Copyright 2009 - For more of the same, visit 10,000 Birds

The Double-crested Cormorants below were all photographed yesterday morning in Meadow Lake, the more northern of the two lakes in Flushing Meadow Park.  I took advantage of the early morning sunlight and the fact that these cormorants have become relatively adapted to nearby people, as they hang out on a dock next to a parking lot where people park and feed the gulls, ducks, and pigeons.  Most Double-crested Cormorants I have encountered have been much more flighty, most likely due to the fact that, as mentioned above, fishermen hate them and most likely try to do them harm when given the opportunity.

Anyway, I enjoyed taking these pictures and hope you enjoy looking at them.  The first shot was taken with my 60mm macro lens and is included just to give an idea as to how close the cormorants were.  The rest were all taken with that that as well, but it was, of course, attached to the spotting scope at that point…

This post has been submitted to Bird Photography Weekly #82. Go check it out!

Copyright 2009 - For more of the same, visit 10,000 Birds

Copyright 2009 - For more of the same, visit 10,000 Birds

Last week I spent most of Sunday in Malvern, Worcestershire in a packed village hall surrounded by passionate mothers [*see note above!]. I was attending the AGM of the Garden Moth Scheme, a once-a-week monitoring scheme I’ve joined this year which aims “to encourage more people to get involved in studying moths and therefore wildlife on their doorstep and to create a valuable dataset of garden moth records. This dataset can then be used to study the effects of climate change, change in habitats, to act as a biodiversity indicator and to plot against garden features such as distance from nearest wood, green-space etc or presence of pond, log-pile etc in garden”.

Amidst a whirl of county moth recorders, amateur mothers (like myself), and the founders of both Atropos and Anglian Lepidopterist Supplies, was a rather slight figure with a West Midlands accent who was overseeing and managing the whole affair: Dave Grundy, National co-ordinator of the Garden Moth Scheme, and probably the hardest-working - and seemingly calmest - mother in the UK.

Absolutely.

(NB: I’ve taken the liberty of adding in some of the moth photos I’ve taken this year. Most are species I’ve recorded on the GMS so far, but not exclusively. For any reader who hasn’t really looked at how well-marked and beautiful some of the UK’s moths are (even in this earliest part of the year - just wait until the summer!) they’ll perhaps partly explain why so many birders are starting to take up mothing too… )

Charlie: You joked rather wistfully at the AGM that you probably have the least attractive garden in the whole scheme (least attractive to moths anyway), a small paved area in the West Midlands. If you don’t mind me saying it seems a somewhat unlikely location for such an imaginative scheme to start. What made you envisage the Garden Moth Scheme in the first place, and – I have to ask - do you ever see the records coming in from estates and far-flung corners of the UK and feel a pang of envy?

• DG: I don’t think that it was really my idea to set up a Garden Moth Scheme (GMS) - I’m sure that plenty of people thought of the idea before me, but realised how much work might be involved in running it and I was just daft enough to try setting it up! Having said that I do want to stress that the GMS is not mine: GMS belongs to and is run by everyone who records for it.

  The whole idea of GMS is to measure population changes of common and easy to identify moths and these occur in every garden big or small and urban or rural. We want to record what happens to these common species in ordinary gardens on ordinary nights, so it is important that we do record in urban back yards like mine and we need more urban gardens joining in. The GMS isn’t about recording the rarest species in the best gardens in the country, it’s about all gardens. This therefore includes everything from a pub toilet roof in NE England, a balcony in a block of flats in central Glasgow, a narrowboat in Yorkshire, a farmhouse in Wicklow, Ireland, the warden’s house by the side of a loch at the RSPB Hoy Reserve in Orkney and an ordinary suburban garden in Sidcup, Kent.

  Any garden in Britain and Ireland is welcome! And all of them are important.

March Moth

Oak Beauty

 

Charlie: There was a clear distinction made between ‘recording’ and monitoring’ at the AGM. Would you mind explaining that distinction again now?

