gryllosblog   Gryllo's (aka Ian Lewis') blog. All things to do with travel, wildlife especially birds, history, architecture and anything else that interests me.

The view from the hotel at Noumea at dusk.

The first two days on New Caledonia were spent at Rivierre Bleu NP. This bridge that crossed the lake has been condemned. There used to be a shuttlebus on the far side but this wasn’t running. As a result we had to walk most of the 8 Km to the best birding area, but managed we got a lift on the way back from Francoise and his group of Japanese/Taiwanese tourists..

Around the entrance to the park stands of impressive, endemic New Caledonian Pines can be seen.

The best birding area is in the mature forest as typified by this giant Kaori Tree.

A true Gondwanaland relict. The Kagu’s nearest relative appears to be the Sunbittern of the Amazon.

I knew the Kagu was easy to see, but I hadn’t realised it was this easy. Francoise shows New Caledonia’s most famous bird to his group of young ladies.

Barred Honeyeaters were quite common in scrubby areas.

This Yellow-bellied Flyrobin accompanied us a lunch time and was clearly fond of French cheese.

Further afield on the main island of Grande Terre we saw this impressive New Caledonian (or White-bellied or Blue) Goshawk.

The New Caledonian Crow has the reputation of being the most intelligent bird in the world, as it not only uses tools (twigs etc) to winkle grubs out of wood, but actually shapes the tools for the job in hand. However this activity has only been seen in captivity.

I posted a front side view of the amazing Cloven-feathered Dove on the 18th September. It’s just as gob smacking from the rear!

We also flew to two offshore islands in the Loyalty Island group. The first Ouvea, hosts a single endemic, Ouvea Horned Parrakeet, which I managed to photograph but rather poorly. Instead, here is a shot of one of Ouvea’s beautiful beaches.

Flight timings meant we had to stay overnight on the island of Lifou. There are two endemics, the imaginatively named Small Lifou White-eye and the Large Lifou White-eye. The former, pictured above, is a typical Zosterops White-eye but the latter is larger, darker with a whopping bill, is much more elusive and has no ‘white eye’.

Phil’s angels. L-R: Ellen, Terry, Phil, Valerie and Eva.

The Kagu is real relict, the Coelocanth of the bird world, It appears to have remained unchanged on the island of New Caledonia and has remained unchanged for millions of years.

Elsewhere on the island we saw the wonderful Cloven-feathered Dove

As well as birds endemic to Vanuatu we saw some regional endemics such as this South Melanesian Cuckooshrike

Like the Kagu, the Silktail is another ancient relict. Confined to a couple of islands in Fiji, its nearest relative seems to be a the Papuan Drongo, which isn’t a drongo at all. It took a bit of bashing around in dense undergrowth to see this elusive bird, but it was well worth it.

The Orange Dove, another Fijian endemic. Can you imagine a more absurd colour scheme for a pigeon?

As we left Dubai there was a good view of the Burg Khalifa, at 830m the tallest building in the world. Desert haze and thick glass have reduced the image quality.

Another view of the Dubai skyline with the Arabian Gulf behind.

Approaching Sydney Harbour. The famous bridge can just be see in the lower left of the picture, whilst the sun is reflecting off Bondi Beach to the right.

It was a wonderful evening with the setting sun illuminating the beach and the display aircraft with a soft light.

One of the highlights was the Spitfire Mk19, one of the few Spitfires that are still airworthy

. I tried to explain to Kara why this plane is held in such esteem in the UK by saying’that if it wasn’t for the Spitfire we’d all be speaking German now’.

Later there was a fly-by by this very impressive Sea Vixen. Unfortunately at this point my camera battery died and I’d forgotten to bring a spare, so the dramatic sight of planes doing aerobatics with fireworks shooting from the wing went unrecorded.

I returned on Sunday afternoon just in time to see the Battle of Britain fly past. The sight of three iconic aircraft, the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters and the Lancaster bomber in the air together was really impressive. Unfortunately the sun was now in our eyes, producing rather washed out pics.

I wish my father could have seen this fly-by, he served in the RAF from 1939 – 1945.

Next up was the Meteor and Vampire, early jet fighters from the late 40’s and 50’s

It costs a lot of money and the dedicated attention of many enthusiast to keep these old planes airworthy. I wonder if there is any chance of seeing an original Sopwith Camel at an airshow?

There was a great aerobatic display from the Blades but unfortunately we heard that the highlight of the afternoon the enormous Vullcan had gone ‘technical’ and would be unable to fly.

We that’s all from us for a week or two, I’m off on my travels again. I’ll update you when I return.

Bill Oddie warmly welcomes the guy with the beers. Bill said that he was surprised that this was the 25th anniversary of the Birdfair as he had been coming for at least 30 years and wondered what he did for the first five!

In most years after the Birdfair we continue on to Duffield, to the north of Derby to see my brother and family. This usually coincides with my niece Miriam’s birthday, who is 17 this year. One, of her friends had given her this huge cuddly monkey as a present.

