Birding in the Cloud Forest of Ecuador

It seems amazing that it has taken me this long to start writing the 2nd part of my blog on birding in Ecuador but it has taken me this long to transcribe all the birds I saw into my database and then note down all the individual observations. South American birds seem to have the longest names and as usual there is a lack of consensus as to which birds belong in what families. The birding in Ecuador was only three days but in that time I managed to break all my records. The total number of individual birds for the trip was 158. 118 of those I saw in those three days in mainland Ecuador and 35 in the Galapagos themselves with the remainder in Guayaquil and at airports. My previous record for a trip was in Uganda and Rwanda with 136 but this was in Africa where birds are so much easier to see and over a longer period. I also had my biggest day of new birds which was 61 birds, my previous record being 35 also from the Uganda trip.

We were met at Quito airport by Gabriel who turned out to be our driver and guide for the next three days and to my delight he was a bird expert. The best birding is always when it is just you and the guide where you're free to stop wherever you like and take as long as you want. Lindsey of course doesn't always like this but I have to say she was a real trooper over these three days never complaining about the hours of birding. Quito is the highest capital city in the world at 2,800 meters and I definitely felt a little short of breath. We were going west of Quito and actually although we had to climb even higher initially, our eventual destination was lower than Quito.

On our way we stopped several times to see what birds we could find and I actually recorded 20 new species just on the way. Of course, its always easy on the first day when every species is new. When I am on a trip like this I only count the new birds of that day and not the total number of bird species. The terrain was quite open and the birding was quite good allowing me this good shot of an American Kestrel. I also saw Gabriel use his bird calling device for the first time. This was simply an ipod with just all the bird calls on it hooked up to quite a powerful hand held speaker. During the trip he used this a lot and although it worked rarely in bringing the birds, occasionally the effect was dramatic.

The distance wasn't far but the roads weren't good and what with stopping for birds it took us a good three hours to get there. The reserve is called Macuipucuna and the lodge was an eco lodge typical of the ones we use through Discovery Steppes Travel. At the lodge they had lots of hummingbird feeders set up and I was thrilled that we were literally surrounded by hummingbirds the whole time. The main species was the White-necked Jacobin which our guide was really happy about so I think they can't be too common elsewhere but there were other species too. The Purple-throated Woodstar was particularly pretty.

After lunch we went birding where the birding highlight was the golden-headed quetzal, that high scoring scrabble bird, but actually the wildlife highlights were seeing the rare Tyra and an Agouti both mammals. We got back and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to photograph hummingbirds. Next to the frigate birds in the Galapagos, I took more shots of hummingbirds than anything else. Without really knowing what you're doing it's really hard to take decent shots and the few I have were all just flukes but it was fun trying.

The next day was my biggest ever day for new species at 61. Our first walk was at 6:30 in the morning where the highlight was having a female Cock-of-the-rock fly right at us for a few seconds and in the after-breakfast walk I got an ok shot of a Scale-crested Pygmy Tyrant (you see what I mean about the names). After lunch we drove to a different reserve in the Mindo Forest where I think our guide was more used to going and immediately started to see different birds probably as we were at higher altitude. According to our guide, Ecuador is joint 3rd with Brazil in terms of number of species with Columbia, surprisingly to me, having the highest diversity. Ecuador has the Andes going right through it as well as coast line so really has every kind of terrain possible hence the high of number of different species. On the way back from Mindo we stopped at this house built by a hippie, vegan, American couple. They hold the record for the most hummingbird species in one place (over 20 I think). True to form we saw 9 different species including my favourite, the Booted Racket-tail. A whole day of birding and Lindsey didn't even want to divorce me!

During these 2 days Lindsey was always saying that she wanted to see a Toucan.

We had seen a smaller species, the Toucanet and the extremely pretty Toucan Barbet but, despite Gabriel's best efforts, we had yet to see a proper Toucan. While eating lunch before leaving the lodge one of the lodge guides all of a sudden grabbed us and ran over to where a Pale-mandibilled Aracari, a Toucan in all but name, was sitting in a tree right next to the lodge. It was then joined by two others who casually began eating some fruit within easy view. To top it off, we stopped again at Mindo on our way back to Quito and finally saw the Plate-billed Mountain Toucan, a triumph!

