Sharing is Caring

I should definitely play my hunches more often. I was down at Burton Bradstock beach not long after 05:00 and, despite the pathetically gentle onshore breeze, was absolutely brimming with confidence. Yesterday morning I did an hour and twenty minutes in two bites, and my highlights were flocks of 6 and 22 Common Scoters. Poor. Yet Pom Skuas were reported here and there; Steve had one at Seaton finally! Even 2 Long-tailed Skuas popped up along the S coast - the nearest at Berry Head, Devon. I just had a strong hunch that there would be some more Poms pitching up in Lyme Bay later in the day, making an early start essential...

However, by 06:00 I'd managed no more than just a few Common Scoters and a Great Crested Grebe. It was very slow. I began to worry that if there were going to be any skuas I might only get one chance, and I didn't want to accidentally miss it because I was looking at Twitter or playing Minesweeper or something. A heads-up from the West would be nice. I texted Steve...

06:02 'R u seawatching Stevie??'
06:03 'Do I need to be? Is it busy?'
06:03 'Ha ha! Not so far!'
06:04 'Just doesn't seem as good weather conditions as forecasted?'

Steve was right. Hardly a breath of wind. It didn't look promising at all. And yet...

At that precise moment a very distant bird appeared above the horizon and climbed rapidly, coming straight towards me. "Is that a Whimbrel?" I thought. It then stopped abruptly, turned E and sailed gently down to land on the sea. A skua! Too far out to ID, but definitely a skua.

Some more tippy-tappy...

06:06 'Mind you, just had my first v distant skua, has landed on sea...'
 [note 'first' skua. Confidence!]
06:07 'Oh there's no harm in me popping down for an hour is there...'
06:08 'Let me know when the Long-tailed comes past!'

Ah, if only...

I kept an eye out where the skua had landed, and after a little while picked up two familiar shapes cruising E, low to the waves. I had to zoom right up to clinch them, but definitely 2 Poms; I assumed my initial sighting had been one of these two.

06:16 '2 distant Poms E'

Soon we were chatting on the phone, talking up the potential and generally being wishful, when my scope eye was suddenly full of Pom! Another two fully-spooned stunners were muscling E at no more than 2-300 yards! I rang off a bit abruptly. Brilliant!

Then it was Steve's turn...

06:29 '9 Poms on sea off Spot-on'

Steve was so excited he inadvertently sent it twice!

NINE!! Shortly we were talking on the phone again. All nine had evidently taken off, circled over the Spot-on kiosk, directly above Steve and Richard, the only two birders seawatching there, and then headed my way! To say Steve was ecstatic would be an understatement. I now had the heads-up I had been hoping for.

At 07:05 they came past me. Simply superb. Probably 400 yds plus, low to the waves, powering eastwards with seemingly no effort. All pale phase birds except one, which I guess was intermediate-ish, and I reckon all or nearly all of them had full spoons. In a previous post I promised birdy #recordshots, so duly made the effort...

I reckon a couple of those specks actually look Pom-shaped. Amazing. I can only make out 8 in the photo, but even that's a minor miracle.

With the aid of the technological marvel that is Twitter, those 9 Poms were tracked all along the S coast from Seaton, via James McCarthy at Lyme Regis, via me at Burton, all and sundry at Portland Bill, and on round past Hurst Point in Hampshire and into the Solent. I'm not sure how far they got after that, but they do appear to have stopped for a breather somewhere before Selsey Bill. It was great to be aware of the shared experience and, as I've yet to meet a birder who isn't fired up by seeing skuas, to know that a lot of fellow birders were on cloud nine this morning!

Something weird is happening. Has birding changed dramatically while I've been away, or something? Because I am seeing LOADS more decent birds than used to be the case.

How to Count Birds. Lesson 1: Flocks

There were waders on the beach early this morning. Quite a few. Three different sorts too. As all birders know, it's not just the species name that you make a note of but also how many. Counting is important. In fact counting is vital. Why? Because the accurate counting of birds is an identifying mark of the true birder. Witness the three seawatching buddies faced with a writhing flock of Common Scoter going past. The true birder will rise to the occasion...

- What do you reckon guys? About 60?
- Yeah, something like that, maybe even more. Derek?
- Sixty-seven.