Her sister Jennifer also poses with the giant monkey.

Whilst in the Derby area we always make a point of visiting Dennis and Ida, my sister-in-law Viv’s parents. They have known each other for 78 years as they were next door neighbours as children. They both have a great sense of humour and are great fun to chat to.

On Sunday afternoon we popped down to a newly establish local nature reserve. We didn’t see much of note, but that’s not the point. Small nature reserves like this form a chain of wildlife habitats all across the country  preventing wildlife becoming isolated in ‘islands’ and are to be warmly welcomed.

On Friday 23rd we went over to Bournemouth to have a drink with John and Anita and found out that Kara was already there.  What better place to have a pint then at BIC  where we could again watch the Friday night fireworks.

We hardly ever went to Bournemouth before John and Anita moved there, but now we seem to go several times a week. On Sunday 25th we went back to the pier approach along with their friends Ken and Pam.                      L-R at the back: Amber, me, Kara, Anita, Janis, John, Ken and Margaret and Pam at the front.

The pier approach area often has free bands playing and on this occasion it was the excellent Perfect Alibi, a Pink Floyd tribute band. Earlier on they played some of the longer and less well numbers like ‘Pigs’ from Animals and Margaret, Anita and Kara decided it wasn’t from them and headed back to the flat, but later on they performed perfect renditions of various numbers from ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and ‘The Wall’ and ended up with a fantastic version of ‘Another Brick in the Wall’

On Bank Holiday Monday we made our annual (or near annual) visit to the beach. It was suitably hot but the sea was still cold and I didn’t go in past my knees. The beach was very crowded at the car park end but a couple of hundred yards further on there was plenty of space.

Leonard Cohen in concert. Photo from the internet.

On this tour the saxophonist has been replaced by a virtuoso violin player which give the songs more of a ‘gypsy’ feel. To the left are the lovely singers, Hattie and Charlie Webb and Sharon Robinson, each of whom took the lead vocal on a number of songs.

An resounding standing ovation from the delighted crowd. In all the years I have been attending music events I have seldom seen such a rapturous reception.

Our site at the ‘goat plots’ at Durlston is more sheltered in a brisk northerly, however birds move through very quickly and its all over within an hour of dawn.

Back in the ‘garden’ Mick and Mike try ‘flicking’ for Swallows, that is swinging a net into the path of Swallows that are drinking at the pond. Although an accepted technique they had zero success!

The best day of the last fortnight was the 27th at Durlston when we ringed 114 birds of 20 species. There were surprisingly large numbers of Tree Pipits about, we had at least 50 over the ringing station, whilst Hamish Murray recorded 75+ elsewhere in the park (some duplication may have occurred). We managed to ring a dozen of them, our best day ever for this regular, yet tricky to see well, trans-Saharan migrant.

On the 27th we also ringed our only Pied Flycatcher of the year. The shape of the white fringe on the tertials allows this bird to aged as a first year.

We don’t catch many flycatchers at our usual site as the nearby trees are too tall, so this Spotted Flycatcher was, like it’s black and white cousin, the first of the year.

This was our 14th Common Redstart to be ringed this year. We haven’t had any recoveries/controls of this scarce migrant but it is likely that our birds originate in the sessile oak forests of Wales or south-western Scotland.

Common Whitethroats live up to their name at Durlston, being a regular breeder in some numbers. We have retrapped quite a number of birds over consecutive summers, showing site fidelity. The pale eye and (not visible in this shot) white rather than buff edges to the outer tail feathers show it to be an adult and the grey head indicates it is a male.

This juvenile Yellowhammer is quite unlike an adult, showing little more than a yellow tinge to the plumage.The white spot on the ear coverts becomes yellow in an adult female/winter male.

The lack of red in the centre of the black moustache shows that this Green Woodpecker is a female.

Two days later we caught her offspring. As in the adult bird above, the tail has been pressed against the ringers hand for support as if it was climbing a tree trunk.

This juvenile Treecreeper was an unusual catch at Lytchett Bay.

At Fleets Lane this male Sparrowhawk was an interesting capture. The yellow eye (orange in an adult), and active moult of the flight feathers whilst retaining some brown fringed juvenile feathers allowed us to confidently age it as a second year bird.

This juvenile Greenfinch has a large parasitic tick on its head.

This bird was a valuable object lesson to one of our trainees. The definitive way to separate Chiffchaff from Willow Warbler in the hand is the emargination (narrowing of the outer web towards the tip) of the 6th primary (counting downwards, ie ascendantly, and with the first primary being vestigial and hardly visible). This moulting adult appears to have a fresh 6th primary emerging from the sheath that is not emarginated making it a Willow. But it looked overall like a Chiff and the 3rd, 4th and 5th primary are of similar length, again typical of a Chiff. Close examination showed the 6th to be absent and the emergent feather was in fact the 7th primary, confirming it as a Chiff after all.