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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

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  1. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Bluethroat this morning. Specifically the one that got confused about where it should migrate to and has spent the early summer of each of the last few years at Slimbridge wondering why no female ever turns up in the excellent bit of habitat it's claimed as its territory.
  2. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Also Baikal Teal. Don't know if it was the same one, but if so it was clearly tired after its efforts yesterday and slept for most of the time I was there.
  3. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Pallid Swift. Got to see the one that stayed a couple of weeks at Winterton on Sea in Norfolk on Tuesday morning. Given that it doesn't seem to have been reported again since, and the weather had turned bad enough to persuade any self-respecting migrant that maybe it was time to move on, I got a...
  4. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Forster's Tern. My first lifer of the year, other than an armchair tick from a taxonomic change. Finally convinced myself that since it isn't a gull my aversion to travelling a couple of hours to see a gull that looks like all the other gulls doesn't apply. So off to Arne I went, and very nice...
  5. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    I know Australia has better-sounding bird names than the rest of us. I also know that this isn't actually a species of wren that's the size of an emu. And yet I can't get the image out of my head...
  6. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Canary Islands Chaffinch, from the same split. I think this is my first armchair tick due to a change in taxonomy since the UK adopted the IOC list and I gained a second bean goose species overnight. This is a rather frustrating one - my trip to Tenerife was a long time ago and I wasn't aware...
  7. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    MigFest at Spurn continues its amazing run of delivering me a lifer every time I've shown up (if you allow me to stretch a point with the albatross at Bempton last year). So I was at the seawatch on Sunday morning, kicking myself that I missed sooty shearwater yet again the day before, when the...
  8. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    What I love about this thread is the way it mixes new birders seeing common species that they happen not to have seen before with twitchers who've travelled serious distances to see mega-rarities and people who've just been on the holiday of a lifetime and seen hundreds of new species. Plus...
  9. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    At the moment my latest is snow goose, due to the three at Slimbridge seen a couple of months ago. However I'm told they disgraced themselves by still being there at the end of March, so I guess they're not going to be accepted and I need to keep looking. One day...
  10. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    I wait a year and a half for a lifer, then get a second one a fortnight later... Bunked off a few hours early on Sunday from the always-wonderful MigFest at Spurn and made the diversion to Bempton for the Black-browed Albatross on my way home. About half past 3 it flew in and immediately landed...
  11. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Black Stork, RSPB Frampton Marsh this afternoon. With grateful thanks to the RSPB volunteers who made sterling efforts to spread word when it initially flew in & landed, so more people (including me) got to see it when it decided to go to Freiston and took off again.
  12. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    There's a summary in a post on the taxonomy forum. Basically there are now 3 species and thanks to the wonderful rules of taxonomy the species name "subalpina" now applies to the only one of the 3 that isn't called "subalpine" in English. IOC made the split on 6 May, see their updates diary...
  13. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Great grey shrike today. There's a showy one that's spent a week or more in the same clump of bushes near Sapperton, which happened to be close to my route to Slimbridge. The highlight of a day that also featured year-ticks of black-necked grebe, green-winged teal and ... oystercatcher.
  14. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    I got as far as last weekend without a single lifer, due largely to not spending enough time in interesting parts of the country. Things have been livened up with 3 lifer butterflies and completing the set of long-established UK Odonata. Last weekend was MigFest, the excellent event organised...
  15. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    I neglected to mention MigFest at Spurn in September, my third lifer in three annual visits due to a Common Rosefinch that performed quite nicely. It's a great event to go to, not least because the guided walks tend to be led by people with serious birding skills, which really helps those of us...
  16. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Last weekend, after getting this far into the year with no lifers at all, I got the opportunity to pick off two at once with Flamborough having an adult male rose-coloured starling and a dotterel. And when I got there I checked their Twitter feed and found a report of Temmink's stint having...
  17. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    A couple of weeks ago I continued the slow ticking-off of the UK birds I really should have seen by now, when I flushed a Jack Snipe while walking round the reserve at Hickling Broad, Norfolk.
  18. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    American Golden Plover at Dale, Pembrokeshire a week ago. Annoyingly, Birdtrack is now insisting the presumed-escaped Red-breasted Goose at Slimbridge last weekend is a lifer, so I now either have to somehow see a real one or accept a permanent glitch in my list.
  19. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Another one for Red-necked Phalarope here - one spent the weekend at Farmoor Reservoir with an admiring crowd of birders from the Oxfordshire area. I saw it on Sunday morning when it was very close in to the shore, so very pleased with that. Should have mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I...
  20. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    A long wait for me to contribute to this thread this year, but worth the wait. 1 May, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker drumming away like mad and giving a brief flight view while he moved from one tree to another. I think the location is reasonably public, and it was a lone male with no sign of a nest...
  21. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Desert Wheatear at Thurlestone, Devon on New Year's eve was the last of 14 lifers during 2016.
  22. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    The very showy Desert Wheatear at Thurlestone, Devon, today. Came prepared for a long wait, but it pretty much started tap-dancing in front of me as soon as I got there.
  23. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Two in the space of a week, which I'm pretty pleased with. Last Saturday I was at Spurn for Migfest so braved the rain for the Kentish plover that provided the highlight of the weekend for most people. Then yesterday I finally caught up with American wigeon. It was in eclipse, so I'm going to...
  24. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    Hoopoe on Sunday - finally got round to seeing the one that's having a go at overwintering in the UK. Very good flight views.
  25. Swindon Addick

    Your Most Recent "Life" Bird

    To continue the theme of tits seen yesterday - penduline tit in Gloucester. Ridiculously showy. And then this afternoon I finally ticked off the current holder of my "most unsuccessful attempts to see" title - ring ouzel.
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