Posts Tagged: Birding

Birding — 3 Comments
13
May 11

Summer Bird Census 2011 – #stg11

Blogging seems to be so old fashioned nowadays – I just saw that the Nabu Germany now also advertises Twitter. To follow the discussion about this year’s summer bird census, called Stunde Der Gartenvögel, you can use the tag #stg11.

This weekend everybody is invited to spend one hour counting (and identifying) birds in the garden or a different place, and report the results back to support scientific long term observations on the biodiversity in our “civilized” environment.

Not much content on Twitter yet, though. So for you here is the result of me counting birds in Munich Alt-Bogenhausen, one of the greener corners of this not-everywhere-so-green city.

I am getting better in identifying birds by their song, therefore my list actually is a little bit longer than last year’s :-)

  1. Blackbird – three. Actually they were everywhere, but you ought to only count those you can see at the same time (they might fly behind your back to the next corner and continue singing there… not probable? Who knows…)
  2. Great Tit – Two. They confused me without end because I actually saw two juvenile first, already big enough for me to think “hey, this is a different type of swamp tit!”. Embarrassing enough, but you don’t see the little ones that often!
  3. Blue Tit – One. Very busy very high up in a tree, no time to loose to collect food for the chicks.
  4. Chaffinch – Three, a complete family with a chick being fed by Mom. And I saw a second lonely chick trying to “climb” a huge tree with a trunk diameter of certainly more than two feet without success. I hope it did not fall from the nest. While I watched, it tried again and again to climb that wall that must have seemed like the Eiger Nordwand from its perspective. But probably it helps if you have two wings, even if they were not flight functional they seemed to provide some stability when beaten fast enough. When I passed by the same tree 20 minutes later again, the little one was gone. I like to think he made it :-)
  5. Great Spotted Woodpecker – One. They are quite common around here, and I got a good and long look at this individual.
  6. Carrion Crow – One. You can’t leave the house without seeing them around here.
  7. European Greenfinch – Two. These had eluded me the prior years, but maybe only by now I have learned to look at the highest tree tops to find them.
  8. Eurasian Collared Dove – One. Beautifully colored bird.
  9. Common Swift – Eight. My current favorite species, I keep watching their aerial maneuvers from my balcony in the evenings :-)
  10. Common Chiffchaff – One. At least, I kept hearing one, I didn’t see it.

Oh, and as usual you can see the online results of the bird census over at the LBV. Will be interesting to see the trends in bird population.

To learn more bird-songs, I bought the – German language only, sorry – book Grundkurs Vogelstimmen: Heimische Vögel an ihren Stimmen erkennen, written by Hans-Heiner Bergmann and Uwe Westphal. Not sure on my success with that book, though, I will report in a later post, so stay tuned and subscribe!

Birding — No Comments
9
Jan 11

Bird Census 2011

The “Stunde der Wintervögel“, you could say “one hour for the winter’s birds”, aims every year to determine the health of the bird population in our country. The mechanism is simple enough – volunteers spend one hour on the 6th of January (conveniently being Epiphany, a public holiday in Bavaria) or the following weekend at one site counting the birds of each species seen during that period.

The result is an overview of the Bavarian bird population, at least of the most commonly seen song birds, giving the nature protecting NGOs like the Landesbund für Vogelschutz in Bayern (LBV) or the Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU) the data they need to act protecting the birds.

And for a birder, there is of course no better excuse to spend that hour birding than for a larger cause :-)

I had participated – and reported here – already in 2009 and 2010, and this time I again chose a different place for my birding – a place at the eastern shore of the famous Starnberger See some 40 km south-west of Munich. So in addition to the song birds in the trees near a winter RV park there, I also hoped to add some water fowl.

