Hel Hath No Birdies

The recent publication from Richard Dawkins and some activity on books on birding Twitter got me thinking about the books that make a birder ,and in particular, this birder. I started out with truly awful books. Dusty, faded things, accumulated by my dad over decades of casual second hand browsing. Observer's book of birds. Heritage trust guides (individual guides, split by habitat, woodland, farmland, seaside etc). Various birds of the world type titles. Most of very little use, generally British and generally lacking information.  It's because of books like this I walked the dunes at curracloe thinking I might find a Red-Backed Shrike, or through the Raven looking for breeding Hobby. Awful books. As I began to advance, this changed, and one of the first books to really alter and inform my view of birds and birding was Lars Jonsson's birds of Europe. There's been many covers over the years, but that Eagle Owl still gets me every time. This book exposed me to a wider wo...

June is always a good month for rarities in Finland, combined with the last of the breeders arriving, such as Blyth's Reed Warbler, Marsh Warbler and River Warbler. On Sunday I made an early morning trip to Suomenoja to look for nightsingers.  Straight out of the car, a River Warbler burst into it's sewing machine song right by the car park. The bird was quite mobile, but with a bit of patience the bird eventually showed itself, giving excellent albeit brief views. River Warbler - these are the scarcest of the regularly breeding nightsingers (if that makes sense). Savi's warbler is rarer (though expected to colonize) and Lanceolated Warbler (if it ever does manage to breed) is obviously pretty mega.  River Warbler - just as I switched to video he decided to stop singing. Typical. The current estimates for River Warbler is somewhere between 1000 and 2000 pairs, but these are quite spread out and random. It's not often you get River Warbler in the same location 2 years ru...