Ghana Revision and a bonus lifer

Everyone in the family is down with a winter cold today so I took the opportunity to work through photos from Ghana to revise some birds and eventually upload all my photos to Ebird. Amongst the photos I found an excellent lifer- Yellow-casqued Hornbill which had got lost as Jaffa and I saw them at Kakum on an extra day before a tour started so they didn't appear in the trip report so the species didn't make it on my lists and hence got lost in time. 

Also found some nice pics that I haven't published on the blog before . Here's a few pics from the archive and will post a link when I've uploaded all my old photos onto my Ghana Ebird HERE.

Also added some more herps to the Ghana I-Nat project HERE. 

Yellow-casqued Hornbill (male above, female below). 

Black Dwarf Hornbill

African Pied Hornbill

Female African Piculet

Honey Buzzard

African Pygmy Kingfisher 

Long-tailed Glossy Starling 

Black Bee-eater 

Egyptian Plovers

Spotted Night Adder 

African Saw-scaled Viper 

Week round-up

Surprisingly there were a couple of wildlife highlights during the half term week in the matrix with the kids (a week of Retail parks, petting zoo, soft play, adventure golf, Harvesters, McDonalds, Waterparks and other hellscapes which the kids love). A day at Cotswold wildlife park was the highlight . I had an Otter from the car while in the drive-through for Starbucks in Thame and while driving through the Cotswolds on the way to the waterpark a Merlin flew over the car. The Merlin puts me on 499 for the world year list. 

Also a few other highlights from the records validation front. We now have several 'firsts for I-Naturalist' from our 2022 West Papua trip thanks to Shelley B, the project admin who is working through the identifications (and telling me off frequently for my sloppy data dumping strategy). The records are:

 https://uk.inaturalist.org/observations/137116830 

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/135870584

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/135752605

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/137120542

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/338404208

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/338400524 (the first male for I-Nat)

It's also possible we've got an undescribed species: HERE

In my defence simultaeneously I have been working through all my old Ghana records and cleaning up and actually learning the identifications- during the travel times and early mornings before the kids activities. After a clean up on my old Ghana records my Ghana bird life list is now 470 and got a few more identifications and corrections on the leps  HERE. Been doing a lot of revising too ready for our trip next month.

Also finished reading the species accounts of the Birds of Sussex finally- quite a hefty tome to be reading in the car. Also been closing the gap between my I-GoTerra and Ebird life lists, now on 3557 for Ebird HERE. 

Basically very much looking forward to getting back in the field. Not much chance today as Holly's 40th birthday. 

Sad news this week is that the fox got our ducks and geese while away. So gutted about that. Will need to work on a more secure setting before we get some more. 

Achrosis pulchricolor- a first for I-Nat HERE. It's actually a common species HERE but clearly not for I-Nat users. 

Prepping

THEE BRYANS

Helm Talks - energy climate infrastructure & more · 2030

I'm a fan of Dieter Helm (Net Zero and Natural Capital pioneer) and as usual while travelling to London was listening to his podcast this morning. Interesting to hear some of his predictions for the next four or five years on the podcast '2030' (embedded above) which include amongst other things like China taking Taiwan,  the potential over-hyping of AI, the Net Zero and 2030 projects failing etc, also his predictions include a high risk of the next huge financial correction before 2030 and the necessity for a new pathway following the crash. 

Bubble territory is the term I keep reading in the financial media. I know nobody knows, Helm also agrees he is not certain, but the thing about our unsustainable system is that it literally cannot be sustained and it's just a question of the nature of the time line of how that collapse and rebuild occurs. 

Personally I'm with Helm on this (or rather I trust his expert opinion)- I'll be very surprised if we are not extremely close to the bubble bursting (within a five year time frame). There are a lot of indicators suggesting iminent (in deeper time terms) collapse including blow-off top financial markets, extreme volatility in commodities, escalating global conflict, what Mark Carney described recently at Davos as the emergence of  a 'post rule based world order', the consolidation of fortress superpowers like China, Russia and the USA,  Clown/apocolyptic leaders (Trump etc), unprecedented corruption scandals (Epstein, Mandleson etc), widening inequality, huge debt to GDP ratios and escalating ecological and climate chaos. 

Anyway  better to listen to Dieter Helm rather than my penny's worth. For those who don't know Helm, he is Professor of Economic Policy at Oxford, author of the book Net Zero and former chair of the Natural Capital Committee advising the UK government (and was the next door neighbour of our friend Barry when we were in Oxfordshire). Dieter Helm website HERE. 

What that post-collapse new system might look like is something we've been experimenting with at Little Oak Group for years, a parallel structure which tests out some post-GDP paradigm models. I studied this stuff 30 years ago at University and only now is it becoming more and more relevant. Our main experiment has been with a triple bottom line enterprise model that measures growth and value in Social, Ecological and Economic metrics. The idea is to position ourselves to ride any waves that may or may not come our way (I know very well we are just as likely to get swept away by the tsunami as anyone else)  following the consequences of unsustainability. Thee Bryans is our campaigning  arm of what we do so considering we seem to be moving increasingly into Bubble terriority we've been spending more time in recent weeks updating the website and material etc. More to come on this. New website pic above and old track below.  

