Pining for the fjords

With Judith flying to Hong Kong on Friday afternoon, I had the whole weekend to myself. What to do - a bit of shopping, lazing in bed, perhaps re-dig the flower border. Oh no, two full days birding ahead. With the maxim of sticking to lifers in mind, the plans were laid on Thursday. Day one would be up North for a pine bunting, day two back down south for egrets and assorted year ticks.
The pine bunting was near York in a village called Dunnington and initially I was going to go up on Saturday morning. Then I looked at the map and thought about a 4am start. I then booked a nice pub for Friday night in the village and went up on Friday afternoon.
I had plans for stopping on the way up, but in the end the M1 was awful, the weather was disgusting and so only one stop was available - a red-necked grebe at Draycote Water. One in the midst of about 50 great crested grebes took a bit of finding but in the end it gave itself up. After that it was just a slog up the M1 to Dunnington. The Windmill pub was nice - clean new rooms in an annex by the pub plus a giant portion of haddock and chips with a couple of pints suitably refreshed me. The only down side was that breakfast wasn't served till 7 at the earliest and that meant valuable birding time wasted! So, at 7am I was in a field, all alone, but in position for the bird.
The pine bunting is a cousin to our yellowhammer, and is pretty rare in this country, normally being found in Scandinavia over to Siberia. This one had been hanging around for a couple of weeks but was described as "elusive". Also, Martin got it two weeks ago, so it was a good if challenging target.

My only company for the first 15 minute or so were a courting pair of pigeons.

There were two areas where the bird was normal seen - the field above, lurking about in the hedge, or a paddock about 15 minutes walk or 30 seconds bird flight away. By about 8 it was clear the assorted twitchers were split - half of us in the field, half in the paddock. I chose the field as it was having seed put down and was attracting a good supporting cast of birds - yellowhammers, bullfinches, tree sparrows, reed buntings and assorted tits, robins and thrushes.

By 9.30 or so there was probably 25 of us at the site, scanning every bird in the hedge, but no sign. Then someones phone went - the bird was showing in the paddock. Queue a mass exodus of camera and telescope wielding birders across a very muddy field. We were literally running at one point, not very sensible with the soft-going underfoot and thousands of pounds of optical equipment on our shoulders! We got there two minutes after the bunting flew off. The crowd was now 50 strong but no bird in sight. This was not helped we thought by a tree surgeon in a garden backing onto the paddock who was chainsawing and mulching a large tree!! Then the phones all went off again. Bunting seen back in the field in the hedge. Another mass cavalry charge back to where we started. "It showed briefly but was flushed by a dog walker". We all staked out the hedge, started to discuss past exploits, split up to check hedgerows but by 11 no bird. That was 4 hours in. At least it wasn't raining. Then, it happened again - phone went off, bird back in the paddock. What to do? Half of the group went back but I stayed with a small group who had all bonded and thought the best tactic was to wait. There was almost a fight though as one bloke who left walked straight past the hedge where the birds were feeding, flushing them all and being shouted out by our group. He very aggressively turned back and gave us a mouthful before heading off. We did talk about waiting till he was virtually out if sight before calling him back and saying the bird had been seen. He looked a bit big and cross though so we decided against it.
By 12, a few new birders had arrived, sone had left but still no bird. Then suddenly the bloke I had been working the hedge with shouted out "there, on the seeds". Before I could get onto it though it was "flying, over us now, second bird" as two birds dark shapes shot over and landed 100 yards in a hedge. Queue small cavalry charge and finally we had it.

Trust me, it is in the centre on this photo. A really smart reddish-brown bird, with a beautiful striped head. It stayed for only about 30 seconds though before it relocated back to the hedge with the seeds. Many, many happy birders though with lots of hand-shaking and back-slapping, especially the guy who found it. I got the message out on RBA and the crowds in the paddock returned. I gave it another 20 minutes but we couldn't re-find it so I headed off to try and get a couple more ticks on my way home. Still, over 5 hours for one bird may seem mad, but boy was it worth it for the brief view.
With it now being almost one and over 200 miles to go I only had time for one stop - Carsington Water in Derbyshire. The target here was a willow tit - the rare cousin of the pretty scarce marsh tit. They used to be hard to find, now there are a few hot spots left, otherwise they have gone from many of their old haunts. I haven't seen one for probably 5 years.
About 3 I got to the reservoir and headed for the wildlife centre, looking for some bird feeders where they apparently hang out. This was the total opposite of the bunting though.

