The garden I am now convinced is not on a migratory flight
line as it produced slim pickings despite having my attention for the majority of
the lockdown time.
House Sparrow, Blackbird, Wood Pigeon and Starling were all breeding
as well as my noisy neighbours in my loft Grey Squirrel! “Keep the noise down!!”.
Needless to say I did not get photos of the Mallard that
whizzed past the house or the Red Kite and Buzzard (both singular) that were on a
mission to get somewhere. A Grey Heron was another brief passer by obviously checking out the ponds in the area. The Mallard was a new species for the garden bringing the total to a
mahoosive 47 species!
Hi, I noticed you did some birding on Langley Vale on eBird on the 1st. Very lucky of you to see the Hoopoe. I hope you don't mind me contacting you but I was curious to know how come you didn't use the Langley Vale hotspot for your observation? I live in Langley Vale and would hope more people like yourself will use the eBird hotspot Langley Vale.
ReplyDeleteKind Regards
Cheech Albanese
CheechAlbanese@yahoo.com
Hi Cheech I saw the Hoopoe 2days running in different areas but have not seen it since. I regularly walk Epsom and Walton Downs. ebird in my opinion micro manages areas into too many smaller hotspots which has created species sighting breakdown issues for my historical data dating back to 1999. A prime example of this is Holmthorpe Sandpits (Historical name) which includes several ebird hotspots Mercers Lake, The Moors, Spynes Mere etc but does not include Mercers Farm.
DeleteMy use of ebird is primarily a back-up system for my Wildlife Recorder where I maintain the scientific UK Vice County boundaries something ebird has surprisingly not adopted?!
Having said that ebird is far more advanced than the other data recording platforms inc Birdtrack.
I'm sure our paths will cross at some point.
Good Birding!
Hi Kevin,
ReplyDeletethanks for the reply. I guess I was just hoping to not be the only person on the Langley Vale hotspot....;-) But I am also very happy for you to have seen the Hoopoe, it was one of the first birds that I wanted to see when I got into birding a few years back.
I use eBird a lot when travelling to find places to bird so I am a huge fan of it. But I see your point. Birdtrack is so cumbersome, I honestly can not understand how it passed the development stage.
Anyway hope to bump into you one of these days, I am sure you are a wealth of information.
Kind regards
Cheech