Hawaiian goose, also known as the the Nēnē is the worlds rarest goose.

It is the official bird of the State of Hawaiʻi, and is exclusively found in the wild of the islands of Maui, Kauaʻi and Hawaiʻi.

I snapped these shots of the nene while out in Slimbridge wildfowl and wetland centre.

The birds have a black head and hind neck and the neck is streaked with diagonal stripes.

Females look the same as males, but are slightly smaller.

The nene has reduced webbing on its feet as they are supposed to have adapted to the lava flows on the island on which they live.

Once thought to be a common bird, their population was reduced to around 30 by hunting and predation.

however, these goose breed well in captivity and as a result of captive breeding, the population has since increased.

It was in Slimbridge, under the direction of Sir Peter Scott, which was instrumental in breeding these birds back from the brink of extinction and re-introducing them to Hawaii.

There are now thought to be around 800 wild geese and 1000 in captivity (zoos and conservation centres)

In Slimbridge however, they dont give off the impression of being so rare as they are the most friendliest of the parks wildfowl.

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Posted By Tom to Bird Snapping on 12/22/2008 07:40:00 AM

The lens was slow to focus, and there were plenty of “sitting ducks” for models, but every time birds appeared in the sky over Slimbridge wildfowl and wetand centre, I couldnt resist the urge to point my camera upwards and shoot. Here`s a few captures.

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Posted By Tom to Bird Snapping on 12/19/2008 05:03:00 AM

I`ve just been tagged for a meme, thanks to Christopher from the Picus Blog. I`ve never done something like this before and I tend to shy away from such things, but I guess there’s always a first. Here are the rules of the Tag called

Six Random Things:

1. 1.Link to the person who tagged you.
2. 2.Post the rules on your blog.
3. 3.Write six random things about yourself.
4. 4.Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. 5.Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. 6.Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Now that I`ve done the first and the second, here`s the third. As this is my birding blog I`ll keep it birding related.

1. As a kid, before I started bird watching I was more of a bird hunter! We had an air gun at home, with which I used to go bird hunting. Thankfully the accuracy of the gun was just as bad as my aim and most birds didn’t even budge as the pellets hit everything else except the birds!

2. My real introduction to birding happened at school when our class was taken out bird watching. I missed the session and thus I was given the chance to go out on my own entrusted with my biology teacher’s precious binocular and field guide. I enjoyed it so much that I used to go out every weekend, roaming the schools 800 acre campus.

3.Mine was a school built on military traditions and one among them was organised “ragging”. While in 9th grade we had a servant status and had to stay back in our dormitory on Sundays to do the bidding of our masters – the seniors. The only escape from this was if we had an academic commitment. I got myself excused saying that the biology teacher had asked me to be present for “ornithology”. The word was too big for them to grasp and they let me go, until one day they discovered that it was just bird watching that I was going for!

4. After school I never got an opportunity to continue bird watching. I made several attempts to, but there was too much happening. It was only once I met my wife that I got a chance to restart my bird watching.  Her parents were keen bird watchers and used to take her and her brother along on their bird watching sessions which she found boring. As a result my wife hated bird watching! After we got together she has started taking an interest in birding again too.

5. I`m doing a PhD and thus I`m supposed to be scientific, but when it comes to birds, I almost conveniently ignore their scientific names.

6. My dream is to win discover/invent something and earn so much money that I can buy the best photography equipment, retire and spend the rest of my life bird snapping in exotic places all across the world!

..and now I tag the following people:

1. Animtreebird from Pictures of Birds.

2. Bob and Cynthia Kaufman from Reflections of a Bad Bird Photographer.

3. T and S from Walk in the Wilderness.

4. Dr Redzlan of Birds and Nature photography by Tabib

5. Bernie Krausse of Natural Moments: Bird and Wildlife Photography

6. Mick from Sandy straits and Beyond.

Whew, that took some effort! but its been fun. For those whom I`ve tagged please don’t feel pressurised to do it. I fully understand if you don’t but I look forward to your posts  and comments in future. Also, if you are not already on there, please do consider adding your blog to the Power guides. It makes it easy for a lot of people including me to read your posts instantly.

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Posted By Tom to Bird Snapping on 12/17/2008 01:20:00 AM

I took these pictures of the Crested Screamer while at Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetland centre.

The Crested Screamer also called the Southern Screamer (Chauna torquata) is a native of South America.

Although it id a waterfowl, its feet are not webbed and it prefers to spend most of its time on the ground.

They possess spurs on their wings, which they use as defence against other birds and enemies.

These birds are monogamous and stick to a single partner for life.

Its diet is mostly vegetarian consisting of stems seeds and leaves of plants but they may occasionally include small animals.

The crested screamers habitat range from swamps to estuaries to pool coasts

They are not considered threatened with regards to their conservation status. The average lifespan of this birds is about 15 years.

It was certainly one of the most eye catching birds we came across in Slimbridge. If you look closely at the first picture you may notice the bird sticking its tongue out!

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Posted By Tom to Bird Snapping on 12/14/2008 03:50:00 PM

The last time I went after a Kingfisher I had a hard time stalking it and I barely managed to get decent pictures. Nonetheless, I was thrilled. Last week while at Slimbridge, snapping all those exotic birds, my wife and I spotted an excited crowd with cameras clicking away. We looked where they were looking and spotted this Kingfisher. It seemed more than content to sit in the spotlight, completely unmindful of all the attention being showered on it. As a result, I went crazy with the camera and got hundreds of pictures. I apologise for being completely helpless to narrow down my selection of images to a lesser number, but for those of you who can appreciate birds, I guess they are a treat for the eyes….what a fabulous bird! Enjoy.

P.S.

