Hertfordshire News, Comment and Bulletin articles
This month
Falcon smuggler becomes legal first
New address for county recorder
Comings and goings on the BBRC list
Birding Beyond Hertfordshire - Egypt
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Recently the Ecuadorian government, mainly in partnership with ARCO (an American Company), agreed to begin the construction of another trans-Andean oil pipeline. This new pipeline would begin its route near the town of Puyo, Ecuador, and continue north cutting through Tena, up and over the Huacamayos Ridge, pass by Cosanga until then connecting near Baeza with the already existing trans-Andean pipeline that connects Lago Agrio (in the Amazon basin) to the Pacific coast near Esmeraldas.
Road construction companies have been hired by the oil companies involved to pave the way for the laying of the pipeline. While the road itself is to be kept to only to about a 3-4 meter width, the base layer of paved roads build in Ecuador is logs. Property owners with considerable stands of forest near the pipeline route are being approached by the road construction companies to sell off their trees and saplings for the road preparation. This process involves the uprooting of the trees in order to put them down side-by-side so that asphalt can then be placed on top. This process will result in the absolute destruction of the forest. The heavy disturbance to the thin top soil layer and the destruction of the root base will make it almost impossible for the forests to regenerate. What will follow will be increased erosion, including landslides, that will pollute the river systems. This is involving thousands of acres of primary growth wet tropical rainforest not to mention the detrimental effects of fragmenting the forest.
A group of Ecuadorians and Americans are trying to preserve a small piece of forest that connects two large preserves. The pipeline will not pass through that area, but the owner has been offered about $65,000 for the trees. This is akin to winning the lottery. The group of people involved are trying to raise enough money to buy the land. If successful, the land will be purchased by the Population Biology Foundation, a non-profit organization. The hope is to raise $70,000 to buy about 700 hectares. This is roughly $44 per acre.
The east slope is the winter home of several North American birds, including Blackburnian Warbler (common), Canada Warbler (fairly common), Summer Tanager (common), Olive-sided Flycatcher (uncommon), Broad-winged Hawk (common), Barn Swallow (transient), Swainson's Thrush (fairly common).
And equally important it is the home to three fairly rare birds, the Black-billed Mountain-Toucan, Bicolored Antvireo and White-capped Tanager. I have visited the forest that is in danger from this action. It is a magnificent area and one I hope can be protected.
Below is a letter from the Foundation outlining what is happening. Please consider supporting the cause or at least writing ARCO to voice your concerns about an American company causing an ecological catastrophe that would never be allowed in the United States. In searching the ARCO web pages, I was unable to find an email address, but their physical address and phone are:
ARCO Chemical Company
3801 West Chester Pike
Newtown Square, PA 19073-2387, USA
Tel: 610.359.2000
Fax: 610.359.2722
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. The contact information for the Population Biology Foundation is listed below. Thank you for taking the time to read this post.
Mark Lockwood
Austin, Texas
Falcon smuggler becomes legal first
A Dutchman who tried to buy 16 peregrine falcons to smuggle out of Scotland has been fined £2,000. Wilhelmus Enzlin, 53, also had his car impounded and £4,000 in cash seized. Enzlin was arrested in a complex covert international police operation involving Scottish and Dutch specialists in wildlife crime. His was the first prosecution to be brought in Scotland under new legislation controlling the trade in endangered species.
Enzlin had pleaded guilty to trying to buy the falcons at an address in Brora, and at Aviemore between February and May last year. At Inverness Sheriff Court, the Crown deserted proceedings against two other accused.
RSPB Senior Investigations Officer David Dick said: "Every year peregrine nests in Scotland are robbed of eggs and young to supply the illegal falconry trade. A successful prosecution is an important deterrent to those involved and a tremendous boost for the many people who protect peregrine sites throughout Scotland. It should be remembered that peregrines are still uncommon birds internationally and although they have recovered from pesticide poisoning in most parts of Scotland, they are actually declining in some areas." [From BBC News]
New address for County Recorder
Rob Young, the Bird Recorder for Hertfordshire, has recently moved. His new address is 37 Barkers Way, Stokenchurch, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, HP14 3RD and all correspondence should now be sent to him there. Sounds like a long bike ride to Tring Reservoirs, Rob!
British Birds Rarities Committee news
The following items are taken from press releases issued by the British Birds Rarities Committee. These may not all be of imperative importance for Hertfordshire birdwatchers, but we should certainly hone our Ferruginous Duck descriptions, and who knows about the other species?
New species to be considered by BBRC
It has always been the policy of the BBRC that the list of species they consider is not unchangeable. Species that have become more common are taken off the list but species can also be re-admitted if suitable circumstances arise. The development of the scarce migrant database of the United Kingdom and Ireland by Peter Fraser has allowed us to monitor fringe species in a more organised way.