Birding in the Galapagos

We have just come back from our holiday in the Galapagos and then a cloud forest in Ecuador. Birding in the Galapagos is astonishing from many view points. The most startling thing I found in the beginning was the fact that even the small birds were totally unafraid and even when we saw them in the few towns that exist in the Galapagos. Although I expected the larger birds to be unafraid it was really odd to have the small finches and beautiful yellow warbler right next to you at any one time. From a photography point of view, it was also stunning as the birds will sit there, often motionless in perfect sunlight. I took over three thousand photographs as I went and that is after the daily deletions I was making. Thank God for digital cameras.

There actually aren't that many species of birds in the Galapagos which isn't that surprising considering that they had to get almost 1,000 km from mainland Ecuador and that's only if they were coming from there. There are 58 species of bird of which 28 are endemic. I can't say that I saw a great many of this list but I can say that almost without exception, every single bird species I did see I was able to take a definitive photo of at some point during the trip. I was using my 300mm lens which was mainly excellent for the birds despite the fact that they were often so close. I had wanted to buy a 400mm lens before the trip but Lindsey wouldn't let me. There were three other avid photographers in our group and two of them were using Cannon cameras. They both had a better body than I had with the 40D and were both using an 18-270 Tamron lens which appeared to be just the thing for the holiday. That way you could take great photos no matter how close the animals were without having to change your lens. Having said that I appreciated having that little bit extra zoom. I am starting to look much more critically both at my own photos but also at professional photography and am surprised to start seeing the flaws in the professional pictures. It seems that the quality of cameras and lenses that an amateur has access to are such that the gap between the technical quality of amateur and professional photographs is quite small and the skill lies more in the creativity and probably manipulation of the photos afterwards. I think the other photographers were taking the shots in RAW format whereas I was simply using the Large/Fine setting. If you look at my shot of the Galapagos flycatcher and imagine seeing that shot in a magazine would you really think the quality was poor? I think not. Having said that, I consider this shot probably one of my best ever photographs.

I originally bought the camera in order to take pictures in low light knowing that I would not be able to use flash to take pictures of the gorillas in Rwanda. In the Galapagos I had the opposite problem of not really knowing how to take pictures in strong sunlight. Stupidly I didn't even have a lens shade so I am sure that would have helped. The problem was exacerbated with the frigate birds. Frigate birds (both the magnificent and the great) are very large, mainly black birds which simply float in the air tantalisingly in front of your camera lens. The problem is that if they are above you even a little bit then what you end up with is basically a silhouette with a tiny bit of colour (usually the red of the deflated neck sack) just showing if you look close up. I think I took more photographs of frigate birds flying than of anything else. I would guess at least 500 and in the end did get the definitive shot complete with inflated airsack. In the Galapagos patience really does pay off, eventiually you will almost certainly get the definitive picture. The only exceptions to that were the galapagos penguin which we we only saw on one day and the flamingos which were too far away.

Probably the best day for birding and photography was the day we went to the island called Espanola. This is where the blue-footed boobies were nesting right on the path which not only was great for photography and for watching them do their courtship dances but also because they were flying in right over our heads to land on the path. The path takes you up to some cliffs where you also see masked or nasca boobies and swallow tailed gulls. Espanola also has an endemic species of mockingbird. We had heard stories of how the mockingbirds will drink from an open waterbottle. We didn't see this but they did follow you around everywhere obviously expecting something. When we got up to the cliffs we saw nesting waved albatrosses which was definitely one of the highlights for me. The chicks were the size of a large chicken and the adults more turkey sized. The wind was billowing the cliffs allowing the birds to glide along slowly through the air. Watching and photographing the albatrosses doing this was fantastic but the real treat here was probably the red-billed tropicbirds with their long white tails. My shot is not bad but on close inspection is not quite in focus. As if that wasn't good enough as we returned to the beach a galapagos hawk flew in and posed perfectly for about 5 minutes. I would say I was about 5ft from it. After seeing the albatrosses on Espanola I was lucky enough to see albatrosses on the water a number of times during the trip. This has to be one of the rarest sites and most rewarding for a birder.

