I woke up on the morning of Jan 3rd to the sounds of Starlings bickering over some bread-crumbs on the garage roof (the safest place to put out food in a neighbourhood full of cats). I’m back at home, and the first UK listing of the year can begin in earnest. Or at least it would if it wasn’t so miserable, wet and grey that it makes the word ‘monochrome’ seem far too glamorous a description. The British winter can be an uninspiring flat slice of dullness sometimes. Clare, up there in the total darkness of the Arctic since October might wish for some daylight about now, but if all it revealed was slippery rooftops, hedges cloaked in drizzlymist, and cars with their headlights on at midday, even he might feel nostalgic for the deep croaking of Ravens, the crisp, cold air, and the crackle of a log fire.

 

1st winter male Blackbird Turdus merula

 

Starling Sturnus vulgaris

 

Male Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs

 

However, waiting in and wishing for the kind of bright, clear weather I just left behind in Japan won’t get my year-list any additions, so after an hour or so looking out of the bedroom window at familiar garden birds like Wood Pigeons, Collared Doves, Blackbirds, and Chaffinches (and Lesser Black-backed Gulls which in recent years have started breeding on rooftops all over the county) I took myself off later that morning along the back-roads dividing the small farms near Marshfield (a village just a few miles away). If I’d had any lingering feelings that I’d not got off to the best of starts in Choshi (even though I saw everything I expected to), they were knocked on the head by the almost nil visibility and relative lack of birds I found. No doubt those of you who have never seen any farmland birds will be unsympathetic to my complaints, and would love to see birds like Ring-necked Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges, Fieldfares and Redwings, and Corn Buntings and Yellowhammers - but then again, so would I! Yes, they were there, and I saw them, but mostly as almost colourless shadows of themselves, drifting in and out of the mist or sliding off the low-stone walls to disappear into the depths of dark bramble bushes.

 

Pheasants Phasianus colchicus:
in this part of the world rearing and releasing thousands of fat, tame birds that won’t get out of the way of a car
and then shooting them is apparently considered a ’sport’.

 

I’m exaggerating? A little bit of course, and despite the weather it’s always comforting to get back home and see familiar faces, those ‘old friends’ like Blackbirds, Dunnocks, and Robins you’ve seen a thousand times before. Call me a pessimist but in the back of my mind I always worry that one year I’ll wake to find that they’re simply not there anymore, the fields given over to housing developers, new roads ploughing through the hedgerows and bushes: here in this crowded corner of the world we’re supposedly experiencing a housing crisis that can only be solved by building a minimum of three million new homes. Where are they going to be put? Well, there’s plenty of land providing we don’t care whether species other than our own merit space to live and breed in. Land just like this, in fact.

Still, so far the fields are still there, and so are the birds. I may not have the photographic proof I like to provide, but I’ve a feeling that claiming Magpie, Rook and Jackdaw for the year won’t be stretching anyone’s belief in me too far (at least I hope not). I only spent an hour or two out: the list is below, the new ones for the year (21) are in bold, those that overlap with the sightings I made in Japan are not…

 

Red-legged Partridge Alectoris rufa c)12; Common Pheasant Phasianus colchicus 20+; Common Buzzard Buteo buteo 1; Common Gull Larus canus 50+; Lesser Black-backed Gull Larus fuscus 5-6; Black-headed Gull Larus ridibundus 10+; Wood Pigeon Columba palumbus c)10; Eurasian Collared Dove Streptopelia decaocto 2; (Black-billed) Magpie Pica pica 4; Eurasian Jackdaw Corvus monedula 20+; Rook Corvus frugilegus 50+; Carrion Crow Corvus corone 3-4; Blue Tit Parus caerulus 2; Sky Lark Alauda arvensis 1; Common Starling Sturnus vulgaris 30+; Eurasian Blackbird Turdus merula 5-6; Fieldfare Turdus pilaris c)100; Redwing Turdus iliaca 3; European Robin Erithacus rubecula 2; Dunnock Prunella modularis 2; White Wagtail Motacilla alba yarrellii 2; Chaffinch Fingilla coelebs 20+; European Goldfinch Carduelis carduelis 2; Corn Bunting Emberiza/Milaria calandra 1; Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella c)20

 

Year Total: 75
For the full list please go to “Old Friends, New Friends World Tour 2008″ Year List