ZooChat Big Year 2020

Bunyip State Park. We went there tonight as it is the closest place to home where I thought we might see both greater and yellow-bellied gliders. Heard yellow-bellies but no luck otherwise. A good place for mammals, other than macropods also saw a sambar deer.

Mammals

38. Bare-nosed wombat Vombatus ursinus
39. Sugar glider Petaurus breviceps

Birds
308. Pied currawong Strepera graculina
309. Scarlet robin Petroica boodang

Strange coincidence with the numbers.

 

This ended up being a misidentified small dusty wave, so I'll continue listing from #67. The new #67 is called "Common corona moth" in Dutch, which is coincidental!

INVERTS:
67) Elderberry pearl, Anania coronata
68) Inlaid grass-veneer, Crambus pascuella

 

First time birding at my local spot since the end of lockdown and I truly had a fantastic session after a rather slow start, embodied by my third Bonelli's eagle there in three straight years, an early tern and finally a lark lifer!

113 - Bar-tailed godwit, Limosa lapponica
114 - Bonelli's eagle, Aquila fasciata
115 - Common tern, Sterna hirundo
116 - Greater short-toed lark, Calandrella brachydactyla
117 - Barbary partridge, Alectoris barbara

 

Thanks. I'll have a look at that website.
It's a family trip so I probably won't be able to do too much but maybe I can convince everyone to have a go at them Eagle Owls. Is it fairly obvious where to find them at that location?

 

I've seen them there twice now, both times from an observation 'wall' which should be fairly straightforward to find (the observation point is labelled "Oehoe Vallei" on google maps, and has a rather prominent wooden eagle-owl statue in real life). From that point you look into the quarry, and the owls should be against one of the quarry walls, usually on the western wall which would be on your right. It can be quite difficult to see them with just binoculars though, and I dragged my telescope all the way up the hill last time I was there to get better views. There is a mounted telescope there as well, but like mounted public telescopes everywhere I don't know to what degree it still works.

 

Went for a walk around sunset and found a little nature preserve area I never knew existed. Saw a good few birds, most I already had but was able to add two more:

54) Great Crested Flycatcher Myiarchus crinitus
55) Chipping Sparrow Spizella passerina

~Thylo

 

Mammals:

1. White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

Birds:

5. Red-Tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)

 

Fish
8. Round Goby Neogobius melanostomus

 

A fairly late individual of this increasingly regular, but ever difficult to connect with vagrant showed uncharacteristically well, and was my first ever in Belgium!

BIRDS:
214) Eurasian thick-knee, Burhinus oedicnemus

 

Birds
220. Acadian Flycatcher Empidonax virescens
221. Hooded Warbler Setophaga citrina

 

A new butterfly today at Twycross and a couple of birdy stops on the way home - Willington Gravel Pits for a summery duck and Alvaston Park for Britain's only wild (albeit naturalised) parrot.

Birds:
176. Garganey - Spatula querquedula
177. Ring-necked Parakeet - Psittacula krameri

Invertebrates:
46. Ringlet - Aphantopus hyperantus

 

Research failure on my part, this would be a brown morph of the roof rat Rattus rattus since Norway rats are only found on the coast and on islands.

 

Willington's just down the road from me and I didn't know there were gravel pits there (in my mind I only think about a couple of good pubs and the monstrous, remnant, cooling towers).

Alvaston Park's less than three miles as the crow flies and I had no idea there were parakeets there (though I saw one in my garden once and assumed it was a, more local, escaped pet -now I'm wondering). Is this a known colony of birds there, just a one off or just a nice surprise for you?

 

It's a former-gravel-pit-turned-nature-reserve situation: Willington Wetlands | Derbyshire Wildlife Trust

It's also the proposed site for the first soft release of beavers in Derbyshire; the Wildlife Trust was fundraising for this before lockdown with the plan for it to happen this year (not sure how it's been affected by... *gestures vaguely at whole world*).

Good site for egrets, terns etc as well as bittern and waterfowl. It's also where I saw the biggest starling murmuration I have ever seen.

No, I went there on information received.

There's a colony of at least a dozen birds there, mostly reported from the area around the lake/tennis courts - only took me 10 minutes or so to find some of them yesterday.

Not sure if they're breeding at this site yet. By far the furthest north I've encountered them.

 

Brachter Wald

Birds
103. Sand Martin (Riparia riparia)
104. Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus)

Anyone know if the Fallow Deer there are countable?

 

Many thanks for this clarification, whilst not a birder I really don't have any excuse for not going to check out these places now. Who knew such wonders were on my doorstep?

 

Yeah, get out there! South Derbyshire actually has quite a lot to offer in terms of wildlife, perhaps counter-intuitively as the north of the county is notionally 'wilder'.

 

22/6/2020
127. Little Raven

 

Just to update myself, for anyone interested, Derbyshire Wildlife Trust posted on their social media yesterday that they'd secured the funding needed for phase one (construction of the beaver-proof fence) and are now fundraising for the actual costs of transporting, health-checking etc the beavers. So the project progresses well enough.