• DG: Recording is about noting down the wildlife that you see and that is important to do and very valuable. Records are sent in to County Bird and Moth Recorders to appear in county bird and moth reports. Monitoring schemes are about adding value to this recording and monitoring schemes include the Breeding Bird and Wetland Surveys coordinated by BTO in the birding world and the GMS and Rothamsted Insect Survey in the Moth world. Monitoring schemes are designed to measure and quantify populations. The GMS counts moths on a weekly basis in the same garden throughout the recording year. This allows comparison of populations from one year to the next and from one part of Britain or Ireland to another, or even one type of moth trap to another. This can then tell us important things about what is happening to our environment as moths are arguably the most sensitive indicators of change in habitats, management of these habitats, or indeed of climate change.

Charlie: How does the GMS differ from, say, the data collection work of Butterfly Conservation, or does it ultimately dovetail with other conservation initiatives?

• DG: The GMS is a totally independent volunteer-run organisation set up to monitor garden moths. However it is not set up to compete with any other scheme that is gathering data on Lepidoptera. The Rothamsted Insect Survey aims to monitor insect populations through a network of mostly rural locations and has been running for much longer than the GMS, but their data will compliment each other. Meanwhile Butterfly Conservation has several important initiatives to study moths and these include the Priority Moth Species Recording Scheme which looks into conserving our rarer species and particularly the United Kingdom Biodiversity Action Plan species. The Moths Count team runs a very important national database, the National Moth Recording Scheme, which now holds over 8 million moth records across the UK. This is an incredible resource. As you can see all of these projects are different but complimentary, and the GMS looks forward to working closely with the other schemes.

Grey Shoulder-knot

 

Pale Pinion

 

Charlie: How do you see the data that’s being collected through the GMS being used in the years to come?

• DG: We are still getting a handle on just what the GMS database can be used for. Expert statisticians from Birmingham University are analysing our database to compare catches of moths using different types of moth traps, different types of gardens (urban, rural, suburban), with different diversity of garden habitats and different nearby landscape features such as woods, coast or rivers. And even in relation to light pollution from street lights and security lights etc.

  To date we only hold 7 years of data, so population increases or declines of moth species can not be related to significant habitat or climate changes yet – really we need 15 to 20 years of data to be able to prove changes statistically. But we have to start somewhere - and this is a wonderful way that your ordinary back garden can contribute toward some serious science for the future!

Charlie: The GMS has grown from a small band of West Midland enthusiasts to a UK-wide collection of about 300 mothers. Did you think the GMS would expand at the rate it has, and what do you put the growth down to?

• DG: We expect to end the 2010 recording year with over 320 recorders on the books across Britain and Ireland and from the Channel Isles and the Scillies to the Orkneys. We are still searching for our first Shetland recorder if you know anyone!? We must stress that we are not just UK wide, we are Britain and all of Ireland and we also include the Channel Isles incidentally.

  When we started the GMS we hoped for 100 recorders nationally – or at a push 150 - so we have passed that mark by quite a long way. We must be getting something right! I think the reason for the success is that people feel that they are part of something really valuable, and we make a point of showing to people that they are all important. Every garden is important to us and that includes concrete backyards like mine in inner city Birmingham.

Charlie: The terms ‘monitoring’ and ‘scheme’ do sound quite technical and might be a bit daunting for new mothers. Does the GMS welcome new and inexperienced mothers, and if so what help is available for them?

• DG: Yes, the data that the GMS creates is very serious and scientists and statisticians at Birmingham University are excited about the potential uses of the data, for instance this is an excellent way to monitor the effects of light pollution on wildlife.
  But the recording by moth trappers to create this data is very simple and straight forward. Anyone with a moth trap can take part – you don’t need to be an expert. Beginners manage fine in the scheme, as difficult to identify species are deliberately excluded from the list of moths in the GMS and beginners get help through the chatsite and website links.
  So no matter how experienced you are get in touch with me now and get yourself signed up to join in for 2010.

  If you are already recording moths in your back garden, then why not make the most of these records by sending them in to the GMS database?

Small Quaker

 

Twin-spotted Quaker

Charlie: Having convinced new mothers they’d be welcome to join the scheme, I should note that the 2010 GMS has been running for a couple of weeks already: is it too late for people to join this year’s GMS?

• DG: Not too late, but if anyone reading this article wants to join in the 2010 GMS they’ll need to move fast to get involved for this recording year. To join in as a recorder for this year you need to have definitely put your moth trap out in your garden for a GMS recording night by next weekend at the latest - the 28th March.
  Alternatively you can work up towards getting involved in GMS for next winter or next spring, and in the meantime can join in the GMS chatsite and read the GMS newsletters.