Yes, Derek is a true birder. But just in case there was still doubt, he adds:

- Including twenty-eight adult drakes.

Don't you just hate him?

I am not a true birder. I am in fact Mr Ballpark. If a flock of 67 Common Scoter flies past me I am usually busy trying to detect the flash of white secondaries. My count will be extremely circa. Mind you, if the flock numbers 20 or less I will do the best I can to count it properly; I'm not completely useless. So, when faced with a flock of waders on a beach, what does one do? What do I do? Well, it depends, as the following #recordshots illustrate...

Ringed Plover. This was in a flock of one. Even I was untroubled here.

Sanderling. This was one of several. They were running about a lot, rather quickly, and I was struggling. Eventually I settled on nine. They then flew along the beach together of their own accord. Much better. There were ten.

Whimbrel. Lots of them. When I first arrived this morning a flock of 23 Whimbrel took to the air off the lower beach for some unknown reason and then drifted back down in the same area and landed out of sight. I thought to myself "23 Whimbrel. Nice. I must check them out later and see if I can get a #recordshot." Upon my return I found this lot, considerably more than 23. Actually this is only some of them. The others are out of shot, or hidden behind shingle ridges and bigger, fatter Whimbrel. Nightmare.

I thought perhaps if I got closer to them, the hidden ones would be visible and I could count them properly. I could see there were more than 40. I tried it...

As you can see, it doesn't help to get closer. The hidden ones just crouch right down, and your field of view is restricted to just a few birds at a time. Dreadful.

I know what you're thinking.
"Make them fly! Boot 'em! Get them up, UP! Then you'll see how many there are."

But it's not as simple as that, not when there are loads of them...

See? Awful!!

There had to be another way...

And then I remembered a trick I'd pulled in order to count a huge flock of Golden Plover back on the Axe. Get them up properly. Right up. Make them dots.

And then take a photo. Take a photo, blow it up, and count the dots at your leisure.

So I ran down the beach, screaming, and they all fled inland...

Exactly 60 Whimbrel.

So yes, 60 Whimbrel. And I'm glad I have the evidence too, because no one believes counts that end in zero. Obviously you struggled with accuracy, and rounded up. Not a true birder.

PS. I'm sure the following caveat is unnecessary, but just in case: before anyone comments adversely on my seemingly questionable birding ethics, don't believe everything you read on NQS.

PPS...

Not a Barwit. Rubbish photos can lie.

Vaguely Serious Birding and Record Shots

On April 1st I wrote this:

"In a way it's a shame that I just cannot seem to get the birdy juices flowing right now, but I take consolation from the fact that it has happened before; the interest has merely diminished, not died."

And yet here I am just a few weeks later, apparently a full-on birder once again. I must be a nightmare to live with...

I think it was the Redstart which got things rolling. And of course, finding a Hoopoe is basically a class A drug, and I am in serious trouble. Talking of serious, my birding approach has definitely gone up a notch. It is now somewhere on the 'serious' spectrum. But not fully serious. For example, I have begun to cart the camera around with me, but still not the scope. After all, the camera is a piddling little bridge jobbie that weighs about two ounces, whereas the scope/tripod combo tips the scales at almost a hundredweight. I will regret this decision one day. I have in the past, so I know it's only a matter of time before some goody slips through the net because I can't be bothered to carry a scope. Just this morning I had to let a trio of divers go - simply too far out for my bins. I suppose I'd better think about manning up before the inevitable happens.

Anyway, in the meantime here is a post about some not-quite-fully-serious birding...

I'm glad I've decided to take the camera with me because it means I can illustrate my birdy posts with lots of record shots. And 'record shots' is exactly what the vast majority will be. Here is about the very best you can expect:

Stonechat. Not a record shot. No. This is a portrait.

More likely you will get stuff like this:

A Hobby coming in-off on May 5th. At this point it is still well out over the sea. When it decided to make landfall it shot past way too quickly for my camera-pointing skills.

And some more:

Gorgeous Grey Plover on Cogden beach, May 5th.

