Hot Mediterranean action

Adult Mediterranean Gull drifting over Langtoft Fen

I think I say it just about every time I blog about them, but adult Med Gulls are great. They're preposterously good-looking and sound the business too. On my old stomping ground around the pits at Langtoft, a pair or two can usually be found kicking about among the throng of breeding Black-headed Gulls every summer (though never yet confirmed breeding). That said, it's always great to actually see them and thus I was pretty chuffed to find a pair loafing around on one of the new roadside pits over the weekend. Disappointingly, though, there were no youngsters in tow despite some suggestive behaviour - for example, I got out the car and they decided to fly around my head, calling. Friday was a hot day, and the bird is actually panting in both images below, not exercising its vocal chords.

They did warn me...

I've been told by a number of people that getting in to orchids can be a dangerous game. As Mr Lowen said to me once, "you think large white-headed gulls are hard? Wait 'til you get in to dacts!". I laughed it off. I'd seen some strange looking creatures down at my dad's old place in Kenfig, and thought I was well prepared for problematic Dactylorhiza-types. Then, while at Holt Country Park in Norfolk over the weekend, this 'thing' appeared in front of me and left me flummoxed:

The plant was in a marshy area at the bottom of the country park's heath area, among many hundreds of Common Spotted Orchids. At a first glance I presumed it to be a Fragrant Orchid due to the lack of spots on the leaves and flowers but, to me, the size (huge) and shape of flowers is not right. The shape and structure is kind of reminiscent of Common Spotted Orchid, but the obvious lack of spots (and the overall flower structure) are not quite there.

So, is it a Fragrant x Common Spotted Orchid? I'd be more than interested in others' thoughts!

Last week at Collard Hill

It's been a breathless couple of weeks, and I haven't yet had chance to share a few photos from Collared Hill on 28th June. Large Blue proved really difficult and it was only within the last five minutes of our 5-hour visit that we finally scored.

Also seen were a few Wasp Orchid spikes along with a more typical Bee Orchid.

Un-bridled Joy

Bridled Tern with a backdrop of auks - an Inner Farne special

This summer is starting to get a little crazy. The Pacific Swift was great - a real June mega that was supposed to cap off a decent spring (at least for ticks) and keep us pumped until September arrived. Then last week came the Needletail. Two monster swifts unleashed in ten days - had that really just happened?! Then, six days on, I'm sat in the office at work and Dom calmly relays a tweet to me "Bridled Tern... Farne Islands"!

Say what?!

This was getting too good to be true. Another bird out of the top drawer. Of course, no one had got near this particular bird yet and, after just twenty minutes, it had flown off. But we knew that a Bridled - not accessible to the masses in Britain since 1988 and thus a similar calibre of 'blocker' to both the recent swifts - was in Northumbrian waters. Some went that evening, and scored crippling views of the bird when it flew back in at around 18:30, roosting among the local Arctic Terns. Others, like myself, were consequently spurred in to action by the bird's reappearance and organized a boat out of Seahouses at 06:00 the following morning.

Superb overnight driving from Pegden had us in the harbour car park as first light was breaking. Rich tried to scan Inner Farne at extreme range while the rest of us just dozed. 06:00 came around soon enough, though, and we were quickly on our way towards the island with around 30 others. Plenty of familiar faces but some new ones too - plenty of youth out in force today.

Arrived on Inner Farne at 06:30. The bird was showing instantly, giving a fabulous mix of crippling flight views (to less than 10m) and more extended looks as it perched on rocks. It also serenaded us with its peculiar gull-like call on several occasions. Sadly, though, the party was soon over and the bird headed off out to sea at 06:45 - before I'd a) got some nice shots and b) been fully satisfied with watching it!

It was hard to complain, though. Could the bird have chosen a better location?! Embarrassed to say that I'd never been to the Farnes before. I'll definitely be returning! Arctic Terns were everywhere, with many feeding youngsters:

Puffins were also commplace, and seemed to enjoy perching on buildings:

Great views of Bamburgh Castle en route back to the mainland too. We docked at 08:00, got involved in a cooked breakfast in a local cafe and then began the drive south. More top driving from John despite the rest of us nodding off and I found myself back in London by a little before 16:00. If only they were all so straightforward!

Now, surely that is it for the summer! Or will there be a Red-necked Stint? Or something rarer?! I guess the way things seem to be going right now, you just never know.

More on the needletail

Yours truly with the needletail, videograb with thanks to Dan Pointon

"There we were on the hard shoulder of the M6, a couple of hundred yards short of Gretna services. The blue lights were still flashing through the back window as Dan continued his futile attempts to start the car. We were due to fly out from Inverness in about 6 hours time. In our minds, though no-one dared speak it, were thoughts of the air fare going down the drain and the chance of a Needletail going with it."

The above is the opening paragraph from John Pegden's fantastic write-up of our day out yesterday. You can read the whole thing here - it's well worth it:
http://talesfromswallowfarm.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/needletail-highs-and-lows-of-twitching.html

I've also co-written an illustrated piece for the BirdGuides webzine that details much of the day from both mine and Alan Tilmouth's experiences of the day. You can read (if a subscriber) by clicking here. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a couple more photographs showing the upperside:

...and the underside:

The trip was rounded off with these dudes - there were loads of them flowering at Stornoway airport, though I can't really decide what they are - Northern Marsh or Early Marsh?

White-throated Needletail

Very brief post from Stornoway airport. What an incredible bird. More pics and context coming soon.

