I just bought this WH smith £9
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Yes I should have said, but for me it’s been a really valuable addition to the field guides which don’t always show or explain all the variants. And it’s only a few quid…
I’ve got a spare copy of that if anyone would like it.
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Yes please Al… 
No problem Jim - pm me your address and I’ll pop it in the post 
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This odd-looking bird from the Mediterranean just bred in Britain for the first time ever This odd-looking bird from the Mediterranean just bred in Britain for the first time ever | Countryfile.com
Amazing looking bird! 
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There were 3 of them on Fetlar in October 2022
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Jealous!
Enjoy the superb plates.
I’ll send it to you if you want? PM address.
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Point of detail: I hadn’t realised that signed copies of books sometimes sell (new) for less than unsigned ones. There can be deals between retailers and publishers whereby if the retailer over-orders they can send unsold copies back to the publisher. But this usually doesn’t apply to signed copies. So a retailer can find they have books left over and if they’re signed then all they can do is discount them, because the publisher won’t take them back.
All this was explained to me just last week by the woman behind the counter in my local Waterstones, where I bought a signed copy of a book for half the price of an unsigned one.
A few late migrants in Feal plantation today was a welcome change.
2 tristis (Siberian) Chiffchaffs were mobile and constantly calling while a couple of Goldcrest buzzed around the pines. Another phyllosc caught my eye and was looking like a very late Yellow-browed Warbler but I hadn’t seen it very well and it wasn’t calling.
Hume’s had to be ruled out at this time of the year (I found Fetlar’s first on Nov 14th 2023) but it took a good half hour before I finally got a decent view.
Although it continued to remain mute (Hume’s has a distinctively different call) once seen well it was clearly just a YBW.
Elsewhere, Fieldfare numbers were substantially up, one of our smartest thrushes IMO
being very skittish birds, the Fieldfare views were, more often than not, like this
Winter plumage seabirds seen in the last couple of days include Black Guillemots
and Red-throated Divers
An (ever present) Hooded Crow posed nicely
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Stunner in all ways! 
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I love ’em. They’re as hard as nails (which is just as well, living here all year round) build nests that look like an Eagle could live in (I found one with several sheep bones over a foot long in it) they’re unfazed by raptors- they just attack them, in fact the only bird that gets to eat the dead sheep first is the (much larger) Raven.
Bizarrely, to me anyway, they’re going to be “lumped” with Carrion Crow as a single species! I’m aware that DNA doesn’t lie (probably) but when birds look so different when compared to Carrion C. it just seems wrong. Ok, they DO occasionally hybridise with CCs but if that was the only criteria then half the ducks in the world would be considered as a single species…
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We’re forever running into issues like this, mainly because the whole concept of a species as a uniform, definitive unit is an artificial construct, much more of an Ideal than a reality. Even the arrival of new scientific methods (morphometrics, cladistics, genetics, &c &c), only really shift the area of debate from the old intuitive and characteristics-driven methodologies, to the newer ones that give a certain kind of mindset a comforting sense of scientific rigour…
…which is the only thing Nature itself abhors more than a vacuum! 
It’s rather like the eternal, and futile, debates in audio between foo-fans and measurbators: both are equally flawed, neither can be reconciled, yet both hold a part of the jigsaw puzzle of Truth…
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Oh, I get it. But there’s no consistency.
These are all considered races of the same species
Yet the putative 1st winter Eastern Yellow Wagtail I found last month is considered to be a full species that can only be separated from a 1st winter Western Yellow Wagtail by call or DNA…
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If you really want to upset yourself, take a look at the speciation/hybridisation of Asteracean flowering plants, things like the Taraxacum dandelions are a mindblowing nightmare of infinite variability and hybridisation. I’m out of date, but the superfamily used to be considered to contain multiple genera that could hybridise! Molecular phylogenetics may have sorted that out, I can’t brain enough to find out
Birds are interesting in the way they form strongly defined phenotypes within a species that don’t usually interbreed, but then they are strongly visual mate selectors, not something plants do much 
I’ll have to take your word for that, which I’m certain is the right thing to do!
Much as I feel like I should learn a lot more about plants, insects, etc. I have to prioritise and it takes all of my time and not inconsiderable effort trying to keep up with developments in the avian world. I want to be a good (better) birder and the only way to do that is to never-stop-learning. In this game, as in many, you snooze, you lose.
I love it though, even if I never become more than just decent, I’ll have enjoyed trying.
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That’s been the prime motivator for me, and the greatest pleasure, though godnose it gets harder with passing years. I will never stop regretting neglecting birds (not that sort!), when I was young enough to actually learn stuff!
And this is ALL that matters - love, in all its forms, is Everything
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