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.