Friday 21 September 2018

Pallid into insignificance

After such a good time with the Pallid harrier at Welney this week, I was tempting fate to try and repeat it with a local bird. Another juvenile Pallid has been quartering the fields at Therfield in the north of Hertfordshire for 4 days. It seemed like a tricky bird to get close to but yesterday people were saying it was putting on a good show so I thought "why not". I got to the village about 8 and parked up by the church. It took about 10 minutes to walk to the top of the fields where you have a view over the valley and the stubble. The farmer has been releasing grey partridge and with the accompanying food crops for them has brought in a lot of smaller birds. This is probably why the harrier was hanging around.
There was a crown already gathered on a VERY windy hillside. The harrier has just dropped out of sight. When I worked out where they were looking though it was miles away. When it did fly you could see a harrier and probably a bit of golden colour but the rest was too distant to make out. In the high winds it didn't want to fly far and came to rest in a ditch from where it did not want to move. I could see some other birders lower in the valley in front of us. One of them walked along a small track across the fields towards the bird, spooking it into flying but not far. They seemed to be closer anyway so I relocated down to there. Lee Evans was already there but of the bird no sign. We waited and waited till eventually it flopped out of the ditch and flew a few yards before disappearing again. This was repeated again about 30 minutes later. Lee was in phone contact with birders up where I came from who could see the bird sitting in the ditch, but it was out of sight to us. The landowner apparently didn't like you going down the track towards the ditch and even Lee didn't want to risk the wrath of him of other birders up on the hill. We sat it out for over an hour hoping it might fly! Finally we got a lucky a breaks it flew up out of the ditch.
It was still way further off than the Welney bird but you could at least make out a few of the salient features. Not sure I could call it a Pallid rather than a hen harrier on these views but I'll bow to others on that. It flew up the hill opposite us and sat down briefly on a grassy bank before flopping down out of sight into some stubble.




 We decided that we'd had enough so most of us left though the second shift were starting to arrive as we walked back to the cars. Hopefully they got better views than us.
I did stop off at Maple Lodge on the way back which had the usual suspects in attendance, mainly from Long Hedge hide. The little egret put on a good dance for me.




and a heron gave a fly-by before having a rather perfunctory go at fishing.





Only other birds of note were the semi-resident green sandpipers and grey wagtails.


Very stormy weather forecast for the weekend so lets see if anything nice drops in!!!

Tuesday 18 September 2018

Is it a bird, is it a pallid?

Over the weekend there was a degree of confusion at Welney WWT. First of all, it was reported that a Montagus harrier was hunting on the reserve. These are breeding birds in the UK but only in very small numbers and so would be eminently twitchable. Then it was reported that the bird had been re-identified as a hybrid between a pallid and a hen harrier. Hen harriers are a commoner bird, although disappearing at a rapid rate near any grouse moor. Pallid is a rare migrant into this country. A hybrid however is not tickable for both of them so the excitement level dropped. Finally after some photos were obtained of the underwing pattern it was determined as a juvenile Pallid harrier, the best of all results. Morning therefore had me on the road east towards Welney. The weather was clear but blowing a gale so it could be interesting trying to pin down a bird that hunts on the wing.
The reserve opened at 9.30 and I was first into the main observatory. By 9.40 about 6 of us were scanning the marsh. In Winter it is flooded and covered in swans but now it is very dry with a few pools concentrating the waterfowl. The rest is scrubby fields and brush. Within only a few minutes we picked up two harriers in the far distance. One was clearly a marsh harrier but the other was a lot smaller. As it banked you could see the "ring-tail" or white-patch on its rump. This was almost certainly the pallid. It was miles away though and not wanting to come closer. Myself and another birder broke ranks and yomped down the river to the Lyle hide, about 10 minutes away, risking of course it coming past us in the other direction. When we arrived there was no sign of any harriers.


















It wasn't devoid of birds. A family of cranes were feeding in the field and the odd marsh harrier did fly past on the strengthening wind.


Finally though we got onto a smaller bird hunting at some distance - clearly a raptor, banking and drifting over the reeds and grass, ring-tail showing and when it turned into the sun it almost glowed orange! This was our target.

