Baird's Sandpiper

A couple of portraits of the juvenile Baird's Sandpiper which graced Davidstow Airfield, Cornwall during early September (images taken Sept 7th). I never tire of seeing this fantastic species, particularly so when in such fresh plumage - they really are subtle yet stunning. At times, it showed down to four metres alongside its Dunlin escort.

American Black Tern, 30/8

Late on 28th, news broke of an apparent juvenile American Black Tern (surinamensis) at the slightly unexpected setting of Farmoor Reservoir (Oxon). Due to various reasons, I sacked off going on the 29th, playing it cool and eventually going on the Sunday morning.

The bird wasn't exactly difficult to find. Farmoor is great; it's really easy to see everything on a couple of concrete bowls. Sure enough, the obliged for the next hour or so (albeit at distance) as I viewed from the causeway, along with my fellow Bank Holiday Sunday dudes. The bird itself was splendid; a wonderful marsh tern with dusky flanks and underwings, dark grey rump and upperside and grey (as opposed to black) crown. What helped (and indeed made the record so remarkable) was that both confusion species, both 'European' Black and White-winged Black Terns, were present alongside it:

Left to right: leucopterus in flight, niger (middle) and surinamensis

I guess it will be some time before (if ever?) such a trio will ever show up on the same body of water again. Being able to compare the three side-by-side revealed a few things, not least the size and structure of surinamensis appearing more akin to that of leucopterus. In flight, it also seemed to resemble its White-winged cousin more than Black, and spent much of it's time associating with the former. This allowed for fantastic comparison between the clean, crisp White-winger and the much darker, duskier American Black. So, perhaps not a good candidate for a split (you only have to look at the DNA to realise that), but certainly a charismatic and distinctive subspecies that I would certainly recommend seeing.

Above: Upperside...

... and underside

Ireland, 22nd - 28th August

And so it was time for what has become an essential in my birding calender - the annual end-of-August pilgrimage to the west coast of Ireland with the primary focus being seawatching off the Bridges of Ross (Co. Clare). The first weekend of the trip was spent with my mother in Dublin and Cork, with very little birding done at all - best of the bunch were 8 Ruff on Swords Estuary on 22nd.

Mid-morning on the 24th saw me up at Shannon airport to meet the team, who had arrived on the morning flight from Stansted. The 2009 line-up consisted of old favourite Richard Bonser, Little Shear king John Archer, the ever-pleasant Marc Read and Bridges virgin Dan Pointon. The first notable bird of the drive west towards Loop Head was a Common Buzzard over the road c.4 kilometres east of Lisseycasey, an Irish tick for yours truly!

Eventually, we found ourselves at 'The Bridges' by mid-afternoon, and a seawatch until mid-evening yielded an adult Sabine's Gull, Balearic Shearwater and c.30 Sooty Shearwaters amongst others. Further seawatching sightings over the following four days will be listed below.

Other birds were quite difficult to come by during the week, though a 3CY Ring-billed Gull at Spanish Point regularly broke up the monotony when the seawatching got dire; plenty of juvenile waders about too but nothing particularly spectaclar with water levels still very high.

25th August; moderate SW wind with showers:

Wilson's Storm-petrel (1) west @ 07:35

Sabine's Gull (9) adults

Grey Phalarope (2)

Pomarine Skua (2)

Long-tailed Skua (1) adult

Sooty Shearwater (c.70)

Storm-petrel (8)

Arctic Skua (7)

Great Skua (3)

Arctic Tern (25)

26th August:

Sabine's Gull (3) adults

Leach's Storm-petrel (1)

Pomarine Skua (1)

Balearic Shearwater (1)

Storm-petrel (17)

Arctic Skua (11)

Great Skua (3)

Common Scoter (10)

Arctic Tern (7)

27th August, mid-afternoon to dusk, wind moderate WSW:

Sabine's Gull (5) adults

Leach's Storm-petrel (1)

Balearic Shearwater (5)

Sooty Shearwater (46)

Storm-petrel (9)

Great Skua (25)

Arctic Skua (6)

Arctic Tern (32)

28th August, 06:30-09:00, wind brisk WNW veering NW:

Sabine's Gull (23) one juvenile

Grey Phalarope (16)

Leach's Storm-petrel (8)

Long-tailed Skua (1) juv

Pomarine Skua (1)

Storm-petrel (75)

Sooty Shearwater (c.100)

+ good numbers of Arctic & Great Skuas

Arctic Skua, Bridges of Ross (Co. Clare)

Pomarine Skua, Bridges of Ross (Co. Clare)

2nd-summer to adult (3rd-)winter Ring-billed Gull, Spanish Point (Co. Clare)

"Aup!"