Peter Alfrey/Thee Bryans · The Bubble Will Burst Sample

Weekend and Ebird Updates

MY EBIRD

It's that time of year before Spring starts- time to clean up data and systems.  Thanks to the help of Dave and Sue while in Thailand and more so to Jaffa for more detailed instructions I managed to move my world list from IGoTerra to Ebird. Still missing a few but I'll pick away at finding the discrepancy between my IGoTerra list of 3571 and my Ebird list of 3545- not bad a difference considering the scale of the operation! 

Roger popped down this weekend but what with Valentine's Day rituals and awful weather today, didn't get out birding at all this weekend. Worst still it's half term this week and the whole week is full up of work, family visits, zoo visits, birthdays (Holly's 40th) and waterparks. At least it will be fun albiet rather unproductive.  

Apart from a few Chestnuts and Depressaria daucellas the constant rain and rather cold evenings have been pretty unproductive for moths on several nights I tried. However Friday night was a bit better with 2 Early moths, Hebrew Character, Acleris sp, Depressaria daucella and Chestnut. 

So basically it's all been desk top this weekend. I've also been picking away at the next couple of papers for Dutch Birding- one on the Paddyfield Pipit we found in Oman and a Corvo 20 year reveiw paper. 

Here's a link to my Ebird world list HERE. It will be easier to keep track (as Ebird live updates from the field) on my life goal to get to 5000 world species eventually. However world listing is not the main focus but more so on our exploration projects and trying to discover interesting and rare records. One of the most exciting excercises was uploading all my Ghana data to get my Ghana bird  list HERE which is 458 which is the highest number from any one country for me. Hope to add more to that next month. Also meanwhile the I-Naturalist validation has been coming along with around 200 butterflies and moth species identified for Ghana HERE (some stunning species in there!) and slowly getting some ids on the West Papua leps HERE. I know from Sue that we've already had a few firsts for I-Nat from West Papua which is pretty impressive considering the scale of that database now. 

Now I'm all up to date with the Ghana records we (Kev, me, Robert and Isaac) can hit the ground running on next month's visit and live update/populate Ebird and I-Nat which will be a useful way of referencing identifications and setting targets. The general objective is eventually to get more skilled and focused in our exploration to find some good records. In terms of our other projects (in Bulgaria, Azores and UK) the scale of biodiversity out there is off the scale so a much more difficult mission.  

I-Naturalist Updates

Western Fantasia, Ankasa, Ghana

I'm pretty excited about returning to Ghana next month to continue our 'tropics project'. One thing or another (mainly our Isaac and plague) has meant the last time we were out there was in 2019. However since then I-naturalist has developed further so I've uploaded all our moths and butterfly photo specimens from trips in 2013, 2017, 2018 and 2019 and started a Ghana folder HERE which we will use to populate further next month. Just hope that internet connections in Ghana have improved since then too. Originally the plan for Ghana was to do something similar to the Bulgaria project i.e. purchase a wildlife plot and improve the habitat and use it as a base for recording and exploring but the logistics in West Africa proved to be exceptionally challenging. So this time the objective is not so far reaching but instead to explore for some more difficult bird species in Ankasa and Mole National Parks and getting the moth traps out into habitat and recording the butterflies too. 

Sue and I also discovered this weekend that we can't share the same records on I-Nat so I uploaded all my photo specimens from our 2022 West Papua trip HERE which was fortuitous as I had an extra 100 potential species or so in my folders.

As I've just uploaded the photo specimens it will take quite a long time for the records to be verified to research grade.  

I found this in the 2013 Ghana folder. If the I-nat AI is not mistaken it's a Tunbridge Wells Gem. I've been looking out for these when I get Golden Twinspots. Didn't know I'd seen one before. 

East Side Corn Buntings

I continued exploring the parts of the Peninsula that I haven't reached yet. Today I did Pagham rife and walked back round to North Wall. HERE . Highlights were 5 Corn Bunting in the direlect fields by the Pagham road with 35 Yellowhammers and the 3 White-fronts where around the fields and 2 Spotted Redshanks were in White's Creek. 

Corn Buntings are generally strictly confined to the Ham area near Medmerry on the west side of the Peninsula and Andrew informs me that this is the first time in years they've been seen on the East side. 

Corn Bunting 

Spotted Redshank

White-fronts and Canadas

Interestingly there were Gadwalls on Shovelers in the Honer Fields which is unusual - maybe birds from the Ferrry area but also maybe migrants? 

There has certainly been a big increase in Common Gulls numbers (and Meds) recently with about 200 today on my travels . Maybe these birds have been pushed off flooded fields from elsewhere or could possibly be migrants moving? 

