Simple Pleasures

The last couple of evenings have been pleasant enough to tempt me to sit outside and keep my nocmig recorder company for a while. Recently I've been averaging just one or two notable birds per night, so my expectations were low. However, last night I heard a Barn Owl at 22:57. It sounded quite distant, and certainly wasn't loud. Prior to taking up nocmig I would not even have registered it as Barn Owl, but I've had so many now that I am very switched on to that call. Sure enough, when I reviewed the recording this morning there was a nice little Barn Owl screech at 22:57. And reasonably loud too - I would never have guessed how distant it sounded in real life. The mic is definitely more sensitive than my ears!

The recording also delivered my first Curlew and a single, very unmistakable 'kleep' from an Oystercatcher. A good night.

Late afternoon and I was back on the coast, walking from Abbotsbury beach car park to West Bexington and back. There were far fewer small gulls than my last visit, and I saw little more than a handful of Meds. But it doesn't take much to keep me happy, and the simple pleasure of a fresh juvenile Reed Bunting at East Bexington was enough to put a smile on my face. They don't breed at East Bex as far as I know, so this little chap is evidence of a bit of post-breeding dispersal, from Abbotsbury or West Bex perhaps. Movement. Always good...

So where are you from, my little friend?

I spent some of the return leg on the beach, so as not to miss any gulls on the waterline, where they can be invisible from the coast path. Approaching a small group of big gulls I was overtaken by another big gull heading over the surf towards them. Aha! One of my hoped-for target birds...

And there it is dropping in at the back of the group. Even in this shot there is just enough there to tell you it's a juvenile Yellow-legged Gull

I tried the tactic that worked with the Med Gulls a couple of days ago. A very slow approach, stopping frequently. Rather than lifting off en masse, the nearer gulls peeled away one by one, quite sedately, as I got closer and closer. The Yellow-legged Gull was so relaxed that it had settled itself comfortably on the shingle, but in just about the most inconvenient pose regards showing off its diagnostic features. My plan was to approach sufficiently close to coax it into standing up...

Juv YLG in super-relaxed mode

Well, it was a plan.

Sure enough, it did stand up...and simultaneously launched itself off the beach! I got a couple of distant shots on the water, before it upped and headed for France...

My current approach to local birding is just to go where the fancy takes me. I've talked about this before, and it is working well. Rather than feel duty-bound to visit a particular patch - an approach with which I've struggled in the past - I feel delightfully liberated. My birding is still all local of course, but completely without self-imposed constraint. Frequently, when the birding is slow, I get ample pleasure from the simple act of walking in lovely surroundings, probably because I've chosen to go there rather than felt obliged to. For me this works perfectly right now. Hopefully it will continue to do so...