Wall, Cogden, also May 5th. I know it's a butterfly, not a bird, but 'rubbish pose' and 'highly cropped' are both on the list of #recordshot criteria

Common Sand, Cogden, May 3rd

Which brings us to this morning. Yet another bright and sunny start to the day, with a biting NE wind. Although I was only out for a couple of hours or so before work, I wished I had longer as there was obviously a lot going on. Waders on the beach for a start, as well as passing by. Several little groups of Dunlin and Sanderling. Quite hard to count but I settled for 27 Dunlin and 22 Sanderling. Also a handful of Whimbrel; I ended up with seven.

A Whimbrel legging it, because I'm pretty scary and much too close for comfort.

10 Sanderling. In the true spirit of #recordshot the birds are not only small but also blurry.

There were also passerines. It's funny, whenever you've been out and done a bit of birding, and then later on read the counts of migs at Portland for that day - you know, '10 Redstarts, 15 Whinchats, 60 Willow Warblers, 5 Yellow Wags, etc' - it's so easy to think you must have been walking about with your eyes closed. I have to remind myself that Portland clearly acts like the spout of a funnel, and concentrates birds that would otherwise be across a broad front. Also, there will likely be lots of birders out in the field all day, going through the habbo like a giant flea comb. Whereas most of us are birding what amounts to the mouth of the funnel, for only a small part of the day, with just one or two others or perhaps on our own. So when you walk a mile of coastline and see a Whitethroat skimming across the sea towards the beach, and a Willow Warbler flitting through the sea kale, and a few jumpy Wheatears on the shingle, and a steady trickle of hirundines zipping past, and it's evidently all going off to some extent...well, you can safely assume you're going to see about three percent of it all! Or less!

I saw 7 Willow Warblers, 7 Wheatears, 1 Whinchat, 2 Sedge Warblers, and 1 Spotted Flycatcher. I would say that apart from one of the Sedgies they were all new arrivals, along with at least 1 Whitethroat. Add to that a few other passerines which made landfall too far away to be identifiable. So, using the Three-Percent-or-Less Rule, I can confidently extrapolate my counts to 230 Willow Warblers, 230 Wheatears, 30 Whincats, 30 Sedge Warblers and 30 Spotted Flycatchers. Which is much more like it.

One of the 30 Whinchats on patch today...

...and one of the 30 Spotted Flycatchers likewise.

Pom Party

Everyone loves a skua, especially a fully spooned-up spring Pom. So it was very nice to see this tweet from Mike Morse early yesterday evening...

As regular readers will know, West Bexington is just a mile or two E of my chosen patch. So of course I was a little bit gripped. But at the same time I was rather pleased. How come? Well, I know I'm leaving myself open to accusations of being unbearably smug after the fact here, but I predicted exactly this scenario at exactly this time. Yep, Poms past the patch, late on Friday. Not out loud, not in print anywhere, but quietly to myself. And if my free time late yesterday hadn't been compromised by a prior engagement I would have been at Burton Bradstock from about 4:30 pm. Honest!

This was because several days ago the weather forecast indicated that the mostly NE wind we've been having for a while would move a bit more easterly on Friday, with roughly due East (and quite brisk) set for late afternoon/evening. I was optimistic of some Pom action, and earmarked the slot for a nice seawatch...and then we got invited out. But the forecast held good, and look what went and happened!

Although I'd missed out on that chance, I was aware that a small number of Poms had passed Portland over the last few days, so they were definitely on the move still. I therefore hoped that the Bex birds weren't the only ones to have been pushed a little further E than usual, and that despite the wind reverting to a rather unhelpful NE again, one or two might do the decent thing and come past early this morning. In fact I more than 'hoped', I was borderline confident, and set the alarm for 5:30.

Arriving in the Burton Bradstock car park about 5:50 I faffed about a bit trying to find somewhere comfy to sit down out of the wind, eventually settling on a spot on the beach, with my back to a wall. I then fiddled about with the scope, getting the legs set right, getting it level, and so on. Like an old woman. Eventually I aimed it at the horizon and tweaked the focus. As I did so a distant bird reared up above the waves. A skua! Literally the first bird I clapped eyes on! It banked slightly and I could see it was a pale phase, but there were clearly no spoons. Must be an Arctic, surely. Suddenly, in the same field of view, another appeared. Also pale, also spoonless. But two together? Could they be Poms? The birds were still distant, but evidently coming towards me. A better view of one bird convinced me that it had shortish, but blunt tail projections; it was a Pom. At this point another two birds appeared. Strewth! A flock! I quickly scanned left, and could hardly believe my eyes when the four became seven! All pale phase, at least a couple sporting full spoons. Absolutely magnificent! I heard myself talking out loud again: "SEVEN Poms!! Wow!!" and stuff a bit like that...

