A Risky Business

It's hard to imagine a more sedate pastime than birding. Strolling about, pausing regularly to scan the hedges and whatnot, or even sitting in a comfy chair for hours at a time while peering at the sea. Hardly free solo climbing is it? And yet...

On Thursday, in a strong SE wind, Mark D was seawatching at Berry Head...

In front of some torrential rain, the wind suddenly switched from 40mph SE to 70mph N, and apparently stayed that way for about 30 minutes. At the Berry Head seawatching spot there is no protection from a northerly. I couldn't help wondering what might have happened if ten or fifteeen seawatchers had been gathered, instead of just Mark. One or two of the perches used there are precarious, to say the least. Sobering. In the event, aside from sandwich box and brolly, no harm done. But could have been much, much worse.

This morning I went to one of the spots I've been plugging away at lately, Burton Bradstock. The cliffs here are some of the first coastal high ground W of Chesil Beach, and certainly attractive to birds. So the clifftop path is frequently my first port of call. Anyway, just before 06:30 this happened...

The cliffs at this point are apparently 160ft high, which gives you some idea of the scale of that rock fall. Notice how it appears to go almost all the way to the top. However, I can tell you that I set out from the Hive Beach car park at 06:20, and was probably right there on that clifftop path at, or very shortly after, 06:30, blissfully unaware that anything had happened, and that there was now a monstrous undercut in the cliff. In places the path is just feet from the edge, a fact which keeps a bloke with a healthy respect for crumbly cliffs and vertical drops very much on the inland side of it! Even so, flippin' heck!

So, a few photos from the last couple of days, one or two of which I unwittingly risked life and limb for...

Tree Pipit hiding in the clifftop grass at Burton Bradstock, one of three which dropped in together yesterday morning. My first locally.

The ubiquitous Wheatear shot, with tastefully blurred cow's backside.

A visit to West Bexington yesterday afternoon rewarded me with the entertaining spectacle of a Common Tern feeding its two juvs. I didn't do that brilliantly at getting food-pass type shots, and this one is probably the best...

Pair of Gannets

Three of five Sanderling. A fleeting, scuttly distraction

Cogden Whinchat from this morning's walk.

And a Swift, perhaps my last one of 2020?

There has certainly been plenty to look at over the last couple of days. Adding the totals gives me some 91 Yellow Wagtails, 39 Wheatears, 2 Whinchats, 3 Tree Pipits, a handful of common warblers, a pile of hirundines (particularly today) and a Swift. A party of three alba wagtails heading W this morning looked suspiciously like White Wags...the whole birding vibe has suddenly got very autumnal. Exciting times.

Hopefully not too exciting though!*

* See above...

Small Pieces of a Larger Picture

I only had time for a quick outing before work today, and was at Burton Bradstock shortly after six. No one was about just yet, so the clifftop path was still hosting a few freshly-arrived migrants: 3 Wheatears and a Whinchat. Not for long though...

06:30 on the clifftop path. A Whinchat and a Wheatear sense that it is almost time to vacate...

Despite the disturbance I stuck with the clifftop, and soon came across a nice flock of 25 Yellow Wagtails hanging around the small herd of cattle...

12 Yellow Wags in this shot

I spent some time watching the delightful Yellow Wags, and checking through them for anything vaguely blue-headed, or better. While doing so I was surprised to spot a small, dark falcon zip in low from my right and have a go at them. My first thought was Merlin, and then I remembered it was still August. I've never seen a local Merlin in August. As it jinked and turned in aerobatic pursuit of a Yellow Wag I could clearly see that it was dark brown, and the Merlin diagnosis persisted! Within a few seconds it had given up and continued rapidly W along the coast, quite high. Of course, as it went away I began to doubt myself. Was it just a small Peregrine? Am I rubbish at falcons? Well, the size, colour, and twisty-turny hunting style convinced me that my initial impression was correct, and it genuinely was a Merlin. So I mentioned it in my local WhatsApp group message later...and was delighted to learn that Dan at Sidmouth had likewise encountered a surprise Merlin this morning!

I love that! When your seemingly insignificant little birding event turns out to be mirrored elsewhere, to fit a pattern of something happening on a grander scale. And I'll come back to that theme again in a moment.

But first, some snaps...

Dreadful light first thing, but these Yellow Wags are doing their best to look cheery. Love 'em!