In case you are wondering, they are not building a new housing estate behind the reserve, it is work to shore up the river bank and stop the nearby village from flooding! Gave a lovely back-drop for the photos.
As we waited the bird came closer an closer as it searched for its brunch. It was now around 10 and I spent until 2.30 in the same hide. The harrier would go on circuits, sometimes on the far side of the reserve, others quite close to us.  Sometimes it disappeared for 45 minutes but would finally be picked up again. It was being very fair, coming close to pretty much all the hides at some time or another giving everyone good views.



With sun behind us, the colours in it really stood out. With the wind getting stronger all the time it was challenging both for the bird and for us trying to photo it. Going into the wind it almost stood still but when it turned with the wind behind it put a spurt on! That together with it always being low made tracking it pretty tricky.


What made being in the Lyle good was that there was a pool, or two connected pools, near us which is kept coming back to, trying to catch ducks and waders right in front on us.









 I'm not sure how a good a hunter it is though. We never saw it catch anything close to us, but it did drop down a few times further away from us, presumably having got a small bird or mammal.
We had a steady stream of admirers caning into the hide, al of whom left happy, especially with the really close views of the cranes in front of  the hide. The decoys fooled more than one person!!!
It was a stunning bird and carried on putting on a good show over the afternoon although you had to be quick to catch it close. Just the sight of it quartering the fields was spectacular though.



Apologies for so many photos but you don't get to see a bird like this to often, and certainly not in perfect light. Another great day out at a wonderful reserve. If it stays I may well go back for another bite of this cherry.

Friday 14 September 2018

Once bittern, pretty shy...

Living where we do I spend most of the time having to "go" for birds. Norfolk, Kent, Dorset, Sussex, Rutland and the rest are all equidistant from us. It can be a boon or a curse: you have to drive to get anything but its better than, say, going from Dorset to Norfolk for a twitch. So, when a good bird crops up close to home it is a bonus. It doesn't happen often though. Little bittern a few years ago was the best and then a selection of nice birds at Staines come to mind.
On Friday, I was just finishing cutting the lawn when I checked my phone on the off chance. Nothing on Birdguides or RBA but there was a couple of Facebook notifications. The most interesting was from Keith Pursall, chairman of my local reserve at Maple Lodge. "Geoff Lapworth has just seen a bittern from Teal Hide". Not a rare bird if you are in Norfolk but round here it certainly gets the pulse stepping up a gear! I rapidly finished the last two stripes on the lawn, gathered up my gear and dashed off. It was nice change to do a 5 minute drive to a twitch.
When I got there it was over an hour since Geoff had seen the bird. I got to the hide quickly and he was still there. The bittern had only showed briefly, walking out of the scrape and into the reedbed.. He had few photos he'd managed to grab through the window before it disappeared. Nothing could be seen of it now though.
I set myself up, camera trained on the reeds and waited. A few people came and went but eventually it was just myself and Anna Marrett left in the hide. A couple of green sandpipers kept us amused but otherwise it was very quiet. I kept scanning the reeds and the muddy margins, hoping it would come out and start feeding. We discussed where it might have gone to and was it worth checking the other hides. With water levels low there were not too many areas for it to feed in, so I though we were in there best place. Anna was about to go and check elsewhere when she gave it a last scan. "It's there, in a bush" or words to that effect got me out of my reverie into which I had drifted. She got me onto an area at the back of the scrape where there were a couple of small bushes or trees.
It took a bit of time but finally we both got onto the area half way up the bush where you could see a golden-brown patch. It was only with a 'scope or large lens view though that you could see what it was - the bittern sitting happily on a branch. How long it had been there we don't know, and how Anna saw it I have no idea. It was really hard to get good views.
As the wind blew it sometimes showed a bit better as branches moved out of the way.

I stayed for an hour and half watching it as the local crowd started to arrive on the news of it reappearing. It twitched a bit, preened but generally just sat there. Often it looked up in the very bittern-like way showing its stripy throat very well.


I had to go to a concert that night so I eventually left it. I was torn as I presumed it would soon come out of its tree and have a feed along the margins. Apparently it didn't though. It was still there at 7, at least 6 hours in the tree. The following day it had gone. A one day wonder but a really good bird for the reserve. Very happy I had the opportunity to go for it!