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DOMINIC
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gives Grasshopper
Warblers a
personality test
A REKINDLED PASSION
How #My200BirdYear renewed
one man’s love of birdwatching
SWIFTS ARE BACK
Discover the hidden secrets of
the ultimate flying machine

COVER STORY l COVER STORY l COVER STORY l
COVER STORY l COVER STORY l COVER STORY l
COVER STORY l COVER STORY l COVER STORY l
FR
Contents
May 2018
Features
20
Inspiring
challenge
Can our
#My200BirdYear
challenge encourage lapsed
birders to ‘look up’ again?
32
24
32
42
62
Sensational
Swifts
Why Ian Parsons
considers the Swift
to be the ‘Ultimate
Flying Machine’!
Life on the edge
How you can get involved
and help our troubled
Kittiwake and other seabirds
Welsh wonders
There’s no place quite like
home, says Ruth Miller
Grasshopper
Warbler
Dominic Couzens
studies the
personality of this
elusive species
24 62
FREE
MAGAZINE
4 May 2018

COVER STORY l COVER STORY l COVER STORY l
BEYOND BIRDWATCHING
James Lowen explains
the sort of wildlife you
can expect to enjoy in
May, on page 12
42
WIN CANON
BINOCULARS
WORTH £1,299
SEE PAGE 23
6
In The Field
37
45
58
Your Birding Month
Birds to find this month
include Red-rumped Swallow,
Cirl Bunting and Crested Tit!
ID Challenge
How well do you think you
know your spring waders?
See if you can identify the
six featured here...
Go Birding
Ten great birding walks
for you to try
Q&A
Your birding questions
answered and mystery
photos identified
News & Views
14
16
17
56
98
Weedon’s World
The birds were great, but the
mammals were better, on
Mike’s trip to Spain
News Wire
How tree felling in Sheffield
has a huge impact on our
birds and other wildlife
Grumpy Old Birder
Bo Beolens likes nothing
more than a drawing by
hand when identifying birds
Your View
The best of the month’s
readers’ photos and letters
– will yours be there?
Back Chat
Garden BirdWatch organiser
Kate Risely answers our
monthly birding questions
Travel
68
74
Panama
On David Chandler’s visit he
saw the amazing Harpy Eagle
and much more
Urban birding
David Lindo reveals all
there is to know about
birdwatching in Santiago
FREE INSIDE:
16-PAGE
GUIDE
WIN AMAZING
SWAROVSKI
BINOCULARS
WORTH £900
Birding Gear
76
78
79
Gear Reviews
Optical expert David
Chandler puts a new pair of
Avians through their paces
Books
A selection of the latest
releases, including Our Place
by Mark Cocker
Wish List
Birding-related goodies this
month include a butterfly
oasis and clothing
Bird Sightings
81
84
Rarity Round-up
The best rare birds seen
in the UK and Ireland
throughout February
UK Bird Sightings
A comprehensive round-up
of birds seen in your area
during February
57%
SAVE UP TO
WHEN YOU
SUBSCRIBE
SEE PAGE 18
birdwatching.co.uk 5

CHALLENGE
#MY200BIRDYEAR
Lev birding as a child...
... and as an adult
A rekindled passion
I
blame the Canada Geese. Not the
most glamorous birds to trigger a
renewed interest in birdwatching
after a 35-year hiatus, I grant you.
But if I’ve learned anything in the
two-and-a-bit years since those
hulking squawkers flew low over my
head that morning – and I mean grazingmy-bald-patch-with-their-wingtips
low
– it’s to seek beauty in even the most
mundane spectacles.
And as any London-based birder will
attest, there are few things more
mundane than the Canada Goose.
It was January 2016 and, as is the way
of things, I’d made New Year’s
resolutions. I hadn’t called them
‘resolutions’, of course – I find they’re
much easier to break that way.
But I was absolutely clear in my head
that, halfway through my 51st year, I
needed to shake things up, particularly
in the fitness department. I was eating
and drinking less; I’d enrolled in a yoga
class; I’d taken to long walks, saying
hello to grass and clouds and trees.
Middle age was upon me.
It was on one such walk that the
Canada Geese happened. Not in their
usual way, pestering for food, fouling the
pathways and generally making a
nuisance of themselves. These birds,
eight of them, were organising
themselves for take-off from the lake
in Dulwich Park near my home in south
London, calling to each other in fervid
It was a case of 0-200 birds in 35 years for one man
whose interest in birdwatching dipped but was then
renewed by a birding challenge
Words: Lev Parikian
excitement, a frenzy of organised chaos,
coming together at the last second as the
final goose slotted into place. They
churned the water and the air, sending
a Moorhen scuttling for cover. And then
they were coming at me, wings straining,
wafting displaced air over my head, a
reminder of the weight and difficulty of
flight – thrilling and unignorable.
From such everyday moments are
obsessions rekindled. My 12-year-old self
resurfaced briefly, sidled up behind me
Dulwich Park
and grabbed hold, never to let go.
“Remember this? It’s time again”.
It’s not difficult to explain why I got
back into birding after 35 years away –
least of all to readers of a magazine
devoted to that magnificent pastime.
Harder is to explain where I’d been all
that time. What was I playing at, not
taking advantage of the best free
entertainment available to mankind?
I’m still not sure how and why the
passion dissipated, but somewhere
Chris Lewington/Alamy*
20 May 2018

