UKC

Apologies for the poor pic quality: phone camera on zoom setting.

What bird could this be? Location is park in Glasgow

Bullfinch?

Bullfinch,

Chris

Excellent. First confirmed sighting for me then. 

Could UKC add a UK birds tick list?

Yep, bullfinch. One of my favourite garden birds. Had a pair nesting in the hedge couple of years back. Even the female is quite lovely too, but lacking the bright colours, as you’d expect.

I love the slightly mournful phooweet call they make.

Careful, you'll be accused of being sexist...........

LOL.

I quite like the idea of a bird ticklist, bit of citizen science and all that (I could show off with all the divers we get out west too 😁) 

Aside from the ubiquitous magpie, crow, pigeon, blackbird & robin, I see Jackdaws, great tits, bluetits, coal tits & nuthatches every day on my dog walk through Pollok Park, (plus some other small, brown fleeting bird).

Now I will be keeping an eye out for the Bullfinch. I may have seen a woodpecker a few days ago hanging around the edge of one of my 'feeding zones', possibly a great spotted.

Isn't there a Scottish version of bullfinch? I think there are a few differences north and south of the border for fauna and flora. What's known as a harebell down here is a bluebell up there is one example I can think of.

Harebell? I've always konwn it as a bluebell, growing up in Ireland. My wife, who's from Shropshire, also knows it as a bluebell. Perhaps not such a neat divide?

Not thinking of crossbills?

jcm

Harebells (campanula) and Bluebells are totally different plants wherever you live. Different enough not to be easily mistaken for one another.

Whilst we're on the subject of firsts, took the dog for a walk the other day and saw a Little Egret and a Jay in the space of 5 mins.  Had never seen either of those before.

There are quite a few subspecies, but in Britain all breeding bullfinches should be pileata.

Here in Germany we have breeding europaea, but in winter we also get flocks of the nominate subspecies pyrrhula from Russia or Scandinavia.

No idea whether the latter also pop up in Scotland in winter, but if they do they could be distinguished by a much deeper red in the males. Also, both sexes would not have that beautiful flute-like call of europaea (and pileata, I think), instead nominates sound much more like a kazoo or plastic trumpet!

CB

Interesting how significant location is on prevalence of species.  Jays are very common here - top of Epsom Downs, south of London.  Just getting into this bird spotting thing - currently wrestling with a local population of 'little brown bird, not quite the same shape as the last one'  - variously categorised but without much confidence.

No, I know the difference (although I've never seen a crossbill). What I was wondering was if the Scots had a different name for 'bullfinch'. Certainly there'll be a Gaelic version.

But the Scottish bluebell IS the English harebell/campanula, Graeme. They bloom at different times in different places so easily told apart. AFAIK Scots call 'my' bluebell a wild hyacinth.

I am waiting for the next few weeks to go and visit some of my favourite bluebell (not harebell!) woods in Lancashire to come into bloom.

Never used to get little egrets up here but they're quite common nowadays. Often see them in the Lune estuary and round Morecambe Bay. Global warming, possibly?

Bullie according to this - https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/scotland/posts/scots-words-for-bird...

Today I’ve seen and heard willow warbler, chiffchaff, Cetti’s warbler and both sexes of blackcap. Foots Cray meadows, not too far from you (drove daughter back to her college, empty house so staying a few nights. Will be out tomorrow if you fancy a gander. 
 

Coincidentally, saw bullfinch at 8 this morning. 

Defo global warming. You seen the bee eaters up your way?  
 

Edit: I thought they were in north lancs but could be wrong.  They have reared chicks up Carlisle way in the past. 

Well my mum's scottish and I've lived in scotland for 23 years and I've never heard anyone up here call a harebell a bluebell or vice-versa. And they're correctly sold at the multitude of garden centres I frequent when I get a sunday free.  However, after googling it would seem that there's some confusion  - https://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/6928 (rbge.org.uk)

Pretty much the same debate as there is over turnips (big purple and orange things we'd use for turnip lanterns in the north east when I was growing up) and swedes (people from Sweden of course).

Very possibly, according to the RSPB they're gradually increasing their range northwards...

I'm in London and this was the first time I've ever seen one, see a lot of Herons, but this is the first time I've seen one of these.