I came across the Whinchat again later. It had moved a fair old way from its original spot.

I like chats...

With a final tally of 25 Yellow Wags, 8 Wheatears, 2 Willow Warblers, a Whinchat and a Merlin, I tootled off to work for a bit. Later on I sat down to review the night's nocmig recording...

Ooooh, nice, a Green Sandpiper at 21:47! Along with Greenshank, Green Sand is a nocmig species that I've been anticipating for a while, so it was really pleasing to score finally. Still waiting for Greenshank. Another on the hoped-for list is Tree Pipit. So when the recording got to 04:16 and a teeny little squit of noise appeared on the spectrogram, I was really chuffed to hear a Tree Pipit come through the earphones. This is what it looks like...

Tree Pipit. Obviously.

I should point out that the above image is somewhat enhanced. As I originally encountered it, that squiggle would have been about half the width you see there, almost a vertical line. Also, I've filtered most of the background noise in order to make the call stand out. In other words, it would have been so easy to miss it altogether. I'm glad I didn't though, because I subsequently learned that Portland Bird Observatory recorded 746 close Tree Pipit calls last night. Seven-hundred and forty-six! Just the close ones! To have personally recorded zero Tree Pipits in the face of such news would have been so gutting. In the event it turns out that Chris Townend over at Budleigh Salterton in E Devon recorded his first nocmig Tree Pipit last night. So again, our small, insignificant birdy happenings fit something far bigger. Brilliant.

Finally then, a Wheatear photo that captures the local birding vibe quite nicely. Lovely though it is here, I do not have the local coast to myself...

There are many, many walkers of dogs.

Making Up For Lost Lifers

I do enjoy a bit of seawatching. And I've done a fair amount over the years, though mostly from deep within the bowels of Lyme Bay. When you first take up birding you quickly learn that not all sea is equal. This is why birders go to places like Pendeen and Porthgwarra. I guarantee that not a single birder looks at the fantastic seawatching potential of a stormy weather forecast and goes, 'Right, Burton Bradstock here I come!' Not one. And certainly not me. Which is why I went a bit off-patch last week and visited Berry Head.

I was really hoping for one or two large shearwaters, preferably Great Shearwaters. My tally of big 'uns is pretty woeful for someone who's been birding as long as I have. More than a hundred Cory's, but all during a single week in 2008, and all from Porthgwarra. But just one Great Shearwater, and pretty brief views at that. In about a million hours of dedicated examination of the mainly lifeless ocean off Seaton I had one unidentifiable 'large shearwater sp'. And I had another of those off Berry Head last week. So I did seriously think about going again yesterday. The forecast looked pukka, and I was pretty sure it would produce.

Well, it did...

Whatever it is that occasionally impels me to go birding off-patch got it seriously wrong this time. Five days wrong. And having shot my bolt last Thursday I couldn't really justify another jaunt. So. That's that then. Yep, and I also missed out on the two Great Shearwaters they had at Berry Head yesterday. Gutted.

Anyway, the local seawatching completely took my mind off it. Once I'd ungritted my envious teeth I got two hours in from 10:30, and enjoyed a breathtaking 14 Manxies, 3 Sandwich Terns and 3 Kittiwakes, and added another Balearic Shearwater to my monstrous 2020 tally. Thankfully I had my counting clickers with me, or I'd have struggled to keep up. ZZZzzzzzzzz...

This morning it was time to banish the what-ifs by going out and seeing ordinary, common migrants in the [mostly] sunshine, and getting all photographic. Initially at Burton Bradstock before work, then an afternoon visit to Beer Head while I was in the Seaton area...

Yellow Wagtails on the clifftop. Four in this shot, 20 in total.

Yellow Wags are a gorgeous late-August treat.

Juv Peregrine looking for trouble...

...and finding it!

Two Spotted Flycatchers were nice, but not very cooperative.

A 'birder's photo'. Yellow Wags, Burton Bradstock style.

Who needs Pterodromas when you've got these? ...Sob!

Sob! ...and these.

I came across 5 Wheatears at Beer Head this afternoon. I haven't done much birding here since I moved to Bridport, and it was nice to be poking around somewhere that holds so many memories of good birding and good birds. Although it was pretty quiet today, this male Wheatear made up for it by being quite approachable. Forgive the overdose. Just remember I'm in mourning...

And a nice little Beer Head 'birder's photo' to close.

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...