OT - seeking opinion of any bird watchers here
Hermit Crab
Posts: 883
Hi folks,
I'm in the UK - Scotland to be more precise - and went out today to the coast with my camera which happens to have a very good zoom lens.
As a boy I was a keen ornothologist for a while but nowadays just enjoy seeing what I come across (errm - does that sound dodgy?). However in the UK, and probably elsewhere, there are mad keen bird-watchers who will jump on the first 'plane or train to catch sight of any rare species that they can tick off on a list.
Well, today, I took a few close-up shots and some video of a bird I personally couldn't identify and when I got home found it wasn't even in my 'Birds of Europe' book.
An internet image search eventually led to me being sure it is Great Cormorant which hails from the southern coastline of Greenland, apparently.
A much more detailed search suggests that it isn't listed as having been sighted in Britain at all - so this may be a first-time visitor. I do find that hard to believe but tonight I'm considering ways to get the news out - if it is news. I absolutely do not do facebook, twitter, instagram, etc.
Perhaps the bird has been there for months and is well-known about. But if there is a slim chance that it is of interest to many then I thought I'd ask here first.
Any bird-watchers from the UK ??
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https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/birdtrack/taking-part/recording-your-sightings
I wouldn't go to the RSPB as they don't know what they are talking about half the time, at least the watchers I meet up in the hills don't
They have lost sight of their objective and now see themselves as guardians of the countryside.
Thanks, Fishtales. I've been taking autumn pictures locally a few times this autumn - I think the displays have been particularly colourful this year. The weather was dull today but I just had the notion to visit the coast - nowhere lonely - and this bird was the first thing I saw (in Irvine, Ayrshire).
I'll attach some heavily cropped pictures. (and will soon need to buy something from the DAZ store in appreciation of using the forum for another Off Topic discussion).
There was a seal in the water and plenty of normal cormorants. The larger bird which has a lot of white looks to be a Great Cormorant all the way from Greenland.
Many locals stroll along the estuary and harbour, dog-walkers and others, so it will perhaps have been seen by many others already. On the other hand, I was lucky to have a semi-decent camera with me.
A good while back, I started a topic about whether camcorders were a thing of the past and forum members were very kind in discussing camera options for me. In case any are reading this, I waited a while and then regained interest a few months ago and bought a Panasonic Lumix. I've hardly used it, to be honest, and hardly know how to! But I'm starting to get out there with it and today's outing may have been a stroke of good luck.
I should have said, the Great Cormorant is just a common Cormorant and is found all over the UK.
http://birdsuc.mzzhost.com/cormorant.html
Thanks again Fishtales.
Thanks for the link, which certailnly shows the cormorants I'm familiar with - they're practically all black and smaller than the big one I photographed today. In spite of the name Great Cormorant - are you sure the one I saw today is seen all over the UK? None of my books ever showed one with so much white and this one was definitely much bigger than the normal cormorants around.
I took another quick look on Bing and followed one of the pictures to the page it appears on http://statebirding.blogspot.com/2012/11/great-cormorant-and-hoary-redpoll.html
The bird which this guy travelled to see is the same as the one I saw today. I'm hoping you don't see me as arguing - I'm just a bit puzzled.
Looks like your bird has been seen in the UK before quite a bit...this is from the allaboutbirds.org site on the map of sightings. The picture you showed of the white breasted one looks like a juvenile, but if it's bigger than the ones you're used to, then I have no idea ;). I know how you feel tho...I watch a lot of birds myself and love it when I catch a new one I haven't seen before :D
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Cormorant/maps-sightings
Also, according to other sites, there are two kinds of cormorants from your area - the great cormorant and shags. Shags are black also, but smaller, although I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. LOL
Laurie
Have a look at the sub species on this page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Phalacrocoracidae
As Laurie says it looks like a well fed juvenile
Thanks again, Fishtales and also AllenArt and thanks for the links.
I understand that confusion over bird identification can happen due to winter/summer plumage in some cases and in adult/juvenile differences. Also some birds might be mistaken for another such as the female Sparrowhawk being taken for a Goshawk because the female Sparrowhawk is so much bigger than the male and is almost Goshawk size. Another example - as Fishtales (I'm guessing) would attest, many visitors to Scotland believe they've seen an Eagle when it was probably only a Buzzard.
