Context

Perhaps we don't always consciously acknowledge the fact, but a good percentage of the buzz many of us get from birding is directly linked to context. That is, the circumstances surrounding each bird we see. Context makes it special, or leaves it merely mundane. The obvious case is the common migrant that is so out-of-range that it becomes a vagrant, viz. rarity. But there are many, more subtle examples: the notorious skulker seen really well; the summer visitor in the middle of winter; the dirt-common bird in vast numbers; the seabird inland, etc.

Let me illustrate...

Before heading off to work this morning I nipped over to Cogden for a quick look at the sea. Again, the walk from the car park gave me some patch yearticks: Great Tit, Bullfinch and a singing Skylark. A little black blob offshore turned out to be a summer plumaged Guillemot, and fly-bys included 4 Kitts, 2 Fulmars, and singles of Brent Goose and Red-throated Diver. Eight new birds, bringing my total to 44 species and 53 points. A lone Shag was on the sea briefly before flying E, and a 1W Med Gull went W. All in all, a pleasing start to the working day.

Context played a major role in my enjoyment of that hour. The passerines were all yearticks, making each just a touch more notable than normal - the Skylark especially, due to singing its little heart out on 4 January and instantly raising my spirits. Guillemot, a common bird in places, and guaranteed for the year here, but here was one close enough for me to rule out Razorbill without teetering into the dark world that is 'string'. Thank you, close Guillemot, for keeping my conscience intact. Kittiwake, Fulmar, Brent Goose and Red-throated Diver similar, status-wise - all a given here, but not that common along this stretch of coast apparently. Also the RTD was reasonably close compared to the generally distant views I am used to off Seaton. When the Axe was my patch a lone Shag wouldn't have got a mention, but it is scarce here. Med Gull? Just being a Med Gull as opposed to dross immediately elevates the bird to another plane.

I don't think I'd ever quite made the connection before, but birders of a certain age have a system that describes exactly how special the context has made a particular bird. It's the 'value' system. You don't hear it so much these days, but I'm sure we subconsciously use our own version of it all the time...

Jack Snipe, right out in the open, point-blank range...excellent value!

Onwards. Slowly.

Twitter is awash with @PatchBirding retweets and #PWC2016 hashtags. The 400+ participants in the 2016 Patchwork Challenge have been out there and doing it since 00:01 Jan 1, and their collective tallies and finds are plastered across the ether for us all to enjoy. And that's 'enjoy' in the 'without irony' sense. I am actually quite inspired by it all. The enthusiasm is very infectious and should last until...ooh...early February, which, as every yearlister knows, is the killer month...

Anyway, in the meantime I will continue to enjoy the buzz. Even though I was busy with other things nearly all weekend, dipping into the tweetage encouraged me to hurry down to Cogden the moment I was free late this afternoon. Only an hour of light left, but I didn't care. Walking down from the car park I heard a Blue Tit calling and spied a Kestrel over the field to the W, both new for the year. A pretty strong SW kept me back from the beach a bit; I set up the scope in the lee of a hedge and hoped something decent would fly past. There seems to be a nice bit of gull movement off Cogden in the early morning and late afternoon, and I had at least four, maybe six Med Gulls - all adults - head W. A little party of three Cormorants comprised the third and final addition to my 2016 list. So, as the gloom deepened and the weekend's birding drew to a close, my Patchwork tally stood at 36 species and 41 points. Compared to many this is puny, but as I cast an eye over the patch's fields and hedgerows I wondered just how many species were tucked away out there. Not that many I reckon. Perhaps a focus on the sea at this time of year might be the best use of time?

Other stuff that came to me via Twitter today included gripping pics of an adult Ross's Gull off the Lizard and an adult Glaucous-winged Gull in Cork. Wow!! To birders who shrug their shoulders at gulls I just have to ask:

What is WRONG with you??!!

My goodness! Just think where these birds have come from! The journeys they've undertaken to get here! Gulls are such impressive travellers. Most of them need little more than a bit of wet stuff and some grub, and they can find that virtually anywhere. Factor in some inclement weather and they can be persuaded to up sticks and drop in at the most unlikely places. If they can find a few cousins to hang with, great, they're happy. I can think of no bird family with greater potential to give the sagging patchwatcher the Great Grandaddy of Adrenal Emptyings...

