Natural Selection

At the Cumbria Bird Club Committee last night I got my copy of the county bird report for last year. I was considering doing a review, but as one of the writing team I can’t objectively do that. So let’s call this an appreciation.

An eye catching cover that makes the potential purchaser want to pick it up is always a good start. So full marks to Chris as Editor for going with the eye-catching Spoonbill shot above. It’s an excellent choice.

Bird reports have increasingly gone full colour, and with advances in affordable photographic opportunities sometimes there almost feel like too many images in some. The Cumbrian report avoids that. I also like the fact that the narrative alongside the images includes helpful pointers about age, sex etc in cases where this is relevant.

Cumbria isn’t Shetland, Scilly or Spurn so the rarities are few and far between. It doesn’t help that this year’s only first, an Olive-backed Pipit at Muncaster Castle, wasn’t photographed or sound recorded and that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Where opportunity is presented it is taken very well, as this treatment of the three different vagrant Canada Geese that joined other wild geese on the Solway shows.

One of the strengths of the Cumbrian report is its coverage of other faunal groups. This year that includes ants, beetles, bees, moths and spiders as well as the ‘colourful day-flying species’ popular with birders namely butterflies and dragonflies.

Sometimes with bird reports it’s what they don’t include which is as interesting as what they do. That may be because records are rejected or some observers don’t submit descriptions. On other occasions it isn’t. Yellow-legged Gull and Caspian Gull remain stubbornly scarce in Cumbria, neither feature in this report though regular in the rest of the north west. Only one Caspian Gull has ever been clinched in Cumbria; if you want your name in lights next year you could do worse than grill Cumbrian large gull flocks.