In the case of the Cormorant, what I'm seeing is that the common, everyday Cormorant is also being called the Great Cormorant (perhaps because there is a similar, smaller bird called the Shag). I'm very familiar with these and showed one with its wings outstretched for comparison with the other, bigger one. These are all over British and European coasts. But the one I had never seen until yesterday is exactly like the one the bird-watcher in the US travelled to see - as a rare visitor to that location. (I linked to it in my previous post and the picture is of a bird identical to mine). It is called the Great Cormorant.
So maybe, I've seen something rare in these parts or maybe my photo of the smaller bird is a Shag and the big one is a Cormorant.
Anyway, thanks again. I'll not lose sleep over this!
Well I did intensely bird watch for one year after I moved back to the USA from Switzerland in 2006 and decided to feed the birds while I stayed over at my mom's. The number of different species and shear number of birds that showed up to eat astounded me and what caused me to take up identifying them that year. I used the 1st half way decent digital camera I ever bought for $300 (Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8. It's still the only good camera I have) expressly for trying to get good pictures of those birds. I would sit outside like a real bird watcher does from dawn to dusk in the cold and rain and snow and sun in her back yard taking hundreds of pictures. I even managed to take a few good ones out of shear dumb luck of repetitive picture taking and the technical competence of that DMC-FZ8 camera design..
In those pictures was one I took at night time of what I thought was a Great Grey Owl as I heard it hooting so I went outside at nighttime to try and find it. I just followed my ears as the bird was camouflaged to match the trees and it was dark. That owl was absolutely a huge bird. It let me walk right up under the dogwood branch it was perching on to take a picture but being dark the picture isn't great. I thought I was lucky and had sighted for the 1st time that particular owl species in Kentucky as it was not supposed to be nowhere near Kentucky. However, further research revealed to me it wasn't that species of owl but another species of owl called a Northern Barred Owl aka the famous Hoot Owl and it was the famous hoot that I heard that drew me outside to try & get a picture of it.
Anyway, I also think that picture is a Great Cormorant and according to Wikipedia they are pretty common world wide, in fact I think those birds are famous with sailors because sailors see them practically everywhere they sail. I'm far from even a good amateur bird watcher though.
Facebook Bird Enthusiast Groups are the best easy place to get educated and some expert identifications of birds in pictures; eventually the most likely bird is usually the one most of the commenters say it is.
Since you don't FB you could ask the famous Bird Researchers at Cornell University.
Attached is the picture of the Northern Barred Owl aka Hoot Owl I was talking about. According to the information the camera embedded in the picture it was taken on May 22, 2007 at 9:12 PM. For you real bird watchers: no, unfortunately the camera did not embed the GPS location of where I took the picture at so you'd have to manually add that information if you were creating or adding to a real bird watching inventory.
That owl species, according to Wikipedia is the only North American one with brown instead of yellow irises and I think that contributes to it's spooky look in that picture, which as it turns out is a good picture to have posted on Halloween. And that owl was sitting in my mom's back yard waiting for deer mice to show up and start eating black oil sunflower seeds the other birds had dropped in the daytime. There were also on both sides of the yard in her woods a barn owl on each side hanging out. You could hear and see them in the daytime though.
Thanks to you also Nonesuch00 for the interesting comments, link and image.
I envy you for having lived in Switzerland - I would have loved to have found a way to live in any of the European alpine countries - I used to take holidays there, camping, trecking and climbing. Doing so in the generally fine weather made up for the number of times I built up fitness hill-walking in Scotland in atrocious conditions - as well as many good days also (For some reason, hill-walking seems to take place especially in winter in Scotland).
Looking into the bird identification further I think I need to concede that it is an ordinary cormorant in first winter plumage. https://www.rawbirds.com/2013/02/great-cormorant-phalacrocorax-carbo-ssp.html
I've never seen one before like that and when I started researching I also saw 'great' cormorant mentioned for the first time with a picture of a Greenland bird exactly like mine. So I thought I had spotted a new visitor!
So, tonight, I think I'll go out and be the first in the world to spot a new Supernova in a distant galaxy.
The camera I bought is a Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82 and it sounds as though it may be just like yours or very similar. What determined my choice was the fact it has a viewfinder as well as a rear screen. I find it hard in bright light to see the image on a screen so the viewfinder is really helpful in those conditions.
