Harbour patrol

Today I joined the Sevenoaks RSPB group on a trip to Rye Harbour. Great bunch of people and a lovely sunny day. Oh, and I 'borrowed' the D300, plus 70-300 and the Bigmos. Found that I managed quite well carrying the camera with the shorter zoom, got the Bigmos out to use in the hides.

On the first section of the walk, we saw a couple of smart Wheatears around the wader scrape, with a few Avocets and a nice sum-plum Dunlin on the scrape itself. Then on to the Ternery Pool.

There are hundreds of Black-headed Gulls nesting here, making a hell of a racket. The other nesting birds (including Med Gulls and Common and Sandwich Terns) are quite sidelined. However, near-total domination isn't enough to stop predation. I took several photos of a bit of a commotion over one of the islands, but it wasn't til I got home and looked at the pics that I realised what was going on - a Lesser Black-back making off with an unfortunate Black-headed chick.

There was a veritable conveyer belt of Sandwich Terns commuting between the pool and the sea. I waited by the path and took lots of photos. This was the only one I decided to keep. More practice needed...

This was a bit of a surprise - Cuckoo apparently 'in off'. Hopefully it will busy itself munching through some of the sizeable Brown-tail caterpillar webs adorning the pathside bushes.


Once we turned in from the sea and headed towards the Long and Narrow Pits, we entered Warbler Central. Dominating the scene were the many Whitethroats, singing lustily from bramble bushes, but the wetter spots held Reed, Sedge and Cetti's Warblers. I include this poor photo of Mr Sedgie because I enjoyed his rollicking, wildly energetic and completely incoherent song so much.

Winding our way back towards the car park via several small new pools, we met several Med Gulls which were desperate to be photographed, and hung in the breeze with such obliging stillness that even I couldn't screw up every shot I attempted. Love the fact you can see its wing-bones.

Birds of prey were thin on the ground, but this Kestrel clutching its Slow-worm supper was a welcome treat. The gulls didn't think so, and gave it an almighty mobbing, which proved rather difficult to photograph.

We saw a few other bits and bobs. Nice views of Reed Bunting. A little group of Whimbrels. Numerous Redshanks, Oystercatchers and Shelducks, a few Gadwalls and a pair of Shovelers. Many Swallows, all of them stubbornly non-Red-rumped. One Swift (to go with the one Swift I saw yesterday). Mistle Thrush. Linnet. Skylark. Ooh, and Hairy Dragonfly. All in all, a most enjoyable day.

Hunting in Malta

We spent a nice evening at a viewpoint near Mtahleb on our third day at the Springwatch camp. We were stationed on a narrow road which descended into a very scenic valley. Few birds were about. No hunting activity was observed either, but a couple of pickups came by and slowed down as they went past, their occupants giving us the long, hard and very unfriendly stare that we'd already become used to.

The next morning we returned to the same viewpoint to find this message on the wall we'd sat on the evening before. The stuff in the foreground is assorted bits of vegetables and animals - in the bottom right is a swastika. This cowardly attempt at intimidation is just one of the signs of how badly rattled the hunters are by the presence of BirdLife Malta's conservation teams in the countryside. On other occasions, we had guys with sticks come up and shout at us, were forced to back into a wall by a hunter in a Landrover, and were shouted and sworn at every day. Other incidents that happened to some of the other teams included tyres being slashed, a windscreen shot out, stone-throwing and actual physical assault.

We filmed this chap hunting by the sea on our last afternoon trip. I've blurred his face just in case. The police took more than an hour to arrive, by which time he'd scarpered (they did find his sweater though).

What's going on with these guys? They already have the most generous legal hunting situation in Europe, both in terms of number of quarry species and the length of the open season. Spring hunting for Quail and Turtle Dove was legal for a short season until 2008, and a very short season has been reopened this year. (This is bad news for the two species concerned, both of which are in serious decline across Europe.) But some of the hunters want to shoot all the time, at everything. Most of all, they want to shoot raptors, the rarer the better, and the fact that all of the raptors are protected at all times doesn't deter them at all. A hugely overstretched police force plus a disinterested, head-in-the-sand government mean they often get away with it, but BirdLife Malta's activities do make a huge difference.

This Marsh Harrier has already had at least one run-in with illegal hunters. Both of its legs are injured - we watched and filmed it as it left its roost (we heard several gunshots at the time) and flew out to sea, and its legs dangled hopelessly the whole time. It will struggle to hunt in this condition - it probably won't survive.

A case of 'Malta moult' - this Kestrel has had a sizeable hole blown out of its right wing. It can still fly and of course feathers regrow eventually... but  it may well be targetted again. Several Kestrel pairs are making nesting attempts on the islands this spring - it will be interesting to see whether any succeed. Because of the hunters, no other birds of prey breed on Malta, though there is suitable habitat for many species.