Charlie: Dave, like everyone who actually runs the GMS you’re an unpaid volunteer. You do an enormous amount of work though (answering emails, arranging meetings, and inputting all the data at the end of the GMS season). At the AGM there was a brief discussion about some form of payment for all the work you do (something which I definitely support). How did you feel about that suggestion?

• DG: It’s a wonderful suggestion and if someone offered me the money to work at GMS full-time then I would be happy to do it, but I am not a fund-raiser and I’m not capable of finding the money myself – I’d rather just get on with running the work. In terms of grants most pots of money out there are only available to new projects and the GMS is now 7 years old – so we can’t pretend to be new. Most of these funding projects only last for 3 years anyway. It sounds good to start off with, but creates all sorts of headaches when you get to the end of the 3 years. Better still is to keep the scheme running on a voluntary basis and then there won’t be any disruptions. (But if anyone can find us some permanent funding then we might think again!…).
  Probably most important of all is to not rock the boat right now: we have a GMS where everyone is a volunteer - from all the garden recorders to myself as main coordinator - and that balance works well.

Charlie: As I said the GMS is growing every year. Do you think that there is an ‘upper limit’ of participants in the GMS given the voluntary management structure?

• DG: Not that we can see yet! We just get more coordinators helping out and this covers the extra work. We are already well past our original target size of number of gardens – so why not more?

Charlie: Is it possible to sum up in a paragraph what you hope the GMS will have achieved by, say, 2020?

• DG: I have hardly stopped from all the hard work of running the group to look this far ahead, so this is still quite hazy! The GMS isn’t my scheme it belongs to everyone that takes part in it and therefore it is really the recorders that you should be asking…We would, though, like to be a respected Lepidoptera monitoring scheme that measures changes in moth species populations and is able to plot these in comparison with landscape and climate change. It will still be a scheme owned by all the volunteer recorders taking part and with them really enjoying being part of something special.

Small Brindled Beauty

 

Hebrew Character

Charlie: Finally, Dave, why are moths important, and why should we all be trying to help them?

• DG: Moths are incredibly important indicators of what is happening to our wildlife, landscape and climate. They occupy almost every habitat niche you can think of and therefore show changes in all of them and react immediately. While birds and flowers might survive a wildflower meadow cut by mistake at the wrong time of year, moths will not and therefore are much more sensitive to change. Remember moths are important food for birds too: the masses of caterpillars on an oak tree that feed Blue Tit chicks and the hairy declining Garden Tiger caterpillars that feed declining Cuckoos. For these reasons they are so important to monitor and the GMS is a way that everyone who reads this can help with this monitoring.

  And remember when you are too old to walk to the end of Blakeney Point to see a Wryneck, you will still be able to see and monitor exciting moths in the GMS! In the words of one of our recorders from the AGM; ‘the GMS is the best conservation you will ever do in your dressing gown’.

Charlie: I don’t know about anyone else, Dave, but you’ve left me with an image I could probably do without! But you’re absolutely right, and you and the other co-ordinators do make the GMS incredibly easy to join and feel a part of, so thanks very much for that - and many thanks indeed for finding time to answer my questions.

Joining the GMS couldn’t be easier. Just go to the ‘Get Involved’ page on the GMS website and follow the instructions. Counting moths takes place on just one day a week - Friday is preferred - between March and November, and there really is a great ‘community feel’ to the whole project. I’m finishing this post at about 08:00 on the Saturday morning following a GMS night, and there are already mothers online sharing observations and ID tips (and the fact that it was windy and rained all night and there were consequently relatively fewer moths about….Oh well, there’s always next week!).

Copyright 2009 - For more of the same, visit 10,000 Birds

Copyright 2009 - For more of the same, visit 10,000 Birds

But, as the title of this post proclaims, this ID challenge is a benevolent one. Identify this bird properly and you may be adding a species to my life list. Good luck!

small, drab bird spotted at Mangaloma Reserve in Ecuador

Copyright 2009 - For more of the same, visit 10,000 Birds

Our stop at the coast guard station was fruitful, with flocks of Red-winged Blackbirds, European Starlings, and my first-of-the-year Brown-headed Cowbirds moving through, to say nothing of the Red-breasted Mergansers, Long-tailed Ducks, Horned Grebes, Common Loons and Brant.  The grebes in particular were not at all shy and came as close to shore as I have ever seen Horned Grebes come.

