Always Something for the Notebook

Another late-afternoon yomp from West to East Bexington and back today. My sources of local birdy information had been very quiet, and my expectations were low. Even so, it only takes one bird...

Years ago I noticed that even the 'quietest' outings will usually produce something noteworthy, so I never fret about lack of news. I hadn't poked around East Bex Farm for a while, so gave that a go. Nothing much...until I noticed a flock of ducks heading N towards the ridge, quite high. They were Pintail, my first for ages. They did a big loop and headed away SE, probably towards Abbotsbury Swannery. Nice. I figured they were my 'something noteworthy'.

12 Pintail, all juvs or females.

Working my way back along the coast path, I was just about to cut inland and back towards my car but thought I should first have a look at the small group of gulls on the beach. They were rather backlit, but even so, one of them made me stop and check it out properly. It looked good for a sub-adult Yellow-legged Gull. Initial views were like this...

Yellow-legged Gull. Clearly not an adult though.

A little closer.

I'm always a bit wary of the hybrid possibility these days, but nothing rang alarm bells. The shade of grey seemed spot on, and the size and 'look' of the bird fitted well. It even sported pale yellowish legs. I headed down on to the beach for a proper look from a better angle, light-wise...

...and it unhelpfully sat down.

Unfortunately I couldn't get it to stand up for me; it chose to fly past instead...

Although barely visible in the photo, the basically white tail had two or three feathers with darker marks.

So that rather smart Yellow-legged Gull ended up being the especially noteworthy bird after all, with the Pintail flock coming in at second place.

 

Late afternoon yesterday I managed to get in a quick walk at Cogden. Like today, I struggled to find anything much in the bushes, just a single Blackcap. I thought I was going to be heading home with almost nothing in the digital notebook apart from a couple of Clouded Yellows. And then this happened...

At Fair Isle Bird Observatory I once saw Merlin in the hand. It had the baddest attitude I've ever witnessed in a bird trapped for ringing, screeching non-stop and taking big chunks out of its unfortunate captor. So I've seen Merlin closer. But I've never seen one better. Definitely best views ever!

Juv Merlin. What a cracker!

 

When it had finished its meal and flown off, I walked over to see if I could find out what the victim was. There was hardly anything left. Just four primaries and a few breast feathers. Nothing else. In the video it appears to consume something long and hard (a bone?) so I can only conclude that virtually everything is eaten! Amazing...

Judging by the rusty tips to the breast feathers I guessed Robin. The primaries are the outermost four, and apparently the length of p1 (the short one) fits Robin too.

This month has just been ridiculous. The jammy Wryneck on 1st set the bar, and it has continued to produce bird after quality bird. Two Short-eared Owls, two Whooper Swans, a brilliant Casp, that goose, my best ever views of Merlin, and today's Pintail flock and Yellow-legged Gull. Surely this run cannot last? But I don't mind if it does...

The Sound of a Dropped Ball

Since birding regularly along the Lyme Bay coast from Cogden to East Bexington I have become used to Canada Geese passing by all the time. When their direction of flight is west I assume they have recently departed from the Fleet at Abbotsbury Swannery, which is choc-a-bloc with waterfowl. Conversely I assume all those heading east are on their way to the Swannery. Because of the obvious possibilities, ninety-nine times out of a hundred I will check the flocks to make sure they're not carrying something a bit more interesting. So far they never have. With the result that I have become complacent, and today was the one time in a hundred when I didn't look. Or rather, didn't look early enough.

What follows is an audio version of a cock-up, recorded for posterity by my merciless and unsympathetic Zoom H4n Pro. The setting is East Bexington, at approximately 08:45 this morning. Here is an interpretation of what you are going to hear...

0-10secs: Approaching Canada Geese clearly audible. NQS bloke oblivious.

10-11secs: Idle glance at little group of 6 geese reveals that one is small. Small!

11-14secs: Geese are passing right now. Bins are up. Light is rubbish. Angle is rubbish. The little one is a grey goose sp. but I cannot see enough on it to ID. Realise that photos will be needed, so...

14-19secs: Camera bag chaos! (warning: LOUD) Ripping velcro etc...

19-31secs: I now know how long it takes to prep the camera for a shot. Switch on. Zoom. Frame. Hold breath. Focus...

31secs approx: Burst of 7 shots.

32secs: Exhale.

32-35.5secs: Final, forlorn squint through bins at receding, unidentifiable local biggie.

35.5-36secs: Massive sigh of disappointment.

36-42secs: Brief period of reflection upon woeful bit of complacency.