Almost immediately I saw a little brown bird with a distinctive back cap in the trees near the bird feeders. There were probably 4 or 5 birds hanging about in the trees.

They looked really nice against the catkins, quite spring-like.
On the way back to the carpark I also picked up a surprise year-tick in the form of a ruff on the lagoon. Not rare but a nice bird.

and there were some feral (?) barnacle geese around as well, although I had already got them in Kent!!

After this I headed back home and was in bed really early for the next trip on Sunday.

So, 6am saw me on the road again, this time down to Somerset and Dorset. No lifers on offer but I was after some more year ticks to get ahead of Martin. First stop was at a village called Box, where Martin had seen a dipper last week. This is apparently a good site for them, and it looked good with a nice river, but despite searching for 20 minutes up and down stream they weren't playing ball. I moved on to Ham Wall about an hours drive away. I've been here before - Hudsonian godwit and little bittern being the stars. The weather today though was iffy, with strong winds and showers so the only things I managed to find were great white egrets, which breed now on site and one lone bittern. Still, two more ticks. Adding to the mileage I then moved down to the south coast at Abbotsbury. Two Richards pipits have been overwintering behind the cafe at the Swannery. They are regular visitors to our shores, but only in small numbers and are pretty elusive. I've only seen one before so well worth having.They are larger than pipits and quite distinctive and leggy but in long grass that can be hard to see. In between the rain showers I trotted out into the fields and started quartering the long grass. On my own, the only chance was to flush the bird. First field - nothing. Second field though proved more productive. Only just into it and a pipit flew up. No call and in flight, who knows. Luck was on my side though - it landed on a stone wall and perched for a few seconds allowing me a good enough view to nail it. Then to confirm it, the bird flew over my head calling. Really good tick and again without hours waiting. Last stop before heading home was at Radipole to get a tick of Meditteranean gull in the car park. A short stop with the mother-in-law for tea and cake and the long journey home.
What a weekend though. One lifer, 6 other year ticks, not a bad haul for March. I am only one behind my best ever March, on 169 birds birds now, which will be gettable with Spring migrants starting to arrive. More importantly, I'm 6 ahead of Martin!

Blue, blue, electric blue

We're almost into Spring, the first reports of sand martins moving through Africa are popping up, the dawn chorus is starting to play full throttle and daffodils are poking up. Doesn't mean that Winter birding has finished though. With a record start to January, the momentum needs to be kept up and if there's something good around it needs going for. So, this morning we both set out very early for a day in Fen country.
The first target was the most popular bird this week, a stunning male bluethroat in Willow Fen which is about 20 miles north of my old stomping ground of Peterborough. This is a rare bird in the UK, a vagrant normally found in Eurasia, the Russian steppes, Turkey and southern Europe. It used to be a member of the thrush family, but now like a lot of birds it has been reclassified on DNA sequencing, and is now an old world flycatcher. It occurs pretty much every year but often as a juvenile or female and often being difficult to twitch. This though was a stunning male, with full breeding plumage, and was being very accommodating partly due to copious quantities of mealworms proffered up by photographers!
On a relatively dull day we got close to the site by about 8, but had a slight detour due to a bridge being closed for repair. In fen country, this means a long trek along the "drain" till you get to the next bridge. It did mean though that we came across lovely garden full of snowdrops, another cheery sign of Spring.

Despite the delay we got to the carpark just as it was filling up and got one of the last spaces. I've never been to Willow Tree fen before so wasn't sure on the lie of the land. From the carpark though you could one main track leading up to a group of around 20 people all clustered together! So, one coffee later we set of on a relatively short and easy walk.

The reserve was typical fen country - flat, wet, lots of reeds and pools. Ducks, swans and lapwing swirled overhead.

On the one main path was the group of birders. A quick chat ascertained the bird had been seen but wasn't showing. We only had to wait about 5 minutes before it popped up.

It appeared out of the reeds and started feeding voraciously on the mealworms and insects on the grass.

