Our little friend

I remember many years ago on either Spring or Autumn watch seeing a video of someone who had a pine marten living in their loft. It ran along the gutters in a very comical way. We really, really wanted to see one in the flesh. Problem is that they don't live in England, at least not in the south, anymore. We did go, twice, to the Speyside wildlife hide near Aviemore and had quite good views of one coming in but its pretty expensive!! We've never managed to get to "find" our own one in the wild.
This year at our cottage in Applecross I did half hold out some hope of having one around as we are in a good area for them and miles away from anywhere. Once we had got to the house and unpacked we had a quick look in the visitors book. Alway interesting to see what people had thought of the house and what was around. One thing that was mentioned by lots of guests was a PINE MARTEN was being seen on the terrace. This created a lot of excitement. We also saw that there was a very architectural log just outside the windows. So, once we had our tea we put some assorted peanuts and porridge oats on and near the log and sat down to watch TV.

Almost as soon as it got dark we saw a movement on the terrace. It was only a pine marten popping up bold as brass. I was nowhere near set up to photograph it and so there was a bit of a comedic half hour as I found lenses, tripods and tried to work out how to switch on the terrace lights. The pine marten was clearly totally used to all this and didn't worry about the two of us blundering around.
For the 7 nights we were in the house it came on 6 of them. On the only one we didn't see it the weather was awful but we did see a badger on a remote camera I had set up.

The food we put out became increasingly varied including peanut butter, which it very much liked, and boiled eggs, which were its favourites. Peanuts were popular as well.

It was a totally amazing thing to see. We're not sure if it was a male or a female but we certainly became very fond of it. When we left we were hoping there next visitors would continue to supply the tea every night. It would be great if they managed to make it down south but I suspect we will have to wait for out Scotland holiday to get our next fix!

A very grey day

With another day free to go birding I looked at the inter web and hatched a plan last night. The options were either to go to Norfolk on spec as anything could drop in or to revisit the south coast for a possible pair of year-ticks. The weather wasn't great for either option but at least looked workable for the south coast.
My two targets were a wryneck at Titchfield Haven and a grey phalarope at Cuckmere Haven. I quite liked the coincidence of place names there! I decided on the wryneck first and got there by 7.45 to a very grey dawn. No rain but it was cold and one of those days when dawn never really comes. Titchfield is a good reserve and I've seen some cracking birds there, most notably the greater yellowlegs a few year ago now. The wryneck though was apparently lurking around some chalets nearby. Another birder confirmed this and that it had been seen late evening. Good auguries to start off with. Things rapidly turned south though over the next hour and half as a stream of birders arrived but of the wryneck there was not a sign. A few chiffchaffs in the bushes, oystercatchers on the beach and brent geese on the sea were scance consolation for an early morning dip. I refreshed myself with a coffee and gave it up to try for my second target further along the coast. It took me almost 90 minutes to get there with traffic and roadworks not being with me. Cuckmere Haven is between Brighton and Eastbourne. I got a glossy ibis here at there start of the year. It is basically an estuary and valley that floods in Winter. By the time I got there two things were immediately apparent. First, I had caught up with the bad weather. It was absolutely chucking it down!! Second, this was not an isolated incident as the river had burst its banks and flooded the valley and half of the car park. The phalarope had been seen "well" about an hour before so I put on my full wet weather gear, wrapped the camera in a bag and headed off.
The directions seemed OK: being seen from a concrete path towards a farm. A local man fortunately confirmed that the path by the car park did in deed lead to said farm. A couple of hundred yards along it and all I had to show for my dampness were some miserable-looking gulls on the flood. I met a birder coming back from further down the path who had not seen the bird either. Despondency was starting to set in as the rain came down even harder. I had another coffee to fortify me and carried on searching. I had been catching up on alerts on my phone and suddenly "grey phalarope showing well at Cuckmere Haven" came up for 5 minutes previously. Very confusing! There were no birders between me and the car park so there had to be only one option, that I hadn't gone far enough. Wiping off my glasses so I could see the path I carried on along the flooded fields. Eventually I reached a sign where the path split, right to the beach, left to the farm. Hmmmm, perhaps when the instructions said path to farm they didn't mean the one from the car park but from here? No birders in sight but I turned down it. There was a small stream behind a fence and lo and behold in the middle of it, bold as brass was a small, grey, ever-busy bird.

Phalaropes are actually wading birds but behave more like ducks. They feed on the surface, picking off insects and this one was clearly hungry.

The one thing that didn't put it off was the weather, as you can see in this video.

I stayed for about 20 minutes and it just kept pottering up and down the channel hoovering up the insects.

It took me about twenty minutes to get back to the car where I had a vague plan of drying out a bit then going back with my bigger lens to get even better shots. By the time I'd had yet another coffee and a sandwich the weather was even worse and the sky was totally battleship grey. I gave it up and headed home. A bit of a curates egg of a day. One out of two birds seen and that almost gave me pneumonia. It was a great bird though and showed really well so overall I suppose a satisfactory day. Still need 10 ticks to get to my best ever year which might be hard. A couple of lifers of course would help: Raddes warbler at Wells wood anyone??

A quick in and out

I had a half-day today to go twitching. The question was, what to go for? As we head through October there aren't many year-ticks to go for. As a long drive was out of the question I decided on a medium-length trip, down to Dungeness. A Sabines gull had been lingering off the beach for a day or so, and was still there early doors. This is one of the smaller gulls, like a little gull in size and a bit more petite than our black-headed gull. It breeds in the Arctic but is a regular visitor to our shores in Autumn in small numbers. It is a bird I would expect to see most years but you have to and find them. 

 The occasional one does find its way inland: my first in the UK was at Blenheim Palace lake!

So, once I had dropped Judith off at the station I headed down to Kent. There was a bit of traffic but I got to the lighthouse by 12.30. It was very busy there, not with twitchers but Sunday beach visitors and lunchers at the pub! I got a parking space, loaded up my gear and headed off on the short walk to the "patch". Dungeness is one of the first nuclear-power stations in the UK but it is now being decommissioned. Until it finally goes there is a hot-water outlet just off the beach which acts as a magnet for gulls and this is where the gull has been loafing around.

There were a few issues though. First was that there were no other birders around. Second, there were I guess a couple of hundred gulls feeding, flying, sleeping and generally moving about over a couple of hundred yards of sea. Thirdly, by midday you are looking straight into the sun so the light is awful to seen anything! Still, a challenge is a challenge so I set up by the hide and started to scan around. 

After 20 minutes I got onto a "different" gull amongst those feeding on the patch. It seemed a bit smaller and darker, definitely not one of the larger lesser-black backs or herring gulls and with too much colouration to be a black-headed. It was really mobile though and I lost it.

I did notice though that the current across the beach took the birds to my left and as I studied the birds on the sea I saw a smaller, darker one. It was definitely the Sabines gull. You can see in the photo above how much smaller and darker it is compered to the the black-headed gulls. For the next 30 minutes as I watched it with another couple of birders who had arrived it became clear it had pattern.

It flew into the patch, fed for a couple of minutes then settled down to drift along the coast before taking off and repeating the pattern.

It was horrible trying to get a decent shot of it though as the sun was right between me and the bird. The killed shot is of the pattern go black markings on its wings in a characteristic W-shape. As you can see, I failed appallingly! I gave up quite quickly and with nothing else of note around headed back home to avoid the hell of the M25. Still, another year tick so can't complain.