Birds On The Wire

Waxwings, Bermuda Road, Cambridge                                                                                      Photo by Jo Sinclair

I recently joined Cambirds http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cambirds/ and got an instant irruption of local ornithological newsflashes in my inbox. This hawfinch was much talked about. The star of the week, photographed at Wimpole Hall featured handsomely on the Cambridgeshire Bird Club pages http://cambsbirdclub.blogspot.co.uk/.

Between the two bird groups, there are constantly updated headlines on species that get types with long lenses in a flutter. Cambirds provides chatty email bulletins. They got me back on the waxwing track, with up to eighty birds spotted in central Cambridge. I visited on a dark afternoon and found about sixty swooping from tree to tree, all eyes on a cat. 

The waxwings inspired one member to make these comments on wildlife gardening:
 'At least 25 Waxwings there today at 11.20, feeding on the same hybrid cotoneaster that they used two years ago. I checked the large one in Herbert St. which was also used then, but none there today. Perhaps as well as buying the pink rowans we should buy one of these cotoneasters for later in the season (plus a hornbeam and yew for the Hawfinches

if you have a huge garden!)'

The Cambirds conversations are hugely enthusiastic and knowledgeable, providing data, behavioural observations, anecdotes and advice: a jack snipe is 'showing well' at Fowlmere; an albino water rail is a regular; a buzzard is seen 'circling low over B&Q'; and a perching starling acts as a counter-weight to a woodpigeon stretching to reach a fat-ball feeder - a case of new habits acquired in order to survive the harsh weather. There's a helpful strand advising which hide at RSPB Fowlmere offers the best light for photographing the endangered hen harrier, and at what time of day.