A pre-Xmas surprise

With Xmas plans well in place I thought my birding year had pretty much finished. I was going to be taking a day off to go year listing today but I had to do an emergency dash down to Weymouth to help out the mother-in-law with her central heating (another story and don't ask me about British Gas!!). I ended up staying overnight and a plan was hatched. An hours drive along the coast an olive-backed pipit had been found in a park in Exmouth. This is a lifer for me and number 4 in the most-wanted-list. I've dipped on 3 or 4 occasions, normally in Wells wood in Autumn! It was found on Monday in strange circumstances. A bloke looking for a rare aphid on an oak tree spotted it hopping around. Fortunately he was also a good birder and realised what he had found. It was twitched on Monday and was there all day Tuesday, feeding on insects in the leaf litter. So, I got up early and hit the road about 6.30 to head west. I got to the park just after 8 and parked up in the birds favoured area.

It was only a hundred yards from the road and the pipit was apparently favouring these two trees, finding lots of insects to eat underneath them.

By 9 there were 6 or us looking but of the pipit there was no sign. I had chatted to birders who had seen it the day before and they said it was hard to pick out in the leaves so we spread out and carried on looking. Finally one of our crew spotted it and we all congregated underneath the spreading oak tree. I could see why it was tricky to see in the dull light (it is in this photo honest!).

It is a small bird, about sparrow sized and basically brown. The leaf litter and long grass kept it out of sight as well.

Gradually we worked out a pattern for it - feeding, then flying up to the tree, then coming back down again in a different patch to feed some more.

Olive-backed pipits should be in Asia from the Himalayas, Nepal, China even Japan. It is a typical pipit, with a greenish-brown back and a heavily streaked belly. It has a very strong supercilium and pronounced double wing-bar. Whilst we were there it didn't call or make and vocalisations. 

Over the next 45 minutes the crowd grew to a dozen or so as the pipit carried on its breakfast. It was really confiding and showed no sign of us or the assorted dog-walkers worrying it.

By now I had got my cameras on a low tripod and was kneeling in the grass to get a low angle shot of it. There were two issues here. First. being so low meant it was often behind tufts of grass or leaves and partly hidden. Second, it was petrifyingly cold and I was losing sense of feeling in my fingers, making it hard to use my favoured back-button focus. I didn't give up though and gradually it came quite close to where I was kneeling.

Finally with both my knees and fingers giving out it seemed to get bored and flew off across the park. I waited for a bit but as it didn't return and I had a long drive back I packed up and headed off home. This makes it 12 lifers this year, a pretty good haul, and 258 for the year, just above average.  I can't imagine any more lifers but then I wasn't expecting this one.