And here is the result:

  1. Three Great Tits. At least. Probably ten, but you’re tasked to count only those that you can clearly see concurrently, because the danger of counting the same individuum more than once is just too high. And these as usual gave me a hard time telling them apart.
  2. One Blue Tit. I kept having one in my binoculars over and over again, and again I am sure there were more.
  3. One Long-tailed Tit. Why it was only one I do not know, as they usually come in the dozen, but I was enchanted as I absolutely adore these cuties! Of course, I failed to take a decent photograph (again) – they just never sit still.
  4. A stranger I mistook for an Eurasian Blackcap at first sight – though of course all the Blackcaps have by now found a nice warm place in the southern sun. But I took some photos of my riddle bird (the one shown above is probably the best of these), and of course it is a Marsh Tit (its song made it clear, from the looks it could have been a Willow Tit as well).
  5. Nuthatch. One. I always love seeing these colorful birds.
  6. Treecreeper, short-toed I guess from the habitat. One.
  7. Chaffinch. One, on the ground between the RVs picking up food that fell down from a bird house there.
  8. Carrion Crow. One. It did not seem to enjoy as the other birds did today’s beautiful plus 13° C seemingly announcing spring, but in reality being only Foehn wind turning winter briefly into something, well, muddy, given the amount of snow melting on the meadows.
  9. Two Mute Swans, being fed by the strollers at the lake side.
  10. Six Mallard Ducks, trying to get some of the food as well.
  11. One Blackbird.
  12. One Cormorant, flying high above.
  13. A flock of sixteen or so Black-headed Gulls.
  14. A riddle Gull that swam lonely far out on the lake, as my photos ended up being not sharp enough I could not distinguish between Caspian Gull and Herring Gull. The excellent birding field guide for southern Germany, “Vögel Beobachten in Süddeutschland” by Moning and Wagner mentions both of these being very likely at that spot, so I don’t dare to guess – this bird will go by unreported to the LBV.

Later added (after the official 60 minute counting time was over):

  1. A large flock of Canada Goose. In one sub-flock I counted 13 Canada Goose, and they had a:
  2. Single little Barnacle Goose hiding between them, also flying with them as the Canada Goose took off as one.

All in a very typical result of the most common birds around here, and no big suprises today. But a Long-Tailed Tit :-)

Birding — No Comments
6
Jan 10

Bird Census 2010

Time flies, a year passed by, and it is winter bird census again! Like last year, this is organized by the Bavarian Bird Conservation Society LBV. And they are getting better at it, this year you can even see the online results of the Bavaria-wide census coming in life at their website!

Briefly, how it works: Volunteers count for one hour all birds they observe in a certain area (garden, park, …) on a specified day (January 6) and report their observations. Only the number of birds that are concurrently visible are counted, to avoid counting the same bird more than once. Which can easily happen, and it can get really hard to figure out the real number of them… Today I officially counted three Great Tits, but I am very sure it were at least 10 ;-) . It’s just you couldn’t see all of them at the same time…

As a location for my count, I for a change did not walk along the Isar river as usual, but chose a small but beautiful old park very close to my home, the Bürgermeistergarten of Munich’s district Bogenhausen. You can find more information and some photos here in the web, or even in the – didn’t know it exists – Munich Wiki.

Here is my result for today:

  1. Blackbird – two. A couple obviously, looking quite frozen at today’s high temperatures of -4° C.
  2. Great Spotted Woodpecker – one. High up in the old trees of the park. I heard him wood-pecking only once.
  3. Blue Tit – one. It especially liked one particular tree in the park.
  4. Great Tit – three. At least. They won being the most common winter bird in Bavaria in the last two years, so let’s see if they can make a hattrick! At the time of writing, the sparrows are leading though…
  5. Nut hatch – one. He was added to the list at the very end of the one hour observation period. No idea where he hid (and why :-) )
  6. Carrion Crow – Two. In flight, I saw some more, but as I am always unsure if they are not Rooks after all, I decided to only count the two on the ground I could have a closer look at.
  7. Feral Pigeons (City Doves) – Five. Beautiful birds, if you look close enough!
  8. Brambling – Two. This made my day! The first bramblings (German Bergfink) I have seen, and I was really confused at the first sight (and they were at the very very top of the largest tree). But on the second sighting I could get a looong look through my binoculars, and could study the bird good enough that my subsequent lookup in the bird book at home made it a 100% identification. Ah, birding excitement!

Today, again I didn’t take a camera with me because I wanted to do a good job counting just like last year– did I miss a photo opportunity? I don’t think so, as we like last year had a grey overcast sky and the light was very dim. I might have been able to get an ID shot of the Brambling, but by now I am experienced enough to memorize the bird’s feather colors for identification at home :-)

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