Decade summary #8 - Best of 2017

Almost there! Just one more annual summary after this before my 2019 summary.
2017 was another exciting year - fieldwork season in Iberia, trip to India, summer visit to Shetland, two visits to Israel at either end of the year, and in between lots of good birds in the UK.

Early in the year I cleaned up some good divers and seaducks, including this obliging White-billed Diver in Lincolnshire:

The trip to India, with Gidon, Amir and Eli, was primarily targeted at seeing a Tiger in Ranthambhore, which we did...

A trip to Kaziranga offered excellent birding, including this stonking male Pied Harrier, surely one of the best raptors of the world:

I spent most of April and May in Portugal and Spain, doing fieldwork for my PhD with my outstanding field assistants Re'a and Daniel. We had a very successful season and a great time together, and didn't stop birding for a moment. 

Sisónes

My second visit to Shetland, this time with my family, was wonderful, how can it not be? Barely an hour after stepping off the ferry we were treated to a fantastic show by a pod of Orcas hunting seals outside Roger and Agnes's,

The UK provided me with quite many rarities; nothing as intense as in 2016, but I guess Elegant Tern, PGtips, Stilt Sandpiper, Parrot Crossbill, Black Scoter, Pacific Diver and Coues's Arctic Redpoll aren't a bad annual tally.

During a quick November trip to Israel I was treated by a friendly Red-rumped Wheatear to a private show:

Full summary of 2017 here.

Bridled Monsterbill

Today I paid respect to the White-billed Diver / Yellow-billed Loon in Lincolnshire. It was rude of me not to go till now - EVERYONE in the country went and saw it. Some photographers got better results than others but generally it's a showy bird. So eventually I couldn't resist temptation and managed a neat twitch before work with Dave and Keith. We were the first birders on site this morning, and were happy to find the diver almost instantly, happily swimming in the River Witham not more than 200m from Kirkstead Bridge. We had the bird to ourselves which was nice. It was diving constantly, and looked rather relaxed. What a fantastic bird! And showing fabulously - as a good rarity should. This monstrous bill is quite impressive innit? It was a lifer for me - my first for 2017. 

White-billed Diver, 2cy 

 

Then more birders arrived, and the bird became wary and moved up the river quite a bit. We did walk upstream to catch up with the diver for final views before departing home. But eventually our best views were right at the start. Other than the diver we did not see much. A Kingfisher, some Yellowhammers and that's all more or less.

As you may notice from all the images, some piece of string or net is dangling from either side of its huge bill. This piece of string was apparent since the bird had been found, though in some images by others it is not seen - check Rich's photos for example. Today the net, or whatever it is, was very prominent. I don't know what was the diver's fishing success in previous days. Today we did not see it catch a single fish or crustacean. I am sure that the net or string does not improve its fishing success. I hope its fate will be better than the famous 1996 bird just down the river.

 

 Looks like a piece of net?

River Whitham

Thanks to Dave and Keith for the good company!