It isn't just the big and impressive birds that interest the hunters. Many keep collections of stuffed birds and are keen to kill new species to add to their private exhibitions. If migration really is quiet, the hunters will amuse themselves by taking bets on, say, who can be first to kill a passing Swallow. This Swallow will hopefully manage alright with its damaged wing, and continue its migration to a safer place.

Everywhere you go in the Malta countryside, you will see the little dry-stone buildings that the hunters use as hides. The extraordinary abundance of these hides illustrates the enormous popularity of hunting here. Also common are trappers' hides, from where the trappers illegally catch finches and other birds using decoys and clapnets.

In the woodlands of Mizieb, where some 200 dead protected birds were found last autumn, there are spent shotgun cartridges scattered liberally on the ground, along every path and trail through the trees. In nooks and crannies around the hides, they are piled up in their hundreds.

Many birdwatchers have boycotted Malta for years, in protest at the continued illegal hunting situation and the government's failure to sort things out. The BirdLife Malta message is... don't. Come to Malta on your holidays, but be aware of what goes on and be ready to report any illegal activity you see to the police. These are our birds, trying to migrate to northern Europe, and they need our protection. The more birdwatchers active in the countryside, whether on BirdLife Malta conservation camps or not, the more the hunters and trappers will have to curtail their activities. See here for everything you need to know: http://www.birdlifemalta.org.

Malta - the migrants

Though Maltese hunters have wiped out many of the country's breeding birds, at migration time lots of species traverse the islands. All are targetted by illegal hunters, especially the raptors. Here are some of the ones we saw.

Male Collared Flycatcher, keeping still for a split second. Collareds, Pieds and Semi-collareds all stop off in the Mizieb woodlands on migration.

There are a few pairs of Common Kestrels breeding on the Maltese islands this year, but this is a male Lesser Kestrel, which occurs as a migrant only. No doubt this very rare species could become an established breeding bird on Malta if the hunters would leave it alone.

All four European harriers may be seen on migration in Malta. Montagu's is the second commonest after Marsh, with Pallid in third place and Hen Harrier the rarest. This male Monty's was hunting low over fields - we were willing it to just gain some height and fly away.

After Sardinian Warbler (which breeds here), the commonest Sylvia warbler is  Subalpine, a passage migrant here. This soggy female was photographed drying off from a bath in the fountain of a small park near our hotel.

Swifts and hirundines were numerous during our visit, mostly around the coast. Besides this Alpine Swift there were also Common and Pallid Swifts, and hirundine-wise countless Barn Swallows, a few Red-rumped, and House and Sand Martins.

Wildlife of Malta - some of the common stuff

Spanish Sparrow, the only really common urban bird in Malta (unless you count the free-ranging but still domestic pigeons).

Zitting Cisticola (and I know I am probably alone here but I think that's a MUCH better name than 'Fan-tailed Warbler'). Common breeding bird - during our trip we were never far away from a territorial male, singing his tedious 'zit... zit... zit...' refrain from an undulating display flight.

Excuse the dodgy, very heavily cropped photo, this was as close as we got to a Blue Rock Thrush, Malta's national bird and an absolute stunner. Honest.

Malta has its own subspecies of Swallowtail butterfly - Papilio machaon melitensis. Quite common... and one of only about six butterfly species we saw on our visit.

I'm not great at flower ID but I think this fantastically pink specimen is Greater Snapdragon (Antirrhinum tortuosum). Poor it may be for vertebrate animals, but Malta seems great for flowers.

This is a Moorish Gecko. So called because one is never enough (boom tish). A really lovely-looking animal, though I think this one is sporting a regrown tail. Did a bored hunter blow away his original one? In the next posts I'll talk about migrating birds and the illegal hunting problem.

Malta - part 1 of probably lots

Firstly, apologies for lack of photos. There ARE photos to come but thanks to a certain Icelandic volcano our flight home is cancelled, so I thought I'd while away the time waiting for Air Malta to answer their helpdesk number by writing a wee blog post.

Our week in Malta is over (or is it?). We've had the most extraordinary time, despite things being really quiet on the bird migration front. Met some absolutely awesome people, heard some totally shocking stories and had some really quite alarming experiences. Rob has gone out with the teams again this morning while I'm waiting here to try to find out how/when/if we can get home.

The hunting and trapping problem here has not been exaggerated in the UK media. If anything it has been understated. Likewise the importance of the work of BirdLife Malta... More later.

Elmley, Easter Monday

Seduced by talk of Merlins, Little Gulls and Yellow Wagtails on the KOS website, I suggested Elmley Marshes for our outing today. It was cloudy again, with the BBC forecast cheerily promising a steady improvement to blinding sunshine by mid-afternoon.

