Atlantic Weather Blues

This afternoon I walked from West to East Bexington in a fresh SW breeze. I didn't expect much, and wasn't disappointed: 6 Wheatears, 1 Whinchat, 12 Yellow Wagtails, and singles of Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler. To be honest I wasn't trying very hard. Normally I'd give the fields and hedgerows a bit of a grilling, scan the sea carefully, that sort of thing, but not today. Just a cursory look here and there. Did this slackness cost me birds? Possibly, but not many I'll bet. It all felt a bit empty...

Distant Whinchat does its best to cheer me up

Here we are in the 4th week of August, a prime slot in the autumn birding calendar, and all I can see is a tedious procession of Atlantic weather systems rolling this way, one after another. I must admit, it affects my mood a bit. I would very much like to stumble across a Wryneck or (dare I say it?) Ortolan Bunting right about now, or at least feel like such excitement was a possibility, but in this weather I cannot see it happening. Not even slightly. Ah well...

At least Wheatears don't really care what the weather's doing, and just come anyway.

Only one thing for it. Just plod on...

Down to the Sea Again

All week I've been watching the weather forecast, and drooling. Loads of birders do this. Like me they look at the charts, they see the tightly-clenched isobars, the exciting arrows, the squally clusters of rain symbols...and visualise all sorts of seabird carnage. And then they pick a location from which to witness it all. Some will be weighing up the options available locally, others further afield. I'll be honest here. Having endured some terminally dull patch seawatches of late I was not up for another. There are only so many times you can grit your teeth stoically whilst comparing your 8 Gannets and a Manxie to the birdy riches parading past watchpoints a few miles along the coast. I don't often travel for birding, but today was earmarked for such. Berry Head. Yep, that was where it was going to happen. I was sure.

I was so sure, that I arrived in the dark and walked up to the seawatch point wearing a head-torch. I wasn't going to miss a single minute of large-shearwater potential.

The headland quickly filled with eager, like-minded souls. As dawn broke, the flood-gates opened...

...and a seepage of mediocrity dribbled past...

Actually, it wasn't that bad. Compared to what I'm used to it was brilliant, but compared to what I'd imagined it was...well...

And I was reminded once again how absolutely rubbish I am at predicting birdy magic.

So, here are my totals for the all-day effort...

Manx Shearwater 212 (big under-count, I'm sure)
Balearic Shearwater 39
Arctic Skua 7
Arctic/Pom Skua 1
Large shearwater sp 1 - a typically frustrating event of excessive range and appalling light.
Storm Petrel 2
Sandwich Tern 4
Med Gull 1 juv
Common/Arctic Tern 16
Arctic Tern 4
Common Tern 4
Whimbrel 4
Bonxie 1

It was great to meet a few birders I hadn't seen for years, as well as a couple I knew from Twitter but hadn't met in the flesh. Entertainment was provided by Alan(?) who carefully fell over sideways in his chair, very slowly and deliberately - and quite noisily - so that no one missed it. First-class performance. I've never seen so much polite lip-pursing and suppressed merriment. Classic!

Despite the somewhat disappointing tally, the time whizzed by. At Berry Head there is always something to look at. As well as passing birds there are the close, feeding birds, there are cetaceans, and of course there are seawatchers toppling sideways in their chairs. By the way, if you're hoping there might be photos of the latter, sadly not. Sorry. I really am. I was just too slow. Anyway, here are a few photos of stuff that didn't make me laugh...

A pod of some 20 or so Common Dolphins came close in the morning...

...including calves

My first-ever Balearic Shearwater pics

Gannet. Sunshine. Moody sea.

Another Balearic Shearwater

Immature Gannets

The local Lifeboat. On exercises presumably...

Harbour Porpoise accidentally sticks its head out

Two Harbour Porpoises

I discovered that trying to photograph cetaceans is a nightmare. You have to guess where they'll next appear, and of course they almost never oblige. Passing seabirds ditto. Dreadful! Find with optics, point camera at where you think they'll be in a moment, peer through view-finder and wait. Nine times out of ten I waited in vain. Probably because I was pointing the camera at totally the wrong bit of sea. Whatever. I am evidently very bad at it. Much practice required...

