I'm still plugging away, clearing my desktop from last years photos. Now for September, and the first day of October, which brought a trio of lifers as well as a few more rare and scarce birds.
Saturday 2nd & 3rd September; Migrant Happy!
The first couple of days birding were covered in a blog written at the time. Covering a couple of scarce migrants in the form of a Wryneck and a Red-backed Shrike plus the enigmatic Stone Curlew. Read it and see more photos here.
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| Wryneck |
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| Red-backed Shrike |
Year List additions;
284) Wryneck, 285) Red-backed Shrike
Saturday 9th September; Booby!
Retribution in part for the Red-footed Booby dip of a fortnight before, when its cousin, a Brown Booby settled in at South Gare on Teesside. Our second of the species, read the account of a small boat trip to get extremely close views of the bird and the hairy dinghy ride to reach the boat here. Lots of photos of the Booby stood on top of a green buoy too.
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| Brown Booby |
Year List additions;
286) Brown Booby, 287) Buff-breasted Sandpiper
Sunday 10th September; Purple Patch!
We were heading to Draycote Water where a Ferruginous Duck had been showing for a few days. Halfway there Mrs Caley announced that a Purple Heron had been seen near Stratford. I pulled over in a gateway, checked the details, reasoned that the latter was a better bird to try for than the former, and set the SatNav to head for Lower Quinton around half a dozen miles south of Shakespeare's town.
The pin drop on Birdguides pointed to a very unpromising half-built housing development, which transformed into a fully built housing development when we arrived. Google maps is a great tool but often years out of date. The Heron had been seen by a local on his daily walk around his patch, and he'd spotted the bird stood on a fence overlooking a small pool on the edge of the estate. Naturally it had disappeared by the time we got there and there was nobody else looking for the bird. We'd made the effort so we had to have a look around at least. A few minutes later the finder greeted us, he'd seen us walking past his house, and gave us the spiel. The Heron had flown but only into an adjacent overgrown paddock where he assured us was another small pool that was hidden from view. The area was surrounded by building hoardings as well which made seeing into the plot virtually impossible. As is my norm, I remained sceptical. But the chap assured me that it was a Purple Heron and that he'd taken photos but his camera was now inside the house. He added that he tweeted a photo out just before we arrived.
For the next half hour the only Heron type birds that we saw were a couple of Little Egrets and a Grey Heron. The cynic in me began to rear its ugly head again. That demon was banished though when I found the tweet made by the finder showing quite clearly that he'd seen a Purple Heron, a juvenile, and stood on the fence just like he'd said.
Our luck changed when the two Little Egrets we'd been watching on the pool where the Purple Heron had been, flew off towards the hidden pool. They whiffled down into the overgrown paddock and as they did so, the Purple Heron flew up and came towards us, angrily squawking in its gruff voice as it flew. The Heron then made a couple of circuits of the bigger pool, passing close by, pursued by the Egrets which had followed.
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| Purple Heron |
The Purple Heron landed in a large tree at the far end of the pool and gave excellent stationary views as it balanced deftly right at the top of the tree. A number of local birders had begun to arrive, all very excited because the bird was a county tick for most of them. I thought it was ironic that Oxfordshire based birders had beaten them all to it!
Another flight by the Heron followed when it relocated to a tree nearer the hidden pool but it stayed visible for all comers. At one point it shared the tree with three Little Egrets and the Grey Heron.
The Grey Heron didn't take too kindly to the imposter and soon ousted it from the tree. We were then treated to a really close pass by the Purple Heron has it breezed past. Unfortunately it didn't stop in the original tree this time but kept going. People arriving were now faced with a mile long walk to where the bird was re-found an hour or so later.
I love days when you set out with one plan and end going off on a tangent when another presents itself. The good views of the Purple Heron kept up our almost flawless record with the species as well after seeing most of the ones that we've twitched before.
For even better photos of an adult Purple Heron, images that I'm very proud of, then go to here, to see a write up of the bird that graced Summer Leys in 2021.
Year List addition;
288) Purple Heron
Monday 11th September; Aqua-tick!
A bird that I thought I'd never see!
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| Aquatic Warbler |
Year List addition;
289) Aquatic Warbler
Saturday 16th September; Lesser is sometimes More
On a very wet day locally I searched for somewhere to go and to see, eventually deciding, against my better wisdom, to travel to Goldcliff Pools near Newport. Against my better wisdom because, although we've seen a few decent birds at the site before, including a Citrine Wagtail, views are never great and almost always distant. And it's always raining there. We were however, closing in on our second Big Year total of three hundred species, and felt that we may as well keep plugging away.
