Beddington Farmlands- plastic fantastic

 Been working in London for last few days. Seems like the theme has been Category C and E birds with a Yellow-crowned Bishop and the White Stork (GB35) at Beddington today and a count of over 1000 Ring-necked Parakeets going to roost yesterday evening. Ebird list HERE.

The evenings have been fairly mild with a few moths including Feathered Thorn, Chestnut and Silver Y. 

Yellow-crowned Bishop (above and below) - this bird has been around for a while and seems to be doing well, frequenting the bird feeders. This species has successful colonised parts of Portugal (see here) but is native to sub-Saharan Africa. This bird is of the race afer, which is the West African sub-species. 

Ring-necked Parakeets (above and below)- the winter roost flights are always spectacle to watch. Over a 1000 yesterday evening. 

The White Stork (GB35) is still around and seems to be in good health. 

Works have started on the Northern Lake with vegetation being cleared to make breeding habitat for waders

Chestnut (new for year at Beddington- see comments below, ) and Narrow-winged Grey (below) 

Weekend in Lisbon- PRC meeting

A good weekend in Lisbon- on Saturday we had the Portuguese Rarities Committee AGM and because we worked right through and got everything done we had Sunday off and had a bonus birding day in the Lisbon rice fields Ebird list here.  Unfortunately my bins are in for repair and the Easyjet flight I got would only allow me hand luggage so I was only armed with a pair of 8 x 32 opticrons that I borrowed from my nephew Sid. This meant no camera, no scope or decent bins for what was a most spectacular birding location and involved Magnus Robb finding a first for Portugal (and also a Red-throated Pipit) and me getting a world tick and two WP ticks. It was one of the best most un-prepared birding days I've had.

The world tick is a bit provisional- a Taiga Bean Goose which was found by Luis Gordinho a week or so ago. Magnus Robb found a Tundra Bean Goose as we arrived at the site (this will be a first for Portugal if accepted - by us!?!?)  and then we also found Luis's Bean Goose which looked better for a Taiga Bean Goose - a larger, long necked bird with more orange in the bill and a white thin blaze on the rim of the bill. The two Bean Geese were not particularly associating with each other. Will be interesting to see more opinions on these birds- some video should emerge soon (NOW HERE ). All I managed to document was a very poor digi-scope image of the Tundra Bean Goose. We also had another first for Portugal candidate, a Snow Goose (which has been present for a while).

We also had Cat C Yellow-crowned Bishops, which was a WP tick for me (and plenty of Common Waxbills) but unfortunately despite much searching we failed to find the Cat C Pin-tailed Whydahs (which would have been a WP tick for Pierre).

So my listing totals are now:  World List: 2933, WP List: 700,  False WP List: 895

Contrary to this post HERE, I realised I've seen a lot more in the WP then I thought as Netfugl only count compliant ticks and I've got something like 112 non-compliant ticks because I haven't got round to editing the records properly. Another job on the to do list! I'm still working to my target of reaching 800 in the WP by the time I'm 80 years old (800 by 80) but now I'm a closer than I thought- will need to slow down even more! Life is long- there's no rush (my twitching moto).

More on what we do at the PRC here: 

PORTUGUESE RARITIES COMMITTEE

 Tundra Bean Goose (top left) 

 Yellow-crowned Bishop - numerous in this area (unfortunately this was a road victim) 

 Twitch for the Tundra Bean Goose (with Magnus Robb, Pierre-Andre Crochet ((also below)) and XoFred