And finally, this photo was taken at about 09:45, by which time the realists among us had upped and gone, leaving only the hopeless optimists...

Nocmiggery

Prior to Saturday night I had logged just one nocmig Redshank, at 03:21 on May 22nd. A single, rather feeble call. In roughly four months of nocmigging, that was it. And then, in the early hours of Sunday morning, my second record. And third, and fourth, and fifth, and...

Between 02:42 and 04:30 there were eight separate Redshank 'events', varying from single calls to multiple affairs, and totalling 15 calls in all. Obviously I could not say for sure whether it was one bird or many, but judging by the similarity of the calls I suspect that one bird might have been responsible for the lot. If so, what was it up to? Flying around in great big loops for a couple of hours? Or landing somewhere in between stage appearances? Or perhaps I'm wrong about that, and it actually was several birds. Who knows? Whatever the case, it once again illustrates why I find nocmig so fascinating. It is just full of surprises!

This pair of calls at 02:53...

I get the impression that some nocmig locations get very busy as the volume of autumn passage gradually builds. If that is true of my little corner of Dorset I haven't seen any sign of it yet, and still get the occasional blank night. Mind you, a 90-millisecond 'tsip' at 22.32 last night appears to have been my second Spotted Flycatcher of the year, so I live in hope. Of course, the early-autumn Holy Grail is Ortolan Bunting, but if I ever get one of those I will give up chocolate for a month. Scratch that. Six months.

The Weekend

I managed to get a fair bit of time in this weekend, despite a lot of rain. Don't think I've done so much birding for many years, and I'm really enjoying myself. West Dorset is not the east coast, so nothing dramatic as yet, but a steady trickle of early-autumn migrants has kept things interesting. Here's a bunch of photos...

Wheatears on the Burton Bradstock cliff top

Always an encouraging sight on a murky morning

This lot are from today...

Adult Peregrine at West Bex, being buzzed by a Kestrel

East Bexington Spotted Flycatcher

An East Bex perspective I'd not experienced before. Interesting...

Lesser Whitethroat

East Bex Chiffchaff in a welcome bit of afternoon sunshine

Immaculate Willow Warbler

Same Lesser Whitethroat as above

West Bex Wheatear

Assuming no repeats, this is the weekend tally...

23 Willow Warblers, 17 Chiffs, 12 Whitethroats (definitely under-counted), 27 Wheatears, 2 Yellow Wags, 3 Lesser Whitethroats, 3 Reed Buntings, 3 Blackcaps, 1 Goldcrest, 1 Whinchat, 1 Spotted Flycatcher.

Other highlights included the smart Peregrine pictured above, and my first local Common Dolphins for many years, with at least 2 off West Bexington yesterday evening. They weren't close, and they weren't fully breaching, but I managed a couple of very poor, short videos in the rubbish light, from which this grainy still is taken...

West Bex Common Dolphin

Notably absent from the weekend list are Red-backed Shrike, Icterine Warbler, Greenish Warbler, Wryneck, Long-tailed Skua, etc, etc...

Knowing what's going on around the country is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, in that you don't have to guess about what you're missing, you know precisely. And a curse, in that such knowledge can nibble away at your happy collection of modest birds until all that remains is a nasty, festering little heap of dissatisfaction.

Don't let it happen!

Someone else's birding is always better than yours. Tough. However, when an Icterine Warbler or Wryneck or Red-backed Shrike turns up on your patch one day, you won't yawn and go 'Blah, blah, blah...another one...' No. Your eyes will pop out, your heart will pound, and you'll be forced to remember what adrenaline is.

To close, here's a photo I took at 07:19 yesterday morning from East Bexington, looking towards Abbotsbury Beach. I sometimes wonder if I'm on the right planet...

The Birder's Photo

Two days ago, at Spurn, this...

Somewhere I have a very similar photo of the one and only Roller I've seen, at East Budleigh in 1989. That small, turquoise blob draws your eye like a magnet doesn't it? Commenting on the pic, Mark James Pearson said...

'I genuinely prefer these kind of photos. Pin-perfect shots with super-fancy gear are increasingly boring, whereas this just makes me want to leave my desk and go back out birding...'

