Heroes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXgkuM2NhYI

Early November saw just a brief opening of the eastern window on the 5th and on 6th I was able to make a dawn start on Gypsy Lane.  Blackbirds were pouring inland along the coastal hedgerows joined by Redwings and as dawn broke Fieldfares chuckled overhead.  It was cold and other passerines in the undergrowth and sycamore stand were scarce.  I headed out onto the marsh where breeding Seals were hauled up above the main creek.  Starlings were moving inland in numbers and finch movement was steady, I heard a couple of subtle "tics" overhead.  Loosely assosciated with a small flock of Chaffinches, 2 hulking Hawfinch flew West, flashing swathes of white through the wing.  Wading boot high across the path on the falling tide I headed to the dunes and sunk into the sands.

It was really busy offshore, 100's of Lapwing headed W in flocks of 20.  Teal and Wigeon heading East.  Merganser, Eider, Goldeneye and 1000's of Scoter at various distances plus the usual smatter of GC Grebe and RT Diver.  Starlings and Skylark over the steel grey sea added to the subtle spectacle.  After an hour I dragged myself away and back to the bushes.  By mid-morning I felt I'd worked what I could pretty thoroughly and headed up the road to Titchwell where a Red Breasted Flycatcher had been seen.  The chosen spot seemed a little dark and dank but a flurry of excitement revealed a grey and white Chiff with a bright yellow wing panel.  It was being called as a tristis but was the Bonelli's looking type of eastern grey and white Chiff I have longed to see.  I saw it a few times around the loop and, fickle with light, it did look browner with "tobacco" ear coverts at times, at others monochrome with shafts of highlighter yellow in the primaries.  A cracking looking bird and one I'd have liked to have heard but alas it remained silent.  

I chose to seek out the best interface, thinking specifically of how Ian Wallace (dimw) had shown me and Rich Baines the art of reading the lines of a canopy to locate where flycatchers can best locate insects against the light.  I thought I'd found the best spot and another birder or two joined my speculative vigil.  The fella behind me whispered, "I've got it" and with a few flicks the RBFly was sitting proud and spanking out in the open.  I drunk it in and it moved back into cover, I decided to wander.  Doing a loop around the fen sallows I slowly came back around to the chosen interface again but with the sun just breaking the clouds.  In no time the Flycatcher perked up activity, the grey and white Chiff showed itself well and one, then two sprites revealed themselves, my first Yellow-brows of the autumn.  I got home to learn the sad news that Ian Wallace had died - a birding hero since my early teenage days, in the late eighties and nineties, reading his hugely engaging and inspiring articles in Birdwatching magazine.  Rich's work on Flamborough allowed me and Ben to meet with Ian on several occasions.  They say best not to meet your heroes but in this case that proved wrong.  A gentleman, full of insight and reflective humour, a total bird obsessive alert to all the potential and possibilities and keen to share his thoughts about the journey with those willing to listen with an open mind.  Ben got to see in his briefcase once.

Last week the wind turned Northerly and I was able to get to the coast again for dawn with Mark Hawkes and later joined by Elyers - Mark x 2, Will and Ben. Our minds were on Dovekie, Little Auks, tiny pied bullets on a seawatch.  The wind was raging in and shelter proved hard to locate but we found a sweet spot and after a few drenchings the skies cleared and the viewing was good.  There was plenty to look at with steady movement of Kittiwake flocks into the wind being most enjoyable - these resilient gulls at their pelagic best.  Eider, Mergansers and Goosander, Shelduck and Scoter all put in a show as did Divers with plenty of Red-throats, a decent view of a Black-throat and a distant Great Northern.  A Black-necked Grebe made a short inshore flight but gave all the details it needed to before dissappearing into the swell and 4 Bonxies helped keep the idea if passage alive. A pale phase Skua defied specific identification, tempting to assume a Pom with several along the coast during the day but the plumage just didn't click.  I had to be back in Ely for lunch but the return past the freshmarsh yielded an adult winter Grey Phalarope hectically feeding and a Water Pipit  not far beyond it on one of the newly sculpted banks.  