Apologies for that intrusive copyright badge too, I`m working on it and I promise it’ll get better.

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Posted By Tom to Bird Snapping on 12/11/2008 01:57:00 PM

I was out photographing other birds when this Carrion Crow flew and sat on the pine tree.I thought I`d take a few shots. It jumped across the branches to reach for what appeared to be pine buds and proceeded to eat it. I never knew pine buds would constitute food for birds. Here's the whole episode documented:

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Posted By Tom to Bird Snapping on 12/09/2008 03:05:00 PM

Photos of Flamingos taken at Slimbridge wildfowl and wetland centre:

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Posted By Tom to Bird Snapping on 12/09/2008 12:32:00 AM

My wife and I finally headed out to Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetland centre. We took our bikes along on the train and then cycled 4 miles to get to the centre. On our way we caught sight of what appeared to be Lapwings to me, but I wasn’t sure as I had never seen a lapwing in UK before.

As we got closer, we could more or less confirm that there were indeed Lapwings.

Finally we came across a group that sat relatively close to the road, but with the constant traffic on route and unaware of how much more distance we had left to cover, we didn`t stay long.

It was inside Slimbridge centre that a better opportunity to snap these birds finally came up.

The lapwing is the largest wader in the UK. It is also called the peewit due to its distinctive “peewit” call:

A noticeable feature of this bird is its long crest. Both males and females have them but the male’s crest is Longer.

The lapwings are so called for its broad rounded wings and slow wavering flight.

Most of the British Lapwings are resident during winter but some may migrate to Ireland, France or Spain.

However, winter populations are thought to significantly increase by the arrival of migrants from elsewhere.

The lapwings were once a common bird in UK but numbers have significantly fallen and they are now on the amber list with regards to conservation.

They are mostly found on farmlands around the UK but mostly in the northern England and eastern Scotland.

They are mostly insectivorous and their diet is chiefly composed of worms (as seen in the picture below) and insects.

Its been great catching what I first thought was a very shy sociable bird this close on camera. They do indeed make some great subjects to photograph.

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Posted By Tom to Bird Snapping on 12/08/2008 12:42:00 AM

I`m sure a lot of us birders out there make bird lists. Some of us use online tools such as ebird and Birdstack. The data from ebird is officially recorded and that from Birdstack can be imported into ebird. However ebird is only for USA and near regions. For those of us in UK, how do you make your data count? 

I use Birdstack to record my data as you can see from the side panel in this blog but to actually make it count, I also submit it to Birdtrack. So what is Birdtrack ? It is best explained in their own words:

BirdTrack is an online bird recording scheme developed through an exciting partnership between BTO, RSPB and BirdWatch Ireland. It is a year–round recording scheme that will use data from birdwatchers records to support species and site conservation at local, national and international scales. Results produced by BirdTrack will include mapping the migration and movements of birds and monitoring of scarce birds in Britain and Ireland.

You can log in to Birdtrack using a BTO username and password if you have one, if not you can register for one here. While registering they provide an option to submit your data to the local bird recorders, make sure you check this box.

Once registered an logged in you will have access to your Data Home, from where you can navigate within the site and record your data.

From here you can add/register a site –a place you have recently visited or your local patch – with the create new site link:

As seen above, you have a number of options by which the site can be created and it is easy enough to locate the popular bird watching sites in your area using the drop down menu but even remote locations can be recorded using option C. Using this you can zoom in on your location within a Google Map:

Once you  zoom in, shift into the satellite/hybrid view if need be to verify your area of interest and press shift+click to select your location. This will generate your Grid Reference which you can then submit

This will then show you a map with shaded area which defines a predefined “Tetrad”

If the shaded area does not completely include your area you can make it bigger by choosing the appropriate size.

Once you`ve defined your site, you can proceed to submit your observations via the “Submit species list” link on your Data home page.

Select your site, add date , add time (optional) and continue. You are then presented with a list of all the commonly encountered species, which you can tick off and enter the counts against. You can also add comments against each entry if needed.

You can also add other species by entering text at the bottom of the page if it is not present in the list.

The next time you make an observation for the site, all species that you have recorded will be shown in the list by default and you can add new species via the text box.

Alternatively you can submit a casual observation via the “submit casual obs” link in the data home.

Once you submit your data it is filed away and will be available to access via your data home. The data will contribute to the Bird Atlas project:

You can also generate data from all your recordings for a particular species, a particular location or a particular time or combinations of the above using the “search and download facility” on the data home.

Alternatively you can generate a list of all the birds seen in a particular location of your choice via the “species by grid” link

I find this a particularly useful tool to know how rich an area is in birds and what to expect from a certain area:

Even though I found Birdtrack confusing at first, I have found that it is an extremely useful tool to have for anyone interested in birds. Keep in mind though that the data you can mine off it has been generated by submissions from common people, so if you are out there bird watching/twitching and have valid data, please submit it to Birdtrack. Right now Birdtrack is wanting in many features such as importing data from other lists, user credits, customisable gadgets/widgets for displaying data on websites etc, biut it seems that this is a project in development and I hope to see improvements as it develops. Until then lets make our data count and submit them to Birdtrack. Read more on Birdtrack here.

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Posted By Tom to Bird Snapping on 12/05/2008 01:12:00 AM

I see this Kestrel every single time I go to Star Hill. Yet few are the time when it actually allows me to get close enough to get that awesome picture that I`m always looking for. Yesterday was different though. It could have been the freezing temperatures or the unusual winter sunlight, but whatever it was the kestrel wasnt too bothered by my approach. I inched closer and closer until I hit the jackpot, check it out:

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Posted By Tom to Bird Snapping on 12/04/2008 02:58:00 PM