And I have to agree with that sentiment. As fellow blogger Stewart Sexton put it...

'A sharp, in context, image is a birders photo...'

And it's true, isn't it? This kind of photo simply wouldn't do for the out-and-out photographer, but for the birder, well...

You've got the habitat to give everything its proper context, and you've got the bird nice and small to give everything its proper scale. Unlike the proper togger's frame-filling shot, featuring pin-sharp rictal bristles, this is real life. This is what it's actually like in the field. And I think Mark is dead right - a 'birder's photo' just makes you want to get out birding.

So. Much as I like to feature a sharp frame-filler (when I'm fortunate enough to get one), from now on I will also endeavour to post a few more of those 'birder's photos'. Starting today. I'm sure the quality will vary a bit, but hopefully they'll add a little more patch vibe to the blog, with not just the birds but also the habitat and surroundings.

Here goes...

This morning I tried East Bexington. One of the first birds I saw was a Hobby, and judging by the upperparts colouration, an adult. It dashed rapidly E towards Abbotsbury. Some 9 Wheatears and 3 Willow Warblers later, a load of noisy corvids drew my attention to this smart Marsh Harrier, an E Bex first for me...

Marsh Harrier

First Wheatear of the day, a nice male by the looks of it.

Birder's photo! Wheatear.

Another lovely male Wheatear. You can see it, right?

And...Wheatear.

Just as I was leaving, I picked up these three egrets a bit late. I'm 99.9% sure they're Little Egrets. Just as well really...

Little Egrets in annoying going-away mode.

This afternoon Sandra and I visited West Bexington. Would you believe another Hobby?! Quite decent views by Labour-in-Vain Farm, but again it didn't linger, departing into E Bex territory to the accompaniment of alarm-calling Swallows. A juvenile bird, so not the same as this morning's, but still something like my 6th(?) this autumn. This is way more than I am used to. Also, I am not hearing about other local birders seeing regular Hobbies, so I'm feeling a bit like a stringer ought to but doesn't...

Anyway, the only other West Bex excitement involved Whinchats - three in total. The first one pictured here was so far away that identification with bins was a challenge. In flight it was easy enough, with its white tail patches, but when perched it was right on the limits of confidence. So this 'birder's photo' demonstrates how helpful the Nikon P900 can sometimes be, even with mild heat haze...

Whinchat habitat. Oh, and juv Whinchat.

And this one by the beach is an adult.

Same again. Beach Whinchat.

And by the way, I'm not using this 'birder's photo' lark as some lame excuse for not bothering to try and get close shots in the future. Nor am I claiming that atmosphere, aesthetics, mood and context would necessarily trump a nice sharp set of rictal bristles. But they often might...

Pied Flycatchers et al...

Yesterday morning the local birding WhatsApp group was buzzing with reports of Pied and Spotted Flycatchers. Pied Fly has never quite been a guaranteed bird each year, so I was eager to get out and have a sniff around. I had to wait until the afternoon to do so. And the afternoon was hot. I mean HOT! Absolutely scorching, with not a breath of wind. I headed for my little spot at Burton Bradstock and was slightly amazed to find a Pied Fly almost straight away. Or, should I say, at least one. More likely there were two, but I couldn't prove it. The only other bird of note was a Lesser Whitethroat, though 7 lovely Wheatears were flitting around the fields.

I must have lost about two litres in sweat, but the urge to carry on was strong, so I took my shrivelled carcass to West Bexington and made it walk all the way to East Bexington. By the time I got back to the car I'd added another Pied Fly, 2 Spotted Flycatchers, a Redstart (my first of the year), 4 more Wheatears, 2 Great Northern Divers together, 6 Common Scoter, 5 Willow Warblers, another Lesser Whitethroat and a couple of Blackcaps. Also a Clouded Yellow and an Eggar moth of some kind.

All in all, a really nice tally by my standards. By now I was seriously crispy, so went home to rehydrate.

Although I managed a few dreadful Pied Flycatcher record shots at Burton Bradstock, none were remotely sharp. I flushed the Redstart when I found it, so it gave me a five-second glare from a few yards away, then promptly vanished. So, have this hare...

