Here’s looking at you…
This blog started when I was getting fed up with the Sisyphean process of looking up a bird I didn’t know, identifying it, and then forgetting all about it; only to go through the same process the next time round.
In a way, this is a photographic memorandum of what I’ve seen where and when. Granted that the photographs are not always top notch quality (after all, what do you expect of a point-and-shoot box, even if it has an optical zoom of 40x), but that’s not the main point of this blog. It really is more a matter of setting the record of bird sightings in context. Whatever the case, I hope it’s of as much use to the casual visitor as it is to me. Enjoy!
| Latest blog entry (22 August 2023) HELMETED GUINEAFOWL |
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Recordist : Peter Boesman
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| Some recent blog entries : | |||
21 August Rhea |
20 August Eastern Moa |
19 August Tawny Owl |
18 August Glossy Ibis |
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Coming Soon:
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Some more pages : |
Around the time when I was compiling the website in support of this blog, I became aware that DNA studies had upset the apple cart of bird classification in a big way (see the Nature and Science articles, more recently supplemented by an MDPI article on Neoaves), and I wanted to capture my pictures in this new framework. That’s what I’ve done in the Galleries (#1, #2, #3 and #4), although for a number of bird orders (Anseriformes, Columbiformes, Charadriiformes, Accipitriformes, Strigiformes, Falconiformes, Psittaciformes and Passeriformes) I’ve preferred to follow the more recent efforts of the Taxonomy in Flux list on jboyd.net.
As I started to collect pictures from my photo archive, I realised that some of my trips abroad could be grouped together in what I call Hotspots, with entries for the Galapagos archipelago, Botswana and Argentina & Brazil. Somewhat later I reckoned that hot spots did not have to restrict themselves to places abroad, but suited some of the British island nature reserves such as Lundy, Skomer and Skokholm very well, or other sites such as the Somerset Levels, the nearby Forest Farm nature reserve or the Goldcliff Lagoons a bit further afield. Only as an afterthought did I add the birds seen in or near my front and back garden in an entry called Garden Ticks. Since then, a number of further entries have been added, such as Roath Park Lake and Cosmeston Lakes under local hotspots, Ramsey Island and Bardsey Island under island hotspots, and Fishlake Meadows as a separate entry.
After all these efforts, and even though I’m not really a “list” person, I became aware of the existence of the official British bird list, and thought it would be nice to see how it matched up with my own (slightly unorthodox, since it also contains birds seen outside the UK, as well as captive birds) “life” list.
Please Note: On most pages I have embedded bird sounds which come from Xeno-Canto’s sound library, and, where appropriate, the UK distribution maps from the Bird Atlas Mapstore. If anyone has a problem with this, please contact me, and I’ll see what I can do.
Also, a special thank you to the Bird Identification Q&A part of the Bird Forum for helping me out on several occasions. Their comments have always been concise, spot-on and courteous.
Marnix's Bird Gallery 