Peter Moore's Wildlife Blog

Saturday, 7 November 2026

If Carlsberg did dips...

After indulging in a day of 'brown' birding, twitching a Nutcracker on 25th October, I was determined to get out on the bike the following weekend. Extra incentive was provided by the fact that I had gone the whole month without adding to the non-motorised year list - and Saturday 31st October would be the last chance to change that. Late breaking news on the Friday evening of a Siberian Stonechat on Portland - a potential bike tick - seemed like fate so I packed the bike up that night ready for an early start.

Pallas's Warbler, Portland, 31st October

A traffic and trouble free journey saw me reaching Weston Road, where the Sibechat was last seen, in just under 2.5 hours - not bad given how out of practice I was. Before getting there, the first 'year tick' of the day had already been added with a couple of Black Redstarts in the half light at Chiswell. On arrival at Weston Road it was brightening up but the mood soon darkened when I approached Brett who broke the news that there had been no sign of the Sibechat in the first hour or so of daylight.

Pallas's Warbler, Portland, 31st October

Not to worry, I thought, there were other birds to look for, not least a Snow Bunting which had been frequenting the east cliffs below the Observatory for over a week. I rolled down towards the Bill, turning left to the coast path before the Observatory and, over the next couple of hours, grilled every inch of the coast and the sites apparently preferred by the Bunting. By this time I was getting hungry and considered heading to the Lobster Pot cafe before trying again, but en route another birder reported that he had just seen the Bunting in the Bill quarry close to the toilet block. I headed straight there and after a bit of a search happened across Simon Craft who had just located it through his thermal imager. Phew.

Pallas's Warbler, Portland, 31st October

I celebrated with a bacon and egg bap at the Lobster Pot, went back for another quick look at the 'Snob', and figured it was time to start heading home, not least as there were other potential year ticks on offer, including a Ring Ouzel last seen heading in the direction of the Top Fields. Just as I reached them another report came through of an Ouzel heading north from that area, so my hopes dropped a bit at that point. They were soon lifted though when news broke of a Pallas's Warbler, located close to where we had dipped the Sibechat earlier in the day.

Snow Bunting, Portland, 31st October

I was 5 minutes away so put the pedal down to get there as quickly as possible. A small crowd had gathered and not long after the Pallas's was relocated. It performed superbly for a good while, so after a few photos, and with time pushing on, I agreed a plan with Phil Bentley to meet up at the Verne at the top of the island before leaving Portland, as Ring Ouzel had been seen there in the preceeding days.

Snow Bunting, Portland, 31st October

Alas, we couldn't find one and after about an hour had to admit defeat. But I still had one more year tick in mind and this one ought to be a dead cert: Golden Plover at Lodmoor. After another brief stop in Chiswell for a few pics of a Black Redstart, in less than an hour I had reached Lodmoor and was enjoying the sights and sounds of a large and nervous flock of Golden Plover.

Black Redstart, Chiswell, 31st October

It was a memorable way to end the birding day and put the spring in my step needed to complete the remaining 17 miles of the journey back. I arrived home at 1732, precisely 12 hours after I left, and chalked 4 new species for the year onto the non-motorised list - a good haul at this late stage of the year, and it certainly rescued what would otherwise have been a pretty barren October.

Golden Plover, Lodmoor, 31st October

If Carslberg did twitches...

On returning from Shetland on 11th October, and plunging straight back into work and trips on trains full of coughing commuters, it wasn't long before I succumbed to the first cold of the winter. This deprived me of the opportunity to get out and stretch my legs on the bike, which had sat untroubled in the shed since the end of September. By Saturday 24th I was going a bit stir crazy, and although my health was improving I still didn't feel well enough to get out on the bike - and certainly not well enough to drive to Flamborough to stand for hours in the cold and rain amongst a scrum of birders looking for a possible glimpse of an elusive Rufous-tailed Robin - a very desirable bird but not one I wanted to see that badly.

What I needed was something nice and easy, and not a million miles away. So when news broke of a Nutcracker in Norfolk - or Slender-billed Nutcracker, Nucifraga caryocatactes macrorhynchos, to give it it's unduly long sub-species and scientific names - the adrenaline shot led to a remarkable recovery and the hatching of plans to head there on the Sunday. The arrival of this species into the UK this autumn had been widely predicted following an irruption involving dozens of birds reaching the low countries on the near continent. Although, like the Robin, this bird was expected to attract a large crowd, being the first twitchable Nutcracker for 35 years, it is not exactly a skulky species, and photos online suggested it was showing nicely in a fenced garden where obtaining views ought not to be a problem.

Now Norfolk may not be a million miles away, but Mundesley, where the bird was to be found, is right up in the top right hand bit of the county so still a very long way, and I really didn't fancy the long drive alone. Putting feelers out suggested it wouldn't be hard to fill a car though and I arranged to meet a couple of other Dorset eccentrics, Rob and Brett, at my home in Wareham at 0200 for a very early start which should see us arriving in Mundesley five hours later, just around first light.

