Hello chaps thats me back from my trip to Germany. I've registered for the wild about the world forums but haven't had my confirmation email yet. But theres a few things I noticed that have relevance to the UK anyways so no harm in posting here.
Firstly at the actual Hurricane festival (scheeßel) before I drank myself stupid I noticed some large buzzard like birds working the corn field on the edge of the campsite right where we camped. They seemed larger than regular buzzards and would regularly hover like a kestrel which was an amazing sight (like a huge kestrel in slow motion). They also seemed to be lighter than common buzzards and on the odd occasion I could see their backs they had a white patch of feathers near the tail. I'm kicking myself now for not getting a pic as they were so close and even the wee compact digi I had taken would have been able to get a fairly decent shot. Any ideas on an ID?
Once in Berlin I saw birds...lots of birds (though I must confess to spending more time admiring the non feathered variety
), but really only a hand full of species which I suppose is not that unusual since it's quite a busy city. House sparrows were absolutely everywhere. Their constant chattering were actually becoming pretty annoying (the zoo was swarming with them). I guess this must be what it was like in UK before they went into decline. The city did seem to have much better habitat for them than say London or Glasgow. The city itself was absolutely spotless and there was a lot more greenery with many of the quieter streets being lined with trees which even had nest boxes. The other birds that were common were feral pigeons (though not in huge numbers surprisingly) and the hooded type carrion crow (please correct me if im wrong as they seemed a bit bigger than the ones we have in Scotland). Though there were signs about saying not to feed them. Some areas would have several dozen in the trees and the zoo had hundreds. Wheeling above the streets I spotted swifts, swallows and house martins. At least I'm pretty sure that's what they were, there was no mistaking the sound of swifts early in the morning with a killer hangover. I saw a few tits (
) greenfinches, blackbirds and a yellow and black bird about the size of a starling that I only caught a glimpse of, could it have been an oriol? Strangely enough though I hardly saw any starlings or magpies and absolutely no gulls at all
Apart from the birds there wasn't much else kicking about wildlife wise apart from this guy who my mate who is not really interested in wildlife spotted and insisted I take a picture
I thought it was maybe a stag beetle of some sort. It was pretty big though not really apparent from the pic. I've seen stag beetles in zoos or whatever and would say it was roughly the same size.
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