A bit of context. Any grey goose is very scarce, or even rare, in this neck of the woods. The most regular is White-fronted Goose, which I assumed was the likeliest candidate today. But then I remembered the Seaton Pink-foot...

It arrived on the Axe Estuary on September 28th, initially on its own. It soon began associating with Canada Geese (as wild geese often seem to do here) and was still around yesterday, when it took an afternoon trip to Chard, appearing at (and departing from) two locations there. I assumed that was the end of its local visit.

Could today's bird be the Seaton Pink-foot? When I got home and enlarged the photos, and lightened them up a bit, this was the result...

Obviously the bird in question is top, second left

 Here's an uncropped version...

Perhaps it's clear why the big sigh...

Size-wise, Pink-footed Goose fits nicely. But what else do the photos tell us? In both cropped pics the upperwing is visible, and so is the upperwing of the adjacent Canada Goose. The grey goose definitely has a paler upperwing than the Canada Goose. Quite obviously so. Which fits Pink-footed Goose too. One more thing. This afternoon the Seaton Pink-foot was back on Black Hole Marsh! So was that the bird which flew past me, heading west (towards Seaton) at 08:45?

It seems very likely.

However, as the flock headed over the Coastguard Cottages into West Bexington territory, I failed to raise any West Bex birders on the phone. It later transpired that none were there. Pink-footed Goose is a Dorset rarity. It would also be a new bird for the well-watched West Bex and Cogden patch. In other words, Pink-foot is an 'important' bird locally. Based on those photos I've had feedback varying from 'Can't tick it on those' to 'It's a Pink-foot. Wouldn't think twice'.

It certainly livened things up this morning!

It's Not Just the Birds...

On Cogden Beach...

Ringed Plover. Today's attempt at a birder's photo.

Walking the beach this morning reminded me once again that birding, for me at least, needs to be a holistic activity. Perhaps too often I can get a bit preoccupied with this kind of approach...

The bird, the whole bird, and [almost] nothing but the bird.

A steady plod along the Cogden shingle is accompanied by the constant, gentle roar of surf. Traffic on the coast road is audible too, and less agreeably so, but the natural soundtrack of sea, wind and birds mostly drowns it out. And the whole - the sounds, the scenery, the birds - is so much more than the sum of its parts. A bit of a sanctuary really...

There was a steady movement of birds going west this morning. Meadow Pipits, Skylarks in loose groups, Siskins in tighter, writhing flocks. The only birds I bothered trying to count were Siskins, though my 115 will be no more than the tip of the iceberg. Actually, not true: 2 Ringed Plovers. Surprisingly no Wheatears or Chiffchaffs. Bird of the morning was a Merlin which hadn't read the script and dashed east.

Towards the end of my walk the sun came out, and with it, butterflies. At least 11 Clouded Yellows, one of which was a helice type...

Clouded Yellows - helice on the right.

The digital recorder was running and ready, but no 'Ooh! What was that?!' moments, unfortunately. I have no doubt it will happen though, sooner or later. And when it does, I do hope I'll have remembered to switch it on and make sure there was enough charge in the batteries...

Meadow Pipit in autumnal mood.

Yesterday afternoon I finally managed to get this far...

The East Bexington tamarisks.

I'm not sure why I bothered really. I knew it would be rubbish in the blasting wind, but was probably looking for an excuse to pass the Caspian Gull field again...just in case. Well, there were gulls, but very few, and all small...

Just look at that. The little stunner...

There were less than a handful of Med Gulls present, but I know the numbers will soon build. It's a species which never fails to cheer me up when I see one, a bird for smiling at...

And in Gull Class Today...

This post is in response to a query regarding yesterday's Caspian Gull. Basically, how did I identify it? So I'll try and go through the process, and hopefully there will be some useful tips for anyone who's interested.

If I've done the sums right, yesterday's Casp is my 17th ever. Following a 2nd-winter on the West Bexington Mere back in January, it is my second in Dorset; all the others were on the Axe Estuary, Seaton. I personally found 13 of them, or 14 if you count one which I later learned had been seen a day or two earlier. I actively look for Caspian Gulls, regularly picking through crowds of large gulls for the tell-tale field marks which identify them. I found my first in 2009, but I'd been searching for a couple of years prior to that, so we're talking roughly 13 years in total. In other words, I've found about one a year on average. Mind you, last winter I found four, but at this stage I'm not sure what to put that down to. Are they becoming less scarce in the southwest? Or was I just exceptionally jammy? Or perhaps there are sometimes 'good years' for them? Who knows? Time will tell I guess...