Bird-watching is for me just an interest now if I happen to be at the right place at the right time although at home I always automatically rush out when I hear a loud outcry of Gulls and Crows - generally there is some kind of hawk soaring above.
I'm attaching a few very cropped pictures taken from a long distance in Spain earlier this year, when I first tried using the camera out and about. (Bee Eaters and Vulture).
Just to add - the quality from the camera is excellent even in default settings - these pictures of mine do it no justice because they were taken with camera-shake at far-distant moving subjects.
A few of my bird photos.
https://www.ftscotland.co.uk/gallery/piwigo/index.php?/category/4
Finally, I know this has been off-topic, so I've made a point of giving DAZ some of my custom. I've just bought the following:
https://www.daz3d.com/minami-hd-and-minami-hair-for-genesis-8-females
https://www.daz3d.com/grace-yong-and-grace-yong-hair-for-genesis-8-female
What a nice topic. I can't say that I'm a keen bird-watcher, but I do love to observe birds. On Monday morning I looked out of my window to see that the plum tree in the garden was full of blue tits. I've never seen so many at once. Unfortunately I was rushing to catch a train so didn't have time to photograph them. We also often see kestrels in the area, and last weekend a great brace of pheasants (again, more than I ever remember seeing at once). I live in the countryside of the midlands of England. With all the stories of depleting wildlife it's very nice to be seeing more of these birds now than I can ever remember seeing. We also saw unprecedented numbers of the more interesting butterflies this summer.
Awsome. i've bookmarked it.
The pictures i've taken in 2007 at my mom's of birds is in this FB photo album. I just made it public so it should work if you follow the link. It's not every species of bird that I got a photo of that showed up in her yard that year but most of them. i've taken others in other years and other countries but not with the same effort or time spent I made in that year.
Ha, I have a few vulture & hawk pictures similar to yours that I put in my 2007 Bird Watching Album on FB long ago. I find birds flying in the sky the most difficult to take pictures of. Example I want to specifically get pictures or two types of birds that have long been among my favorites: Chimney Swifts and Barn Swallows, however I'm simply not skilled enough with a camera to manage it. I just made that FB album public so let me know if it doesn't work.
Switzerland was nice and extremely expensive but then so is everywhere I've lived. It all depends on you doing something you enjoy and not much else most of the time really. The mountains (but not the seas) of Scotland actually look like the mountains here in Appalachia when they've been stripped of trees. I plan on feeding birds again this winter at the house I live at now for the 1st time in years. It can be quite expensive as they'll eat 40 lbs of black oil sunflower seed a month from one efficient feeder (which is 1/2 the price it was 12 years ago so it makes it affordable to me again). It's not as near as beautiful in my yard as at my mom's yard but it is still pretty yard. Kentucky, especially southeastern and eastern Kentucky are woefully underrated for natural beauty. It's not the gaudy, immediately in your face beauty of the Swiss Alps but beauty you must pay attention to find and have patience to wait for. LOL, look out your door in Switzerland and see the Matterhorn. Look out the door at my house and you see small white vinyl clapboard houses build 50 years ago and very boring yards mostly of just lawn grass. You have to go into the state and natural parks and enough people own undeveloped land you can look at too to see something else. There is about 50 or more acres out my back door that's not been developed that's a bit more varied.
Some really nice photos in that album Andy.
I though you would buy the long shag hair given the topic
Ha Ha Ha, Wendy. It might have fallen into my shag-pile carpet (I made it myself and now the Shag IS a rare species around here ...Ha Ha.)
It's nice to hear your comments, Hiro Protagonist - I thought this thread would be so far from most people's attention that it would quickly die. Around last January, I went down to the coast on one of those crisp, frosty days with perfect blue skies and took some binoculars that my brother gave me for Christmas. Over the water, the island of Arran looked like it was made of flour it was so snow-covered. Through the binoculars I could make out all the cliffs in detail and re-live walking along the mountain ridges. Then I realized that there were different waders and sea birds down on the rocks and rock-pools. I could zoom in and see them up close and started wishing I could get photos of this. Then I noticed a group of people all in gloves and scarves taking pictures of the same birds with their zoom lenses - so that made up my mind to get a camera. The other day was when I finally went back to the same place but the tide was in and the weather was utterly dull. But I saw a seal in the water and took video of a Cormorant diving. By the way - that brace of Pheasants ... I once saw a peasant in braces. Of course I ordered him to remove them and not to dare dressing like his betters again. He was so fowl-mouthed.