There are 13 species of Darwin finch. There are a few which are easily identifiable due either to size or obvious beak shape but there are a number of intermediate finches which are pretty tricky. Whenever I could I would photgraph the finches and then when we got back onto the boat I would play the finch game which involvedtrying to identify the finches by their beak shape. The three that I was sure of were the large ground finch, the small tree finch and the cactus finch. Unfortunately we didn't see the woodpecker finch which uses a stick to ferret out grubs in trees thus taking up the woodpeckers natural evolutionary niche.

If you want to take great photos and be up close and personal to birds then the Galapagos is the place. Our last part of the trip we spent three days in a cloud-forest near Quito. That was the place for seeing diversity but more of that on my next post.

New Birds in Devon and Regent's Park

OK, I need to catch up on my blogging. Three new birds in Lee this time and one in Regent's Park. Lindsey and I went for a walk on the coastal path to Ilfracombe on the 2nd May bank holiday and had a great view of a pair of linnets. Fortunately, I had the binoculars with me but sadly not the camera. The next day, when Lindsey went for a run, I went up with my camera this time to see if I could get a shot of them. No linnets this time but two other birds that I managed to photograph but could not immediately identify. One of them was identifiable pretty easily once I had a look at the book and the internet, this was the female northern wheatear. The other one though was much harder, even though the photo was good. I was pretty sure it was a meadow pipit and now I have had this confirmed by Tony Duckett, the wildlife warden of Regent's Park. Tony's blog talked of a whitethroat feeding at a nest site in plain view. I immediately went to see if I could see it and happened to bump into Tony who told me exactly where it was. When I went to the site I saw it immediately, a triumph!

In other news, we have had two baby wrens bouncing around our garden of late and being fed by the adult birds. They have now bounced into other gardens so we're not entirely sure if they made it or not. We first noticed them on the ground on the 10th July.

Baby Birds

Not too much to report of late. I went to Devon and saw a whimbrel at Crow Point in Braunton as well as my first swallows of the year. I set up a large niger seed feeder in Devon hoping to eventually attract bullfinches. I expected the birds to take a few days to discover the seed but to my pleasant surprise I had siskins feeding from it on the first day! That's Devon for you.

I thought I saw some house martins in Regent's Park but now reading the park blog I see that swifts have also been seen which makes me wonder. I still need to get these birds clear in my head. One small triumph was when I was walking through Regent's Park the other day and distinctly heard a chiffchaff, looked round and then saw it. Once you know the song you realise that it's actually quite a common bird even though the first time I ever recorded actually seeing one was last year.

This morning I woke up and saw a baby robin in the garden. I have lots of robins so hope that this is a baby from one of the pairs regularly fighting it out in my garden. This evening, I was watching the great tits going in and out of the bird box and thought I saw a baby coming to the opening in between feeds. Having the binoculars to hand I was then treated to witnessing for the first time three great tits leaving the box. Two I saw clearly with the bins, with the second one sneaking out without me seeing him clearly. There is at least one more in the box which also approached the opening but has not come out. My other bird box is empty which makes me wonder whether two boxes this close are too many.

The niger seed is going down at increasing speed which is probably the result of three goldfinches regularly feeding together at the moment. I wonder if they feed regurgitated niger seed to their young?

Good Birding Weekend

Lindsey is in New York this weekend (and if the volcano in Iceland doesn't stop, she may never get back) which means I can go birding at leisure. On Saturday morning I went to the Barnes Wetland Centre and was treated to a good sighting of a sparrow hawk, my first green sandpiper and my first sand martins which were flying in and out of a bank that the wetlands centre have set up for sand martins. There were also a number of redshanks there which were great to see.

In the evening I went to my parents and witnessed their largest haul of mandarins so far this year at 12. There were 3 pairs and the rest males with one of them ringed. Having spoken to a local ringer during the week, Phil Belman, I was pleased to notice the ring and have also photographed a robin in my garden with a sky blue and probably illegal ring.

