The Lyons Share

I had a great day today visiting a gentleman in West Sussex who showed me this amazing specimen of a Nutcracker. This specimen was shot back in 1906 near Chilgrove, back in the days when birdwatchers were a little more trigger happy and 'bagging' a bird meant literally that. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not celebrating this behaviour in anyway but the retention of the specimen after all these years I do support. I'm just grateful that we have digital cameras these days! I was also intrigued with what else was inside the case, I spotted some Big Shaggy-moss and Common Bent in there, looking just like they had been picked last summer, not 106 years ago.

The taxidermist was a W. Swaysland of 47 Queens Road, Brighton. It seems that this person was responsible for much of the taxidermy at the Booth Museum (also in Brighton for those that don't know). Incidentally, I have always felt a connection with Nutcrackers after seeing one in my home county of Staffordshire 21 years ago in 1991, I would have been 12 or 13.

Living birds today included a singing Firecrest, fly over Hawfinch, singing Crossbills and Marsh Tits and dozens of Redpolls.

I've been to a training day at the Natural History Museum today organised by the Bat Conservation Trust looking at analysing bat recordings from woodland transects that I helped carry out last summer at The Mens and Ebernoe Common. It was really interesting and my physics degree came in handy for the first time in a while! I learned a lot, it was great to see and hear the different calls the bats make and how to describe and identify them. Particular emphasis was put on Barbastelle Bats and that is what is shown on the above photo. It has two calls at different frequencies and of different shapes. You can't identify all bats this way, the Myotis species for example cannot really be differentiated by call. A long day with a lot crammed into it but I have learned more abouts today than I have probably in the rest of my life put together. An invaluable day and I am looking forward to helping with the surveys (and now the sound analysis) this year on our sites. I had no time to look around the museum and all I managed to get a photo of was of this was this pasty looking fellow waiting for a bus.