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23 Feb 2011

Celebrating a pair of Great Tits on Hilbre.

Not quite what those of you with a smutty mind may think but these completed the set of Hilbre tits for me! A quick visit with the Chairman was rewarded with these two caught in one of the heligoland traps.

I've now seen Blue, Coal, Long-tailed and Great Tit on Hilbre! The male on the left was definitely a glossier and greener backed bird than the female on the right.

Saw this article in the Daily Mail yesterday:


Healthy? Relieves stress? Try telling that to the hordes of birders chewing their nails waiting for a major rarity to show itself.................................Inspiring landscapes? They obviously haven't peered through the fence at a landfill site looking for some dodgy gull.

Out and about locally the Nordic Jackdaw was showing but the whole flock have moved back on to the pasture land where the farmer is spraying slurry. Once again I failed to get a single photograph of any corvids let alone one with a white collar. The locally nesting Canada Geese are back though.

3 comments :

Denzil said...

Hi Phil

I just love things like this.....
When people get excited about finding relatively common birds in unusual locations.
It was the very point that I was making when I said that the best bird I recorded in 2010 was a Common Jay at Llyn Penrhyn on Anglesey,because although I've recorded them regularly at almost every site that I can think of,I'd never seen one there.....NOT IN A LIFETIME!....and despite extensive research,I couldn't find anyone else who had either.
It also reminds of a gentleman whom I bumped into on Frodsham Marsh a couple of years ago,who assured me that no-one had ever recorded a Coal Tit on Frodsham Marsh since records began there.
I again tried every means that I could to find any evidence of one being recorded there,and drew a complete blank,and to be fair to him,I've asked every other Birder that I've bumped into there since,and not one of them has either,and I definitely haven't, that's for sure.
If you ever meet anyone who has recorded a Jay at Llyn Penrhyn,or a Coal Tit at Frodsham,please let me know.

Cheers Denzil

Phil Woollen. said...

Hi Denzil. This is exactly why I enjoy working a local patch as well as twitching rarities. These birds on Hilbre are passage birds. Where have they come from? Where are they going? I was on Hilbre last autumn when the sea fog rolled in and we suddenly heard a Coal Tit - nnext minute there were 22 on the Island. More than had been recorded in total over the last 50 years.

Denzil said...

Hi Phil
I managed to get hold of Jay at Frodsham,who said that he had never recorded a Coal Tit there personally,but believed that according to information from a book written by Bill Morton in the 80's,that Coal Tits were present on the Marsh as Passage Migrants and Winter visitors,and indeed may have also bred.
All of which now suggests that that they have indeed been recorded at some stage in the past at least,but not recently apparently.
He did confirm however,that a Treecreeper would definitely be a 'First'

Cheers Denzil