Spotting flycatchers

Summer is here.  Or at least the Spotted Flies are back.  This year I've been fortunate to have a pair appear just behind my house - certainly not a bird I ever expected to have from my garden in the house I am currently in!  These birds aren't those, but they were taken not too far away.  They are a fantastic bird to practice taking images of.  The Panasonic GX7 really pulls out more detail than I have ever experienced from a digiscoping camera - I am exceptionally pleased with it.  So if anyone is dithering about what new digiscoping camera to get, look at one of these and the 20mm f1.7 pancake lens - awesome!

Back on it

Meadow Pipit, Biggleswade, 30th April 2015

Got to get back on this blogging bicycle, so here's an image from my new digiscoping camera - the Panasonic GX7.  It's quite good!

Well, its definitely a Chiffchaff

Here we go again.  What appears to be the same 'Siberian' Chiffchaff has shown up at Marston Sewage Works today.  I wasn't quite expecting to bump in to one but like last year, this bird appeared just as I tried playing the the call of tristis.  However it really didn't seem very interested in the recording - perhaps coincidence?

So, it looks like the same interesting individual as last year and also sounds like the same too.  Below is a snippet of calls I managed to get with my Remembird.  It sure does sound the same.  That is to say, not right for tristis, but very much more collybita in tone - listen to the clip and have a look at the sonogram below.  I really think this bird needs ringing and a feather being sent off.  Maybe it's one of those mythical abietinus...

Here are links to previous posts about this bird:
http://steveblain.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/95-tristis.html
http://steveblain.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/that-chiffchaff-again.html
http://steveblain.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/iffy-chiffy.html

Beds is ON FIRE!

Wow!  What a couple of weeks Beds is currently having.  Barred Warbler, a very confiding Hoopoe, a Lap Bunt and now a Lesser Grey Shrike!  It really makes up for a thoroughly dull rest of the year (Glossy Ibis aside).

Barred in Beds!

Well, that's turned around a truly dismal birding year in Beds.  John Lynch did a sterling job a keeping on this Barred Warbler at Blows Downs today - Bedfordshires first.  Many thanks John!  But the big question is "what did you have vismiging?"