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Originally Posted by wildone Hi John
I certainly would like to see pictures of rare vagrants. Not all of us can afford either time or fuel to go chasing around the country twitching. I was a little surprised at some of the birds on your list such as Waxwing, Smew and Great-grey Shrike which are seen in Briain every year. Soon you will need to add White Stork and Common Crane which are being seen in Britain on quite a regular basis. Also Bee Eater which has nested in parts of Britain two of the past three years. I certainly would like to see a gallery for such birds and would be interested to see how soon they drop out by being usual sightings.
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Hi Wildone
I have added the three birds you mentioned due to the fact that they do visit Britain but are usually localised, instead of well distributed, birds. That it to say that you might not have any of those any where near you at any given time.
We have been fairly lucky with the Waxwings over the last couple of years with heavy influx's of birds but I still know of many parts of Britain that didn't get them. In any case Waxwings are an eruption style bird that visit in numbers if their berry crop fails. If the crop is ok you might not get any (or very few) that will visit Britain that year.
Great grey Shrikes, even though they are regular visitors, are not numerous and I doubt that most people outside of the birding world (and including some birders in it) will not have seen these birds.
Smew can be very difficult to find if you haven't the right habitat for them. We are fairly lucky here in the Midlands with all the pits we have but even here we will probably only get the odd Drake visit, more than likely it will be the female Redhead that is found. Again if you are not a regular birder I doubt if you will ever see one outside of a collection.
I am also aiming this thread at probably those that don't do birdwatching, or only have a passing interest or are either fairly recent to birdwatching or birders that haven't really challenged themselves as they don't really know these birds exist.
The others, such as Stork etc are very, very localised and I doubt if they will become so regular that they lose their relative rarity status for a long while yet. The Common Crane is mainly in Norfolk (by Horsey Mill) with the odd one or two turning up at far flung areas of Britain.
It would be great if the Bee-Eater were to colonise Britain for they are a magnificent bird to watch.
I fully agree with your captive bird stance. I would never knowingly photograph a captive bird. I can't see the point. If this is a wild forum then the images should be of wild birds.