Cow, Kilbaha (Co. Clare)

Great Spot, 4th August

A photo of what was a new British bird for me (after missing at least two in recent times), it was remarkably elusive in the couple of hours I had spare to look for it. Feeding avidly on caterpillars, it was often accompanied by a juvenile Common Cuckoo. Perhaps more spectacular than this worn adult was the massive influx of ladybirds; some pockets of the coast looked orange at a distance! Closer study revealed a remarkable amount of cannibalism going on - the live ladybirds were feasting on their less-fortunate brothers!!

Mirror Images..

Having spent an unhealthy amount of time on computers (and the internet) of late, it appears that some of our very own British birders have their own lookalikes across the North Sea. In Sweden, to be precise:

... and just for fun, it's Aslan from Narnia:

Finally, can you guess this big lister?

More to come, probably.

Summer Doldrums

It's been a tough few weeks - the summer doldrums, if you like. Last Tuesday, I went to Cornwall on spec with Marc Read, only to be let down heavily by the weather - we managed a single Sooty Shearwater amongst other crap in a long, long seawatch (granted I spent most of the time asleep). I eventually arrived home in the early hours of Wednesday morning, but was rudely awoken by news of a Blue-cheeked Bee-eater in Kent, which I went on to dip. 1300 miles in two days, for a Sooty Shear - I found myself questioning "why bother?!"

Today (27th July), I kicked myself out of bed and the house for 11:00, and decided to do some local birding. First port of call was local gull mecca (by national standards it's shite) Dogsthorpe Tip. Amongst the few hundred Lesser Black-backed and tens of Herring Gulls present, five Yellow-legged Gulls (two adults, 4th-s, 3rd-s and juv) were picked up, as well as about five Great Black-backed Gulls:


Adult michahellis in typical setting

With not so much as a sniff of a cach, I quickly got bored and headed off.

The once-great Maxey Pits complex looked a shadow of its former self today (it has become ludicrously overgrown and water levels were very low), and all I could muster was a juvenile Greenshank being bullied by a Black-headed Gull. My old favourite, Baston & Langtoft Pits, looked even worse - here water levels are far too high and there's too much vegetation. Two Green Sandpipers seemed slightly perplexed to be feeding amongst the rocks on ARC Pit (the only available margins), but later looked more characteristic when they flushed from 300 yards and pissed off.

I wish autumn would hurry up - July birding is crap!

Recent Shenanigans 29th June - 4th July

It seems like an age since I wrote anything on here and, to be frank, it has been. After a lull in birding activity for much of June, the past week has been comparitively hectic. It all kicked off on Monday (29th June), when I finally pulled my finger out and went to Somerset to see the male Little Bittern, which has been singing at Ham Wall RSPB all month. The bird was heard soon after arrival on site (at around 05:00), but it took another eighty minutes for brief flight views of the bird. With weather conditions far from ideal (bucketing rain), my good friend Will Bowell and I decided to leave and, after being delayed by a slight mess on the M42, we were home early afternoon.

Things then slipped back into the midsummer doldrums for a couple of days, until a call at around a quarter to nine on Thursday morning from twitching's foul-mouthed bad boy Dan Pointon alerted me to a River Warbler singing the previous evening in the unusual yet magnificent location of Applecross, Highland. Realising that this was only 11.5 hours from home, and seeing as I had 24 to play with before I was due on shift for BirdGuides the following morning, I figured that if the bird played ball then it would be doable. So, off I set, picking up DP at 11:45. We made good progress, passing Glasgow by 15:00. Anyone who knows the road from Glasgow up to Kyle of Lochalsh will agree that the scenery is stunning, and I left Pointon to do the photography whilst I tried to concentrate on the road:



We finally reached the bird by around 19:30. The River Warbler was giving short bursts of song from thick gorse until it was provoked by a wandering Whitethroat; it reacted in such a way that it sat right up on top of the bush and proceeded to sing constantly for the next fifteen minutes. I was fortunate to get a couple of decent shots before it moved to its favoured perch in a nearby sycamore:


River Warbler, Applecross, 2nd July

Somehow, I managed to drive back to Glasgow, and Pointon took over for 150 miles or so. Remarkably, I was back home in Langtoft for 06:30, a full 90 minutes before my BirdGuides shift began - nicely timed...