On Sunday morning, I went on a planned bird walk with Tony Duckett, the wildlife warden of Regent's Park and a group of other birders. With Tony knowing the bird song he was easily able to pick out a blackcap which we then saw and also a brief glimpse of a sedge warbler. On the walk we also saw a goldcrest, 2 sparrow hawks flying quite high and a chiffchaff.

This takes me to 85 UK birds for the year and 91 for the all time list.

More new birds from Regent's Park

A further note of frustration on being away was that while I was away, a ring ouzel had been spotted in Regent's Park and actually hung around for a couple of days. I went to look for it when I got back but to no avail. However, in the area where the ring ouzel was supposed to be I did see 2 chif chafs for the first time this year. I was very pleased with this as I have only ever seen a handful of chif chafs ever. Then I walked over to my normal area that I walk past in the morning and saw another unusual bird. This was just like the chif chafs I had just seen but to me definitely looked a bit different and if anything a bit greener. I had seen from the Regent's Park bird blog that a willow warbler had been spotted so knew that they were around. I said to myself that if the description of the willow warbler said anything about being a bit green that this must be a willow warbler. Sure, enough the RSPB site describes them as having grey-green backs. The real way to tell the difference between them is the song and in fact the next day I did hear the same bird singing and noted a slight trailing off and lowering of the notes in the song towards the end which conforms with what Collins' Bird Guide says about their song; "somewhat descending verse". The advent of the digital age is of great benefit to birding. When I got to my desk at work, I immediately looked up a willow warbler and could play their song with no problem and then compare it with the chif chaf's as opposed to looking up the phonetic description of the song which to my understanding is incomprehensible.

Yesterday, on my usual walk I then spotted a redstart, again, my first ever. At first I thought it might be a stonechat having seen many of these before but then on closer inspection, especially with the flitting tail, it had to be a redstart. That makes 88 all time UK birds and 81 for the year. 100 is beckoning on both counts. That's got to be achievable.

Diving and Birding

I have been away diving in the Red Sea in Egypt in Sharm El Sheik. From a birding point of view the holiday was a bit frustrating despite being a great holiday in general. Egypt is one of those corridors from Africa to Europe and Asia that migrating birds use. These are usually the soaring birds like raptors and storks who need the air currents present over land but not the sea. However, even knowing that, it is very difficult to figure out where to go or what to do without having some insider info, and this all in the context of a diving holiday where you are diving three times a day. Half way through the holiday one of our diving guides turned out to be a zoologist who actually studies raptor migration, Francesco Germi. Once we got talking he then offered to take me to a spot where raptors roost after crossing over the Red Sea. Unfortunately, he had to work on the day we had planned so we couldn't make the trip, maybe next time.

One time we rose from the depths and Francesco enthusiastically pointed out an Osprey, Booby and some terns resting on a buoy come lighthouse. Although I could see the birds he was referring to, it was not a good enough view for me to count any of them, so I haven't. My first true Osprey will have to wait.

Whenever I land in a country I always look out the window from the airplane and then the general area to note the first bird I see in the new country. Usually, the bird is something fairly ordinary like a crow or a pigeon and true to form the first bird I saw this time was a feral pigeon or rock dove. The second bird was more interesting being a pied wagtail but after that it was all fairly run-of-the-mill for the area. Laughing dove (really quite pretty), carrion crow, house sparrow, and the local gull, the white-browed gull. I saw some kind of quail, also apparently on migration and various glimpses of raptors and some heron like birds but nothing I could positively identify.

Then there is the diving. If you have a listing mentality, diving can be very frustrating. Imagine being in an aviary with a hundred really colourful interesting birds that you've never seen before and you have a guide with you only no one can speak. For about 15 of the birds the guide has hand signals to identify them but the others are just lost in a haze of colour. I am wondering about creating a database of fish but I'm not sure I'm quite there yet.

