for why the Robin has become the bird we Britons associate with Christmas. Look at the cards; sooner rather than later, you’ll get to one with a Robin on it. 

Robins often feature on British Christmas cards (and tea-towels and various seasonal decorations). There are some interesting explanations for this that go beyond the fact that Robins are vocally active in the winter months. Perhaps appropriately for Christmas, Jesus is involved. 

Legend has it that a Robin sang to Jesus to comfort him as he was dying on the cross, and it got marked with his blood as a result (funnily enough, it’s not the only bird that was supposedly there at the Crucifixion, as we shall see when we get to the Goldfinch). I also recall being told a story about how Robins were present at the Nativity, where they also sang to Jesus; in this version, they got their red breasts by being scorched from a fire that Joseph (being a practical sort of bloke) lit in the stable to keep everyone warm. From an ornithological perspective, these stories are justified as the Robin’s range does extend to the Middle East (although both stories seem to be uniquely British in origin). 

Moving away from Christianity, Robins are also associated with Thor, the Norse god of thunder. We also get Robins in the traditional folk-story Babes in the Wood. In the realm of myth and legend, the Robin certainly does get around!

There could be a more mundane explanation for the association with Christmas cards, though. Christmas cards first became popular in the mid-nineteenth century and Robins appear to have been depicted early on. In Victorian times, postmen wore red jackets and were nicknamed “Robins” as a result, so the Robin on the Christmas card could (also?) symbolise the postie who delivered it.

Culturally, the Robin also pops up on the badges of three English football teams that I can think of (all of which play in red, naturally). Although Britain does not officially have a national bird, the Robin has been unofficially recognised as such not once but twice — once when The Times did a vote on this subject in the 1960s, and again in 2015 when David Lindo, a.k.a. the Urban Birder, organised a nationwide poll. 

Internationally, our Robin (Latin name: Erithacus rubecula) is known as the European Robin, presumably to distinguish it from the American Robin; both birds have red breasts but the similarities end there. In terms of classification, our Robin is an Old World chat, while theirs is a New World thrush (and isn’t associated with Christmas; over there, the bird you’ll most likely see on the cards is the Northern Cardinal). 
Which again indicates the cultural significance of the (European) Robin, as the early settlers doubtless named the American bird in honour of the one they remembered from back home.