And so the third chapter of the week involves a Caspian Tern, which graced Welney WWT's Buxton Scrape on the morning of Saturday 2nd. Waking up late, I was greeted with messages concerning the bird's presence, and so I stumbled out of bed and in to my car, and was down at Welney by 13:00. Sure enough, the bird was still present (and asleep), ending a run of dips I've had with the species. Judging by the incomplete hood and 'mucky' cheekys, as well as immature-type primaries and coverts, it seems this bird is presumably a 2nd-summer. After it got it's conk out for me, I left. And that was about it:


not-so-Royal Tern, Welney, 4th July

A busy week then - but when's the Royal going to be back to shaft all us dippers again?

A Royal Dip

Today (16th June), I went to northwest Wales, or more specifically the Lleyn peninsula, with reborn twitcher Marc Read, RBA slave Will Soar, and Dave Holman of BLEA. Certainly a stunning backdrop for a stunning bird which had been present the previous evening (a Royal Tern). To cut a long story short, the bird had done one, and was not seen despite searching as far away as Cemlyn Lagoon by some.

Still, a rather nice day out - lovely weather and brilliant scenery, and we also had a few Choughs which were nice. Here's a photo of Abersoch harbour:



So, not exactly the best reintroduction to birding (I haven't been out due to Uni/festival-related commitments) but I have a feeling we are to hear more of the orange-billed beast before the summer is out! See you all at Dawlish next week.

Kent again, 16/5

Another trip to Kent today. Leaving Lincs at around 06:00, I picked up Werrington duo Chris Orders and Leon Smith (not a couple I hasten to add) and caned it down to Grove Ferry for about nine. Finally found Marsh Hide, and watched the Black-winged Pratincole for a further two hours at the back of the pools, generally obscured and often totally out of view. In that period, it flew once (I had a split second view through my bins before it disappeared behind the duffer standing in front of me) - very unusual for a pratincole, so I thought. It spent much of its time waddling around, not really doing alot. Occasionally, it would dart after an insect or get upset by the local Greylag Geese. Still, a very pleasant bird to look at, and the experience was greatly enhanced by twitching guru Garry Bagnell arriving and struggling considerably to get on to the bird for several minutes.


Black-winged Pratincole, Stodmarsh, 16th May - note the black wings. Erm...

Nevertheless, I decided to move on some time just before 11, and headed back to the viewing ramp with the crew. A Wood Sandpiper shot about at the back of the pool, and there were also a few Blackwits and Avoshits on the scrape. Then we left, just before a Red-footed Falcon flew through. And that was about it!

Local bits, 14-15th May

I decided to have a break this weekend and head home. Naturally, this usually means copious amounts of birding crammed in to the limited time available. Sure enough, I got out on the patch as soon as I could on the evening of 14th. The recent Spotted Redshank (a splendid summer-plumaged bird) was still on the New Works, and a nice bonus was a Black Tern on the Ocean.

Friday (15th) saw me gripped off by local birder and butcher, Will Bowell, who managed to find a Temminck's Stint at Maxey Pits in between slaughtering local livestock. Keen to get back on level terms, I went down to BLGP - 3 Black Terns were nice on the Ocean, and an Arctic Tern was on the Jet Ski Pit. A Common Sandpiper flitted about on North Pit, and the Spotted Redshank was still in residence on the New Works. Other bits included a Hobby over, but there was no sign of that real bit of quality I was after.


Black Magic @ BLGP

I moved on to Maxey, where Bowell's Temminck's eventually showed rather nicely, along with a few tundrae Ringers and a Dunlin:


Temminck's Stint, Maxey, 15th May