Man Orchids

I decided to pop in to Barnack again on Saturday evening. In a relatively brief visit, around 20 or so Man Orchids were easily located - very cool looking plants. Hundreds of Fragrant Orchids beginning to flower, guess it will look great in a week's time.

Homefield Wood

Orchid-filled meadows at Homefield Wood

On Wednesday, I visited Homefield Wood, near Marlow, for the first time. I'm a self-confessed amateur with all things orchids (and other plants), but keen nevertheless. My aim was to have a look at the Military Orchids that occur here with anything else a bonus, so I was pleasantly surprised (thrilled) to find the area teeming with Common Spotted Orchids of all shapes and sizes:

Quite a lot of Military Orchids in flower including some impressively-sized specimens. The vast majority were past their best (many well past), but some still in good condition:

Fly Orchid had always been a species I was keen to see and I'd read on Matt Eade's blog that he'd seen them at Homefield in late May. The vegetation had grown up considerably since then and no doubt most had already gone over; nevertheless found a few of these tiny but beautiful flowers. Again though, they were ever so slightly past their best.

 Somewhat embarassingly, Common Twayblade was a new one for me too:

...as was Greater Butterfly Orchid. There were three of these at the far end of the enclosure, one past its best but two still looking nice:

Finally, a few Chalk Fragrant Orchids were just starting to come in to flower:

Add to this a few Pyramidal spikes and it was a particularly productive couple of hours in which I had five orchid ticks! To top it all off, several Red Kites were lazily floating around in the (very) warm sunshine and a couple of Buzzards also showed well.

Pacific Swift

Pacific Swift over the Suffolk countryside - a long way from home

Given the run of sightings, I guess I wasn't alone in thinking that 2013 might finally be the year in which Pacific Swift was 'unblocked'. But such belief still required the bird to do its bit and actually linger somewhere long enough for a large-scale vigil to take place. But, at last, [one of] the Pacific Swift[s] gave itself up in Suffolk yesterday (and still today as it happens).

I mentioned on Thursday that an animated call from Rich Bonser last weekend had me going for a bit, but alas it was regarding the Long-tailed Duck that he'd just found. That said, there was no mistaking the panicked tones in Rich's voice as he rang at 10:45 yesterday to tell me that "the Pacific Swift is at Trimley". As it happened, I was heading westwards on the M4 with my mate Chris - we'd planned to visit a couple of orchid sites in the Home Counties to get some fresh air and enjoy a stroll outside the capital. I'd just passed the M25 junction as it broke, but was able to pull a quick U-turn at junction 5. The M25 looked pretty clogged up so we tediously battled back in to London and around the North Circular before eventually getting a fairly clear run up the A12 towards Colchester.

We arrived on site about 12:40 and soon met up with Rich and various others tackling the three-mile walk to the reserve in brisk fashion. And, forty-five minutes later (after a nerve-wracking message about the bird flying off over the river!), there it was, hawking around low over the lagoon - a bloody Pacific Swift! Significantly different in structure to the Swifts by which it was surrounded, it was more elongated with an obviously forked tail, and had longer, slimmer and more scythe-shaped wings - not to mention to obvious pale scaling on the underparts and white rump and throat. Just look at that profile!

 The Pacific Swift displaying just about everything you'd need to identify it - note the deeply-forked tail, long, scythe-shaped wings and of course white rump

In the strong winds, the bird spent much of its time feeding low over the lagoon. We felt that the bird's flight pattern was different to Common Swift, being a little more Alpine Swift-like in many respects. It was also a paler shade of brown to Common Swift.

 Comparison between Pacific (right) and Common Swifts

Though more often than not on the distant side for photography, it would occasionally battle the wind towards the seaward side of the lagoon. This meant it did just about get within range for some half-decent record shots, several of which can be seen below. What. A. Bird.

It proved a fantastic few hours in Suffolk. The crowds were surprisingly small and there was a lack offensive behaviour or conflict, just huge swathes of relief and elation as those arriving connected. Great to see so many friends there too. All in all, a brilliant day, despite the almost biblical storm along the A12 on the way home - cars were pretty much at a standstill due to quantity of rain; aquaplaning was proving a real problem. We saw at least seven seperate car crashes (of varying severity) on the way back to W London, four of which were on the North Circular alone!

London's early summer celebrity

Rich went to check out a female Long-tailed Duck a couple of Sundays ago when it first turned up on a small park lake, festering with McDonald's wrappers and various other bits of everyday urban detritus, in the middle of Peckham. By the time I got round to twitching it on the Tuesday it had disappeared, only to turn up again on James L's patch in Greenwich Park on the Friday. Rich had been livid that the duck had overflown his patch in Rotherhithe but, while slightly intoxicated in Manchester on Saturday afternoon, I received a call from him and instantly recognised the urgency in his tone. My heart sank. "Bollocks", I cursed, "this is going to be mega".

But no, thankfully not. It transpired that the duck had relocated to Canada Water, an empty Coke can's throw from Rich's flat. Here it has since remained to the time of writing [13th], showing extremely well at times but often diving around in the middle of the lake. I managed to fit in half an hour or so with the bird on Tuesday evening prior to my football game, though it primarily remained distant aside for a brief period when it unwittingly floated in to the margins as it preened. Sadly it didn't seem fond of the cheap white baps I'd brought along and, with light pretty poor, my shots aren't great. Needless to say, Jono Lethbridge has some considerably more appealing images.

Hopefully London's latest summer hit will hang around a few weeks longer. If it does, I'll be sure to head back down in proper light, armed with some hearty seed-filled goodness.