The West Bex Pied Fly was far more accommodating, presenting me with at least 60% of its body surface, if not 65...

West Bex Pied Flycatcher. To be fair, most views were like this or worse.

After yesterday's relative riches, I was out early today, with high hopes. Burton Bradstock now held a very pleasing three Pied Flycatchers, plus 11 Wheatears. But absolutely nothing else. So I tried Cogden, adding another 8 Wheatears and a couple of Whinchats before breakfast. Slightly more success with the snappery today...

The walls which serve as field boundaries at Burton Bradstock are quite possibly the most photogenic Wheatear perches I have yet seen...

The Pied Flycatchers initially gave photo-opportunities like this...

Still, at least the focus managed to find it somehow

 Finally...!

On a slightly different note, some good butterfly news. Last year I posted this photo...

Long-tailed Blue at Axmouth

Prior to August 26th, 2019 I had never seen a Long-tailed Blue. The discovery of a small number at Axmouth enabled me, Sandra, and umpteen others to enjoy great views of this pretty little gem. The site was publicised and therefore got a bit hammered, but as far as I know there were no major issues. However, one or two visitors may have had intentions other than mere observation and a few snaps. Nets were seen. Though the law protects some species, many butterflies can legally be collected, including Long-tailed Blue. It seems unthinkable that anyone could stoop so low as to consider catching and killing such a rare butterfly, but there it is, Victorians are among us and the risk is real. Well, the site has already produced again this year, and the news broadcast. Realistically, after their popularity in 2019, anyone with evil intent would no doubt have been making plans for 2020 anyway. So perhaps the best way to ensure the butterflies remain unmolested is to publicise the site widely. A steady stream of visitors might then serve as an unofficial wardening service, and discourage would-be collectors from even thinking about it...

Possibly.

Forty Years

Birding has been a bit neglected these past few days. Towards the end of the week our elder son Rob made a flying visit from Switzerland, and we somehow wangled a night's fishing together. Well, if you can call a bankside chilli, generous helping of red wine and much natter, actual fishing... We did have some rods out, and even caught a couple, but really...

This morning I made the effort though. Waking a little late, I was conscious that today was a momentous day, and I ought not fritter too much of it on mere birding. So a quick jaunt to Burton Bradstock, where I inspected the clifftop fields and glanced briefly at the adjacent bushes. Offshore there was clearly some decent gull movement going on, with lots of Black-headed and several (mostly juv) Meds heading west. A proper count was no doubt in order. Not from me though. The best I could muster otherwise was a loose gang of 5 Wheatears in the top fields...

Three out of five

But I needed to get back fairly pronto, because today was important for reasons other than birding. Quite often on Twitter you will see tweets which begin with 'OTD...' followed by perhaps a grainy photo of some rarity of yore, and an announcement that [insert big number, but usually 25] years ago the tweeter and this bird happened to cross paths somehow. Usually it's a bit of twitch nostalgia. Well, this post is in a vaguely similar vein.

On This Date 40 years ago, this happened...

This photo was taken outside the register office at Harrow Civic Centre on 9th August 1980. The young couple pictured here then climbed into the car, which drove them to the reception venue, a pub called The Green Man, off Wembley Hill Road. The Green Man was (and still is) within easy walking distance of Wembley Stadium. If you were to do a little research you would quickly discover that 9th August 1980 was the date on which Liverpool FC lifted their fifth FA Charity Shield, beating West Ham 1-0 at Wembley stadium, in front of 90,000. Back in those days, a big game at Wembley meant all-day closure for most, if not all, of the local pubs. This included The Green Man. However, visiting fans might still park at such pubs and walk to the stadium, and maybe use the outdoor facilities for a little pre-match refreshment...

And so it was that a Rolls Royce, bedecked in the traditional white ribbons of a nuptial carriage, slid quietly into The Green Man's car park and came to a halt. Next to the car park lay a sizeable pub garden, and sprawled upon its lawn was a very large crowd of beer-drinking football fans. Every single one of them turned and stared, momentarily silent. Then, as one, they raised a can towards the red-faced couple and let rip with a loud and hearty cheer.

Forty years ago, this afternoon.

A nice Wheatear, oblivious to the significance of the date.