Please, give Gull a chance. You can only benefit, I promise.

Way over in London E11 the Wanstead Dandy has been owning up to sartorial dreadfulness. Most amusing! A quick trawl of old NQS photos has got me weighing in with this example of late 80s cringe...

Mmm, the cap-sleeve t-shirt. Really, really cool.

Kick-Off!

New year. New start. Up at 6:30, coffee and toast, then off to the Cogden patch.The first six birds were all heard: Carrion Crow, Wren, Robin, Blackbird, Herring Gull and Dunnock. And they needed a bit of volume too, because the roar from the beach was pretty loud! The surf was getting ripped up by a brisk SE and giving the Chesil shingle a right pounding.

By the time I got down there a nice pink glow suffused the sky over Portland...

That's the closest we got to actual sun all day

I mooched along the beach, without much reward beyond a calling Water Rail, and eventually came to what was clearly the seawatching shelter...

I can tell you, this is perfect for a SE, which basically comes straight along the beach. The wind got progressively stronger, yet I was completely sheltered from it here. If it had rained I'd have got wet, but I have nevertheless earmarked this spot for springtime Pom joy (given the right conditions) and noted the need for a brolly! This morning's prize was a spanking adult Little Gull, which came in from the E and slowly worked back that way. I love Little Gulls. There's always a chance of one along this coast when it's stormy, yet even in a howling hoolie they never look even slightly stressed. Captivating things! A real quality bird to get on my Patchwork Challenge list so early. Nice.

Soon the forecast rain arrived, and I headed home for a proper brekky. However, just before I turned away from the beach, two Shags flew E, close in. Result! Shag was easy-peasy off Seaton, what with there being a breeding population on the Beer cliffs, but off Cogden the species is rated 'scarce', and these were my first here. Again, nice.

Mid-afternoon, and I was back. By now it was tanking down, so I donned the full wet-kit, removed specs and shuffled forth across the fields and into the wind. Blinkin' horrid it was! Despite being bent double I still managed to add Song Thrush, Pheasant and Chaffinch. I came to a sheltered spot with a view of the sea and blow me if there wasn't another adult Little Gull moving slowly E just beyond the surf! I say 'another' and, as it kept going never to reappear, assume it probably was. Brilliant!

Eventually the rain stopped and I finished the day with a walk along the beach from E to W with the really strong wind at my back. Three Med Gulls E - one of each age class - topped off a great first crack at the new patch for 2016. The first of, hopefully, many...

Blimey, a proper birding post, no padding...I'm not quite sure what to do now....er...

The End of Year Post

I'm glad not to be outdoors right now. Squally rain is lashing against our little conservatory like a breaking wave. 2015 has played itself out in this manner for the last several weeks and, along with everyone else, I am ready for a new tune please.

That refrain will begin tomorrow. January 1st is a nice date for new starts, and many a crisp notebook has been cracked open on that day. I'm not sure that I'll bother with a notebook tomorrow - for some reason these days I'm not so fussed about careful recording - but I will be out on the new patch nice and early. I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully there'll be a blog post about actual birding afterwards.

The end of a year is a great time for wallowing in nostalgia. Motörhead frontman Lemmy died the other day. The news took me instantly back to June 1977 and a very long walk from the Music Machine in Camden to my home near Wembley following a Hawkwind + Motörhead double-bill. A warm midsummer night, ears ringing, feet sore, university imminent, the future an unknown. Ah, such an innocent...

Right, that's enough of that.

Many birding bloggers compile a review of the year type post about now. For me though, the biggest event of 2015 was moving from Seaton in Devon to Bridport in Dorset. Only 18 miles or so, but a fairly big thing nevertheless. Once the dust had settled there was the consequent search for a new patch, now sorted of course. Birding-wise, the majorest thing was a cracking week on Scilly with our good friends the @birdingprofs. Great company, great birding, great surroundings. Incidentally, if you were over there this year as a relative Scilly newbie, and found yourself looking for Little Buntings in the 'Standing Stone Field', maybe you wondered why it was called that? After all, there were quite clearly no standing stones present. Well, here's why...

