Book review: Rare and Scarce Birds of Cheshire and Wirral
In this book Allan Conlin and Eddie Williams have written and privately published a review of records of rare and scarce birds in Cheshire and Wirral. The book updates and expands upon Allan and Steve Williams' 'Rare Birds in Cheshire and Wirral' that was first published in 2004.
This attractive 248 page hardback has been formatted and printed to a high standard by Swallowtail Print http://www.swallowtailprint.co.uk/ with the dust jacket adorned on the face with Ray Scally's impression of the 1979 Asian Desert Warbler at Meols against a backdrop of Leasowe Lighthouse and on the rear cover Ray juxtaposes the distinctive heavy industry of Frodsham with a fantastical amalgam of standout rarities from 23 years and a six mile radius of there in one painting.
Although the mainstay of the book is the individual accounts reporting the status of 150 species and two elected subspecies (Kumlien's Gull and Siberian Chiffchaff), the preface is followed by chapters celebrating seawatching from the north Wirral shore - including a climactic stormy seascape captured by Steve Young - site profiles for seven latter day rarity hotspots (North Wirral Shore, Dee Marshes, Hale Head, Frodsham Marsh, Woolston Eyes, Marbury and Sandbach Flashes) including a catalogue of notable birds for each and illustrated with nearly a score of site photographs - including four of Burton Mere Wetlands but none of Frodsham Marsh - and then followed by further pages detailing the recent dramatic increase in the county of Common, Velvet and Surf Scoters, Little, Great White and Cattle Egrets and Yellow-browed Warbler.
The featured species largely follow The Cheshire and Wirral Ornithological Society (CAWOS) and British Birds Rarities Committee (BBRC) description lists although more regular species such as White-fronted Goose, Leach's Petrel, Great White Egret and Snow Bunting are also included. For the rarer species a tally of records is included and for the rarest all records are listed. The more frequent species are given summary accounts with plots illustrating the frequency of occurrence in five years partitions. Records from 2016 and 2017 that had not been adjudicated upon before publication are included but highlighted as pending.
All contemporary records included have been sourced from either CAWOS Cheshire and Wirral Bird Reports or from BBRC annual reports. In the main the continued acceptability of individual records is not commented upon by the authors although the only records of both Baillon's Crake and Cream-coloured Courser are slurred here whilst other unlikely records - such as a juvenile Purple Heron on the impossibly early date of 26th June or that both Grey-headed Wagtails arrived far earlier in the spring than would be expected for this subspecies are not highlighted as questionable.
The taxonomy followed is closest to that of the International Ornithological Congress (IOC) - as soon to be adopted by The British Ornithologists' Union - although the IOC proposed English names are not endorsed with the names employed here being those in popular parlance amongst British birders. Some of the subspecies referred to in the text are not upheld by the IOC such as pacificus Buff-bellied Pipit.
Beyond the dust jacket over fifty attractive watercolours by Ray Scally are included - typically for species where photographs are not available - and I wholeheartedly agree with the authors that Ray's work brings to life many of the featured rarities; especially so the Two-barred Crossbill that was dead when found!
In addition to the artwork the book is liberally illustrated with over one hundred photographs of generally high quality and all are reproduced well. As a great fan of pre-digital photographs of British vagrants I was excited to see the inclusion of the 1969 Roller, 1973 Sharp-tailed Sandpiper (albeit actually photographed over the border in Wales), 1976 Aquatic Warbler, 1979 Asian Desert Warbler and 1985 Common Nighthawk. However, notable omissions for me were Mike Edgecombe's photograph of the 1977 Barolo Shearwater at Rostherne Mere - although possibly this was excluded due it being a (warm) corpse and not a living bird - the 1982 Black-billed Cuckoo - where the presence of a photograph is mentioned in the text but I imagine many not have been traced - and the returning Kentish Plover of the 1970s.