Birds in Regent's Park

Two more birds to report and two coincidences thrown in. On Monday while doing my usual walk to work through Regent's Park I spotted a goldcrest in a silver birch in a great birding spot kept by the excellent wildlife warden of Regent's Park, Tony Duckett. Later that day I read in his blog that 2 firecrests had been spotted. I immediately looked up the species on the off-chance I had actually spotted a firecrest but in fact, what I had seen was definitely a goldcrest. Still, one more bird for the list.

Then, that evening I got a call from my father crowing (if you'll excuse the bird term) over a lesser redpoll he's had on his niger seed in the garden. Three witnesses all with binoculars so it had to be true. I had never seen a redpoll up to that point but stunningly saw one the next day when I was again in Regent's Park almost at the same spot. This time a group of about 4 or 5 were pointed out to me by Tony himself who happened to be there. I even get a mention in his great blog on birding in Regent's Park. That brings me to 78 birds for the year and 86 for the UK All time List.

Buzzards and Gulls at Welsh Harp

Just popped down to the Welsh Harp Reservoir where I saw my first great black-backed gulls of the year and 2 common buzzards soaring above Wembley Stadium were pointed out to me by the other birders. The difference between the great and lesser black backed gulls other than the size is the leg colour. The great has pinky grey legs whereas the lesser has yellowy grey legs. The great black-backs are huge which you could see as they were sitting next to a cormorant and were bigger then him. Other than that there were 2 snipe and the usual suspects.

That takes my birds this year to 76. My total UK birds is now on 85 and my life list is on 382.

Box 2

Both boxes with a lot of action now.

Bird Boxes

In November of 2008 I put up a bird box designed and made by my father who must have made hundreds over the years. That spring I had great tits nesting in it and after the summer I inspected the bird box and found 2 eggs underneath a nest. I never saw the chicks leaving the nest but there were definitely chicks being fed as I could hear them and see the great tits coming in and out of the box. Sometimes it was really gratifying to see the great tit come out of the box, fly straight over to my fat feeder, get a mouthful of fat and then go straight back to the box. I really felt I was helping to rear the chicks.

Last November I put up another bird box about 20 feet along the wall at the same height. Both boxes have received quite a bit of attention mainly from great tits but also from blue tits. According to my father the size of the hole determines if either a blue tit or a great tit will use the box. I have noticed one great tit pecking at the hole as if to try to make it bigger. That time two great tits inspected the second box (box 2) and while one was inside a wren showed a lot of interest, seeming to jump up and down on the box while a great tit was in it as if to say, 'you're not moving in here!' So far I think I have had only a few viewings but no tenants as yet. Watch this space.

The photograph shows the original bird box (box 1).

My goldfinches are coming everyday now; usually 2 but sometimes 3 or 4. So avid are they that the niger seed is going down faster than the black sunflower seed.

Crows and Pigeons

This morning we rolled up the blind to look out into the garden and there were 2 goldfinches eating from the niger seed. They are coming everyday at the moment arriving at around 7:15. Judging by the speed at which the seed is going down I would guess they are coming back quite a few times during the day as well. Also this morning for the first time we had a carrion crow land in the garden. I often see crows flying over or on the roof tops but this is the first time I saw one coming into the garden. He was after a particularly mangy looking feral pigeon which then flew straight into our conservatory. The pigeon was stunned for a while and seemed to have hurt his wing but just about managed to make it into the next garden. The crow disappeared.

The crow takes the number of birds listed in the all time garden list to 19. We've only been here a year and a half so I'm pretty pleased with that. The exceptional birds are a chifchaff (my first ever) which I also managed to photograph, a blackcap and a great spotted woodpecker.

Welsh Harp Reservoir

I went over to the Welsh Harp Reservoir this morning which is about 15 minutes from where I live. Not too much to be seen at first over and above the regular set but then when I went over to the hide, I saw a greylag goose, 1 snipe in good view and some teal. A little stroll through the woods there and I saw a redwing, my first grey wagtail of the year and a fieldfare. I was quite happy to see the greylag goose as so far the ones on my list are from Regent's Park. In my book, if something is flying and could leave then it must be wild, however I don't always follow this rule. Although I am happy to count the greylag geese, I don't count the Egyptian geese even though they fly too. Also saw 2 great crested grebe's doing that mating dance. Great to see.