By now the flock was drifting slowly westwards and I realised they would probably be out of view before coming close enough for really crippling views...and then it dawned on me that the first two I'd seen might not actually have been the lead birds. Quickly I swung the scope well right and scanned slowly back again. The scope was suddenly full of Poms, all up above the horizon now, and quite tightly grouped. I struggled to count them. Eleven! And then another cruised in from the left. Twelve! TWELVE! I could scarcely believe my eyes...

When they had disappeared from view I punted out a tweet, plus a text to Steve over at Seaton. I really hoped they'd keep moving W and make someone else's day too. But nothing happened. Steve wondered if they'd drifted back S, or even gone overland. And then came a tweet from the opposite direction at 8:15: '12 Poms through Chesil Cove heading east...' It seemed a bit unfair really.

Steve reckons I've always been a bit jammy with Poms. This may well be true (and I'm always happy to accept any jam going) but in my defence I have to point out that this morning's jam was genuinely the result of a plan. Of course, plans don't always come good, but once in a while they do, and when that happens I am big-headed enough to enjoy taking credit! Mind you, another five minutes faffing and I would have been bemoaning yet another failure. Okay, it was possibly a little bit fluky then...

So, context: I don't know how often Lyme Bay sees a double-figure flock of Pomarine Skuas, but 'not very' is my guess. It's certainly my first anywhere. I once had a flock of nine, I think it was, at Dungeness in May 1990. And I'm pretty sure that is my only previous flock, with all my other Poms ones and twos. From Seaton they were very scarce. I had a puny total of 17 on 13 dates, with just 12 birds (8 dates) in spring. That's in about 10 years of sporadically moderate effort.

Which is why this brief little encounter with those absolutely stunning birds has got itself a whole fat post of its own.

Finally, if I'd missed the Poms this was my seawatch (05:55 - 07:25): 1 Grey Plover W, 3 Cormorants W, 1E, 2 Shelduck W, 4 Common Scoter E, 3 Mute Swans E, 3 BHGs E, 1 Kittiwake loitering, handful of Manxies likewise.

Yep, Grey Plover would have been the highlight.

Powerful Urges

Readers of this blog may have noticed a very slight decline in the standard of my birdy pics. To make amends for trying your patience thus, I have blagged this so-so shot of yesterday's Hoopoe from Mike Morse...

Just wow! (Thanks Mike!)

I first saw this on Twitter yesterday. Straight away I poured it carefully into a tall glass and stirred in every last ounce of buzz that I got from finding it. A heady brew. I am still under its influence and subject to long-forgotten and powerful urges...

Which is why I was up at first light and out birding by about 5:30!

Migrants too are subject to powerful urges. Despite a brisk headwind no doubt making the Channel crossing a right drag, they still come. Relentlessly. However, being a bit knackered after all that, they sensibly pause for a breather rather than rush off northwards immediately. I counted 14 Wheatears between Burton Bradstock and Cogden. My highest ever May count on the Seaton patch was 6! A Common Sandpiper and a rather grey Willow Warbler added to the interest. I had to be gone by 7:30 but the evident action had me vowing to return later if I could...

At 3pm I was back at the Hive Beach car park in Burton Bradstock. As I tied my boots a Yellow Wag flew over calling. There were Wheatears on the grassy slopes still. Excellent! A long walk later I had a very pleasing tally of birds to savour: 9 Wheatears, 1 Yellow Wag, 1 Whinchat, 2 Spot Flys, 1 Garden Warbler (seen, not singing), c15 Willow Warblers, 4 singing Lesser Whitethroats, 1 Cuckoo, plus brief views of an accidentally-flushed Tawny Owl.

I was on the inland edge of the patch when the Cuckoo flew straight past me and headed down towards the sea, disappearing over a hedge. To give this some context, here is my record with spring Cuckoos on the Seaton patch: 2 heard in 2005 (April 21 and May 15) and one flying E at Beer Head, being mobbed by a Pied Wag, on April 19, 2007. And that's it. Plus I have never seen or heard one in all the countless springtime hours I've spent working outdoors locally. So it is 10 years since I've seen a spring Cuckoo in these parts, and today's is only my 2nd in 15 springs! I've seen more Hoopoes!!

