Belt and braces

 On the 8th of November last year a strange bird was seen on the River Ribble in Lancashire. A very poor photograph was widely laughed at as being of a great tit. The photographer swore it was a belted kingfisher. A bit of an exchange on twitter got nowhere till a week later when the bird was seen again and this time was positively identified as a very rare bird indeed. Cue a mad rush to go and see it. The only problem being that access to the river was down a "slope of hell" of almost vertical mud. Many tales were told of dislocated shoulders and the like but a lot of birders got to see it. It then disappeared from there only to reappear a bit further down the same river in a more accessible location. A combination of Xmas, bad weather, distance and bad timing meant I couldn't get to go and see it. It then disappeared again and I thought my chance had gone. 

About a week ago though it popped up again in the same place. It had probably not gone anywhere, just people had stopped looking. This time I was determined to see it as it is a full-fat lifer.  The best gen was that it was showing well first thing, then being more sporadic throughout the day. My plan was therefore to get to the site at first light. Only problem was that the site, at Roach Bridge, is 220 miles away. Even by my standards I had a very early start, with the car leaving the house at 2am! An easy drive got me to the village as dawn was breaking, around 6am. Andy, one of our casual twitchers group, pulled in behind me and we both set off for the short walk up a lane and across a field to get to the view over the river.

The river was a long way below us but looked really good kingfisher territory. The belted kingfisher we were after should be in the USA so is very lost. It had been in the area for 4 months at least now so it must be happy. As well as the river there is a lake nearby which it uses for fishing.

As the dawn broke and a weak sun started to lift the mist a bit we were joined by another 6 or 7 birders and we staked out the few viewing points to look down the river.

After a couple of false alarms with a common kingfisher flying around we heard a very distinctive rattling call at just after 7.30. It is a very vocal bird and this was a sure sign it hadn't departed overnight. For 5 minutes we could hear it but not see it. It was eventually spotted not by the river but high up in a tree back from the bank albeit at extreme range!

This is an uncropped image with a 500mm lens and a 1.4x converter. The mist dulled all the colours but it stood out well from the still naked trees.

It is much larger than our kingfishers. This is a male bird, told from females by the lack of any orange banding on the body. It sat in the tree for a few minutes, long enough to give all of our group time to get onto it.

Over the next hour it showed occasionally in the same area bur didn't seem to be very interested in fishing.

Finally it flew off again upstream and I took that as my cue to leave. A superb bird and one I was extremely lucky to get to see as it could have gone at any time over the last 4 months. It left a very happy crowd of birders to go about the rest of their day.

Near where I parked the car a dipper was showing distantly on the stream by the road - another year tick for me.

By only other target for the day was a snow goose near Southport on the coast. I've not seen one of these since I was a kid so the chance to get one now wasn't to be passed up. By the time I got through Preston it was close to 11 and the day was very unseasonably warm. The coast all along was full of pink-footed geese, probably thousands of them, and in amongst them was one white bird! Fortunately it was reported to an area  called Banks Marsh which I located and headed over to. Another birder was leaving the site and pointed me in the right direction. He said the snow goose was distant and he was not wrong.

This is only a small section of the massive goose flock I was scanning through. There is a lone white goose in the centre of the picture. I've checked on map and it's about 1.5km away! Good enough for a year tick but I don't think I'd have it for a lifer.

With a long drive home I called it a day and wended my way back. A very long but a very good day. Takes me to 398 on my life list and 176 on the year list.