The insertion of twelve finders accounts of some of the rarest finds amidst the species accounts adds a real human perspective to the book. The earliest account is the 1979 Asian Desert Warbler followed by the 1994 American Herring Gull - the first record of this species for Britain and accompanied here by convincing artwork included in the original submission by its finder David Quinn - with the ten further accounts featuring discoveries between 2004 and 2016 and including the Western Sandpiper and Buff-bellied Pipit found by the authors Allan and Eddie respectively. I felt that the Blyth's Reed Warbler account truly exudes the excitement and enthusiasm felt by the authors and their contemporaries for bird finding in Cheshire and Wirral but such passion can influence ones outlook and I couldn't help but notice the disappointment of the authors that the 1988 Black-winged Pratincole was suppressed being so antithetical to their celebration of the 1997 Hoylake Pallas's Warbler that 'some Cheshire and Wirral birders managed to see', the 2004 Barred Warbler that was 'well watched and welcome' and the 2014 Rose-coloured Starling that was 'well seen by several birders' all of which were available by personal invitation only. Curiously the location of the Rose-coloured Starling is still withheld now, three years later.
The photograph captions consistently feature the name of the photographer but the inclusion of a date, location and in particular the age and sex is erratic. For some photographs where the location is stated the date can be deduced from cross-referencing to the text but this is fallible such as for Baird's Sandpiper where all three records are from the Weaver Bend. I found the use of uncaptioned photographs of birds taken outside of the county but not indicated as such to be misleading and I recognised the Caspian Gull (taken at Ainsdale, Merseyside), Roseate Tern (Seaforth, Merseyside) and Kentish Plover (Kilnsea, East Yorkshire) as such.
Although my knowledge of Cheshire rarities is not nearly complete enough for me to identify missing records wholesale my eye was drawn to Kumlien's Gull and with Steve Minton's photograph of the 2002 adult at (the sadly now defunct) Arpley Landfill in my mind's eye I can assume that the accreditation of the record to Stephen Menzie at Moore Nature Reserve is incorrect. I could find very few typographical errors in the text although Comberbach is mistakenly spelt Comberbatch, and similarly Gatewarth as Gateworth, thunbergi as Thunbergi, japonicus as japonicas and collybita as colybita. The map illustrating Yellow-browed Warbler reports in Britain and Ireland in autumn 2016 is far from comprehensive and in such is misleading, the photographed Paddyfield Warbler in June cannot be a 'first-year' as captioned - and a second-calendar year bird would have undertaken a complete winter moult and be indistinguishable from an adult - the plumage of the Marsh Sandpiper in the photograph seems unlikely for a bird in July and it is certainly not the bird previously seen in Yorkshire (at Blacktoft Sands) as stated in the text: was it really taken at Inner Marsh Farm as captioned? Or has the photograph been transposed? The latter certainly seems possible as I recognised the White-winged Black Tern photograph as having been taken at Crosby, Merseyside in 2005 and not at Inner Marsh Farm, Cheshire as presented here.
Choosing what to include in a book such as this is to an extent down to personal preference but as a book of record I would like to have seen at least the first ten records for each species fully documented - including dates, location, age, sex, observer names and reference to source - the inclusion of seasonal analysis for the more frequently occurring scarcities presented graphically, more photographs of the actual rarities themselves even if they are subprime and clarification of the current whereabouts of the specimens of significant Cheshire rarities of old - for example the only record of Two-barred Crossbill from the county is listed here as 'the skin is apparently retained at the Liverpool Museum' and this could have been easily confirmed and a photograph of the specimen included. The inclusion of records of Category D species is desirable as here it is limited to the clarification of the status of Lesser White-fronted Goose in the county.
If such additional information came at the sacrifice of the existing content than I think the introductory paragraph detailing the global range and taxonomy of each species - including detail of cryptic species never even recorded in the Holarctic such as the marginata Hoopoe of Madagascar (treated as a subspecies here although actually separated as a species by the IOC) - is not a necessity in a book with such a local focus. Indeed given the many references to extralimital subspecies including gambelli White-crowned Sparrow it is incongruent that it is not mentioned in the text that the only record of this species in Cheshire and Wirral has been submitted as the first British record of this unexpected subspecies and if accepted as such will represent the most remarkable vagrant ever to have occurred in the county.
This book is a commemoration and celebration of birding in Cheshire and Wirral and is an essential purchase for anyone with an interest in the birds of the region. It will rest neatly on my bookshelf next to David Norman's magnum opus 'Birds in Cheshire and Wirral: A breeding and wintering atlas' as a further testament to the commitment and enthusiasm that Cheshire birders have in documenting their avifauna.
Heartily recommended.
Rare and Scarce Birds of Cheshire and Wirral is £24.99 and is available direct from Allan Conlin rarebirdingwirral@gmail.com
Chris Batty
6 December 2017
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