The Lesser Yellowlegs that we sought proved to be an awkward bird to see. It favoured the furthest stretch of water from the parking area, and made extremely good use of the reedy edge of the pool to conceal itself. We stayed an hour and saw the bird for a whole minute or so. But on a year list all birds count, no matter how good or bad the views of it are. Oh, and it rained the whole time.
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| Lesser Yellowlegs |
Only ten more needed for our second successive Big Year.
Year List addition;
290) Lesser Yellowlegs
Monday 18th September; Fudging it
After aborting a trip to Draycote Water in favour of twitching a Purple Heron the week before, we made it to see the Ferruginous Duck on a sneaky day off. The drake "Fudge Duck" was found readily enough, but only after asking a local after we couldn't find it ourselves because we'd failed to walk as far as we should have! It showed better than any Ferruginous Duck I'd seen before, preferring to feed right in close to the nearest bank of the reservoir. The bright white eyes of the bird denoted it as a male, and crucially its wild credentials. Even in the drizzle, it would have been hard not to take some half-decent photos.
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| Ferruginous Duck |
Draycote is always a good place to see Goosanders, and on this day there were at least twenty-five on the water, all of them female or juvenile birds.
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| Goosander |
Year List addition;
291) Ferruginous Duck
Friday 22nd September; Magnolia!
We took our turn in getting a piece of the amazing influx of New World Warbler in South-west Wales by making an early start and breezing down to Pembrokeshire to join a frenetic twitch to see a Magnolia Warbler. Followed up by gaining the briefest view of a Melodious Warbler.
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| Magnolia Warbler |
Year List addition;
292) Magnolia Warbler, 293) Melodious Warbler
Saturday 23rd September; Farmoor Phalarope
Tired from the exertion of the effort to see the Magnolia Warbler the day before, we were roused into action when a Grey Phalarope was discovered at Farmoor Reservoir. By the time we made it there, the previously showy bird had relocated right out into the middle of F1, and never came closer than anything but record shot territory.
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| Grey Phalarope |
Year List addition;
294) Grey Phalarope
Sunday 24th September; Phalarope again
With nothing else worth going to see, I went back to Farmoor in the drizzle to try again for the Grey Phalarope. I'm glad I did too, because the Phalarope this time was feeding right up against the concrete embankment of F2. With such point blank views, I took hundreds of photos over the next hour and could have chosen any number to show here. The header photo above was my favourite take, capturing the bird as it flexed its wings.
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| Grey Phalarope |
A flock of half a dozen Turnstones competed with the Phalarope for screen time, although never got the same of degree of attention of the other bird.
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| Turnstone |
Saturday 30th September; Cornish Twitchery!
With our Big Year rapidly gaining pace, we decided that we'd attempt to bring it home even more quickly by taking a weekend break in Cornwall. There were four prime target birds that we'd pick off, including another lifer.
Our first stop was to one of the largest hills in the Bodmin area. A big hill with a telegraph mast on top, aptly named Telegraph Hill by locals, but on maps, Caradon Hill, had been playing host to a Lesser Grey Shrike for a week or so. Birds quite often choose hills to hang out on and where there's a hill then there's sure to be an arduous climb up it. We met our friends Steph & Rob who had seen the Shrike and gave us the dreaded, "Showing really well" news. I say dreaded because from then on we knew that seeing the bird would be anything but easy.
And so it proved. Two hours of fruitless searching by ourselves, and quite a few others, resulted in not a sniff of a Shrike. All we really had to show for our endeavours was a jessie and tracker adorned Gyr Falcon (I think) that was being lure trained by its owner.
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| Gyr Falcon (captive) |
We gave up and headed downhill, cursing our luck that the Shrike had been a no show. Two hundred an twenty miles driven for a captive falcon. Then four hundred metres down from the top, I noticed a sharp movement of a whitish coloured object springing up from the grass and into the tree. Instantly, despite having only seen one before and that at least fifteen years ago, that I'd found the Lesser Grey Shrike. We'd been looking in the wrong place! Of course now that we'd found it, not far from the upward path that we took earlier, the Shrike perched openly as they often do.
