Mopping up

With the country still in a bit of of the doldrums as far as birding is concerned, with very few truly good birds around (excepting the lingering Sibe accentor in Scotland) I had a hard time trying to work out what to do with a Saturday "off". A band of heavy rain from midday onwards across southern England didn't help either. In the end I decided to try and do a bit of mopping up of outstanding year ticks and the best option seemed to be Kent.
I set out early, though my plans were slightly put off course by over running road works on the M20 meaning I was sat in a traffic jam for 15 minutes waiting for it to open again. Still I got to my first stop by just gone 8, with the dawn being pretty grey with rain in the air.
I was heading to South Foreland, which is a National Trust lighthouse just long the coast from Dover. Despite having the postcode in Satnav it was a swine to find, as you go into a small village, down a very small road which turns into a rutted track which turns into virtually a path through a wood! NT properties are normally well signed, this one wasn't. Still, I got there ok and refreshed myself with  coffee and set off on a short walk to the lighthouse.

In the Summer I think it is open to the public to look around, but not today. It was all locked up.

Being so close to Dover you could see the ferries pottering off to France.

My main target was a shore lark, which was apparently lurking in this field, which was right next to the lighthouse. The wind was blowing a hoolie though and it was not a nice day.

Another birder arrived just as I did, so we started to work the field edge and almost immediately a small bird flew up and landed in the field about 10 yards away.

Looking a bit like a skylark or woodlark the shore larks are also known as horned larks but they only get their horns in breeding plumage. This one was still nicely marked though with it's black and yellow mask.

It brought to mind the sibe accentor in some ways. They are not uncommon birds, and at the moment there are some flocks of 50 or more birds in Norfolk. They are typical of late Autumn or Winter though. They are also quite confiding and this one was no different. It eventually moved from the field onto the path, where you could almost stand on it.

It finally moved off to the field edge where you could approach to to a few feet.

You can just about see the remnants of it's horns, the black whispy bits on the side of the head! We did wonder if it was unwell with it letting you get so close, but it was feeding well so I think it was ok. There were some snow buntings around the day before but despite a thorough search by myself and three other birders we couldn't find them.
With the weather closing in even more, I moved about 30 miles down the coast to Dungeness. I started off on the beach with a bit of sea watching. The wind was really strong and the rain starting to get quite vigorous. I was particularly pleased to pick out one of the caspian gulls by the old boats but otherwise a great northern diver and some kittiwakes were all I got on the sea.
Finally I went to the RSPB reserve, or more precisely the entry track at Bolderwall Farm. A cattle egret had been hanging about with the cattle there for a week or so. As I pulled off the road there was a small cluster of 4 or 5 cars with birders, hunkered down in the rain, peering at the cattle.

You could just make out a lone egret by the waters edge near the cattle. Just being near cattle though doesn't make it a cattle egret.

What does it that yellow beak which you can just make out in the flight shot - little egrets have black beaks. You can also make out the rain coming down. When it landed it disappeared from view into a ditch. I waited for 15 minutes or so, but it didn't reappear so I gave up and came home to watch England stuff the South Africans at rugby.
A good day all round then. Three more year ticks, so the mopping up worked well. I'm at 235 now, though 250 seems too far away with only 6 weeks to go. I have a few ticks I should be able to get like crossbill and Bewicks swan, but 240 seems more likely. Still, mustn't grumble.

Eton rifles

After all the excitement of the last few weeks, everything seems to have calmed down on the birding front. With no lifers within reasonable striking distance I've not really been out much. Still, a velvet scoter within 20 miles or so did stir me into action this morning.
Velvet scoters are the rarer versions of the common scoter, an archetypal sea duck normally seen at great distance flying past rocky headlands in gales. Strangely though, a few do crop up inland and without any scientific evidence to back me up, it seems like velvets do so more than common's. Last year 3 hung around for over a week at Grafham and this year there are 2 long-stayers in Bedfordshire and one, my target, at the Eton rowing club lake at Dorney.
I don't think I've been here since 2012 when we watched some Olympic rowing. It's a very long, 2km artificial lake split into two parts, the main bit they do the rowing on and what is termed the return lake where they can potter back to the clubhouse for a refreshing pink gin. It can be quite good for birds along with the nearby Jubilee River, and I've had roseate tern whimbrel and pectoral sandpiper in the past.
Anyway, I got to the lake about 8 in crisp Autumnal sunshine with a bit of mist on the lake. I parked up and strolled along the lake.
Everything was pretty quiet. There were no rowers on the lake although a member of the UK Nordic skiing team was going round and round the lake on what was a cross between skis and giant roller skates!
I first walked down the main lake.