A good day.

My van is booked in for a service tomorrow morning, but there is plenty of daylight available before it's due at the garage. And if I can get up early, there will be urges. Powerful ones...

Hoopoe

As I mentioned in the previous post, there has been some birding. Not serious birding you understand, but whatever the opposite of serious birding is. Half-hearted. Lightweight. No scope, no camera, no note-taking. Superficial birding then. Flippant, even. So basically I really, really didn't deserve what happened this morning...

But first I need to set the scene.

Back on April 21st I popped over to Cogden for a walk. I took my bins and was pleased to note 7 Whitethroats, a couple of singing Lesser Whitethroats and a single Wheatear. Also a Whimbrel was prodding about in a field and - best of all - a Grasshopper Warbler was reeling away in a hedgerow. All very pleasant, and typical spring fare locally. This nice collection of birds kindled sufficient enthusiasm to get me down to Cogden early enough on 23rd to see the sunrise. But instead of driving to the Cogden Beach NT car park I headed for Burton Bradstock; I've always felt the Cogden car park is a bit too vulnerable to opportunist thievery to feel 100% happy leaving the motor there, and anyway, it means I get to cover a short strip of the coast that possibly no one else does. A strategy which paid off very handsomely this morning...

I'm getting ahead of myself.

So anyway, on April 23rd I followed the coast to Cogden, walked a little circuit, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Between 6 and 8am I tallied 11 Wheatears, c6 Willow Warblers, 1 Whinchat, 1 Grasshopper Warbler, 1 Peregrine, a handful of Swallows and a spanking male Redstart. I was chuffed to see the Whinchat and almost all the Wheatears right on the beach, newly arrived. Migration in action. Superb! The Peregrine was only my second local bird; it's not like Seaton, where they're an almost daily occurrence. And the Redstart, well...

It was one of the last birds I saw. A line of gorse at the top of a slope, and as I walked along it I'd already been made to raise my bins two or three times by the ubiquitous Linnets. And then, not a Linnet.
"Oh yes! You beauty!"
I actually said that out loud, which surprised me. Surprised me enough to mentally note that I had said it out loud. I think I'm going soft. Mind you, a spring male Redstart, fresh in, really is hard to beat, isn't it.

Still, something was happening. My shrivelled little birdy gland was trying hard to get some juices going. Just after the Redstart (which vanished pretty sharpish) I saw my final Wheatear, and even tried to take a photo with my pathetic phone camera...

Tiny bird, big habbo

I didn't get out last week, but as the weekend approached I found myself feeling a little frustrated. Why? Because the weather looked like it was shaping up for a good seawatch on Sunday, and I was heading to Wiltshire for a few days and would therefore miss it all. I had depressing visions of Pom skuas piling along the coast in vast flocks whilst I was many miles inland. As it turned out there were hardly any skuas at all, let alone Poms, so I missed very little in the end. But the fact that the prospect of doing so bothered me a bit was rather telling.

And so to this morning.

I hadn't planned to go birding at all, but was up at 6:30, early enough to make it a viable option. Parking at Burton Bradstock I headed along the coast. There's a small caravan park between Burton Bradstock and Cogden. It runs right down to the coast path, and there are nice strips of lawn between the caravans. Perfect for a Hoopoe really, a possibility that has genuinely occurred to me. Ambling along I was suddenly aware that I'd flushed a medium-sized bird on the seaward side of the caravans, that it was heading away from me in a lollopy, bouncy kind of way, and would disappear around the end caravan unclinched if I didn't hurry up and look at it properly. Even straight into the sun it was unmistakeable. That fleeting, rubbish view through the bins was plenty. I'd known it was going to be a Hoopoe anyway, but if I hadn't briefly seen those broad, pied wings through my 10x lenses I would have been a bit stuffed if I'm honest.