A quick look off the cliffs at Hunstanton produced little extra but more Kittiwakes and the odd auk cutting across the churning mouth of The Wash.

vvhitish winger

 

......has landed.

 

always believe in....

 

The Beast

https://rustedrail.bandcamp.com/track/the-beast-2

The forecast didn't look great for very much on the east coast with SW veering W winds and westerly airflows across the continent right out to the Urals.  Jono had the day off work and I was visiting the folks in York so we headed out to Flamborough early doors.  After the ever perilous descent beneath the fog station we settled in to watch the sea for a bit.  There was lots of light, mostly southerly, movement of duck which accumulated into more impressive numbers.  The variety was pleasing, offering good identification practice as sea and freshwater duck, waders, gulls and incoming passerines all presented points of discussion.  

Just shy of 4 hours later we headed up to the cafe for a bacon bap and on checking the bird news saw that there had been 2 White-billed Divers seen flying South at Hartlepool Headland just 30mins earlier.  That changed our plan to walk the headland and we headed back down to seawatch.  Brett Richards had been good to his word "What time are you giving it til Brett?"  "10 minutes after you lads" his deadpan answer.  😂😂

We kept watch and count through till 1.45 - we figured 2 hrs was long enough for a diver to have reached us.  Having scaled the cliff again we headed down to the golf course willows and as Jono walked up the path I stayed on the open side checking for movement.  I had routinely kept my eye on the sea when suddenly a large, brown and white diver appeared flying across the bay just offshore - in my binoculars it looked exactly as my search image for White-billed Diver should, I shouted very loudly to Jono to get on it and got my scope on it - boom.  I worked instantaneously down the bird noting sandy brown colouration, thick neck, no dark collar, no cap, smudgy open face and then the clincher a huge pale banana bill.  I hadn't time to put my tripod legs up and too quickly the scope views were gone and I was left hollering directions to Jono who was running down the path and following the bird in the bins as it flew out of view past the headland.

I wasn't cool over this sighting and froze, stunned, just repeating "I don't know what to do."  Jono took charge, he'd seen the bird but wasn't on the adrenaline hit I was riding.  We did take ourselves back to the fog station to check whether the couple of birders we'd spoken to had seen it and to check if it had landed and put ourselves in a better position if it happened to fly back North for any reason.  After a good search we decided to settle ourselves with a check of old fall which, apart from a dozen or so migrant Blackbirds, was as quiet as we had expected.  Later in the evening news of our diver heading South past Filey at 2pm was welcome.  The bird was described as " a beast of a diver" and I couldn't agree more.

Drive Blind

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x8W6X8X_ApM

An early October Birdo weekend based on the Norfolk coast began to unravel a little as it became clear that Mark H was going to be too unwell to join us.  The discovery of a Long-toed Stint in Yorkshire had started to wobble Jono's resolve too.  Nonetheless we started out at dawn down the shingle of Blakeney Point with a gentle south easterly whispering in our ears.  The beautiful blue skies didn't nod towards any migrants making landfall but it was gorgeous to be out.

The flat sea was dotted with auks and divers and as the tide rose flocks of Wigeon and Brent Geese filled the shallow bays and creeks.  At the Plantation on the Point there were Brambling, Chaffinch, Meadow Pipits and Reed Buntings picking at the brances and leaves.  A few Blackbird, Song Thrush and Redwing hinted at the migration that typifies many autumnal mornings on the coast.  From Yorkshire news came in that the Long-toed Stint was still present and we headed back with haste as Jono was commited to the twitch.  Long and short I went too.

Next morning we worked the coastal belt from Holkham to Gun Hill.  It was unnervingly quiet and it seems many years since I walked this route without a few Yellow-browed Warblers to brighten the search. There are many worse places to go for a walk but the birding was very sparse.  The only thing to do - go to Titchwell.

There was plenty to see on the seawall walk out to the beach at Titchwell and the Golden Plover were particularly beguiling. 