One of the other things I am trying to do at the moment is get my head around birdsong. I find it really hard to distinguish between them and keep finding myself listening intently to a song I've never seemingly heard before only to discover the bird is actually a great tit or something. I usually ask myself, 'is it a Robin', as these seem to be the most common bird I hear. Great tits and blue tits are next and I am starting to get to know the long-tailed tits and the dunnock. The thrush is pretty obvious simply because it is so startling in comparison with most other birds but then would I know the difference between that and a blackbird? Not sure.

I have read lots of books about birds and one of the things I cannot get to grips with is the way authors describe birdsong. This, to me, seems completely subjective. The way I describe a sound will sound different in someone else's imagination than in mine. It gets even odder if you throw in a new language. So the way that a German describes birdsong is different again depending on pronunciation in German. English, with so few rules on pronunciation, seems the worst language to try to describe birdsong in.

Goldcrests and Sparrowhawks

My parents live near Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common so have a great spot for garden birds. Despite that fact it is always surprising to me how different the birds can be. For instance, in my garden in Kilburn I have starlings on the table all the time which my parents rarely have and I also get goldfinches which are also rare for them. However, they are just starting to get ring-necked parakeets and for years now have been getting manadarin ducks coming every spring and staying until mid-summer. I was there recently with my binoculars looking out for the parakeets and also hoping for my first goldcrest of the year as they get one coming to their water fall in the back of the garden. Just as I was standing there, bins in hand, a sparrowhawk flew into the garden to harry the blue tits. They had told me of this happening before but I hadn't quite believed it, as something you want to disbelieve through pure jealousy. However, there it was in full view, my first one for the list.

Birding in Africa

I've counted up my birds from my Namibia holiday now and the total came to 105. This trip took place in June of 2002 and was just 10 days. So in only those 10 days I saw more birds than I had ever been able to count before. This was my first proper list of birds. On this trip we started out in the Caprivi Strip which is the bit that sticks out of Namibia on the North East side. This is right on the border with Botswana and we spent 2 days there as well crossing into the country on a small boat. From here we also flew to see the Victoria Falls and then back to Windhoek where we rented a car to drive around Etosha National Park. All the birds were great for me on this trip with the birds that stood out at the time being the secretary bird afore mentioned and a giant eagle owl. I simply couldn't believe how big it was. Nothing really prepares you for your first trip to Africa. For me it was a life long ambition come true. Seeing African animals in the wild is a million miles away from seeing them in the zoo. Elephants are particularly surprising the first time you see them not because of their size but simply how alive they look and act. Also on this trip I was privileged enough to see a pack of wild dogs with a kill. They were eating a still born elephant calf which, according to the guides is practically unheard of as wild dogs are known only to hunt and kill their own food. My photos of the wild dogs have white-backed vultures in the background waiting for any leftovers. I don't think there could have been much left though.

My next trip to Africa was the best holiday I have ever had so far. This was primarily to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda but we also saw many other primates in Uganda. We arranged the holiday through an eco-tourism company called 'Discovery Initiatives' who then used a company called 'Volcanoes Safaris'. We mentioned that I liked birds and asked if we could maybe have a guide on one of the days who knew a bit about birds. Guiding I find generally can be quite hit and miss, especially when it comes to birds. You sometimes feel you know more than they do. When we arrived in Uganda we were met by our driver who was also to be our main guide for the whole trip, Sam. It turned out that Sam was an expert birder and a great guide. This was perfect for me as we could look for birds the whole time. It wasn't so perfect for Lindsey who was constantly worried we weren't going to get to our various destinations on time as we seemed to be always stopping to look at birds.

We arrived in Entebbe and immediately went to a restaurant for lunch. Already we could see black kites scrounging for carrion and huge maribou storks doing the same. From our table at lunch we could clearly see a maribou stork nest with 3 chicks. They are as common as pigeons there which I think is just great. It reminds me of watching Australian tourists in St James's Park in London photographing the squirrels with glee. There are no squirrels in Australia I believe so this is a novelty just like the storks were for me. During this first part of the trip we saw and photographed several great blue turaco's which were fantastic to see in the wild. Regent's Park zoo have several turacos so although theirs are not this species I was familiar with the family.