I remember only about ten or fifteen years ago it was an event when one wintered in the Chess Valley (just north-west of London). Now there's five or six every winter, and some winters a Great Egret as well.

jcm

20th April last year.  Standish. They’re out now, but not quite in full numbers. 

loxia scotica as against loxia curvirostra according to my copy of Collins (both UK breeding.) I've seen the birds in Switzerland and the Pyrenees, always in flocks savaging a single tree, but never had the privilege in the UK. loxia "robably not safely distinguishable in the field" from curvirostra- often discernably heavier bill. Call intermediate between curvirostra and pytyopsittacus...

I feel blessed here in N/Staffs. Mixed landscapes: egret, red kite, ring ouzel, marsh tit, peregrine, great northern diver, dipper, treecreeper, all within a few minutes without thinking too hard about it. Wife and son heard a bittern three days back. 

Y

Defo a bully.

I posted last week of my delight at seeing a goldcrest  for the first time in 45 years. I have yet to see a bully so this would be a massive tick.

My wife, who grew up 14 miles away said she had numerous visits daily in her garden

Best way to find a Great Spotted Woodpecker is the call - a metallic "chink" - quite distinctive once you realise that's what it is.

I was talking about bullfinch subspecies, sorry for causing confusion!

Crossbill populations are notoriously tricky from a taxonomic point of view*. Whether the scotica taxon merits species status has been debated for decades, and consensus switches back and forth every few days (this is only mildly exaggerated)**.

I believe cheaper sequencing may eventually help by tracking allele introgression between populations, but e.g. crossbill bill shape and size adapts VERY quickly to the available food. Similar to scotica there is a group (species?) called sinesciuris that only lives on such SW US "sky island" mountains that do not harbour squirrels, which compete with crossbills for the nicest and biggest pine seeds.

The problem is that work in other bird groups has shown that an evolutionary response to food can happen to established populations in response to environmental events over an order of years rather than decades or longer. Clearly, the difference between micro and macro evolution is both closer than thought and blurred.

The best example is the radiation of the Geospiza Darwin "finches"*** in Galapagos, where species identity is, as in crossbills, primarily classified by bill morphology, which obviously reflects size and shape of available seeds. Work from the Grant lab showed that this has repeatedly changed population wide within years after drought events or introduction of competing species with a specialization for certain seed sizes, to the extent that you would think that birds present on one island in a given year are a different species from their grandparents!

CB

*but nothing compared to the mess we lump under the various wagtail species!

**I am of course with the splitters, this has boosted my Europe tick list by at least ten species over the last years without having to see one additional bird! Spanish and regular Imperial Eagle, Western vs. Eastern Bonelli's warblers, etc.  . The birding variation of grade creep!

***Tanagers, really.....

edit for typo

IMO the real differentiator is whether the various populations will interbreed (with non-sterile offspring) if they come into contact with each other - yes implies sub-species, no implies separate species.

The birds themselves don't seem to have any trouble sorting this out, it's only us watchers and taxonomists who get in a mess.

Last year, one of the benefits of lockdown was walking through my local wooded valley and seeing almost no-one else, just thousands of bluebells. Come July it was back to busy.

Not sure how anyone would mix up Bluebells ans harebells (I north scotland anyway) Bluebells out in spri g and long gone before harebells come out late summer 

That is really interesting, especially the stuff about Darwin's finches, none of which I'd read about before. 

So essentially, when the selection pressures are strong enough (big diversity in food availability), phenotypes can diversify rapidly without any likelihood of real speciation occurring, especially if those pressures then change relatively quickly too (like breeding dogs but without natural selection so to speak)?

Thanks very much.

Yes. They declared independence 6 months ago but the English bullfinches are having none of it

No, no! You're thinking of Scottish Greenfinches

No, that is a rather old fashioned concept!

Taxonomic grades like species, subspecies, genus, etc. are rather arbitrary labels we put onto populations that are distinct by some measure. These taxonomic grades serve as conventions so people can agree members of which groups they are talking about, or which box they would put an individual in.

Of course, this is of immense practical value, in the case of birds e.g. for conservation issues. Is this a rare species endemic to one island, or is that a (rare) island form of a species widespread elsewhere and so potentially of lower concern?

Anyway, the species concept has long evolved beyond archetypes made by the creator or non-interbreeding populations (or at least post mating isolation/sterile offspring), which is almost as obsolete.