But the best birds at the coast guard station were the nine American Oystercatchers huddled up on shore, another first of the year species for me.  I have to admit though, that the “gray ghost” male Northern Harrier that we spotted hunting was quite a sight as well.

What both Danny and I were really hoping for was a sighting of the Lapland Longspurs that had been hanging out in the grassy area between the bathrooms and gazebo at the coast guard station for months during the winter.  We didn’t see them, of course, because no twitch can ever possibly work if one waits two months to actually follow up a sighting report, but we did have fun trying to turn clods of dirt and chunks of vegetation into birds, and from generic birds into longspurs.  But there is only so long one can stare at dirt and sticks before one must snap out of it and look at birds.  Fortunately, the resident Rock Pigeons were nearby.

Sure, Rock Pigeon is a lousy substitute for Lapland Longspurs but it sure beats rocks and sticks!  From the coast guard station we went and checked the gulls in the West End 2 parking lot and found them to be of the usual species.  Instead of walking out to the beach there we decided to go to the nature center and walk the boardwalk and save our beach walk for Point Lookout, where we hoped to finally get Danny a view of Harlequin Ducks, which, considering he had visited Point Lookout about five times in the last couple of winters without seeing them, seem to want to avoid inclusion on his life list.

The sky was blue, the sun was shining strongly, and our walk on the Theodore Roosevelt Nature Center boardwalk was a delight, especially when we heard a Horned Lark singing and then watched it alternately forage and sing.  I don’t know if I shall ever hear a more delightful sound in mid-March in a dune field than a singing Horned Lark.  It really made my day.  And the rain had left the dunes pocked with small ponds, ponds in which a pair of Mute Swans were apparently considering setting up shop.  I tried to avoid the introduced swans though, and just enjoyed the gorgeous day.

From Jones Beach the ride over to Point Lookout was quick and uneventful, though, just before we left, we spotted our first Tree Swallow of the year flying over the dunes.  The sun still shone, and when we hopped out of the car at Point Lookout and confronted the massive dune we had to walk over to get to the beach we both thought that it looked more like we were entering the Sahara Desert than a public beach on Long Island!

Our walk from jetty to jetty to jetty sadly remained Harlequin Duck-less, but we saw a horde of Horned Grebes, a flock of Dunlin, more American Oystercatchers (including the one pictured way above), Purple Sandpipers, more Long-tailed Ducks, a Sanderling, and a Red-throated Loon, among other species.  Disappointed as were about the lack of harlequins, we did enjoy watching the confiding Long-tailed Ducks diving for dinner.

But even more interesting than the long-tails were the Horned Grebes, which I watched diving and coming up with pinkish things to eat.  I couldn’t figure out what they were while I was watching, so I took a ton of pictures and I think that they mihg thave been diving for, catching, and eating shrimp.  Please, if you can tell one way or another, let me know if I am right or not, because I am certainly no expert on marine invertebrates, but I think that is what I have pictures of below.

After Point Lookout we headed home, happy with the birds we saw and the weather we enjoyed, but wishing we had spotted just a couple more species.  In other words, it was a perfect birding outing!

Copyright 2009 - For more of the same, visit 10,000 Birds

Hence the previous post in which I wondered aloud to the blogosphere (or that small corner of it that reads 10,000 Birds anyway) whether I could make a living as a writer. I have had a ridiculously good time flying as many of my more overblown posts have proved, but - as the comments and private emails told me - it’s one thing ‘having a good time’ and blogging about it and quite another walking away from a relatively well-paid job and trying to earn enough money to pay the rent and feed the family by writing about a life you’ve just left behind.

As at the time I was feeling quite upbeat with my dreams of ‘being an author’ I have to say I was very deflated by what I was told - but I can only thank those readers who took the time to relate their own personal experiences of struggling to write while existing on the bread-line. My family and I may have survived (just) but it would have been a nerve-shredding way to live - and (being very honest) I was probably neither mentally healthy enough nor confident enough to do it.