Yes, that field once looked like this (in 2008) - 'Standing Stone' is an ancient colloquial name for Sociable Plover

Anyway, that's 2015 done. 2016 awaits. It's only a calander-based notion I know, but one cannot help being a little excited at the prospect of that 'new start' approach to upcoming stuff. Let's get to it...

Oh, and finally, despite vows to the contrary in yesterday's post comments, here is a photo of me and my bike...

...or, technically, trike.

A Blogger's Tricks

If this were a birding blog and I was one of those bloggers who goes birding every day, NQS readers could be fed an unremitting diet of birding posts, one after another. Good days, bad days, average days. Especially there'd be average days, of course. Lots and lots and lots of them. At school I learned that there are three types of average: mean, mode and median. This is a mathematician's wheeze to try and make 'average' less boring. Each describes 'average' in a different way, and such a blog would have to employ all three on a rotating basis to inject even the teeniest bit of interest into a steady stream of bog standard birdy outings. Regular readers would find themselves absolutely gagging for a rarity to ple-e-e-e-ease liven things up...

Aren't you glad I'm not really much of a birder?

I'm not even a naturalist. Not really. I'm pretty bad at butterflies, almost hopeless at moths, useless at dragonflies and even worse at plants. Admittedly I can do a lot of fish, but picture me on a sunny day beside the river/lake/gravel pit, with my knowledgeable friends the botanist and the lepidopterist, and who looks clever quickest? Eh? Exactly.

So, not many birds; no other easily observable natural history. That's why for NQS I have to resort to other tricks.

Cycling is one of those tricks. I can think of a few reasons why I might want to read about a blogger's cycling exploits.

• As long as he wasn't too young or inhumanly fit I might seek a little inspiration to galvanise me into doing something about my bulging gut.
• If he was fat and slow I would definitely read all his cycling posts in order to gloat smugly at my athletic superiority.
• Of course, a blogger who cycled to his birds would be a must-read.
• Also, a blogger who cycled to nice places and took photos...

Re the first two, sorry, but deciding whether I am too young, inhumanly fit, fat or slow is a subjective matter to be judged only by the reader...but I can unequivocally demonstrate that I do cycle to my birds and do cycle to nice places and take photos...

April 2014. Nipped over to Exmouth for this Glaucous Gull

Out in yesterday's sunshine, and up to the Hardy Monument. The view south takes in Chesil Beach, the Fleet and Portland, but as that was all shrouded in murk here's the view east. Incidentally, 'Hardy' not as in Dorset's own Thomas Hardy but as in Trafalgar's own "Kiss me, Hardy!"

Also yesterday: West Bay, the western end of the promenade. The place was exceedingly busy for a December Tuesday. I can never quite fathom why West Bay is so popular. The seafront architecture is rivalled only by Seaton for utter direness, and the chips are mostly awful. Mind you, there are usually motorbikes to look at. And boats. For some I guess West Bay is therefore Nirvana.

Rejoicing in Mediocrity

When it comes to belts, you can be sure that Mo Farah and Chris Froome own the 'one-groove' variety. That's because they are immesely fit athletic machines at the top of their game, and they win big, big things that you and I can never aspire to. That said, I wonder how happy they are? After all, if you or I spent a weekend blobbing out on the sofa with endless cake, well, we might feel a bit guilty. But if they did that it would leave their intricately planned 'taper' in tatters and cost them very dear. Whereas we might be able to salve our conscience with a brisk walk and thinking half-heartedly about 'cutting down a bit', they would instantly need a 6-month detox and 2-year rebuild.

Years ago, when I did a bit of running, I never, ever aspired to win. Why not? Because I wasn't a deluded idiot; I knew my capabilities. But I could still set reasonable goals that were achievable, thereby giving me just as much potential satisfaction as (and maybe more than?) the fast blokes who realistically could win, and frequently did.