Meanwhile, think of them as a very scarce bird and you can't go wrong. Search for them, by all means, but don't view failure to find one as some big deal. They are genuinely scarce down here, bordering on rare.

So, when it comes to my seemingly self-appointed role as Caspian Gull ID Guru, what are my qualifications? Please reread paragraph two. Yep, very scanty. I am no guru. How it works is this:

1. Read up a bit
2. Go out and look at gulls
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 ad infinitum, especially step 2
   

And that's it. I could increase my field experience of the species by regularly travelling to some of the country's Casp hotspots, but I'm not prepared to do that, hence only 17 birds. Mind you, that's not a bad tally for local birding in Devon and Dorset. So anyway, down to business...

How come I got so excited, so quickly, on seeing yesterday's bird?

It was with Great Black-backed Gulls, including several juveniles, and I simply began to check all the juvs to make sure they were actually GBBGs. The first one I looked at clearly wasn't! How did I know? Its scapulars were too pale. And even through bins alone, at considerable range, I could see it had two pale wing bars and a line of plain, dark-based greater coverts, a really good pointer for 1st-winter Casp and a combo that I have yet to see on a Herring Gull. So here's a photo of the 1st-winter Caspian Gull with a Herring Gull and GBBG of the same age. Have a look, and pick out those obvious differences.

Front to back, we have 1st-winter Casp, HG and GBBG

All this talk of coverts and scapulars might be a bit confusing, so here's a photo with assorted useful bits labelled...

In the next photo the bird is mid-preen, so its wing is untucked and relaxed, with the feather tracts really obvious. Incidentally, note pale areas beginning to come through on the bill. Typical of Casp.

Have another look at those greater coverts. Now remind yourself what a typical Herring Gull looks like (top photo again). Chalk. Cheese. Also check out the blackish tertials, and see how the pale markings are restricted to neat tips only, without any pale notches further down the edge of the feathers. Again, compare with HG. Note also the relatively long tibia. When it walks about there is a slightly comical 'on stilts' effect, especially in a strong wind!

One more pic with arrows...

When juv Caspian Gulls moult into 1st-winter plumage, one of the most obvious changes is seen in the scapular feathers, and the same is true of Herring and Yellow-legged Gulls. The plain brown juvenile feathers are replaced by patterned grey ones. October 5th is my earliest date for a Casp, and you can see that yesterday's bird still has a few juv lower scaps, a feature shared by my only other October bird of this age. A typical 2nd-generation feather will be pale (or pale-ish) grey, often with a dark diamond at the base, a thin dark line down the centre, and a fine anchor-shaped mark near the tip. A few like that are visible in the photo. Herring Gull (and Yellow-legged Gull) scaps are typically much more heavily marked, appearing darker overall.

Unlike the scapulars, almost all the wing feathers are retained throughout the winter. In other words, they are juvenile feathers, which gradually become more and more worn in appearance. Yesterday's bird appears to have moulted an inner greater covert, and replaced it with a grey, 2nd-generation feather. I'm not sure that I've ever seen that before.

One more preening photo. Note the light streaking on the crown. That will soon wear away I reckon, leaving us with the classic white-headed vision of loveliness for which I am constantly on the lookout during the winter months.

See that grey inner greater covert? I resisted pointing at it with a big yellow arrow.

And here is the only flight shot worth a look. Pale underwing = good. Very contrasty tail with neat black band = good. Blur and missing parts of bird = bad.

In a nutshell, with this bird the closed-wing pattern nailed it. It has many other excellent pro-Caspian features (several mentioned above) but this individual has such a classic set of wing coverts that identification was almost instant. Not all Casps are quite as straightforward.

As I implied at the beginning, words on a page (like the above) are all very well, but there is no substitute for looking at gulls in the field. As often as possible. Relate what you see with what you've read, and gradually it falls into place. It's one of those things where you get out what you put in.

All the best with it!

Disclaimer: there may be errors in the above. My wine glass is empty.

Icing On the Cake

There are a lot of very desirable birds about at the moment. Though not a student of these things, I'm pretty sure this autumn must already be exceptional, rarity-wise. And yet I am not tempted to travel and see any. Not the slightest bit. I am not jealous, not even envious. I do not wish I lived somewhere else right now, nor that I was having a nice holiday there. I am perfectly content as I am. In fact, the glut of good birds elsewhere just whets my appetite for getting out locally. I'm not making some moral point here, simply demonstrating that I'm easily pleased I suppose.