Very nice photographs, Fishtales. I like especially the Wren in the snow. It's always a wonder to me that such a tiny bird was only a miniscule little egg a few months ago and yet it gets through weather that few humans could stay out in all day and night in. I look out the window feeling stiff and aching and the small birds are all energy and activity. The Kestrel is also a great image but (as Mr 'bird-watching-is-only-a-past-hobby-I'm-over-it-now-Look-I-can-handle-it...) I can't help wondering if it is a Lesser Kestrel (I saw these in Spain).
Even though I saw sixteen supernovae last night in the skies I've decided not to let the astronomy societies know - they can go out and find them for themselves. I got so much egg on my face for telling the bird societies tha a cormorant could be seen on the Scottish coast.
I like everything you say about your home territory, Nonesuch00. The scenery and buildings you describe have an appeal to me and sometimes art books and you tube painting tutorials focus on subjects such as the old houses you mention.
I'm all-too-familiar with the Matterhorn, having climbed it as well as Mont Blanc. There is one point just under the summit roof where ther route narrows to about the width of a kitchen table but the drops on either side are said to be 4000 feet. Exposed places on mountains like that always have a wind blowing which somehow adds to the fright. The descent of the Matterhorn led to the greatest despair I ever felt of returning alive. In the end my companion and I spent the night without shelter on a ledge watching the lightning flashes of the storm that had been forecast. We did get down the next day just as the storm broke and the cable car descent further down closed because of it. So,hours later, my friend and I were seen in Zermatt, soaked through in spite of waterproofs, in the most torrential rain, slaking our thirst from a fountain because we'd had so little with us on the climb. The valley below Zermatt flooded so badly that the army set up pontoon bridges for traffic. The Matterhorn was plastered in ice which is what we had feared so much the night before when we were lost up there. Such are the things that happen when taking two weeks annual leave from an office job.
Your hike to the Matterhorn sounds scary. In all my years in Switzerland I only ever hiked the mountains six times with my ex-professional mountain climber brother-in-law and sister and only as dangerous as hiking from hut to hut. However, in places those hikes were very dangerous too. I did once take a the little brother of my sister's friend from New Mexico on a tour of Switzerland but we didn't hike to the Matterhorn but just took a train to a tourist outpost in the Aletsch Glacier I think it's called where you could see the glacier and Matterhorn easily from on high. I personally was glad because in Zermatt in the valley below they have a graveyard at a church full of people that fell off the Matterhorn. Also having lived in Switzerland a pretty good while I had read plenty of newspapers of people falling to their death or injury in the mountains, having avalanches fall on them, or lavine floods get them. I prefer the workers of Rega stay bored. The Appalachians can be dangerous hiking too if you aren't careful. Only on some of the higher Blueridge and Smoky Mountains though do the Appalachians go above the tree line. Also, much further north in the White Mountains the Appalachians go above the tree line for some mountains as it is colder up north. There are people falling to their deaths occasionally though on hikes not anywhere near the tree lines though. One famous waterfalls destination, Cumberland Falls, has had to repeatedly build fences and barriers further and further from the edges of the cliffs but people just ignore them and get as close to the edge as they want sometimes walking toward the edge and taking pictures at the same time. They don't take it seriously a fall of 60 feet will kill them as surely as a fall from the top of the Matterhorn.
I have yet to buy a telescope. Sadly my yard is very near a downlown of a small town and that enough is to make a lot of light pollution. The yard of my mom's house where those pictures I took are has virtually no light pollution though. Even without a telescope I cat remember accidently clearly seeing an awesome meteor shower one August. I think it's called the Perseid Meteor Shower.
Does Scotland have puffins? I've only ever visited Edinborough. I did visit Iceland's coasts and get to see hoards of seals, puffins and whales too. Even though I'm landlocked now by over 650 miles in any direction sea gulls show up in the WalMart parking lots looking for food in winter. A huge artificial lake was build in the 50s called Lake Cumberland is why they come. There are also occasional plovers and such too.