So, move on two months to today. I’m off the medication I’ve been swallowing every day for the last eight years and I’ve had time to uncoil and look around (I wouldn’t recommend stress-related illness to anyone, but six months off on basic salary while you recover should be on offer to anyone who’s been flogging themselves for two decades!). I still want to write - but realism has kicked in (at least I hope so) and I have put some much more solid plans into action.

Firstly, I’ve accepted a part-time position working for the Great Bustard Group. I’ve been ‘working’ for the GBG for about eight months, but not been paid (which was fine by me). Now that I’m editing up ‘Otis’, the Group’s in-house magazine, and planning to go self-employed, the GBG has managed to find enough money to keep me on-board (I’d have stayed anyway if I could have done, but who knew whether that would have been possible) and will start paying me when I quit the airline at the end of this month.

The GBG won’t be paying enough to keep me in the credit-card-happy lifestyle I’ve been accustomed to, but it is just about enough to make the next stage in my ‘grand scheme’ a possibility…

As some regular readers will know I and my family moved out to a little cottage on a beautiful estate in Wiltshire called Great Chalfield last July. I can’t claim any credit for the move as I was in no fit state to purposely pick up sticks and go anywhere and the decision was all Jo’s - but as I said at the time she has been watching my back for many years and she knew (even if I didn’t) that this was exactly what I needed.

Within a very short time of moving in I was walking over the 350 acre estate and farmland, camera and binoculars in hand, and having the time of my life. Being overseas all the time began to seem even more irksome, and it soon got to the point that I just never wanted to be anywhere else but Wiltshire. After years of night-stops and hotel rooms and missing my family I was turning into a home-body! No-one was more surprised than me, but it was happening and I loved it. If only, I dreamt to myself, there was some way I could spend all day doing this and get paid for it…

Well, to cut a long story short, I think I may just have found a way to do exactly that *drum roll* and it’s called ‘Wiltshire Nature Walks’: a guided nature walk business (a ‘business’ if I’m lucky anyway) based at Great Chalfield, and all with the blessing of Robert and Patsy Floyd, my landlords and the tenant farmers who live in the wonderful Great Chalfield Manor House.

I’ve been endlessly churning over whether I can make this thing work, but unless I try I’ll never know - so here goes! I’ve designed a website (using blog software so I have a blog attached already), written a pile of text that I’ve changed about a hundred times, and I’m just about ready to unleash it on the world (there are a few things I need to finish off and I have images to add, but it’s all but done and I need to get some feedback before I burst).

So, for anyone still awake and still reading this, may I invite you to have a peruse around the next stage of my life: http://www.wiltshirenaturewalks.co.uk. (The logo by the way is the outline of the county of Wiltshire made to look like a leaf.)

I realise that there are probably a whole lot of 10,000 Birds readers wondering why they should be presented with this stuff, but - you know - blogging is not just about slamming Malta’s illegal hunters, or reporting on birding trips, or running competitions, it’s also about making friends and being part of an online community. For those of you that fit neither category, well, sorry for wasting your time, but for everyone else, thankyou for listening - and if you’d care to leave me a comment or a word of advice (my resignation letter is written but not handed in yet) I’d be very grateful.

As for writing, well, I’ll be editing and writing articles for ‘Otis’ and I will still be spending endless hours on 10,000 Birds - and maybe for now that will be enough. On the other hand, walking is seasonal and I potentially have a whole winter ahead of me with time on my hands. My flying tales will still be fresh in my mind, and who knows what the next six months here at Great Chalfield might inspire me to put down on paper…

Copyright 2009 - For more of the same, visit 10,000 Birds

Copyright 2009 - For more of the same, visit 10,000 Birds

I’m hoping to hit Owl Woods for early spring migrants this weekend. Charlie will be seeking out the same, although obviously not the same species, around Wiltshire. Corey hopes to be at Jamaica Bay Saturday morning and perhaps a beach on Sunday. Wish us all luck!

Whatever your plans this weekend, make time to enjoy SkyWatch Friday. Also be sure to come back Monday to share your best bird of the weekend!

In the right light, even starlings can be lovely!

Copyright 2009 - For more of the same, visit 10,000 Birds