It’s not that birds were completely absent from my life
between the ages of 15 and 50, more that they were in the
deep background, like extras in a crowd scene
between binocular-toting, tick-obsessed
12-year-old and grunting indolent
teenager the spark went out, apparently
never to be rekindled.
It’s not that birds were completely
absent from my life between the ages of
15 and 50, more that they were in the
deep background, like extras in a crowd
scene. I’d notice when the Swifts returned
– it’s difficult not to – but only with a
careless “Oh, OK the Swifts are back.
Jolly good”. And when a Wren flew
through the open window of our kitchen
a few years ago and perched on the
sideboard, it caused a flutter and a
stirring in my heart. Of course it did. But
some tedious unimaginative part of me
would tamp down any hint of
enthusiasm, as if to say “You’re too busy
for such fripperies”. Idiot.
Had I really seen a redstart?
Now, enthused by the geese, I leafed
through old bird books, wallowing in the
memories. But as I did so, a nagging
thought tugged at the back of my mind.
I seemed to have ticked a lot of birds I
now had no recollection of having seen.
Quail, Woodcock, Black Grouse. Really?
Jack Snipe, Black Redstart, Marsh
Harrier. Uh huh. I remembered enough to
know that seeing a Marsh Harrier in
Britain in the 1970s would have been
unlikely, to say the least. And where
exactly had I seen a Black Redstart? I
would have remembered that, for sure.
I was left with the conclusion
that as a 12-year-old I was a
great big liar, liar, pants on fire.
This emphatically would not do.
I like a project; and as a cricket fan I’ve
always liked a list. Here was my chance
to atone for my childhood sins.
I would go out and see as many birds
as I could, and I would be scrupulously
honest about it. I set about making
myself a target for the year. How many
could I see? 150? 200? 300?
If only I’d known about Bird Watching
magazine at that stage, it would all have
been much simpler. No coincidence,
though, that I independently settled on a
target of 200 birds for the year. It’s a fine
target for a beginner – just hard enough
to be a challenge, to get you out and
about and thinking of ways to find them,
but not so ridiculously daunting that you
give up halfway through.
I took baby steps. First the garden,
then the local parks, then the WWT
reserve at Barnes. This will perhaps
explain how my total by the end of March
remained a paltry 40. A trip to Minsmere
in Suffolk in April was a giant leap, both
in numbers and confidence.
Then I cast the net wider: Dungeness,
Portland, Lakenheath and beyond. And
the more I went out, the more I learned,
the more I realised how much there was
to learn, and the more I got a handle on
where and when I’d be able to push my
total towards the mythical 200.
There were disasters. Of course there
were. We don’t talk about the rainy day
in Ashdown Forest in June; and the mere
mention of a Short-eared Owl can still
make me shudder. But as the year wore
on, I realised that it wasn’t about the
target. Not really. I’d taken my exercise,
broadened my horizons, changed my
view of the world, and spent some actual
quality family time to boot. And did I
make it to 200? Well, maybe it was about
the target after all, just a little bit – you’ll
have to buy the book to find out.
Lev’s book, Why Do Birds Suddenly
Disappear?, is out 17 May, from
Unbound. Follow him on Twitter:
@LevParikian
WILDLIFE GmbH/Alamy
birdwatching.co.uk 21

SPECIES
SWIFT
SENSATIONAL
SWIFTS
SPECIES
FACTFILE
SWIFT
Scientific Name: Apus apus
Length: 17-18.5cm
Wingspan: 40-44cm
UK numbers: 87,000 breeding pairs
Food: Flying insects,
airborne spiders
24 May 2018

