House List (1 Viewer)

[Richard Cawsey]

Here's my House list for 2003:

Great Tit


It came in through the front door, flew around the living room and finally exited via a bedroom window, after leaving a small souvenir of its visit on the stairs. I don't think I'll be encouraging any more birds to pay a call, but I wondered what unusual visitors other people have had ? . . .

 

[Andrew]

Just a Robin but have had Robin, Sparrow and Starling in the porch.

 

[Swift]

Not a personal list but two funny things have happened to birders i know, one was asked to go over the road and help get a bird out of someones house this he did but imagine his suprise it was a YELLOW BROWED WARBLER fluttering round the lounge he caught it stuffed it in a jam jar photographed it and let it go!!!!! The other birder got a call from his wife saying when she had opened the back door a bird had ran in the house up the stairs and eventually into the empty bath , off the description he couldnt work it out , he went home it was a .....Red Legged Partridge.!!!!

 

[Beverlybaynes]

This is not a 'house list' story, but interesting just the same, I think:

Birding friends took a trip to southern Texas in March. I don't know their exact location, other than they were somewhere in the Rio Grande Valley.

These four folks are quite expert birders, but at least two of them needed one particular target bird: Burrowing Owl. And for the first couple of days, they kept striking out on finding one, although they were in the right locations.

A woman in the group was sitting in the passenger seat of the van they had rented, moaning about missing the owl once again when suddenly, a Burrowing Owl flew in through the passenger window and landed on the dashboard right in front of her!!

One of the more spectacular stories of getting lifer I've ever heard!

 

[Colin]

Hello Richard,
Welcome to the forums. I think that you will find lots of topics which will interest you here and lots of people with all sorts of expertise.

I met you at Slimbridge a month or so back and I pointed out a male Garganey from the Van de Bovenkamp hide.

You have a bigger house list than me because mine is a big fat zero for inside the house unless you count my grandmothers budgerigar which she had in the 1960's.

However, birds seen from the house total into the 70's but the funniest one was years ago when early one morning my mother called me to say that she had just seen the very long haired cat which lived over the road catch a bird on the concrete drive amid open plan gardens and drives. I was not dressed but I put my dressing gown over my pyjamas, donned my house slippers, and went to investigate. I managed to easily grab the cat by the scruff to stop it making off with the bird and then proceeded to extract the bird from its mouth which I found was surprisingly easy. This was proabably due to me having a good grip of the cat. The bird was black and appeared blackbird sized but once I got it free from the cat, it sprouted these enormous legs and feet. It was a Moorhen. Now, how this species came to be in the middle of a housing estate with no water nearby, well, I don't know. Now, comes the funny bit. I have bird in one hand and cat in the other and I am wondering what to do. I thought at first of letting the cat go and taking the Moorhen to a safe place for release but thought the free cat might attack my hand with the Moorhen in it. I wasn't sure the Moorhen would leg it quickly if I let it go and while I was considering my options things took a turn for the worst. A Moorhen sized bird is an awkward size to handle from the off with one hand and it began to struggle and it broke free and set off up the road. At the sight of this, the cat got mad, since it wanted to give chase after its breakfast and broke my grip on it. The cat gave chase. Fearing the worst that the cat would catch it again and make off with it, I gave chase. However, running fast in pyjamas, dressing gown and house slippers is not easy and as in one of my jokes in the Ruffled Feathers forum, one of my slippers came off, so I continued with only one. Fortunately there was a happy ending as the Moorhen jinked left and allowed me to get between it and the cat and the Moorhen got away. Phew.


Colin