New Year's Eve. It's Mahogany here in Scotland today / tonight, so I thought I'd just do a wee blog-ette to wish all our webcam viewers, bloggers, supporters and followers of whatever type, where ever you are, all the very best when it comes, at The Bells tonight, and for the year ahead.
On behalf of all here at RSPB Loch Garten / Abernethy, and from all members of osprey Teams LG 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010...............and beyond, thanks for all your support and encouragement over the past year, and previously.
Have a good one.
You may remember the blog I wrote a few years back, (I can't remember when, or find the link back to it) about the evening I spent in the cinema, watching James Bond's latest outing (at the time), in Skyfall, and picking out bird songs and calls to be heard in the background score, some of them out of place & out of context. Well, listening for birds in the background of whatever I'm watching, be it at the flicks or at home on TV, has become a fun additional pleasure to TV viewing, call it Telly-birding if you like. Yeah, I know, I'm a bit of an anorak.
So it was, last night, as I watched that fascinating programme by Neil Oliver, The Sacred Wonders of Britain, where we were taken on a journey exploring the beliefs and rituals that have shaped Britain's landscape. We were taken to such marvels as Maeshowe, Skara Brae and The Ring of Brodgar in Orkney and various other neolithic sites UK-wide.
Anyway, at one such, as Neil Oliver told us about the world of magic etched by Ice Age hunters into rocks at Cresswell Crags near Worksop, Nottinghamshire, what should I think I heard in the background, but a Hoopoe calling, a quite distinctive onomatopoeic oop-oop-oop, or poo-poo-poo call. The ability these days to stop live telly and rewind enabled me to check and I'm sure that's what I heard in the background. If so, this is all the more intriguing because, the Hoopoe, with the wonderfully-sounding Latin name of Upupa epops, does not generally occur in UK, only as a vagrant, an annual passage-migrant and very sporadic rare-breeder.
These beautiful birds - which always remind me of the garden tiger moth, with their orange colourings and striking black and white wings when in flight - breed in most countries of Continental Europe, except Fenno-Scandia, and are fairly common throughout southern and central Europe, and may well have featured for you on any Mediterranean holidays you may have had. But in Britain, the Hoopoe is very scarce, perhaps only 100+ occurances a year.
Did anyone else out there pick-up on the Hoopoe? Listen for it if the programme is repeated or you catch-up on i-player, and add it you your TV-bird list!
All the best everyone.
Richard