There were small numbers of ducks, mainly mallards, wigeon, gadwall and a couple of tufties as well as cormorants, grebes and a few gulls mooching around but no sign of the scoter. Birdguides suggested it was near the 1250m marker, and there were a lot of ducks there as well as a cut-through to the return lake! So, I walked round the end of the lake and started off down the path separating the two lakes.
Immediately you could see there were many more ducks around, including this little group of Egyptian geese and wigeon on the far bank. It's still amazing how the Egyptians have now become part of the scenery from being rare escapes only 15 or so years ago.

 I quite quickly got onto one lone duck though, diving happily in the middle of the stream.

 Now you see it, now you don't!!

This was the velvet scoter. A classic of the type, media sized with the classic white tear-shaped mark behind the eye.

The other real characteristic which separates them from common scoter is the white wing-bar they show when flying.

As I had to get back I couldn't spend much more time pestering it to get better photos but a good bird and a lovely, if short, morning.

Playing it cool

This is the year which keeps on giving as far as birds are concerned. Numerically there have been 454 birds seen in the UK so far this year, which puts it 4th in the all time list of highest totals and we're are only half way through October.
Last week we had another 1st for the UK - the 5th of the year. This was a Siberian accentor, a bird touted as being a possible in the past, and a probable this year with a dozen or so in the near continent brought in with the persistent easterlies. It is a relative of our dunnock, sparrow-sized but with clearer facial markings.
This first bird was in Shetland, found in a quarry. It produced a major twitch for Shetland, with BA making a fortune taking people to Aberdeen then onto the island, but the distance meant only 300 or so connected before in did an overnight flit!
Last Thursday another bird turned up, this time in Easington which is near Hull. This produced a massive twitch though, with around 3,000 birders connecting over the weekend, when another 2 birds also appeared further up the coast to dilute the crowds.
I couldn't get away though due to various reasons including a very long lunch on Friday! The bird seemed to be sticking though, so with it still being reported on Monday I made the decision to go for it.
This meant a very early start as it was a drive of over 200 miles. The weather was bad overnight though, so I was hopeful it would be still be there. Traffic through Hull was slow so around 7.45 the phone went with the first alert of the day - still showing - taking the pressure off.
I got to the village at about 8.20, parked up and headed off down Vicars Lane to a patch of waste ground which used to be a carpark for the school where the bird had been showing well.
I lucked out on two fronts - first when I got there it was showing very well and secondly there was only about 12 other birders there. On Saturday and Sunday birders were escorted to the spot in groups of about 20, given 5 minutes viewing time and then moved on for the next group!! We had as much time as wanted.

The bird was feeding happily on the ground with a group of dunnocks and robins. It seemed totally impervious to people and came to around 5 or 6 feet from us at times. Its natural habitat is in Siberia so it is not entirely inconceivable that we were the first people it had seen!!
It is a very smart bird, sparrow like in shape with a plain brown back like a dunnock. The head though has those bold stripes in yellow and black giving it an almost piratical look.

Apparently, on talking to one of the locals, people weren't putting down food for it, there was enough around to keep it there feeding away. Certainly there were plenty of ground-feeders around and the trees were almost dripping with goldcrests and phyllosc. warblers like this chiffchaff, which even came down to the ground, which is quite unusual.

It did disappear for a few minutes causing some concern for a couple of new arrivals, but then I spotted it sitting up in the top of a tree opposite, even looking like it was singing!!!

and i even managed to miss another flight shot!!!

I watched it for I suppose 45 minutes and there was never more than 15 people there, so much better than Saturday.

Wow, what a bird. It's not the normal procedure to play it that cool and leave it 4 days before going to get it, a strategy doomed to disappointment but not in this case. As I left phone went with another accentor in the UK on Holy Island. Five for the UK, 77 for Europe, mainly Norway and Sweden, but this is unprecedented numbers of them and shows how weather can affect things.

To make it better there was a second lifer there as well. About a mile away was an Isabelline wheatear. Closely related to our species, it is leggier with a much more defined black-band to the tail. It is another majorly rare bird in the UK and would have got a crowd on its own, but here was the second course after everyone got the accentor!