The most modern approaches in biology go back again to the idea that "species" is a label for populations. At least, the labels must be derived from population properties, and you can then try to put an individual into its proper box. Interbreeding between species can and will happen, and it does not matter whether offspring are fertile, sterile, or something in between.

What does matter - but only makes sense at the population level - is what happens when you do have introgression of alleles (gene versions) from one population into another through hybridization, e.g. in a narrow contact zone between two populations. If these introduced alleles are maintained or continue to spread, potentially forming a frequency gradient away from the hybridization zone, you would consider the two distinct populations as two subspecies of the same species.

If, on the other hand,  hybrids, remain confined to the hybridization zone and there is no allele introgression into the main populations, you consider the two groups distinct species. Here it does not matter whether within the hybridization zone they form pairs between fertile hybrids, or regularly generate new hybrids by inter group matings.

The classic example here is Hooded (Corvus cornix) and Carrion (Corvus corone) crows, which in Germany have a narrow but highly stable hybridization zone along the river Elbe. Cycle through Dresden, and you will see both species. Look carefully, though, and most individuals will show some markers of the "other" species. In fact, there are also obvious hybrids, and these even show some degree of assortative mating. All hybrids are clearly fertile.

Nevertheless, go West by 100 km and you will pretty much only see clear Carrion Crows or East, and all will be Hooded. Morphology only takes you this far, but nonintrogression has been confirmed by genetics and sequencing, so despite the presence of fertile offspring, the two groups are now considered different species. Now, whether Hoodeds from Scotland and Iran are the same species, who knows....

Anyway, when you think you finally understood what a species is, nature comes up with something even more complex. One such example would be ring species, as proposed e.g. for Great Tits or Greenish Warblers in Central Asia, where a species is split into several distinct populations (subspecies?) distributed in a ring, typically around a mountain range.

In both cases it is possible to pick one specific species/subspecies and look at its hybridization zone with its clockwise neighbour. The populations will hybridize freely, there is a gradient of hybrids, so you will conclude that these are subspecies. Same with the next contact zone to the third population, etc., until you come to the fifth contact zone back to the population you started with, and there you will find that there is no hybridization at all, and the populations should be considered distinct species. Now what?

The more careful you look, the more complicated things become, and most ring species are now disputed and interpreted instead as species complexes....

CB

Genuinely interesting and thanks. How come you know so much?  

I am a professor of biology (even if not ornithology), and have been an avid birder since 30 years or so, so a kind of semi pro...

CB

Good stuff.
I’ve been trying to photo a Cetti’s warbler most recent mornings. So far I have got plenty blurred images of reeds, branches and grasses with the odd brown feather. But I will not be defeated!

Wow, thanks for that, sounds like it's all become much more sophisticated - and correspondingly much more difficult to determine exactly what's going on sometimes.

Of course nature just carries on doing its own thing regardless of any difficulties we might have trying to work out what's going on 😁

The ring stuff sounds interesting. I'll bet there are examples where something like this occurs...

4 populations in a ring, everyone a "subspecies" with both their neighbours, but 1-3 and 2-4 aren't "subspecies" (and all sorts of other combinations)

Of course you were (bullfinches not crossbills), my mistake. I thought I'd misunderstood something badly ! That explains it. 

The supplementary details are appreciated. My Dad was a rather senior academic in systematic botany dealing with exactly these subjects. In the way of father/son/professional relationships it's difficult to draw him out much, but it's prompted me to read around the basic issues. Plenty of complexity in there to untangle and a lifetime's fun in doing it. I'm never going to get too far with plants, but the barrier to starting to appreciate the ecology of birdlife is (for me at least !) a bit lower... 

Y

Wish I was still going to Central Asia a bit. I would look at Great Tits with a great deal more curiosity ! 

That kind of mess indeed exists and is called the "Herring gull complex". Circumpolar distribution of ten or so populations (treated variably as species or subspecies by historical accident), with hybridization observed sometimes not with the neighbours but readily with someone else across the pole...

It really helps to consider to think of populations all the time, which have complex relations with other populations, and environmental/geographic/bevavioural/genetic circumstances that affect the gene flow between them. Species/subspecies/race etc. are just convenient labels.

Now you can also extrapolate from populations where it is possible to study ongoing hybridization to cases where this is impossible. You could e.g. measure which levels of genetic divergence are characteristic for bona fide species within a genus or family, and then apply these cutoffs to populations within the same group where you cannot test for hybridization and gene flow. Here, one example would be island species, where, especially in South East Asia and Polynesia you can have hundreds of clearly related albeit distinguishable, geographically isolated forms. What are these? Geographical subspecies? Species complexes? Sister species?