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| Lesser Grey Shrike |
I put out the new location via BirdGuides but for five minutes or so we had the bird to ourselves. We watched it catch beetles and the like but always viewed from a distant as the Shrike flew from tree to tree. Shrikes are generally mobile birds and can be elusive, although they do perch atop a tree or post for considerable periods when on the lookout for prey.
Other birders having seen the news update caught us up and soon began harassing the bird, pushing the bird from pillar to post. I positioned the bird between them and myself and hid amongst the gorse and bracken trying to take advantage of the bird perching on some of those posts. I was semi-successful but the bird largely stayed out of reach for good photos.
In high spirits, relieved to have seen the Shrike, after a really good late lunch at a farm shop cafe at the bottom of the hill, we drove down into West Cornwall, avoiding the A30 roadwork nightmare by hugging the southern coastal route. The weather changed from a nice fine day into a miserable grim drizzly evening that you often get in Penwith. We were after another Shrike species and we found the juvenile Woodchat as detailed in a small paddock on the edge of Marazion within minutes of arriving. I'd seen really good photos of this bird and I was hopeful of adding some similar shots to my own portfolio but the weather put paid to that. It was almost dark.
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| Woodchat Shrike |
We had a quick look for a Hoopoe a few hundred metres away from the Woodchat Shrike without any luck and then took ourselves off to the Premier Inn at Helston for the night. An early start was called for in the morning.
Year List additions;
295) Lesser Grey Shrike, 296) Woodchat Shrike
Sunday 1st October; Lizard Lifer
We were up and out of the digs before it was light. The real purpose of our trip entailed a dawn vigil on the desolate Goonhilly Downs in the heart of the Lizard peninsula. A Northern Harrier, essentially the North American counterpart of our familiar Hen Harrier, had been skilfully identified by local expert birders the week before. The bird had been pinned down to an area of the Downs adjacent to the Goonhilly Earth Station, and had been seen both going to roost late in the day, and leaving again in the first lights of the day. Catching up with it during the day was very hit and miss, and although some observers were very lucky and got good views, many others were not. We found the designated viewpoint where views were most likely and settled in with a round a dozen or so others and waited for the sun to come up.
Except that there wouldn't be any sign of the sun that day. Instead the day dawned and covered the Downs in heavy mist and more drizzle. Luckily however, when the mist lifted slightly, an observant birder spotted a Harrier perched on a distant fence line. It had to be the Northern Harrier since no Hen Harriers were present this early in the autumn. I took a single record shot of my four hundred and twentieth life bird in the UK.
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| Northern Harrier |
A small party of birders were also spotted walking along the same distant fence line. Usually that would be annoying but they actually did us a favour. Firstly because their presence spurred the Harrier into action, allowing us to watch it quarter across the moor, giving good scope views, and secondly because one of them published excellent photos later that day that showed indisputably that it was indeed a Northern Harrier! If only the rest of us had had the first hand info that the lucky trio had, then we'd have all gotten the same excellent views. The photograph below was kindly lent to me by my mate Shaun Ferguson who was one of the lucky ones.
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| (Copyright) Shaun Ferguson |
We tried to find other places to view the area that the Harrier was hunting but the terrain is hard going for the Old Caley's and the area was huge. After tough walking along some of the few footpaths available and not getting anywhere near the remote spot that the bird had chosen, we gave up and headed to Lizard village for breakfast.
You couldn't see far at the Lizard at all, the mist had gotten worse and metamorphosed into fog. Not quite a pea-souper but pretty hopeless for birding. There was a final target bird on the agenda but it'd have to wait until we'd filled our bellies and besides there was no immediate sign of the bird anyway. Half an hour later we were peering into the fog again. This time within minutes our luck was in when a flock of around twenty Starlings flew over the village green and alighted on overhead wires. Of course we weren't almost three hundred miles from home to see birds that are common in our garden, but contained within the flock was what we wanted, a juvenile Rosy Starling, the fourth year tick of our mini-break.
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| Rosy Starling |
The Rosy appeared to be getting a bit of stick from its common congeners obviously the others had spotted the odd one out as well. We've seen a fair few Rosy Starlings, including a few striking pink & black adult birds. Indeed I have found a couple of juvenile Rosy's myself in Cornwall. But they are always a treat and this demure peachy coloured bird set the seal on a decent trip.
Year List additions;
297) Northern Harrier, 298) Rosy Starling
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