The access track came up trumps for us. Lots of birds around, many of them really close to the car. I remarked that the reserve itself would probably be a big let-down, and so it was, photographically speaking. Here's some of the stuff we saw on the way in. First, a Redshank who picked its way along a flooded bit, doing much vigorous bobbing and suspicious eye-balling of the car as it went, but only flying off when another Redshank showed up.

This Lapwing was on my side of the car, and was so close that I could almost have reached out and tidied up its crest for it. Unfortunately, it was too close for Rob to get a pic without including a large section of Passat doorframe, so here's the best pic from the Panasonic. I'm still not allowed to buy myself an SLR...

Even the little birds were gettting in on the act. We had some great close views of Skylarks, and then this splendid fellow. There were piles of horse manure everywhere which I'd speculated had been put down to attract Yellow Wagtails (they eat insects that live in livestock crap) - looks like it worked.

By the reserve car park we found a Kestrel sitting on one of the buildings, keeping out of the wind. On another building was one of those 'terrace' nestboxes with multiple chambers and entrances, built to accomodate several friendly families of House Sparrows. This one had at least one tenant by the looks of things, and the numbers of spuggies in the nearby patch of scrub suggested there could be more.

Out on the reserve, we saw numerous Meadow Pipits, Little Egrets, Skylarks, Reed Buntings, a couple of Marsh Harriers, Oystercatchers, Redshanks, Shelducks, Canada Geese, etc etc. Views from the hides were not great though and nothing much came within camera-range. One thing that did was this stroppy Avocet, which circled above us giving a volley of curiously canine yapping calls.

And that was about it. No real sunshine to speak of today, and we didn't go anywhere but home in the evening. Next Saturday we're off to Malta to do the Springwatch camp, which promises to be a dramatic change of pace...

Oh, by the way, Rob discovered today that the Bigmos lens is back-focusing. He thinks he's corrected for it now in the D300's settings, but that would be why some of the recent pics aren't as sharp as they should be. Maybe in the summer we'll send the lens back to Sigma and see if it can be fixed/replaced.

Farlington Marshes, Pagham, Selsey

Easter Sunday, or 'Chocolate Day' as Rob prefers to call it, and we jumped in the car and headed for Farlington Marshes near Portsmouth, a place neither of us had visited before. On the way we hit a huge traffic jam just next to the turning for Thursley Common and might have had an instant change of plan if it had been one month later... but Thursley in early April would probably have been a bit quiet. So we sat out the delay and finally reached Portsmouthish at about lunchtime. Some roundabout-related shenanigans ensued before we located the place we were supposed to park to walk on the marsh.

This is a Hampshire Wildife Trust reserve occupying a little stubby promontary into Langstone Harbour. A path just inside the sea wall takes you round almost the whole reserve, and you can walk on the sea wall if you like (good thing too, as it was VERY wet underfoot on the path itself). Inland there is mostly wet grassland with a few pools, some of them reedy. The exposed position of the path means getting close to the birds is... well, we didn't. So while there were plenty of birds around (Curlews, Oystercatchers, Redshanks, Black-tailed Godwits, Teals, Little Egrets etc) they were all Far Away. Again.

Farlington is famous for its Dark-bellied Brent Geese in winter. There were only a handful around today, individuals which, for whatever reason, hadn't yet gone back to Russia to breed. This one looked splendid in the intermittent sunshine - I'm sure he/she will have no difficulty finding a willing partner on return to the homeland.

We opted to go on to Pagham Harbour for the rest of the day. It began to rain as we arrived but proved just a passing shower and the sun came out properly for the end of the day, just as it had done on Friday and Saturday.

There is a bizarrely sited hide at Pagham, overlooking Ferry Pond by the roadside. Unfortunately, the hide is on the other side of the road to the pond. so you have to put up with lorries periodically interrupting your view of the waders and ducks on the pond. In between the traffic I found a couple of snoozing Avocets on the shore, too far away for pics. By the path was a more obliging quarry - a rather nice clump of violets which I hope to get round to identifying to species one of these days.

As we strolled alongside the harbour we saw several passing Redshanks, Shelducks and a small flock of Grey Plovers flaunting their black armpits at us. Then a wonderfully obliging Little Egret flew in and performed beautifully in the nearby shallow creeks, stalking about and making flashy strikes at little beasties in the water and among the soggy sedges and grass tussocks.



Nearby, a particularly stately-looking Curlew foraged with ponderous dignity around the small pools. This pic is one of the last in a series of about 100 - Rob experimented with different angles and this one was the result of him pointing his shadow directly towards the bird - colours came out quite nicely.

We ended the day at Selsey Bill, where there were few birds (Cormorant passing by at sea, various gulls including Great Black-backed), but there was a brisk, chilly wind which discouraged us from hanging around and enjoying the last of the sunshine.