With gear and a couple of passengers squeezed into my tiny but efficient car, it was not exactly spacious but still comfortable, and we left pretty much on plan at 0200, which immediately became 0100 as the clocks went back on the hour. A few overnight road closures presented no more than a mild inconvenience and after a couple of pit stops to accomodate the bladder weaknesses of the middle-aged males on board (mainly me) we arrived at the west end of Mundesley just 30 mins behind schedule at 0630, parking sensibly a hundred yards or so away from the bird's preferred garden. Judging by the milling around of the surprisingly modest crowd, we hadn't missed much, and we got a front row position by the fence just beyond which the Nutcracker had been parading the previous day.

With the strong wind chill I was glad that I remembered a to don a thermal layer before setting off, but after 30 mins of standing around I was still starting to feel the cold. Still, the wait provided an opportunity to catch up with old friends, including Bradders and James, team-mates from our recent Shetland trip. The non-appearance of the Nutcracker was obviously slightly perturbing, but it was still early so we tried to keep our spirits as high as our hopes. Before too long a movement to our right suggested that the bird had been re-located. Then the movement built into a wave as the crowd of birders followed the front-runners in the direction of the bird, like a camo-clad scene from a zombie apocaplyse movie. I assumed we would be heading just a few gardens down but the spot where the bird had been re-found turned out to be about half a mile to the east at the southern end of the village.

The brisk walk certainly took the chill off, and birders fast and slow evenutally huffed their way to a small footbridge over the Mundesley Beck just north of Water Lane. They needn't have rushed as, at the end of it, there was the Nutcracker, a vision in dark chocolate brown intensely spotted with white. It spent the next couple of hours hopping around on fences, hedges, garage roofs, trees, lampposts, the ground, signs and wheelie bins down to a few yards. The sun was shining, everyone was smiling and we filled our boots with views and photos.

As we admired the Nutcracker we were treated to the two extremes with which host communities seem to receive a temporary invasion of twitchers: from the irascible pensioner who cursed us for standing harmlessly on a public footpath and parting politely to let her pass unimpeded as she approached, to the enterprising fundraiser who spotted the opportunity to rattle a bucket to raise money for the local inshore lifeboat. We and many others happily chipped in and he seemed genuinely humbled by the generosity of the visitors, and I noticed an online fundraiser set up by a visiting twitcher for the same cause later raised over £1,800. So these twitchers may smell a bit, and a few undoubtedly can't park, but they're not all bad!

It was still only 0900, but our views could hardly improve, and the prospect of getting back to Dorset at a sensible time and rescuing some brownie points started to appeal, so we tore ourselves away and began the long journey home. A major prang on the M11 and a couple of other road closures meant it was gone 1600 by the time we reached Wareham - but not even the arduous journey could mar what had been a brilliant day and a clinically executed twitch.

Saturday, 12 September 2026

An AI for effort

Intrigued by the improvements which various friends seemed able to get enhancing photographs using AI, I succumbed to the temptation to experiment recently and inadvertently ended up having a pretty illuminating chat with a well-known AI brand about the ethics and practicalities of editing images in this way.

Long-tailed Shrike (adult), Eastleach Martin, 5th September - no AI enhancement needed with close views like this

Long-tailed Shrike (adult) with prey, Eastleach Martin, 5th September

Long-tailed Shrike, Eastleach Martin, 5th September (regular edit)

It started after a visit to Eastleach Martin on the Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire border on 19th July where Garry Hayman, Phil Saunders, Brett Spencer and I saw our first UK Long-tailed Shrike. My car was still in Spain after a breakdown in June, but I persuaded Garry that he really needed to drive me to see this bird, and, although we made a hash of meeting up at a sensible location, we were on our way within the hour of news breaking. This being the first day it was identified, there was a large crowd which stayed at a respectful distance, meaning that views were distant and photos poor, particularly with heat haze which was present for most of the day.

Long-tailed Shrike (adult), Eastleach Martin, 5th September

Brett sent me some AI enhanced phone scoped images of the Shrike when we got home and I could not help but be impressed with the quality, particularly when compared to the original. I tried it on my own distant, soft, hazy shots and was again impressed. It sharpened them up without them looking overly sharpened, brought out the colours without over-saturating and seemed to get the light levels just about right. But then I noticed that it had added white undertail feathers which were simply not there in my original image (the bird was in moult and the tail wasn't in great shape at that point, and there was a bit of white in a bramble behind which the AI 'imagined' into tail feathers).