Dave Britton (Peter Fraser's predecessor as BBRC statistician) established criteria for removal of species from the list. When a species has occurred in nine out of the previous ten years and with a mean of greater than 15 birds per year BBRC considers it for removal from the list. Whether this occurs is also depends on whether it is felt that identification criteria have been sufficiently well established amongst the county panels. There is of course no reason why the reverse process should not happen and consequently records of Savi's Warbler Locustella luscinioides and Ferruginous Duck Aythya nyroca will be considered from 1999. Savi's Warbler is becoming an increasingly rare bird and singing birds are no longer turning up at the one or two traditional localities in Southern Britain. This pattern contrasts with the recent upsurge of spring records of River Warbler Locustella fluviatilis.
Ferruginous Duck has never been considered by the BBRC because of the perception that large numbers of feral birds (in the manner of Red-crested Pochard Netta rufina) might be occurring. However the database has shown the species to be very uncommon, and this, combined with identification problems of hybrids, suggested that it would be a worthwhile exercise to determine once and for all the species' status in the Britain. The importance of monitoring their occurrence in Britain is increased by the fact that both species are threatened in their normal range by habitat loss Please continue to send all records of rare birds to your local county recorder who will forward them appropriately. Records of singing Savi's Warbler may also be sent to the Rare Breeding Birds Panel who are used to dealing confidentially with such records.
White-tailed Eagles to come off rarities list Success of the release scheme snookers rarity assessment
Following information provided by the RSPB, BBRC decided, at the last AGM, to stop considering White-tailed Eagles from 1st January 1999. In the last few years there have been at least 34 eagles fledged in Scotland which have not been wing-tagged and this number represents a fair proportion of the successful fledgings.
Recent research from Norway, however, has shown that immature White-tailed Eagles wander a lot further than was originally thought. We appreciate that this decision is going to be a disappointment to many birders but we feel it is an inevitable consequence of the success of the release scheme. It has been shown that Scottish birds have wandered as far as south as Glasgow and Perthshire, north to Shetland and east as Deeside with one even reaching Norway! So far, there has never been a reliable sighting of a wing-tagged bird in England or Ireland although one of the colour-ringed Rhum birds was found in England.
This has led to the situation where birds in Shetland, where genuine vagrants from the increasing populations in Scandinavia are likely to occur, are regarded as 'from the re-introduction scheme'. Similar birds in England and Wales do not suffer this reaction, even though we know wing-tagged birds are capable of wandering much further than this from their natal area.
As the numbers of non wing-tagged Scottish birds has increased the problem of establishing the origins of many birds has also increased to a point where BBRC now considers it a fruitless exercise to attempt to differentiate genuine vagrants from re-introduced birds White-tailed Eagle is an amazing bird to find and, undoubtedly, genuine vagrants do occur and although we appreciate that this decision may disappoint many birders we feel that this is an inevitable consequence of the success of the re-introduction scheme.
Out goes Kumlien's Gull - BBRC will not consider records from 1st Jan 1999
Following the summer meeting of the BBRC at Portland we have decided that we will no longer consider records of Kumlien's Gull Larus glaucoides kumlieni from 1st January 1999.
BBRC feels that there are a number of problems with this form.
1. Since the recent interest in the identification of this subspecies it seems that Kumlien's is best considered a scarce winter visitor.
2. The range of plumage variation is such that it is difficult to establish clear divisions between nominate Iceland Gull and Kumlien's Gull particularly in 1st year plumages.
3. Whilst a number can be safely identified, this isn't true for many as we know that birds indistinguishable in the field from nominate both breed and winter in areas where only Kumlien's Gull is meant to occur. In Britain we are therefore limiting ourselves to identifying only a proportion of the extralimitlal visitors.
4. Because of the problems of identification, the lack of clarity as to which birds are Kumlien's, the shifting nature of their taxonomic status and the change in status in Britain which may represent a change in occurrence but is more likely to reflect a change in observer behaviour we feel that the process of record assessment is not achieving anything scientifically.
5. BBRC would encourage observers to continue to submit records of those individuals resembling Thayer's Gull L. thayeri as these will help in the assessment of future claims of Thayer's Gulls.
Colin Bradshaw, Chairman, British Birds Rarities Committee
When I was a somewhat younger birdwatcher than I am now, I read an article in the 1957 edition of the BBC Naturalist, by Field Marshall Lord Allenbrooke, about a piece of wader behaviour. At Hilbre Island, Cheshire he had noticed a number of waders with one leg hopping about. He first thought these were casualties but soon realised the birds were keeping one foot warm and dry within their body feathers.