It was also in the middle of a large field with about 5 normal wheatears which gave the crowd above an interesting 30 minutes as we scrutinised each bird before settling on the one we were happy with!!
The day finished on a bit of a low after that as I spent 2 hours not seeing the Western swamphen (aka purple gallinule) but that only put a slight dampener on proceedings.
2 lifers in one day, both rare birds, one a first for the UK and my life list in now up to 350 (or 359 if you use Lee's more generous 400 club list). I'll have to reset my ambition for the year end.

When the East wind blows

The UK is stuck in a weather system at the moment which is driving rare birds from the continent onto our East coast. During the week a variety of rare thrushes and a showy Eastern crowned warbler pitched up. Mostly though they were a long way up the coast into Yorkshire. This weather is supposed to stay for another week so it could be a mega time for rarities. It does mean though that you need to be able to drop everything when the alert goes as a lot of them don't hang around for more than a day.
So, when on Thursday a Siberian stonechat was first seen and then ringed at Landguard in Suffolk it piqued my interest. Even more as during the day it was thought to be an even rarer Stejnegers stonechat. Both are only recent splits from our common stonechat and can be very tricky to tell apart. Indeed whether this bird is a Siberian or a Stejnegers will only be confirmed after DNA analysis is done on a feather taken when it was ringed!!!
UPDATE: bird was confirmed by DNA analysis to be stegnegerii!!
I have history with this bird this year, having spent about 3 hours not seeing one at Titchfield Haven. It was showy in the evening before I went but disappeared overnight. At least it was cloudy last night so the bird was less likely to move on  and there were about 20 birders already on site to help find it.
The weather wasn't great, cold, windy, a bit wet and very overcast. As I got to the area it was mainly seen in the previous day everyone was staring at one patch of brambles. Apparently one birder claimed to have seen it and then said he had to go to work and cleared off. No one else saw it and there was a bit of chuntering going on about "stringers" (people who make false claims). One person approached the bramble patch with a view to "giving it a bit of kick" to see if the bird was hiding in it. He got shouted at by a couple of other people but not before it was clear that no self-respecting, or living, bird was hiding there. Hmmmm, don't say it's going to happen again and its cleared off.
We started to spread out and check out the many other bushes but only a few pipits and goldfinches briefly excited us. Then there was a call from one group of birders and some frantic waving. Everyone rounded on the spot. A bird, possibly it, had been flushed by a dog walker and gone to ground again. A line was formed and we covered the area it flew to. Nothing. This was one tricky bird, if indeed it was there. Then finally, someone found it about 30 yards away, showing on a bramble bush. How it got there without us seeing it fly I've got no idea.

Everyone quickly got onto it and for then 10 minutes it was pretty mobile but showed well.
So, what makes it a Siberian as opposed to a normal stonechat. The photos I took don't help as they are truly "record shots" taken at distance and in poor light as the uncropped version above shows.

The bottom photograph gives you on clue as to whether this was the bird from yesterday - its got leg-irons aka a ring on its right leg. That helps.
What else, well, I will be honest I would not see anything unusual at this distance. The beak is apparently thicker! The white on the neck forms  patches not a complete collar, the rump when you see it is plain and unstriped and the eye-stripe looks a bit like a whinchat. The image below isn't mine, it was from yesterday when it was caught and ringed (courts of LBO) but you can see some of the id features, especially that eye-stripe.

Everyone seemed happy though so I now just need to wait for the DNA to come through to finalise the identification.

I didn't hang around much longer, and although the bird stayed all day it sounded like it was pretty mobile all the time. I went about 30 miles up the coast to Minsmere. There was nothing rare reported but its always a nice walk.
When I got there, the weather wasn't getting any better and showers kept blowing through with a strong wind. The reserve was very quiet as well, both in terms of visitors and birds.

There were the usual suspects around - black-tailed godwits, a nice group of 10 spotted redshanks, this smart greenshank pottering about on one of the scrapes

but the star was a solitary purple sandpiper. I'd not seen one this year so that was a bonus. This one was on a concrete groyne by the sluice gates and like many of its kind was totally approachable.

The only problem from its point of view was that the concrete it was on, and which was providing good feeding for it in the weedy mess,

was being swamped with water every couple of minutes.

It didn't drive it away although it did cause it to have to scuttle around sometimes in a quite comic way, as you can see in this short clip.

Purple sandpiper evading a big wave


So, Autumn continues to deliver, with another lifer taking me to 348, 2 short of my target of 350, and up to a semi-respectable 228 on my year list. Still plenty of time to get those other two I hope!!