Well, that didn't take long! I wrote last Tuesday that I was looking forward to seeing my first Swallow of the year and, on Saturday morning, one winged its way past during a great session of birding from my apartment during which I saw or heard 22 different species. The above Grey Heron was one of two which also migrated over, as did three Redwings. The biggest surprise of the morning, however, was a lovely male Black Redstart, which is a new addition to my apartment list. A pair of Great Tits seem to be nesting on the corner of my building and return every five minutes with a new beakful of moss.
I'm amazed at the amount of moss they've brought over the past few days and wonder where they are depositing it all. Great Tit was also the subject of a nice discovery when I decided to go through my notebook from my 2002 trip to Australia. This was mainly to help pass the time and relive the experience, now that any form of travelling seems unthinkable for the foreseeable future, but also to make sure I'd recorded all relevant subspecies with a view to potential splits. I soon found out that the Great Tits I saw during my stopover in Hong Kong have since been split as Japanese Tit. Here again is one of my local birds with, for comparison, a stamp from North Korea showing the considerably less colourful Japanese form.
I then discovered that the Australian forms of what I'd recorded as Black-winged Stilt, Clamorous Reed Warbler and Richard's Pipit have also been split, resulting in a total of four new species for my life-list. Who would have thought I'd be adding new birds during this period of confinement!