I had cause to remember this as Steve Murray and I watched the gulls coming in to roost at Hilfield Park Reservoir one evening in early November. The weather was cool and quite calm and as the Black-headed and Common Gulls came in towards us to land on the water I could see that a fair proportion of them were only putting out one leg to use as an air brake. Presumably they only needed one foot to keep their position on the water in the light breeze and felt one warm and dry foot for the night was a benefit.
Jack Fearnside
BWP on CD-ROM - all you could want, and more?
Birds of the Western Palearctic, S Cramp, et al, published in 1998 by the Oxford University Press, price 233.83.
Before starting, it is worth saying that the brand new three-CD version of Birds of the Western Palearctic is BIG. Not only does it contain all of the text of each of the original BWP volumes, it also contains the new Concise BWP AND photographs and videos. Hereby lies the first conflict, the smaller compact publication contains much updated text. You should read both entries before working out what the latest situation is. For example BWP stated that there was a population of Lady Amherst's Pheasant in Hertfordshire, whereas the concise edition mentions that the Bedfordshire population is decreasing and retreating from surrounding areas.
It is perhaps not surprising that it requires a fair amount of computer power to get it up and running. For those so inclined (and you have to at least understand it if you want to play) the set really needs a 16Mb Ram Pentium. Disk space requirement is not huge, as long as you are prepared to wait for it to access the CD. To increase access to at least 66% of the birds you can copy the second and third CDs on to your hard drive for a cost of 1160Mb. This is in fact something of a misrepresentation because if all you want to access is the text then all the text for all the species is held on each disk, hence no need to change disks, unless you get tempted by the pretty stuff!
So what do you get for your money? As already mentioned you are not short on material. Fortunately you are also not short of ways to navigate. Species can be accessed by name (for most of us). Alternatively by a taxonomic hierarchy, so if you know that Tawny Owl is classified in 'Wood Owls & Allies' (rather than 'Eagle Owls & Allies') and that those two groups are 'Typical Owls' rather than 'Barn Owls & Allies' (I am assuming that you have looked beneath STRIGIFORMES to start with), well you're laughing.
There is also a text searching facility. So, for example, if you are really self indulgent and want to find out just how many times our august county is mentioned, you can enter HERTFORDSHIRE and get 12 entries (actually the first time I got none but then I mistyped it twice...). For interest these entries include a Dabchick ringed in Denmark, some Kingfisher weights, a Jersey-ringed Cetti's Warbler and the following observation about Rooks (Taken from the BWP on CD-ROM: copyright Oxford University Press): 'In Hertfordshire (England), winter roost sites typically in different woods (younger and denser) from those used for nesting, and roosting birds sought sheltered south side of wood (Brian and Brian 1948).' There are no less than three mentions of our home county under Carrion/Hooded Crow.
Other search facilities allow you to bypass this mass of text and go straight to the plates, maps, sounds, photographs or videos. Of the 454 video clips listed, the quality and use varies tremendously but, to be fair, most clips will give you an idea of the bird's 'jizz', surely one of the most difficult things to do in words and a major reason to include video. The Great Skua video, a wonderful few seconds of action, does not appear in the media index so perhaps there are more missing.
The media index for sound is particularly confusing. It initially appears to list only two warbler songs (River and Hume's) whereas in fact Cetti's Warbler has five different calls/songs represented. Indeed, almost all of the warblers covered have between one and three songs or calls, and very good they are too. In order to see them listed, the filter criteria need to be adjusted but then there is a limit of 500 entries in the list - oh well you can't have everything.
The biggest disadvantage is that there is just so much information to process. The computer screen is never the easiest medium for reading large amounts of text and extended research is always likely to be easier in hard copy. That having been said, to be able to search such as vast library in a few seconds must be a tremendous boon.
The packaging is not exactly what you expect from such a premium product but I guess the pressure to look pretty is less if you don't have to fight for attention on the store shelves.
Should you get it? If you don't have the nine volumes of BWP and want them, probably get the CDs instead. That having been said it is always easier to read large amounts of text, and there are LARGE amounts of it here, from paper rather than a screen. Definitely have a look at it, if you get a chance.
Rob Young
Birding Beyond Hertfordshire - Cornflakes are not just for breakfast!
American club member Tom Coles was fortunate to have left Papua New Guinea just before the disastrous 'El Nino' tidal wave caused such havoc where he used to live. He has taken up a new contract for three-and-a-half years in Egypt, working on a big maternal and child health project in all five of the Upper Egypt Governorates. He has written recently with news of his birding exploits.