The principle applies equally to birding. We cannot all have an east coast patch or live on Fair Isle, and many of us are never going to tally even 100 species in a year. Mediocre at best. And yet, a mediocre patch is still capable of producing genuine moments of enormous satisfaction, even joy. Take Staines Moor. Inland, not much water, overflown by Jumbo jets every three seconds. Yuk. A chap called Lee Dingain plugs away there and recounts his exploits on his blog Almost Birding. The subtitle - A Naturalist Struggling to Survive in Birdless Surrey - says much about the day-to-day reality of such a patch, yet last autumn he found a Barred Warbler there and had a fly-over Black Stork! Add in Wryneck and Great Grey Shrike and suddenly even mediocre sounds hugely appealing doesn't it!

And going back to the athletic perspective for a moment, what about cycling? For my age I'm possibly in the top 25 percentile, potential-wise. Again, never a winner. But, according to the mighty Strava my mediocrity is sometimes less mediocre than that of others. For a mildly competitive person like me this is a source of regular satisfaction. There are plenty of cyclists (whom I've never met, incidentally) whose names are frequently vying with mine for higher ranking on our local climbs. None of us is going to be a Strava 'King of the Mountain', but that does not detract in the least from the joy we derive in our mediocrity!

A couple of days ago I wheeled out my bike, pumped up the saggy tyres and wobbled forth. It was pitiful. Several weeks of inactivity has left its mark. Determined to know the worst I headed straight for Eggardon Hill. The summit peaks out at around 800ft, and it's well over 600ft of climbing in all, a nasty portion of it steeper than 15%. According to my Strava records I have been up it 24 times.  Friday's ascent was my slowest ever. My poor heart maxed out at 170 beats per minute - a rate it sees very, very rarely these days. Here's the sorry data...

Latest effort is over there on the right, at the ...er...bottom

My best ever performance up Eggardon Hill apparently places me 177th out of 766 Strava users who have climbed the beast. Friday's effort would put me equal 441st. Supreme mediocrity indeed. Mind you, if I adjust the figures so that just my age group is included things look altogether different...

...until you realise that I am one of the very youngest in the category!

Anyway, enough of this laughable competitiveness. Should know better really. And, of course, I do! I suppose it's obvious - like any mature person I know that the real joy in mediocrity comes from simply doing, seeing, being... What could give greater cause for rejoicing than the sheer pleasure of gasping desperately to the top of a hill where the wind is blowing so hard that you have to lean your bike at this kind of angle to prevent it from hurtling across the road...

Behind the camera is an immensely happy bloke, beaming from ear to ear and jigging up and down in little paroxysms of infinite joy

Patchwork Challenge

So here we are, easing towards the end of yet another year. As I get older, this annual inevitability takes on ever greater significance. For example, thinking back to my first visit to Scilly in 1984 gives me some very vivid memories, yet it was a massive 31 years ago. In 1984 my younger son hadn't been born and the roads were still full of Maxis, Metros and Marinas. If, as a ten year-old boy, I had asked my grandad what he was doing 31 years earlier he would have reminisced about the year 1938 when he was a career soldier stationed in married quarters on Malta with his wife and small children, little knowing what was coming their way in June 1940. Now that is pukka history with a big H - the kind of stuff entombed in musty old books illustrated with black and white photos - and for some reason I find this pretty sobering. Yes, time marches ever onward...which is why it's absolutely crucial that I get involved with the Patchwork Challenge before dementia gets me.

I did it once before, in 2013 I think, on the dump of a patch that I was saddled with back then, but now I have a nice new patch. Here it is, all neatly shaded in green...

The Cogden Patch, all 1.164 km² of it

Life recently has been rather full, and I've noticed the birding urges are a bit feeble. So I'm hoping a fresh challenge based on the friendly competition that PWC provides will get me out and about a bit. I am looking forward to January 1st.

Of course there is always the possibility of a nice find. The next pic was taken (by me) less than 25 miles from Cogden, and I can only imagine the adrenaline rush experienced by the birder who stumbled across this beast, perhaps during a casual stroll around his/her regular patch.

Nice...