Season's greetings ...
Trying to keep alive an old HD habit/weakness/whatever here (I know I won't succeed in the long run, but for this year at least I will) :
It's Ross' gull. Lives, exclusively in principle, in Siberia, on the reasonably/relatively narrow patch of land where "ice meets soil". This one took a wrong exit somewhere and ended up in Belgium. That's RED ALERT on the cellphone of every birdwatcher you know (if you live in Belgium).
So Merry Christmas and a New Year worth living to all of you still reading this, and to all the others who might have but haven't.
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Alas, your image link is broken. (But you're still logged in, so probably fixing it.)
As compensation I hereby submit a recent picture, taken by yours truly, of a somewhat festive duck.
Edit: I see you've fixed the gull pic. Nice.
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Quote from Dave Voorhis on December 29, 2021, 10:33 pmAlas, your image link is broken. (But you're still logged in, so probably fixing it.)
As compensation I hereby submit a recent picture, taken by yours truly, of a somewhat festive duck.
My image, after I finally managed to get it displayed here, is quite as-is, sensor dust and all. I probably should be trying to edit it into something printable, but haven't found the fortuitious combo of both time and motivation to do so, so far.
I don't want to leave that male duck without a partner so I'll add a not-so-recent-anymore image from same species here
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Thanks, Erwin, and thanks again for the other photo of the same bird that you sent me earlier. It matches the picture of a "first winter" bird in my online encyclopaedia, Birds of the Western Palaearctic. Unfortunately I haven't found how to insert an image here, but I've used Choose File under Upload Files to upload Ross's Gull.jpg that I captured from the encyclopaedia (and it seems to work!)
Hugh
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At the link there's a cute photo of Kakī chicks. "one of the rarest wading birds in the world". I can't figure how to paste that photo, so here's an adult.
(The chicks would be more appropriate for Easter, but they'll be off wading by then.)
Thanks for that great news, Antc. I wonder how my treasured mohuas that I've watched in the Catlins are getting on. A few years ago my wife and I revisited a national park on South Island where saddlebacks had been present on our first visit. I asked how they were getting on and was informed that they had been killed by a stoat that had managed to jump over the park's fence during the winter, when an unusual amount of snow had fallen and piled up against the fence.
It's good to see that the forum is discussing a topic I still know something about!
Hugh
Mohua and other birds still on the rise. That's Landsborough Valley/Haast Pass rather than the Catlins. I was tramping at the Pass just over a year ago; I can confirm there was lots of birdlife.
The term "saddleback" reminded me of this jackal we ran (/rode) into in Krüger, south Africa. It's "black-backed jackal" in English and "zadeljakhals" ("saddle jackal") in Dutch. And "rarer than the cheetah" so the guide declared, but he might have been trying to make up for a rather disappointing day with ***very*** few spots of wildlife ...
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