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Thanks for the help! I thought that was probably the case, but never hurts to double check.

I went on another attempt to Thornham Harbour yesterday in an attempt to see some twite - nice day of birding, but I didn't find any interesting finch flocks until the sun was starting to set, hence bad grainy photographs. A local gentleman did mention there were twite there, but though I did...

Thanks. Any suggestions for picking out twite from prospective mixed flocks? Was mostly looking for any that looked like they had small yellow beaks, or just looked different to the rest?

Morning I dropped over to Thornham Harbour in Norfolk yesterday to try and see some Twite, but the light wasn't great so didn't get any views I was happy with in the field, but a couple of maybes, so thought I'd get some thoughts? Also had a hawk turn up - I assume a sparrowhawk as it always...

There's a difference between someone being in history and them being honoured. No one I know is reasoning that we try erase people from history, but a statue or an eponym is a an honouring. To take an example of one I consider "cool" - Eleonara of Arborea after whom Eleonara's Falcon is...

That's fair, but we are trying to be thorough here, there are literally hundreds of these people and many of them require trawling through obscure texts to get an idea of what they were doing behind the white-washed version that tends to be presented. We are looking at how we might release...

I'm helping with a small part of the back research to this proposal, making a catalogue of who exactly the people are that have birds named after them - it's a big task and we're only beginning to scratch the surface, but even so far the list includes: Murderers - most often of indiginous...

Back in July I was in Cornwall and was did quite a few mornings on Trevose Head trying to seawatch for skuas and rarer shearwaters. The winds were fairly decent, and on some days I had some fairly ludicrous numbers of manxes, but didn't really pick out much at the time, despite them definitely...

Thanks! Much appreciated - had fingers crossed but my no-skua curse is finally broken!

On Monday I was walking from Birchington-on-Sea to Herne Bay and trying to pick up anything interesting out at sea, and this bird was a bit puzzling. I'd mostly seen the regular gull species and a smattering of gannets, but this bird passed on by late on. It was very dark, not juvenile gannety...

This is really just a case of double checking my work - saw these two at different points of the end of last week around Trevose Head in Cornwall. I'm pretty sure they are both familiar species to me (willow warbler and sanderling respectively) but as they seemed to be in different plumages than...

Decided to give Welbeck another go for raptors, and while again nothing came close enough to ID beyond Red Kite or Common Buzzard, a few very distant but potentially interesting raptors did appear. I do appreciate that these are very shabby photos, and may not all be identifiable. But thanks...

Thanks for all the help; looking back through some of the other photos I'd missed a front on one which looks to have wingbars that suggest marsh harrier might be a solid suggestion, but agreed, not enough to clinch anything. Back to the drawing board for these 2 species again!

Finally got round to heading to Welbeck Raptor Viewpoint today and after watching lots of common buzzards for the majority of the trip, had two very interesting birds turn up in the last hour before I had to leave. 1) This bird circled in at quite a distance, but was very slight feeling...

You never know, maybe it is very well trained, just specifically for catching Goths and/or ninjas?

The understanding I got from the version of this I read was that the same species colonised the island twice, and both times evolved a very similar subspecies - the interesting bit being this non-continuity was a surprise? While "evolved twice" is a bit misleading, even without that, this is a...

Yep, both Spotted Redshank - and coming into handsome breeding pluamge too - congrats!

I think the factor you have to remember though is that birds' eyes see in different wavelengths to us, and so what we percieve as inconspicuous looking might not actually be so to them, particularly when additives to washing liquids etc have stuff in there to make clothes seem brighter...

Thanks! It was a bit of a longshot. Just a tad vexing to have potentially seen a lifer (given range and vast quantities of pond herons seen) and having zero ability to actually confirm haha.

I was getting a slight Ruff vibe also.