Long-tailed Shrike (adult), Eastleach Martin, 5th September

This realisation led to a bit of back and forth with the AI about, in lay terms, not making shit up, and through conversation, if it can be called that, a bit of trial and error and a few refinements, between us we came up with a form of words for 'authentic' editing, namely, 'Enhance this photo conservatively: reduce noise, improve sharpness and tonal quality by recovering information latent in the original data only. Do not invent, replace or hallucinate detail'. To my mind this meant it would be doing not much more than one would do using a typical digital photo editing package.

Long-tailed Shrike (adult), Eastleach Martin, 5th September

In my limited experience of AI it's not a great listener, and it continued to 'make shit up' despite this instruction, so I refined it further and settled, with the advice of the AI, on the following instruction: 'Treat this as documentary wildlife photography. Apply only conservative restoration (noise reduction, sharpening, tonal and colour improvements). Do not generate or invent feather detail, eye detail or other features not present in the original image'. I subsequently learnt to insert a 'very' before 'conservative' if I think it's trying too hard.

So this is the best I could do with a regular edit on my first visit to the Long-tailed Shrike on 19th July

And this is the first AI edit - pretty good but it invented undertail detail which wasn't there

And this is what I settled on after a couple more 'conservative' AI edits - pretty good though it has perhaps lost too much of the ochre wash on the lower back

Now I'm no expert on the technicalities, but when I explored the issues in a lengthy exchange with the AI, it's fair to say, 'authenticity' in digital photo editing is probably best thought of being on a spectrum rather than either side of a clear line. That said, there does seem to be quite an important distinction between asking it to restore an image (which it interprets as only recovering data from the original image), versus enhancing an image (which it interprets as using any means necessary to make it better, including imagining or filling in gaps based on some assessment of what ought to be there).

My Wallcreeper photos from Pic du Midi (this one taken 30th June) were a bit soft due to them being in shade and some heat haze so I experiemented with AI - this is the regular edit (no AI) - compare with...

A 'conservative' AI edit of the same image

Another original Wallcreeper here

'Conservative' AI edit here

My starting point about using AI for image enhancement was, I should say, sceptical - not about the output so much as the process and the ethics of what might be considered 'cheating'. Then again like many people I use packages like Topaz which boast their AI credentials. So if you are using packages like those on your PC to edit photos, is there really much difference between that and asking AI to do it over the internet? Especially if you click 'auto' when using them? And if a rubicon has been crossed, maybe, as Brett suggested, it was when we went from celluloid to digital, not when we went from photo editing software which uses AI to using AI platforms to edit photos directly?

Probably my most nicely posed Wallcreeper from Pic du Midi on my second visit on 3rd July - a bit soft even after some sharpening in a regular photo editing package

'Conservative' AI edit of the same image, which I think is quite impressive

Original image

AI edit of the above image

I'm really not sure, to be honest, but I think for this and all sorts of other reasons - energy use, seemingly being owned by unscrupulous billionaires etc - I'll be using AI only very sparingly, only to edit very conservatively, and will be transparent about it (as in this post) when I do. Anyway, all this is a long-winded way of shoe-horning in the fact that a family event last weekend took me within twitching distance of the now departed Long-tailed Shrike, enabling me to get some pictures good enough (by my standards) that no AI enhancement was necessary!

The contrast between shaded area and the rest of the image was a bit too much in this original

I asked the AI to reduce the contrast which it did but the rocks just look a bit fake

One of my worst ever record shots of a rarity is this Canada Warbler in Pembrokeshire in 2023...

I think the AI did a pretty good job of restoring this, though at the first attempt it invented the bird's face which simply isn't there!

An amusing post-script, whilst messing with photos, I sent 'before and after' comparison photos of the Black Lark on Anglesey to a friend with the message 'Catastrophically unsustainable resource consumption, and ultimately being crushed under the heel of our AI overlords, is a small price to pay if it makes my shitty photos look good' - except instead of posting this to my friend I posted it into the open dialogue box in the AI platform by mistake!

White's Thrush from Shetland in 2023 - original edit

White's Thrush - AI edit

Black Lark on Anglesey in 2003 - my original image was a fuzzy digiscoped one

AI edit of the Black Lark - I think it's done a pretty good job of this though it does seem to have taken a bit of the heaviness out of the chin, despite me asking it not to invent detail

It said 'haha' implying it 'got' the joke, but then the cheeky AIrsehole had the nerve to have a dig at me that the energy it used to enhance the photo was a fraction of what I used to travel to see the Black Lark, claiming that I was therefore 'saving' energy by using it! I countered that this argument only held if the AI edit had negated any need to go back again for better photos, but as things stood it was just using extra energy on top of what I had already used. To be fair it took that on the chin, but I still didn't know whether to be impressed or disturbed that it felt the need to defend itself over the suggestion of unsustainable energy use, and that it did so by invoking 'whataboutery'! Perhaps even more disturbing is that while it challenged my jibe about energy use, it never felt the need to challenge the bit about ultimately being crushed under the heel of our AI overlords...