It was a really smart bird. From behind it showed a very bold eye-stripe and a slightly red-rump.

From the front though, wow! The only other bird I have seen before was a dull female, this is another beast altogether and you can see why it has attracted a stream of admirers.

There are two races of bluethroats, red-spotted and white-throated, denoting the patch above that blue collar. This is clearly a red-spotted variant, marking it out as coming from Northern Eurasia.

It is very long-legged as well, standing very proud in the grass and even more so on the path. This was about 10 feet away from the closest camera!
We stayed for perhaps 20 minutes till it flipped off into the reeds to digest its breakfast, causing a small exodus of the early arrivers, only to be replaced by more admirers arriving!
Next stop was Baytree garden centre to buy a few very good value plants and then onto another fen near Thorney Toll. This time we were after a rough-legged buzzard, a close relative of our common buzzard, but a bit larger and with a prominent white-rump in flight. After perhaps 10 minutes scanning the fields, and a quizzing from a local toff farmer about our purpose on his land, a large raptor hove into view. As it banked a bright white flash came off its rump marking it out as the rough-leg. We saw it again a few minutes later but only as it disappeared off into the distance.
We then moved off for our next stop, Deeping Lakes, for the overwintering long-eared owls. We had been on the look-out for its relative, the barn owl, all morning with no success. As I was driving along though Judith suddenly stopped me with a "what's that in the field?". All I could see was a sheepdog in the distance. Judith lowered my sights though to a caramel coloured rock in the field. How she spotted it from a moving car, on the wrong side of the road for her I don't know!

This quickly resolved itself as a barn owl having a rest.

We crept up on it along the road, but eventually it decided it had enough of us and flapped off across the field.

We carried on to Deeping Lakes for the long-eared owls. They, or at least it, was there, asleep in a bush on an island. If it hadn't been for another  couple of birders who had it in their 'scopes we would never have found it. Cryptic camouflage does not describe it!
After that we had a very pleasant drive through the fens, lots of long drains, kestrels, starlings and wood pigeons.

I did try for a glossy ibis in Ely on the way back but it wasn't playing ball. Still, a really pleasant day out, with 4 new year ticks. That takes me to 158, only 1 shy of my best ever February total and 5 ahead of Martin. That bluethroat though - worth the trip alone.

A quick quiz

With Martin still 5 ahead of me, and the weather set fair, I decided to take a day off and spin down to the south coast to pick up a few year ticks. Nothing dramatically rare around, but I've now got most of the easy birds so anything now before Spring migrants arrive will be a nice bird.
My first pair of targets was at Lytchett Fields. This is a relatively new RSPB reserve on the edge of Poole Harbour. I went last year for a stilt and a glossy ibis so I knew the directions.

It is a very marshy area and was quite wet getting to it. My two targets were a long staying lesser yellowlegs and a green-winged teal. The former is an American wader and although not common it is pretty regular this side of the pond. I think I've got at least one each of the last 6 years. The tide however wasn't helping me. The water that was around was a long way back and all the birds were very distant. Amongst the 100 or so lapwings, 20 dunlin, a few redshank and a blacktailed godwit I did pick out a medium-sized elegant wader. It's legs weren't yellow, or at least the mud covering them made them brown, but the dagger like bill, pale spotty plumage and long legs confirmed the id.
The green-winged teal did not show though. They are also Americans and probably equal on the rarity scale to the yellowlegs. They are told from our teal by a bold vertical white-stripe on their flank. Of the 50 or so teal I could see though none showed this characteristic. A local birder told me it could be very elusive. Still, one year-tick in the bag.
Next stop was further along the coast to Dorchester for a rose-coloured starling. We did try for it two weekends ago coming back from Weymouth but the weather was foul. Today it was much nicer and there were a number of starlings flying around in the housing estate where it has taken up residence. After 10 minutes or so though I couldn't make it out and was thinking it might be a dip. The local postie on this rounds then accosted me with a cheery "have you seen it?". Apparently it is quite a local celebrity and has even made the Dorst Echo!. He pointed me to the best area for it and quickly I got onto a starling with a light-pink mantle. Tick number two. I actually had quite a long chat with the postie who was genuinely interested in it. Apparently even the local primary school had a trip out to try and find it one day - starting them young!
My last stop then was almost back home at Staines reservoir, where I was on Sunday. This time I was after a classic winter bird, the slavonian grebe. This is normally more of a coastal bird, but Staines does have a habit of attracting them. I got there at the same time as another birder and we both scanned the south basin and eventually found 3 small grebes together at the far end of the causeway. Two were the resident black-necked grebes, one in breeding plumage, and the other was the slav grebe.