Jono headed back to York mid-afternoon and I headed to Gypsy Lane, slowly pottering out to Brancaster I was enjoying some close up Curlew when the strident "schweep" of a Richard's Pipit overhead jolted me, thankfully it wasn't too high up and easily located as it called again heading out towards Thornham Point.

I went back to Titchwell to enjoy the late afternoon spectacle - thousands of Starling began to gather and cover the bund pushing off the Golden Plover. There was plenty of interest in these as a young Rose-coloured Starling had been joining the throng.  With lots of eyes checking it wasn't too long before a call went out for the Rosy - I was in luck as the pallid bird popped out at the front of the flock right in front of me, my phone was dead through taking so many wader pictures, so no pics unfortunately. The chattering mass of Starlings swirled over the reedbed and beyond them 70 or more Little Egrets roosted in the pines, 3 Great White's towering over them within the snow flurry of small herons.

On the marsh gulls accumulated and a very smart 1st yr Med Gull was joined by a few Yellow Legged Gulls and 2 adult Caspian types that kept the interest going.  As the sun dropped, huge straggling skeins of Pink-footed Geese made their way to roost on The Wash.  There are few better places to spend an autumn evening.

Hebridean Majesty

 

Hebrides

After a day-long drive we slipped out of Ullapool into the growing darkness, and headed into the deep velvet blue. On waking, the silent loch, flat calm, greeted us in sunlight. Robins and Stonechats pecked and checked from every bush and fencepost, and wrens called from every dark corner.

The rugged coast hid white sandy bays with smoothed rocks piled up as giant shingle. Small waders and pipits searched on the tideline or rested on the flooded slacks. Throughout the week, geese and a few swans began to arrive too, though from a different direction to the one we had taken to get there. Offshore, Gannets, Cormorants and Shag passed by from time to time, lingering on the autumn sea.

One mistful morning, the clearing wind brought with it Redwings in ones and twos, and some Brambling. They didn't linger and soon we were left with the resident Redpolls and Starlings. 

At the Ness, the loch held birds from much further afield. Four Ring Necked Duck bobbed on the open water, drifting past the flock of chestnut coated Wigeon. A Lesser Yellowlegs and three Pectoral Sandpipers spooked from the plover flock and landed on some grassy puddles on the edge of the reserve.

The Golden Plover, Lapwing  and Curlew spread out on the machair while gulls loafed in a white huddle. A Merlin dashed at the Teal, cold white and grey Hen Harriers sped across the view and a male Peregrine exploded among the waders - picking out a Snipe, chasing it down and defying momentum with time stopping turns and breaks.

and then....

 

They're Coming Mr Frodo...

 

Blue

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NiMbqZqjZFI

During the last week of August and into September I started a bit of a campaign to lure the near mythical Clifden Nonpareil to the garden.  First off Evie made some moth lure from a recipe in her WildTimes (RIP YOC) from the RSPB, I added some red wine and we daubed it across the boughs of the fruit trees.

I then made a seperate concoction of fermenting plums, molasses and red wine which I thought might just increase the chances of bringing a blue underwing to the light.

I was only a few days into my campaign with my light running and the fruity booze lure plated up when the incredible happened.  I routinely go out hourly to the light until I go to bed, my last check at midnght on the 7th Sept had me literally dancing for joy.  There in the torch light on the white sheet I place under the trap was the stone and cobalt form of a Clifden Nonpareil, I was ecstatic and shaking when I popped a tupperware box over the beast and brought it inside.  I kept it in the fridge and a few Ely folk, who could, had a look before it made it's bid for freedom and departrd into the warm Elysian evening air.

It was a week of wonders as the pull of the White Tailed Plover became too much to resist.  Having arrived at my adolescent haunt of Blacktoft Sands, East Yorkshire on the 26th during our monstorous Sheringham seawatch, this fantastic looking bird is still present a month on.  Really enjoyed spending time watching it over a special sunday morning visit.