Which bird immediately springs to mind when you think of the
‘ultimate flying machine’? How could it be any other than the Swift?
asks Ian Parsons
Mateusz Ściborski/Alamy
birdwatching.co.uk 25

SPECIES
SWIFT
There are many people that
refer to the Peregrine as the
ultimate flying machine, but
I am not one of them. For me,
that moniker can only belong
to the Swift. After all, Peregrines spend
much of their time not actually flying,
while the Swift spends all of its time
flying; eating, sleeping, drinking and
even mating on the wing. If it wasn’t for
egg laying and incubation, the Swift
would probably never, ever, touch down.
I suspect that for many of us, the Swift
is high up on our favourites list; a
screaming party dashing at breakneck
speed around the rooftops is a summer
sight and sound that is hard to beat. Yet
for all its popularity, the Swift is a bird
that only visits us for a short time every
year, arriving at the end of April and
departing again during August – they
hardly spend a hundred days with us.
Their stay is indeed brief, but then again,
as their name suggests, these are birds
that don’t hang around.
Of the 100 or so species of swift
worldwide (taxonomists can never
agree!), the Swift is the only member of
the family that breeds in Britain. This is
a statement that often confuses nonbirders,
who presume that the similarlooking
martins and swallows must be
closely related to the swifts. They aren’t
of course, but it is easy to see why people
may think so, as they do share a basic
body shape and fly in a superficially
similar way. However, martins and
swallows, collectively known as the
When helpless,
flightless babies, the
nestling Swifts spend
more time ‘on land’
than during the rest
of their lives
OLD NAMES:
Screecher, Screamer,
Devil’s Screecher,
Whip, Hawk
Swallow
hirundines, are passerines (or perching
birds), and Swifts are most definitely not
perching birds! The scientific name for
the swift family is Apodidae, taken from
the Latin meaning no feet. Now, swifts
do have feet of course, but they are
proportionally very small and very weak,
pretty useless in fact, and they certainly
couldn’t perch if they tried! Swifts are
actually closely related to the
hummingbirds, a group of birds that are
also flight specialists.
The Swift is the most aerial of our
breeding birds – put simply, its habitat is
the sky. No other British bird spends as
much time on the wing as the Swift and
they certainly rack up the miles. It is
estimated that a Swift will comfortably
fly 125,000 miles a year!
And what flyers they are; spend time
watching Swifts in flight and you will be
WildPictures/Alamy
awed. Agility, grace and speed are
combined into perfection as the birds
completely outfly anything else in the
air. Try following them through
binoculars and you will soon appreciate
why they are called Swift, their speed
and their ability to make sudden
changes of direction will soon cause
you to lose them or, as once
happened on one of my tours,
cause you to swing violently round
and hit the birdwatcher next to you in
the face with your bins.
Feeding in flight
Swifts are invertebrate feeders, catching
a wide range of insects and spiders in
flight; they use their mastery of the sky
to hunt above all habitats, from cities
through to moorland and even over
open ocean. They are excellent readers of
the weather and use this to their
advantage when feeding.
Approaching weather fronts can force
flying invertebrates into swarms, which
are then driven upwards by air currents
to heights of a kilometre or more. This
concentration of food is irresistible to
Swifts, who readily exploit it, often flying
some distance to do so. They will also fly
considerable distances to avoid bad
weather; a low-pressure system barrelling
in off the Atlantic can make life for many
birds very difficult – the Swift though
flies around it, sometimes flying 500
miles in one day to do so! This is a great
way to avoid bad weather, but Swift
chicks, land-locked in their nest cavities
can’t do this, so how do they cope when
their parents are away?
If you look through a bird book you
will often find the length of time a bird
takes from hatching to fledging. For a
Blackbird for example, it is given as
14-16 days and for a Swallow it is 20-22
days. There is always a bit of variation in
the exact number of days taken, but it is
normally just one or two. However, for
a Swift it is 37-56 days and that is a
variation of 19 days!
For most birds, chicks will soon die if
the parents are unable to feed them
26 May 2018

Dark all over, apart
from a pale throat,
the long-winged
Swift is much larger
than a hirundine
David Tipling Photo Library/Alamy
Try following them through binoculars and you will soon
appreciate why they are called Swift, their speed and their
ability to make sudden changes of direction will soon cause
you to lose them...
A Swift uses its tiny
bill to keep its vital
flight feathers in
tip-top condition
Nick Upton/Alamy
birdwatching.co.uk 27

