Blogging: the new approach

Hi all,
Well, it's been a long time, mainly due to fears, legitimate or otherwise, that my birding life just wasn't exciting or 'sexy' enough to make what I had to say any more valid than what so many others have said in so much more detail than I ever have done. Something about blogging makes me uneasy, it's like one is clamouring for attention above the background noise of thousands of other blogs, and this doesn't sit easy with my humble side.
That said, I was pleasantly surprised recently, in the text of an unrelated e-mail about Ringed Plovers, to receive a remark about my blog which read as follows: 'By the way, your blog needs a new sign of life, it's been nearly a year now...'
To that person, who knows who he is, I dedicate at least part of this post, for the kick up the posterior that I needed to do something about the situation!
So, of late, I have rediscovered an always stimulating birding blog written by Martin Garner, that often poses as many questions as it supplies answers, yet always in such a way as to attempt to inspire others to help solve the puzzle, or at least to make more use of their own observations. The URL is http://birdingfrontiers.wordpress.com/, I'll be adding it to my own links also.
While I don't know much about the identification of juvenile 'African Cormorants', the Belgian bird, found by Peter Adriaens, on Martin's blog does look amazing, and unlike any juvenile Cormorant that I have ever seen...need to see juvenile sinensis in fresh plumage, however, only seen 2cy birds in late winter/early spring. Certainly don't think I saw any juvenile maroccanus, presume they wouldn't have fledged as early as April anyway, even that far south? Need to do Morocco again...
Chiffchaffs, on the other hand, are something I encounter very regularly, even when doing Atlas-related birding as I have done so often the last few summers, and I must agree: I am hearing the 'swee-oo' call everywhere right now, possibly more so than in recent years. I do recall Bill Oddie musing about this in his column in Birdwatch magazine, perhaps in the mid to late 90s, and I know it was treated in passing by Mark Constantine et al in The Sound Approach to Birding, but, if adults are giving this call as well as juveniles, and Martin's shots clearly show that they are, just what are the implications? Is it just that this call was always in the vocabulary of local collybita, and it is just now, with a long-needed shake-up of how we treat vocalisation in an identification context, that people are taking proper notice? Perhaps, but I still think that such a call from a common and widespread species would have been noted, whatever explanation people gave for it...
Speaking of calls, this year has seen me gain fresh experience with many calls given by species that are rarely heard, or call types that differ from the norm: in particular, and very helpfully for confirming breeding for so many species, I have gained experience of calling juveniles of such species as Sparrowhawk (and how they sound subtly different from those of juvenile Long-eared Owl, not necessarily an academic distinction to have to make, as the owls can start calling before dark sometimes...) and Common Buzzard (which enabled me to prove breeding at a new site one evening without seeing any birds, but hearing at least one juvenile and one adult calling quite late from inside a small copse), and refreshed my aural 'search image' for things like juvenile Greenfinch and Linnet. If the above species don't sound exciting enough for some of you, I was also able to confirm the distinctions, as heard in recordings, between the calls and song of Booted and Sykes's Warblers in central Asia, and to hear the diagnostic 'trrrr' call of Moltoni's Warbler on Sardinia...