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.

The East India Dock Basin

 To East London last week where, on a cold but clear day, I wanted to visit a nature reserve that used to be part of a dock. The East India Docks, specifically — built in Blackwall in 1803 for the East India Company, and closed in 1967 (the first of London’s docks to close as the shipping industry moved towards containerisation which ultimately saw everything move downstream to Tilbury). As part of the redevelopment of the Docklands, the East India Docks were filled in and built upon (the East India DLR station opened in 1994), but the entrance basin remained — and became one of London’s smallest nature reserves.

Located just to the north of the Thames (from which it’s separated by a lock gate) as it loops around the Greenwich Peninsular, it has a saltwater (well, brackish water) lagoon, a reedbed and a small copse. 

In the spring and summer, it’s a nesting site for Common Terns and is home to the elusive Black Redstart (a bird I’ve only ever seen in Italy). In the colder months, it’s a major site for wintering ducks. 

On one of my days off, I decided to make a day of it. As well as visiting the dock basin for the first time in several months, I also took the opportunity to explore a Wren church in the City. I duly got the Tube down to Bank and picked one st random that I had not been in before — St Mary Abchurch with its interior dome and superb wood carvings; a real gem. Then back into Bank station to take the DLR east.

Before entering the dock basin itself I walked down to the River from the DLR station, along the Meridian Line no less (it’s makes out on the pavement). There were many Black-headed Gulls on the water, accompanied by a lone Cormorant, a few Herring Gulls and — perhaps inevitably— some Feral Pigeons flying overhead. A passer-by asked me about birdwatching, claiming to have never come across one before even though she lives nearby and walks through the basin regularly (for non-birding locals, it’s a great haven from the bustle of urban London, much like that church is a superb place in which to escape the busy-ness of the City for a while). 

In the basin itself, there was a fair mix of waterfowl. Three species of geese — Greylag, Canada and Egyptian — plus one Greylag-Canada hybrid. A pair of Mute Swans, three Shelduck, thirteen Mallards, fifteen Teals and a single (male) Tufted Duck.

Fifteen different species, all told — there were also some passing Carrion Crows, a Pied Wagtail and a pair of elusive Moorhens skulking in the reeds. Visiting an historic church and some birding on a repurposed part of London’s industrial heritage — a really good day out!