I searched for it, but to no avail, and guessed it had probably headed off inland. I've previously known Hoopoes evaporate in exactly that fashion. They appear to have just flopped over the hedge but you never see them again. In reality they probably kept going for about fifty miles, all the while giving the impression they were contemplating imminent touch-down. After a bit of time spent trying to refind the Hoopoe I now had to abbreviate my intended route somewhat. Still, I could certainly afford a quick look along the start of the coast path from Cogden. There's a nice fence line there, and a grassy track...and blow me if that isn't a Hoopoe at the far end of it! I was the best part of a mile from the caravan park now, but surely it must be the same bird? Shortly after this, Mike and Alan, the patch regulars, caught up with it as it flew past us back towards the Cogden car park area. We headed that way too but couldn't immediately relocate it. My time was up and I left them to it. Strolling back past the caravan site I flushed a medium-sized bird on the seaward side of the caravans...lollopy, bouncy, etc...

This time it didn't go far. Carefully poking my phone camera around the corner of a caravan enabled me to capture a nice portrait...

No yellow circle needed here. The five pixels of bird are massively obvious up there in the third strip of sunlight

This is the first Hoopoe I've actually found. Although I don't keep a 'self-found' list (for all sorts of reasons that would require a post of their own to explain) I guess it is a bit overdue. There have certainly been enough spring trips to Scilly, and for 14 years now I've lived in a part of the country which gets them quite regularly. However, in view of the amount of birding I have been doing lately it was most certainly not deserved just at the moment!

A Patch of Yore

I've probably done more birding in the last week than the rest of the year put together. How come? Who knows. It is spring though, so perhaps my sap is rising? There is also the constant drip-drip of birdy gen trickling through Twitter and the like, keeping me abreast of migrant action all along the nearby coast. This is inspiration in itself. Anyway, whatever the cause, I have had the optics out.

It's all been a bit lightweight though. I mostly can't be bothered to drag a scope around. Or a camera. It's been more 'walking, with bins' really...

On Tuesday afternoon I had to drive to Heathrow Terminal 5. I didn't need to rush home so, tempted by the evening sunshine, I dropped in at an old haunt...

This is at the E end of the causeway. Back in the day my visits always began at the other end. And I never, ever remember being welcomed!

The view W along the causeway. A much younger bloke spent most of the 1980s gazing hopefully from this vantage point. He probably looked just as earnest as this.

I don't recall noticing in years past but the place is far from salubrious. That's probably because I was distracted by the consistently amazing birding. Well, that's how I remember it anyway! My tenure coincided with a couple of lengthy drainings. Here's a sample of the quality that I enjoyed back then: Collared Pratincole, several Pec Sands, Lesser Yellowlegs, Baird's Sand, all the phalaropes (including a female Red-necked in full nuptial attire), 2 Kentish Plovers, 3 Temminck's Stints, Long-tailed and Pom Skuas, Ring-billed Gull, 2 Ferruginous Ducks, and even one or two decent passerines like Ring Ouzel, a few Snow Buntings, and (though technically it was on King George VI Res) Tawny Pipit. I've even watched a Guillemot fly over that causeway!

It wasn't bad on Tuesday either. Upon arrival I was blasted by a cold NE wind, which in former times at this juncture would have raised the possibility of Arctic Terns. Sure enough, there were at least a dozen or so doing feeding runs on the S basin, which was quite frankly crawling with birds. Loads of BHGs, and a smattering of Common Terns too. A Great Northern Diver on the N basin was a speck, as in fact were a myriad other floating things. I only had bins. Thirty-something years ago I used to think that birders who turned up at Staines sans scope were manifestly complete noddies, which is probably why I received a fairly terse response from the proper serious-looking birder hunched over his enormous scope at the W end of the causeway...

"Hello. You haven't counted the Arctics have you, by any chance?"
"No, I haven't." [Barely a glance in my direction, though no doubt he'd noticed me approaching, conspicuously scopeless]
"Any Black Terns at all?"
"Not that I've seen." [subtext: "Please just move along now..."]
 
He was probably a regular. [Eye to scope, eye to scope...he'll soon get the hint]
 
I remembered I too was a regular once. Also with a lamentably low noddy threshold.

I looked quite hard for Black Terns. And Little Gulls. No joy with either, but I did flush a Little Ringed Plover from the water's edge of the N basin as I sauntered by. It did the decent thing and landed further along, allowing me nice views. Nice bins views.

And then, blow me down if there wasn't a stonking Staines tick waiting by the S basin water tower...

Y-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-SSSSSS!!!!