I had my first two-day weekend since I arrived. We are supposed to have Fridays and Saturdays off but it never seems to happen although I'm not complaining. I headed off on a birding adventure with friends Mindy and Sherif Baha El Din and Richard Hoath. There were also some people I was meeting for the first time: the new President of the American University of Cairo, John Gearheart, and his non-birding wife Gail joined us. They had lived here before and just returned to Egypt after seven years in South Africa where John was head of the Ford Foundation, but more interesting, Gail edited Nelson Mandela's autobiography. Another new person was Linda Cox who had recently returned to Egypt with her husband (a jazz not birding nut).
We all headed up to the Zaranik Protected Area on the North Sinai coast, 35 kilometers west of El Arish. This was my first trip to North Sinai. Sherif is the conservation advisor for this unique area of salt marshes and pans, mud flats, marine open water and sand dunes covering an area of 230 square kilometers. Over 230 species of bird have been recorded at Zaranik. But the most important thing is that it is one of the few spots on the north coast of Egypt where migrants can make landfall without becoming entangled in Quail nets. This is the only reliable place to find the migrating, endangered Corncrake. I had only seen one before, in northern Germany, and it would be a life bird for Richard, John and Linda as well as an Egyptian record for me.
Richard, John and Gail were in one Jeep Cherokee and the rest of us were in Sherif's 4WD. Richard had arrived ahead of us and had already been to the wetland area and back, but we decided to have a look for ourselves. Sherif had mentioned that although there usually are no nets in this area (they are illegally set up and have to be removed, as was the case with one net we found) the power lines can be a problem. No sooner had he said this then I spotted a dead Corncrake under the power lines.
It had been there a while and its already narrow body was now as flat as a pancake due to natural mummification. I said to Sherif, Mindy and Linda. 'It looks more like a Corn Flake than a Corncrake!' Well, Mindy was laughing so hard she couldn't catch her breath and I thought I would have to do CPR on her.
We looked at the Corncrake, I looked at Sherif and he looked at me and we both knew what the other was thinking. So later that evening, back at the guesthouse, I snuck outside and placed our Corn Flake at the edge of a sage bush within viewing distance from the porch. The plan was to see if Richard would discover it the next morning while sipping coffee and go nuts! We returned from a dinner of jumbo shrimp at El Arish around midnight. Sherif had recently discovered a second new lizard species (he named the first one after Mindy) so he, Richard and I decided to go out on a nocturnal reptile hunt. I was particularly keen to find a Desert Viper but we only found geckos although there is a camellia species in this area (we found two the next day).
On the way back to the guesthouse around 2.00am, Sherif and I started manoeuvring Richard in the direction of the Corn Flake. Richard is very observant, but really wasn't looking for Corncrake so finally I had to say, 'Richard! What's that over there?' Richard was riveted! Sherif said, 'It's probably just one of the Bedouin's chickens.' I volunteered to run inside and and get my bins. Richard sat on the ground and studied the thing as only 'scientific Richard' can as Sherif and I kept our flashlights shining on it. I could have pushed Richard over on his side and he wouldn't have flinched, still holding my bins to his eyes.
As Richard described what he was seeing he finally said in a quivering whisper, 'It's a Corncrake!' Sherif said, 'Lets move closer before it runs off.' So we snuck closer and closer until we got so close that Richard realised he had been had. I wasn't quite sure what his reaction would be, but he was a good sport. I would have probably killed both Sherif and Tom. We had a good laugh and decided to have a beer before bed. We sat outside under the porch light watching a little Black Desert Scorpion. The thing moved like one of those remote controlled cars that kids play with as it tried to catch Desert Cockroaches. The cockroaches would escape by shoveling into the sand quicker than one would imagine possible. We decided to sleep out on the porch that night where it was cooler. The mosquitoes ate us alive but the scorpions left us alone, although I did knock my boots against the wall in the morning just to make sure none were sleeping inside.
We were up bright and early and headed down to the wetlands and what is called 'Sherif's Island'. This is where the Corncrakes, Quails and passerine migrants land exhausted after crossing the Mediterranean. I sincerely hoped that Richard would have better Corncrake luck this time. We were fortunate and found three. I was even able to photograph two of them. The following day we headed over to Rafah town and the border area with Gaza (Palestine) and Israel. It was interesting to see the Egypt, Palestine and Israel flags all at one spot. We saw four Syrian Woodpeckers which was a life bird for John, Linda and me, as well as a couple of 'first for Egypt' species, Great Tit and Serin. I saw Palestine Sunbird and met a very knowledgeable gardener who was familiar with their nests and who would collect one for me (after being abandoned) since I like to paint sunbird species, each with their unique nest. Mindy and Sherif gave him one of Sherif's books, Common Birds of Egypt, in Arabic as well as some information on conservation.
The trip back to Cairo was uneventful except I got some great shots of a juvenile Painted Snipe at close range (full frame) at a sewage pond. Boy, the places we will go to see a bird.
Tom Coles