Roma

Well having posted some recent images from a few weeks back, I'll post some from a little bit further in the past. These images are from Rome, and were taken on a family holiday in February. As ever with holidays, wildlife is never far from my focus, and I like to take some of my gear with me. On the continent then the collection of common birds are different to the ones I'm used to, and commonest and most ubiquitous of them all are the Black Redstarts. I love these birds, and I've photographed them a number of times. One thing about these birds i've always missed though is the male birds in full breeding plumage, as I usually miss that time of year. So I capitalised on the fact I found many in Rome, such as this one on a not-so-roman piece of the Colosseum...



This one was frequenting a piece of ancient masonry in a ruined city near the coast...



...This one was enjoying the rough ground between railway line and surrounding houses...





in the Roman forum the number of birds increased markedly, giving me excellent views of species both familar and unfamiliar. The latter category included a first for my lens (but not for me), a female Serin...



A Goldfinch fed, apparently oblivious to the tourists, alongside the path in the dasies...



Ring-Necked Parakeets are always a little controversial as they are aliens, but regardless of any opinions they seem to be hardy and adaptable enough to live in most European cities and are rather comical in their nest holes. First we see the head...



...then out it pops...!



The gardens of the city are actually surprisingly birdful, especially with some of the commoner species. This would include the House Sparrows, who were particularly fond of dust-bathing...



As well as the ubiquitious Hous Sparrows, there were the prettier and more exciting Tree Sparrows. I had an absolute field day with these birds, hiding in the villa borghese between the hedges (much to the bemusement of the locals) and snapping them as they waddled along the tree-lined avenues...







There's that phrase 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do', and clearly this Gull followed it too rigidly, for it murdered and consumed a pigeon in the most foul way imaginable. The two were feeding side by side, before the gull grabbed it and held it in a fountain until it drowned. At first the bloodied corpse resembled a bird...



..before being torn into progressively smaller and less recognisable pieces. This truly was nature red in tooth and claw (and beak and feather)...



So that was Rome. Next? No idea.

'Le Animaux des Alps'- Le Rouge et Noir

We're all proud of the stupidest, most insignificant things aren't we? I mean look at my birding record, my proudest moment of UK birding was this winter when I spotted a Glaucous Gull in flight and pointed it out to a fellow birder. Hardly inspiring stuff. Or my Greater Manchester highlight, spotting Little Egret on my local water park. But these are trumped into insignificance by my foreign highlight, which isn't even rare.

When I was but a little kiddiwink, complete with oversized and over-focussed Viking binoculars, we went on holiday to France and to the mountains, as I have done many times since. When there we stayed in a little place I can't remember the name of, but the point was that I could see all these little birds around the place, all foraging round car parks and in the gardens and on the roads. What were they? I asked this question to my birdbook, a less-than-portable coffee table photographic version of the Hamlyn guide.

And my first birding coup was finding the answer to this question; the 'Rouge et Noir' as they said in the local tongue, or the 'Black and Red' in my own. And I think this pretty much sums up the bird in question, for the Black Redstart is characterised by these two simple and contrasting colours.

Sadly uncommon in the UK, its fantastic to be able to see them common as dirt on the continent and in being common and ubiquitous in towns they're also predictably very approachable. This post, as with almost all my efforts to photograph this species, concentrates on the juveniles, purely because they're more approachable...



This individual was a baby, who'd flown a nest built in the side of a rusting JCB-type digger, which was a particularly cool nest site and something I didn't take full advantage of with the photos. What I did take advantage of though was the approachable nature of the bird at hand, if you look at the eye you can see the hillside reflected there...



I also found a rather attractive one in Suburban Argentieres (if it has suburbs, I mean its smaller than my local park), part of a family of three youngsters being fed by an adult. This was particularly cute but never happened close enough to me for a shot, so I made do with some portraits...



That characteristic upright chat stance...



Anyhow a lovely bird and one particularly close to my heart. Next time I won't do a bird at all, but I will do the closest thing to one... :D

'Kid in a Sweetshop'- Birding the Pyrenees (Part I- Jaca Ass)

Well let me really rub it in, after Shetland I stayed home for a week watching Father Ted and occasionally editing some photos when I felt like it. However, after a week of this I set off once more on my jollies, this time south to the far flung (and slightly exotic) destination of Portsmouth. From here I boarded the Cap Finestre, the ferry bound for Bilbao in northern Spain. It was with the intention of watching the Tour de France we set out that day from Portsmouth, but with a couple of days before and after we had some time to burn and in such a wonderful location the prospect of doing some light birding suited me down to the ground. We've visited the Pyrenees as a family before so knew some reasonable sites and had high hopes that, going in July rather than August, the birding'd be even better than last time. We broke the trip down into going to a certain number of places, covered in this post are:

- Argomaniz
- Jaca
- Riglos/Aguero

...but going somewhere by boat brings with it opportunities, such as those to watch the Common Dolphin in the bow-wave...!

... and 24hrs after leaving Portsmouth we docked in Bilbao, 5pm local time. We had designs to get to Argomaniz near Pamplona before nightfall for some kip before pressing onto the mountains. After some tricky navigation out of Bilbao we settled down for the night, adding Serin, Cirl Bunting, Goldfinch, Linnet and Melodious Warbler to the mix. However, I concentrated mainly on the Black Redstarts, a Pyrenean speciality and a bird not to be missed in its stunning full plumage. This is the male...

...The Serin waited for the next morning, but didn't resist for long as it sat at pretty much head height on a wall by the road...

...but Argomaniz was but a staging post in our stratospheric journey to one of my favourite places on earth, up there with Shetland, Manchester and Anfield. We arrived in Jaca, a smallish town in a valley on the Spanish side of the range. Our afternoon's targets were a Lesser Spot of Lunch and Rock Sparrow. With the first negotiated with little trouble, we set off to pursue these elusive but very attractive sparrows. They live on Jaca Citadel, and eventually we found them. As expected they proved elusive so we left them to have some tea, returning the next morning. On a tour (or 'Vuelta') of the town we found Bee-eater (a lifer!) and this egg-laying Small Skipper...

...VERY co-operative insect, my best shots of one to date. However, with the shadows lengthening and my eyelids dropping into my peripheral vision I called it a day. Or a Dia, I guess.

An early start and as the sun rose we were in position in the crisp morning air near the citadel. Having watched their activities yesterday I had a battle-plan: wait for them to leave their nests, fly across the moat then hit em at close range over the wall. This worked. Broadly speaking...!

...and that yellow throat that marks them out...

...so not a bad start. We then headed towards the twin-towns of Aguero (not Sergio, thank God!) and Riglos, home of the 'Mallos' (or fingers to the likes of you or I). En-route we stopped for lunch, and I got my first ever acceptable Black Kite shots as it came low through the valley...

...whilst we ate the Crag Martins whirred overhead, I tried to capture a feed as the adults attended to some young in a tunnel...

...if nothing else that 50D can't half deal with noise! That was at ISO 1600 for those interested. As we came in towards Riglos we couldn't help but admire the Mallos, what a structure...!

...in the shrubs at the bottom I found my first lifer of the trip, a Sub-Alpine Warbler. Not a great shot, but crappy light and I was still excited having seen it...!

...and found a lovely Black Redstart nest...

...but aside some very interesting vulture nests, we found little at the towns of the Mallos. Still, that was not a day to be sniffed at and as we meandered back through the scorching Spanish countryside we reflected that, on the whole, it wasn't such a bad life.