Much of the theoretical work on taxonomy and the species concept has been developed in ornithology. Plants are even worse than birds, so e.g. botanists have a rather different outlook on what to call to populations with a given genetic and morphological difference, never mind microbiologists.

Now if you REALLY want to open a can of worms apply these ideas and insights to human populations......

CB

I was planning to go on a combined birding / climbing trip to the Stans but then Covid happened. No idea when I will an opportunity like this again....

CB

Such a pity, but the time will come... 

One personal highpoint of business travel was a rather lonely evening in Tsaritsino park in Moscow. I saw my first and only bluethroat. Had no idea what it was at the time, but easy enough to identify... 

Do cladistics get much of a lookin in ornithology ? They seemed to go through a big disillusionment cycle in botany as far as I could tell. Good sample sizes are probably easier to collect with plants, though...

Y

Or Scandinavian comers-in. Waxwing?

I saw a huge flock in Dunkeld, or the village contiguous with it, near the filling station, a few years back.

Well pleased today with a sighting of a Black Tailed Godwit crossing Swarkstone Bridge today, not sure I've ever seen one before.

If you go to Moscow again, keep an eye out for Azure Tits, which, in keeping with my other posts, hybridize with our Blue Tits in western Russia and Belarus!

CB

My wife was around Willington earlier in the week and reported a BTG - and hearing a bittern. Very thrilled ! 

Excellent.... Clearly I need to stop taking the cyanistes for granted. In fact, that's one of the life lessons birdwatching has taught me: pay more attention !

They absolutely are not. The blue bluebells here in Scotland are English bluebells. The white, violet, pink etc bluebells are Spanish bluebells. Harebells are a different plant, the only people who would mix them up are people who don't know the difference. The only people who know what a harebell is are gardeners etc. 

I think it is great to have a hobby that makes you look for things while outdoors. Birds are great because they are mobile (and thus could  pop up in places you have already scanned, so you need to keep your attention up) and you will also pay attention to sounds.

Sound aside, you could just as well look for plants, minerals, insects, or photo motives!

Whatever it is, you continuously pay more attention and will see things that you would otherwise miss which you may not even have been looking for .

One thing to be a bit wary of is what I've come to think of as botanical tourettes.

After getting to grips with upland botany for work, I found it difficult to walk anywhere without compulsively naming all the plants I passed in my head. Good for consolidating knowledge but at times maddening! Found similar with birds but without the latin at least. 

Ha, same here!

I often go birding here in Germany with English speaking colleagues, so I always get confused with species names (warblers are particularly confusing, Sedge warbler is NOT Seggenrohrsänger), so I catch myself using the Latin names instead, which is only mildly preposterous...

Idle question which occurred to me reading your interesting stuff above about Hooded Crows - when I was in Lithuania I noticed that they have a bird which is very like our crows, but has an entirely grey body and black wings. Is that just a sub-species of our hooded crows, do you know, or a different bird altogether?

jcm

A hooded crow should also have a black head and bib.

Jackdaw, maybe? They can appear grayish with black wings in certain light conditions, even if in reality they also more have more black in their plumage.

So no idea really if your mistery birds are all gray except for the wings.

Well, it's been a lifetime of reward so far. Low entry barriers - birds are generally fun to watch. Then a series of "duh" moments as you realise that closer examination of thrushes reveals redwings, blue jays disappearing into bushes in Spain are actually hoopoes, treecreepers are perfectly easy to spot if you actually look for them in the first place, crows with blue eyes are jackdaws and with red feet are choughs... And all those hoodies I used to see in E/Europe - perhaps they aren't hoodies after all ? Shoulda looked harder. 

Linnaeus's idea works for me for making sure you've got the right bird whatever the locals call it. Once you get cinclus cinclus for a dipper and upupa epops for a hoopoe, you won't forget them. Hence I was a bit cross with myself not to recognise pyrrhula for a bullfinch... should know that one ! 

Plenty of fun to come I suspect. Although I wish I had a better memory for birdsong. 

Y

Thanks. They're not really 'mystery birds'; they're kind of Vilnius' equivalent of pigeons. I'm too casual a birder to have taken a picture or anything though.

jcm