ID and Articles

An interesting Acrocephalus Warbler frequented the extensive sedge around Big Pool, St Agnes in the last week of October ‘09. Thought by some to be Marsh Warbler, others weren’t convinced. The photos below are by far the best we have recieved of the bird, thanks to Barry Barnacal. What do you think? Let us know you thoughts on the ISBG Forum. (click to enlarge photos)

Below are a selection of  images kindly submitted by Jon Hall of some of the recent rare and scarce birds on Tresco. See more of Jons’ and the rest of The Bumbling Bears’ photos at http://bumbling-bears.fotopic.net/

Click HERE to see Bob Flood’s video of the Black-browed Albatross seen recently from St Mary’s on Scilly Pelagics website.

Below are photos by Chris Langsdon of a putative female Collared Flycatcher on Bryher. They were taken late afternoon on May 12 2009 and the bird was there early the next morning but was not seen again after 10:30 a.m. Click read more to view the photos and let us know what you think in the new ISBG Forum. Read more »

Hirundines in flight are often a nightmare to photograph so Joe Pender did exceptionally well to capture this Swallow on the wing today. Worthy of a winners place in a Photo of the Month competition in my opinion!

Below is a selection of images, kindly supplied by The Bumbling Bears, of the Woodchat Shrike on St Martin’s on the 24th April.

There is a video doing the rounds on You tube that shows the slaughter of hundreds of Lapwing in France .If you want to see it go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJZ40T5Xdm0

or just put lapwing slaughter into You Tube.

It is so disturbing that we would hope that you could ask as many people to E-mail Commissioner Stavros Dimas stavros.dimas@ec.europa.eu at the European Commission to ask him to enforce existing legislation to stop it - if you have blogs/websites, please consider highlighting the slaughter as the more people that oppose it then there is more chance of getting it stopped!.

Here are a few images of some of the Gulls presently on St Mary’s. Kumliens, Glaucous (2+) and Iceland Gulls (2+) all on the Dump or Porthloo areas over the past week. All images kindly submitted by Joe Pender.

Photos copyright of J.Pender and ISBG Website (C) 2009.

Bob Flood Tubenose@Tiscali.co.uk

6.55 pm: on board MV Sapphire with skipper by Joe Pender about 7 miles south-east of Scilly

Another European Storm-petrel appeared over a wave heading in our direction with its characteristic short wings, slightly bowed, batting towards us. I kept scanning in search of a Wilson’s that our visiting birders were after, expecting soon to see its distinctive head-on profile with medium-length and flattened wings, flying towards us with a hirundine-quality. What in fact I did see was a long-winged storm-petrel and my heart missed a beat. I shouted to everyone to get on this storm-petrel! Read more »