This has been a very busy week and I have fallen behind in my blog entries. On Tuesday we had a new TV delivered, getting it wall mounted and getting the necessary cables to connect it to the digital box and hi-fi proved to be a much bigger job than I expected and had taken up much of the last few days.
I have managed to get some birding done. On Tuesday the news broke of a Spanish Sparrow at Calshot in Hampshire. As this was a new bird for the UK for me, I headed straight there. I didn’t get any photos, but there are plenty on the Surfbirds site http://www.surfbirds.com/cgi-bin/gallery/display.cgi?gallery=gallery9.
On the way back I was delighted to see both Bewick’s and the far rarer (in local terms) Whooper Swan with Mutes near Ibsley as I had missed both wild swans in Norfolk due to the car breakdown.
One Whooper (above) and three Bewick's Swans from Iceland and Siberia respectively had joined the resident Mutes
On Wednesday I joined Shaun and Kevin in an attempt to ring some wintering Chiffchaffs at a local site. Although the vast majority of our Chiffchaff population arrives in to breed in the spring a few winter and the origin of these wintering birds is much debated. Some have a cold greyish plumage with green wing edges and a trace of a wing bar and have a different song and call. This form tristis has even been considered a different species, however some birds looking like tristis give the familiar’ hweet’ of our breeding collybita. We caught three typical collbita and the bird shown below, which may look like a candidate for tristis but it called like collybita on release!
It would be easy misidentify this as a 'Siberian' Chiffchaff if it didn't call!
On Thursday I managed tpo catch up with a Firecrest at Creekmoor that Ewan had relocated and checked a few other local sites. In the afternoon I tried to see Short-eared and Barn Owls and a Great Grey Shrike, all of which have been hanging around the Sixpenny Handly area of Cranbourne Chase. Unfortunately I drew a blank on all three.
The best sighting at Sixpenny Handley was this sunset
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