In this photo the bird on the far right is the breeding plumaged black-necked grebe, with its smart black neck and yellow ear tufts.

These two are the Winter plumaged bn and slav, but which is which?

There are enough id features here to tell them apart. The excellent video from the BTO in the link below gives plenty of detail but what you are looking for are:
generally slav looks more like a small great-crested grebe with a longer, more elegant neck, whereas BN is like a larger little grebe, with a short-neck and dumpier appearance.
Slav is an overall more clean-cut bird. The black crown is sharply demarcated from the neck. The white cheeks stand-out even at a distance but don't quite meet at the back of the neck. The BN has a more smudged appearance with the cheeks looking greyer.You can just about make out from this as well that the head-shape is quite different. The slav is sloping at the front, coming to a peak at the read of the head. The BN is the reverse, a sharp slope at the front of the head over the bill, and then dealing more slowly to the back of the head. This is perhaps easier to see on the breeding plumaged bird.
Both nice birds and quite educational to see them both so close together for comparison purposes.

How to identify Winter grebes

So, a good day with 3 new ticks taking me to 151. I need tow more to catch Martin before he comes back from skiing, unless he fits in a sneaky trip, and 6 more to equal my best ever February total. Crack on then!







https://www.bto.org/about-birds/bird-id/bto-bird-id-winter-grebes

Ruddy 'eck

A few years ago the government launched all out war on ruddy ducks. Native to America, they initially escaped from Peter Scott's Slimbridge reserve and became a self-supporting naturalized population. Then in the late 90's there was a point of view starting to be held that they could hybridize with the closely related, rare and natural European white-headed duck that lived in Spain.
For reasons which have more to do with political expediency than conservation, the Government bought into this line and sent out the DEFRA inspectors with rifles to shoot all the ruddy ducks in the UK. We even had them down our little local reserve at Maple Lodge to shoot our resident pair! Despite the best efforts of the birding community to keep locations private, about two years ago the cull was practically over. There were a very few birds left, probably under 10, and it wasn't worth their while to hunt down the last individuals.
They had effectively gone off my radar now for year-listing, so it was slightly surprising to say the least when I got a text from Dave Simms saying that Paul Lewis had found them on xxxxxx reservoir! This was a out 12.45 on Sunday afternoon, so I dropped everything, threw my 'scope and camera into the back of the car and drove hell for leather round the M25 to xxxxxxxx.
For those who know xxxxxxx, there are two very large reservoirs, separated by a causeway. It can be VERY windy and cold there, but today was not too bad. It can be hard to track down birds though, as there are large numbers of ducks, grebes and gulls and a lot of water often puts them at some distance. I was very pleased therefore to spot two ducks sitting on their own in the near corner of the southern basin almost as soon as I put up my 'scope.

As soon as I had them in my field of view, it was clear they were the ruddy ducks.

This is an extreme crop, but you can make out the main points. A very stocky duck, with a stout bill and a broad white face patch. At  distance they are somewhat like female scoters. What was a bonus was the fact I got in the same frame a breeding plumaged black-necked grebe that seemed to be making friends with them! These are regulars at the reservoir here.

They never got very close, so I gave it about 20 minutes and left them to it. That wasn't before I called my brother-in-law Martin though to give him the heads up, and he did come down later to get them as well. Pretty generous that of me I thought, as it kept him 5 ahead of me in the year-list stakes, on 153 to my 148. Still, he's away skiing for the next two weekends so that gap will be in the other direction hopefully by then and I still have a full weekend of birding when Judith is away and our week in Speyside to come.
As an addendum to this, when I got home I saw that birdguides was showing the report of actually 4 of them on Saturday, with location. This is a change from a few years ago when reports were suppressed. I can only hope it doesn't make DEFRA get out their guns again as a breeding pair I would have thought would pique their interest.