SPECIES
SWIFT
One Ghghgh of the ghgh only ghgh times a
Swift ghgh will ghg ‘perch’ hghg ghg is when
it ghghghgh is clinging to a surface
associated with the nest
WINTERS:
Southern half
of Africa
regularly. If a Blackbird stopped feeding
its brood because of bad weather, then
that brood would soon perish, but when
a Swift flies off to avoid bad weather the
chicks don’t die. Instead, they do
something that you don’t normally
associate with a Swift – they slow down.
Chicks’ survival strategy
Swift chicks are able to slow down their
metabolism and enter an almost torpid
state. Only the basic body functions
continue and the young chicks are able to
fuel these processes using stored fat, but
the high-energy demanding processes
such as growth and feather development
are slowed right down. Once the weather
improves and the adults return, the
chick’s metabolism kicks back into gear
and they can continue to develop as
normal, albeit a few days behind where
they should be. This is an unusual
adaptation, but it is one that is very
useful in a British summer!
Once the chicks fledge they might not
land again for three years. Three years of
continuous flight – remarkable when you
think of it, but for the Swift it is perfectly
normal and means that when a female
lays her first brood she has probably been
flying non-stop for more than 300,000
miles (by contrast the moon is ‘just’
239,000 miles away!).
Everything they do is aerial. They
drink by skimming the surface of bodies
of water as they fly over them or by
catching raindrops mid-air, they mate
while flying and even sleep on the wing.
This isn’t as potentially dangerous as it
sounds, for the Swift doesn’t sleep like
we do. It sleeps by shutting down one
half of its brain at a time, allowing the
bird to function normally while still
getting the rest that it needs.
A perfect adaptation for a bird that
spends so much of its life on the wing.
The Swift might not be with us for that
long every year, but it is a definite
favourite and one that we should all
enjoy. It is an extreme bird, perfectly
honed for an aerial life – the ultimate
flying machine.
SWIFT EVENTS
FLPA/Alamy*
Dozens of events will be held up and
down the country to mark Swift
Awareness Week, taking place between
16 and 23 June.
Organiser Nick Brown said: “Various
local Swift groups have responded
excellently by agreeing to arrange almost
50 events spread from Scotland to North
Wales, Cumbria to Essex.”
For details of the week visit http://bit.
ly/2HIJ4Zd and for the list of events, visit
http://bit.ly/2GGHvLS
28 May 2018

A typical nest cavity
in a house!
The Swift may be the only breeding swift
in the UK, but we are also occasionally
joined by other species:
l Alpine Swift – a scarce but regular
annual visitor.
Nature Picture Library/Alamy*
l Pallid Swift – very scarce
(but easily confused with Swift, so
perhaps under recorded?) but
almost annual visitor.
Buiten-Beeld/Alamy*
l Little Swift – an accidental vagrant,
but a bird that is now breeding in
southern Europe and in expansion,
expect more records!
FLPA/Alamy*
EUROPEAN
POPULATION:
Up to 12
million pairs
blickwinkel/Alamy
l Pacific Swift – a very rare accidental
vagrant from Asia.
Bill Coster Z/Alamy*
BW
birdwatching.co.uk 29

NEW PRODUCTS & GREAT SAVINGS
FOR ALL YOUR BIRDING NEEDS
GEARREVIEWS
Photography: Tom Bailey
Avian EVO 8x42 HR-ED
A GREAT BINOCULAR AT A HARD-TO-BEAT PRICE
REVIEWED BY DAVID CHANDLER
Ace Optics are based in Bath
– you may well have noticed
their ads. The Avian brand is
theirs, and the EVO HR-EDs
are their top-end products. There are
two of them – an 8x42 and a 10x42. The
prices are reasonable, but just how good
are they? I spent some time with the
8x to find out.
Looking at…
This is an open-bridge binocular with
no thumb indents. It feels good in the
hands, with my two smallest fingers on
each hand slotting into the open-bridge,
leaving my first and middle fingers free
to focus. Focus precision is very good,
with a 1.5 finger-wide wheel moving
smoothly against a nice amount of
resistance. There is quite a lot of focus
wheel travel – two full turns anticlockwise
towards infinity, but for
regular birding you won’t need to move
FACTFILE
Eye relief: 19mm
Field of view:
7.0°/122m@1,000m
Close focus: c3m
Weight: 700g
Size: 146x130x53mm
RRP: £449
Warranty: 10 years
Supplied with: case;
strap; tethered,
removable objective
covers; rainguard
Website:
aceoptics.co.uk
it more than about half a turn.
Dioptre adjustment is via a pull-up
wheel. I found it a bit ‘plasticy’ but it
does the job. The rubber-coated eyecups
twist up and down with one intermediate
position. I used them fully up and they
stayed in place. At 700g it is not a heavy
binocular, and certainly didn’t feel
overweight in the field. Overall, build
quality is good, and the EVO HR-ED is
rubber-armoured and waterproof, with
water-repellent lens coating.
76 May 2018