A box of year ticks

Sue and I started off at the Bill HERE where the highlights included an adult Little Gull, 3 Great Northern Divers, 20+ Red-throated Divers and 9 Shags. Proceedings were cut short as we had to go and rescue Holly and the boys with a car breakdown and then after I dropped off Jacob I popped into Birdham Pool and had a singing Coal Tit. I then took Sue and Isaac to see the Slav at Platinum Jubilee Park before she had to head home and then I spent the afternoon at Fishbourne Creek first checking from Chichester Marina HERE and then Dell Quay HERE. Highlights in the Creek including a male Goldeneye, 2 Treecreeper and a Nuthatch (Peninsula tick) at Salterns Copse, 4 Greenshank, 15 Red-breasted Mergansers, 6 Rock Pipit and huge numbers (c2000) of Common Gulls in the same field as the Brents.

Little Gull, Shag, Coal Tit, Nuthatch, Treecreeper and Goldeneye were all year ticks so now 118 for the Peninsula year list and 494 for the World year list.  Now on 207 for the Peninsula with Nuthatch HERE. 

Treecreeper

Nuthatch

Slavonian Grebe

Red-breasted Mergansers at Dell Quay 

Great Northern Diver at the Bill

Redshanks and Dunlin at Dell Quay- good numbers of waders at the head of the creek with 200 Redshank, 40 Dunlin, 35 Turnstone, 60 Curlew and 4 Greenshank (below)

Ruff weather

We took the kids with Sue to Arundel WWT this morning circum-navigating the flooded roads. This afternoon Sue and I checked out Ferry and then did Halseys to North Wall. 71 species of over 12,000 individuals!  HERE. Les had found six Ruff on Honer 2 but when we got there, there were 10 birds and also a single bird was in with the Lapwings. The White-fronts were also flying around and then landed on the flooded fields and we also had the Spotted Redshank. 3 Marsh Harriers came into roost and 2 Egyptian Geese were a Peninsula year tick. 

10 Ruff and 1 Redshank. All the Ruff look the same size so presumably a flock of a single sex. 

White-fronts (above and below) 

Blackwits (above and below)- an increase to approx 1250 today. Not sure if these birds are being pushed out of the Arun Valley which might explain the sudden recent increase and also the arrival of the Ruff. Presumably the floods elsehwere are displacing these birds to the coast?

Flooded Honer Fields

Scenes over the harbour 

The road to home nowadays 

Snow Bunting and Glossy Ibis again

Sue is down for the weekend so we got a birding session this afternoon. We did the high tide pre-roost at East Side/Pagham Spit HERE. Seems like Dunlin numbers are increasing with an estimated 3000 birds and Grey Plovers at approx 400 but seemingly Knot numbers are lower with 200 and we didn't see any Golden Plovers which are definitely clearing out locally. There were at least 1000 Black-tailed Godwits flying around White's Creek and we counted 375 Great Black-backed Gulls and in with them were 10 Lesser Black-backs, a 3rd cycle and an adult Yellow-legged Gull and a first-winter Caspian-type Gull (a little distant to be certain). There was also a couple of Barwits in the roost. Just from that viewpoint across the harbour we estimated about 10,000 birds including a conservative 2000 Lapwing and 1500 Brents. The other guys had larger counts earlier on in the day HERE with 4000 Lapwings, 2500 Brents, 300 Golden Plover, 300 Wigeon, 100 Teal and Pintail, 250 Common Gulls (flocks have been flying over the garden recently too indicating some kind of movements occurring) and 50 Meds so there has to be around 14-15000 birds in the harbour now and that's not including any large numbers of Black-headed and Herring Gulls which could add another few thousand. The most obvious increases recently have been in Blackwit, Dunlin, Avocet, Common Gull and Med Gull. 

On the way back we noticed that the Glossy Ibis was back in the traveller field with 6 Cattle Egret and soon after news broke of the Snow Bunting back at East Head so we headed off over there for the last hour of the day.  Now on 112 for the Peninsula year list HERE. 

Snow Bunting, East Head (above)

Glossy Ibis

Mainly Dunlins

Knot in flight

Grey Plovers and Knot

First-winter 'Caspian Gull' - probably one of the same birds present in the week

3rd cycle Yellow-legged Gull

The drive round to East Side is more of a boat trip than a drive lately with three significant floods to cross. The road through Highleigh and the road to Donnington both remain closed and impassable. 

 

Slavonian Grebe and Rain

Persistent rain and resulting flooding is putting the knackers on any lengthy birding sessions so I've been popping out in between and during showers over the last couple of days.

After failing to get any decent views or photos of Slavs since I've moved down here I decided to go and twitch the wintering bird at Platinum Jubilee Park nearby in Chichester. Amazing to see one in an urban tiny pond and there was a nice little supporting cast for an urban pond too including 3 Chiffchaff, 12 Reed Bunting, Water Rail and Stonechat. 

I also managed to get out and check Ferry yesterday and then got driven back by the rain when I tried to check the Tramway and this morning I aborted a gulling session on East Side after heavy rain started. 

So far, despite a couple of close calls, the water fortunately has only flooded the garden and patio and not the house (yet!), but several local roads are closed making it a bit of a mission getting on and off 'Sidlesham Island'. 

Slavonian Grebe (above and below)

Med Gulls in the rain

Ferry in the rain

Avocets on Ferry

Flooding everywhere at the moment- here's the Platinum Jubilee Park boardwalk 

Slav at Platinum Jubilee Park