With the new Millennium came a flood of new Social Media features ... Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo Groups ... and the birding community gradually took up the chance to use these as means of sharing birding information in a very immediate way. That all seemed very good ... and it was !
The world had moved on ... but there were those who did not ... and as the Regional Recorder for the north part of Cumbria by the second decade of the millennium I was getting an array of records ranging from XL spreadsheets to hand written narratives ... rural vicars would refer to 'the parish' ... I wondered just exactly where they meant ?
And then as the decade progressed those new social media platforms that had served a very good function as informal methods of information sharing somehow turned into accepted reporting channels ... there grew an acceptance within the Bird Recording network that we really had no choice but to accept records in whatever shape they came ...
BirdTrack ... what a good idea ! And it is ... with its sophisticated mechanisms like the setting of Validation Thresholds whereby we County Recorders are supplied with descriptive details of species designated as ' Locally Rare ' ... what could possibly go wrong ? The answer to that now seems so obvious ... it is so easy for observers just to ignore that request for descriptive details ... and they do, most of the time ...
But there was a way round that because we County Recorders got lists of contact details for observers so we could get in touch with them and ask them nicely for details ... but that was alright until the Data Protection Act ... so now we can only message through BirdTrack and observers just get another message to ignore ...
And BirdTrack now take records from BirdGuides who probably took them from BirdingCumbria who probably gleaned them from Twitter or Facebook ... the circularity of this makes it increasingly difficult to track back to the original observer ...
So dealing with that probably goes down as a Low in my week ... but getting out in the field is almost always an antidote and delivers some Highs ...
As I did my WeBS count at Talkin Tarn I watched Black-headed Gulls following feeding Coot in much the same way as I had seen Wigeon doing there ( Blog post 20 March 2018 ) ... a seemingly strange strategy on the part of the gulls which did not seem to derive much benefit from this ...
... they watched the feeding Coot intently as the Coot brought potential food material to the surface and occasionally picked up an item in their bill while never apparently feeding on these items ...
... Quite good on the 'Highs' scale I think ...
The Cumbria Bird Club Long-eared Owl Survey runs through February and March ...
... of my seven sites I have visited three so far as I wait for evenings without wind or rain ( which is a bit of an ask in Cumbria ) ... no Long-eared Owls so far but flyover Woodcocks and Common Snipe were quite magical as I waited listening for distant sounds ... less magical were the late dog walkers with their less than friendly muts ...
... some definite Highs there but a few Lows to boot ...
And finally on to the undisputed Highs ... a mid-week visit to some woodland next to a Water Treatment Plant near Fishburn Co.Durham where a Pallas's Warbler was being reported ... albeit described as 'elusive ' ...
... the area next to the WTP perimeter fence was alive with birds in the weak winter sunshine ... Goldcrests and Long-tailed Tits feeding in the pines and low bushes ... and after a few minutes a smart Firecrest showed ... at least two Chiffchaffs were present . the first looked like collybita although the light was tricky and views were imperfect ... then another perched out on bare twigs and was surely a good candidate for tristis ...
... then just by the base of a pine the Pallas's Warbler popped out and flitted around the low twigs to give lovely views ,,, and even a few record shots ...
... a species that I have seen on all too few occasions in the U.K. but a real delight ...
And a clear High !
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