Week 31 16-11-2014 Birds Spotted: 1

The one thing about birding at the weekends is that you're incredibly reliant on the weather being good. It's been terrible for me this week, so I've not got much to report. I did manage to see one new bird however, and amazingly, it was right outside the window where I work.

Black Redstart
On Tuesday I was having a chat at work about some feature ideas, when I saw two birds flitting about from the corner of my eye. I excused myself (read, got up and walked away) and could see they were definitely not something I'd seen before. Upon getting home I realised they were Black Redstarts, a new tick for my list. But would they be there the next day?
The following day I only saw the one male, but he hung around for the rest of the week, allowing for some decent photos.
It's a stunning bird, roughly Robin-sized and recently reclassified as an old world Flycatcher. I thought this was quite appropriate as he would dart out, fly erratically in mid air and return to his perch. While it's not a very common breeding bird (around 40 pairs) up to 400 birds are thought to winter here each year, which may explain the numerous sightings around portland recently. Like Peregrines, they've managed to successfully colonise man-made structures and are typically found breeding at locations like Battersea Power Station, which proves that man and nature can co-exist together.
Anyway, I was really please to see such an unusual bird and it certainly made up for the otherwise terrible weather over the weekend.

He was quite tame and I was able to get to the minimum focal length of my lens.

You can better see his orange tail here. Some variants have orange breasts too.

It was a blustery day, hence him being quite ruffled.

A shot that's been uncropped.

So that put me up to 123 photographed birds, with another 149 left to find :)