When I go on a trip like this I keep a diary the first page of which is reserved for a list of all the birds. I don't write down birds that I have seen previously on the trip, only the new ones. On this basis you would have thought that on the first day you would see the most and then it would trail off in the end. Although this does happen a little bit the beauty of Africa is that there is so much bio-diversity that you keep seeing new species every day. Seeing 15 or 20 birds a day was common in the beginning and on one day we specifically went on a boat ride in order to look at the birds. This was in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. Sam had told us that we should sit on the left side of the boat, which seemed like the wrong side at first glance. There were lots of super geeky birders who all crammed into the right side of the boat but were then disappointed when the boat turned around and they found themselves on the wrong side. There were so many birds on this trip that it was hard to keep track. The highlights for me were seeing a goliath heron standing almost 1.5 m tall and taking a photo of an Egyptian goose with a hippo in the foreground.

I got engaged on this trip so our next trip to Africa was our honeymoon and this time we went to Botswana. This was a great all round trip. Botswana was probably one of the first African countries to really figure out how to capitalize on safari tourism. Safaris in Botswana tend to be expensive but highly rewarding. For both birds and mammals this trip just got better and better as it went along. We started in the Kalahari and stayed at a camp with a resident pearl-spotted owl who was perfect to photograph. It was interesting going back to Southern Africa and recognising local birds like the red and yellow-billed hornbills, bul-buls and francolins. Birds of prey in the UK seem virtually impossible to see and I haven't got a single interesting UK bird of prey on my list. In Africa, though they are commonplace and spectacular. On day 2 alone of this trip I saw a tawny eagle, a martial eagle and a bataleur.

After the Kalahari we went to the Okavanga Delta, another life ambition achieved. As you would expect, the camp was teeming with life. My screen saver is a great shot of 2 slit-faced bats hanging down from the roof of one of the outside toilets! The birding highlight was again probably the great view of 2 giant eagle owls and this was on the same day as we saw a wild dog from a mokoro boat which is a sort of dugout canoe which is poled along. Our third stop was at a camp in the Moremi game reserve which was not surprisingly great for birding. One of my favourites was the spur-winged goose as I am a particular fan of wildfowl. Here we also got up close to a leopard and saw the first lions of the trip. I remember the other people making fun of me for turning my camera lens away from our first lion (I had already photographed it to death) and turning it on what turned out to be a three banded plover. The other wildfowl we saw was a group of hottentot teal which I was pleased to identify without the need of the book!

Our final camp was just outside Chobe National Park. Chobe national park is safari paradise. It is basically like being in a BBC 2 natural history programme as everywhere you turn there is an abundance of wildlife. The park is right on a river so the safari trips were a mix of boating or land trips. All the boat trips were great for birding with usually 2 wire-tailed swallows joining us on the prow of our boat. Here I took the best bird photos yet being a great close up of a malachite kingfisher, white-faced whistling ducks in flight and in focus and also African skimmers in flight. I was also really pleased to see a giant kingfisher which had been one of goals and we got really close to an African fish eagle.

That's enough on African birding. If I figure out how to get some photos on this post I will add some later.

Goals and Goldfinches

I hadn't planned on getting to actual bird sightings yet but feel compelled to say that as I write this I have 2 goldfinches eating from my niger seed feeder. I live in Kilburn in London and despite this being fairly central I actually regularly see goldfinches either in my garden or just generally around the streets. This is the first time I have seen them actually eating from the niger seed. I have had the feeder out for about 2 months so it actually hasn't taken that long for them to discover it. Funnily enough I saw a blue tit feeding from the niger seed earlier. I wonder if the goldfinches were watching.