Looking through…
The image is crisp, clean, very sharp
and very bright, showing good Fieldfare
speckling detail on an Ash tree loaded
with winter thrushes – and that was
through the car windscreen! I did see
some edge softness when I scanned, but
on a settled view there was perhaps just
a smidgeon, which, in real
world use you’re unlikely to
notice. Colour-fringing seems
well managed, with no sign
of it on Rooks and gulls
against a clear, fading
January sky – the ED glass
seems to be doing its job. The
EVO coped well with
extraneous light, and
performed very well against
the light. Low light performance was
good, with the glass pulling detail out
of close shadows 10 minutes after sunset
on an overcast day.
There is much that is very good about
this binocular. But there are things
that could be a bit better. The
field of view is narrower than
some, but you get used to a
binocular, and I didn’t find it
a problem. At three metres,
the quoted close-focus is
unremarkable, but for me, three
metres is a lie! I measured it at
just under 2.4 metres, still not
RATINGS remarkable, but better.
OPTICS êêêêê I liked the snug, leather-look
HANDLING êêêêê
case, but sometimes
struggled with the rainguard
PRICE êêêêê – it was too hard to get off,
OVERALL êêêêê and stopped me clinching
NB: Price rating reflects value for
money against others in its class
a probable flyover Goosander,
which would have been new
for #My200BirdYear. But the
EVO did help me boost the list – I saw
a local Scaup with them, not bad for
Cambridgeshire.
Verdict
The blurb says “unbeatable value without compromising performance” and it’s
not a bad description. If you don’t need more close-focus, and are OK with the
field of view, then the optical performance, and handling, are hard to criticise
at this price. The EVO 8x42 HR-ED is a very good binocular.
MINDSHIFT ROTATION
180 PANORAMA
BACKPACK, £161.25
REVIEWED BY DAVID CHANDLER Most
people would acknowledge that a backpack is the
most comfortable way of carrying your gear. The
problem is getting at that gear.
The Rotation 180 series is “backpack access
reinvented”… where you can get at some of your
stuff without taking the bag off your back…
The Panorama is a beltpack that sits in a
backpack, and can be pulled round to the front to
access its contents - to take a picture, check the
field guide, eat some food, or whatever. It works,
and I liked it.
You just push the magnetic ‘Fidlock’ down,
which releases a covering flap, grab a handle and
pull it round. It doesn’t take long to get the hang
of the Fidlock, even by feel.
The beltpack lid opens away from you and the
inner has a space for a small tablet, and two
moveable padded inserts. Sometimes the flap
got in the way when I was trying to return the
beltpack, but it’s not a major issue.
The Panorama is well made and comfortable
to carry, with well-padded straps, belt and back.
The upper part takes more gear, and there’s a
decent-sized lid pocket, a pocket for a two-litre
hydration pack, another that’s good for a water
bottle, and a strap and ‘foot pocket’ for lashing
a tripod on. Accessories include a tripod
suspension kit (£38.50) – which gives you access
to your tripod without taking the pack off
(see photo), and, to carry more camera gear, a
custom-made padded photo insert (£36.50) for
the upper compartment.
There’s also a lens switch case (£34.25) which
attaches to the belt (the rotation still works), an
SD card wallet (‘SD Card-Again - £13.25) and
a ‘contact sheet’ (£32.26) to keep you dry and
clean if you sit or lie on the ground.
At 1.3kg the Panorama is not heavy. The
rotation feature means it isn’t as capacious as it
looks but it swallows 22 litres of gear (5.4 in the
beltpack). If you need more space, check out the
other bags in the range. The Panorama is not
cheap, but the beltpack can be used separately so
you get two bags for the price of one. If this bag
ticks your boxes, you won’t regret your purchase.
For this and other backpacking products,
visit: snapperstuff.com/products/r180-
backpacks/name/asc
birdwatching.co.uk 77