Although I haven't really been counting the birds I see until the last two years I can distinctly remember trying to count for the first time all the different species I could actually remember seeing. I could only get to 66 species. I don't have this list anymore so can't remember what birds were on there but it would certainly have included a few American species like the bluejay, american robin, cardinal and chickadee because we lived in America when I was a kid for three years. I remember being shocked at how few species my 'life list' contained. Up until this point I had never been to Africa. It was only on my first trip to Africa that I wrote down or tried to write down every species I saw. When I came to list these birds in my database I saw that there were a few inconsistencies there and had to discount a few birds through inaccuracy but nevertheless, on this trip, I could note down many more than 66 species. (I have just checked my database and amazingly I have discovered that I haven't listed these birds from this holiday in Namibia at all. I definitely listed them once but this was for my table of species rather than my actual observations table. Now I am going to have dig out that holiday diary and go through the process again. As I have since been to Botswana I wonder how many actual new species there will be. Watch this space!)

Africa is such a wonderful place to begin birding. The savannah generally allows you a good view of the birds and there are lots of different species many of which are easy to identify. I can remember screeching to a halt on the long, straight and largely empty road to Etosha National Park from Windhoek on seeing the first and so far the only secretary bird I have ever seen. These impressive birds of prey stand over a metre tall with long, loose, black feathers coming from the back of their head (this is where the name comes from). It also has a red face so comes into the category of birding that my wife, Lindsey approves of i.e. seeing birds that are large and colourful!

I began to form the rules of listing that I have since developed during this trip. Probably, like most birders, I get a lot of pleasure out of seeing a new bird for the first time that I can't immediately identify but then identify it by reference to bird books. My favourite method for doing this it to take a photograph (usually a pretty shoddy one will suffice) and then compare the bird in the book later. However, I am not too fussy. If I am with a guide who points out a bird to me that I can clearly see and then the guide identifies it, that counts for me too.

Despite writing down the birds on this trip and then subsequently going on bird watching excursions near where I lived at the time I still did not write down the birds I was seeing in any reliable form. Since that time I have been to Africa twice more where I listed the birds I was seeing. These birds have made it on to my current list as the lists were reliable and included the dates I was seeing the birds. The only other birds that I have transcribed on to the list are birds from photographs taken from digital cameras where the date is easy to see. This means that there are quite a few birds that I know that I have seen but are not on the list as I don't have the specific dates I saw them or any photos. Mostly this does not worry me as I know I will catch up on all these birds. For instance, I once saw a peregrine falcon nesting on a building you could see from Regent's Park. The RSPB had set up a tent with some scopes to watch them. I don't have the date so they're not on the list but I'm sure I'll see peregrines again. There are a few birds that I am not so confident that I will see again in the locations that I saw them. These include the flamingos and European bee-eaters that I saw in the Camague but you have to draw the line somewhere and I have drawn it there.

The Goal

My goal in writing this blog is to record the development of my interest in birding. My first few entries will be a little bit about me and where this interest comes from and thereafter I will simply be recording my sightings of birds and keeping track of where I am against the various goals I will be setting myself.

I should say from the outset that I am not a serious birder or twitcher. Colin Tudge, in his excellent book simply called 'The Bird' defines twitchers as people mainly interested in counting the different species of birds they see and birders as sort of amateur scientists. Although I don't like the label I would definitely be counted among the twitchers according to these definitions. I work in an industry where Microsoft's Excel is the software of choice which means I have a geekish fondness of manipulating data. I have spreadsheets for everything from paying off my mortgage to listing the books I read. My bird database is actually an Access database although I am a newby at Access so I am doubly an amateur. I have grown up with parents who are both lovers of nature so knowing the birds in the garden, for instance, is knowledge I have simply always known. This means that I became a birder long before I became a birder. Having two older brothers in a family that loves games I am fiercely competitive. Although I am only competing with myself in my birding (I really can't say twitching), it helps to have the competitive spirit. I love to travel so have a great opportunity of adding new birds to my list when visiting new places and finally my wife, though rolling her eyeballs as I write this, allows me to indulge my interest to a reasonable extent. My goal is not to become the kind of birder who spends every weekend waist deep in mud searching out birds or the type who flies off at a moment's notice to see a vagrant blown off course. I simply enjoy birds and I like the idea of writing about this pleasure.