This morning I walked around the Cogden Beach area for a couple of hours from dawn. I passed one dog walker and saw a few others from a distance. Late this afternoon, a yomp from West to East Bexington and back. Again, I passed just a lone dog walker, and saw a handful of other folk from a distance. A few hours in the field, and virtually no one about. Certainly no birders. That, to me, is almost the perfect birding scenario. Factor in that we're talking gorgeous coastal habbo, and then it pretty much is perfect.

Grounded migrants at Cogden were few. I counted 7 Wheatears on the beach (cf 17 on Saturday) and just 2 Chiffs and a Blackcap in the bushes. Overhead, Skylarks were prominent, with around 70, but nothing else of particular note. A Water Rail called repeatedly from the reed bed, and I was glad I had the recorder running. I was also glad I could get a phone signal, because at 08:30 Mike called to let me know that 2 Whooper Swans were heading my way from West Bex. Presumably the birds which had recently spent some time at Abbotsbury Swannery, they came past with a tag-along Mute Swan. Just as I was firing off a final burst with the camera, one of them honked a couple of times. Excellent! A bit distant, and partially drowned by surf on shingle, but the recorder caught it...

Whooper Swans. Proper wild ones. Lovely.

If I kept such things as a local list or a Dorset list I'd have had a tick right there. But I don't and therefore didn't. They very much made my morning though. That's three times in just over three weeks that Mike has phoned from West Bex to get me on to birds heading west towards Cogden: 17 pale-bellied Brents, 2 Great White Egrets and now these. It's about time I returned the favour; I'm beginning to feel like a freeloader!

Late this afternoon I managed another outing. My intention was an uncharacteristic bit of 'fast' birding, a rapid march from West Bexington to the East Bexington tamarisks, and back before dinner. It's a while since I've been quite that far, and time was tight. Actually it was blowing a bit of a hoolie, and visions of an East Bex Yellow-browed Warbler flicking through the whispy fronds began to fade somewhat. Ah well, let's push on anyway...

There are several ploughed fields at East Bexington, and one of them held some gulls. Not loads, but a modest gang of small ones, and a separate, even smaller bunch of big ones. Almost all the big gulls were Great Black-backed, maybe 30 or so. Now, this might sound silly, but in my limited (and 100% local) experience of Caspian Gull, the brutish, hulking Great Black-backed Gull has for some curious reason turned out to be a bit of a 'carrier' species, so straight away I began to grill all the youngsters. And would you believe it, the very first one I checked was a Caspian Gull! And not any old Caspian Gull, but an absolute peach, with a set of coverts to die for...

The icing on the cake. One stonking juv/first-winter Caspian Gull

The gulls weren't close, and I was lying on a grassy embankment, trying to keep the camera steady at full 2000mm zoom in the strong wind. I took quite a few pics, but failed to get any decent open-wing shots, and the one time it flew I botched it. But there is this little video. With the volume up, you too can enjoy the rather fresh north-westerly...

This bird is actually a good one for highlighting some useful Casp ID tips. Initially I planned to do so today, but time is against me, so instead I'll cobble together one or two annotated photos for another post, hopefully this week. Birders in this part of the country stand a pretty decent chance of finding their own Caspian Gull I reckon, but you need to be aware of what to look for. Also they are still rare enough down here that you get a real buzz when it happens! I love 'em!

I never made it to the tamarisks...

The Hackneyed Cliché

You've got to be in it to win it!

Definitely one of my least favourite clichés. Unfortunately it is also a tedious truism, and as I lounged, partially embedded in my comfy sofa at lunchtime, peering out at the greyness and teeming rain, it sprang annoyingly to mind. Because indeed, you have got to be in it to win it...

My Twitter feed, like that of every other birder who uses this form of social media, is rigid with rareness, most of it on the east coast or northern isles. Mix that with amazing numbers of Yellow-browed Warblers and many other even scarcer birds, and you have a potion that ought to galvanise even the laziest birder into action. Except that West Dorset is not East Yorkshire. Still, we are blessed locally with some marvellous habitat and a gorgeous bit of coast, and of course you never know...you never know...

This was exactly my thinking yesterday afternoon too. I wasn't able to get out till quite late, but the rain largely bypassed me, so I was able to tramp the Cogden paths with no more than soggy boots to show for it. However, it was a fair old bit of graft for a tally of 5 Chiffchaffs and 3 Blackcaps! I'm not complaining though, because there were birds all over the place. Little groups of Meadow Pipits flicking about, the constant dipping and twisting of hirundines - mainly House Martins - in the lea of the coast road ridge. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It's just that there were no particular highlights.

Which brings me to today. I was busy this morning, but after lunch there was nothing to stop me heading out the door and giving Cogden another bash. Nothing, that is, except my own inertia. It was raining. It was dank and gloomy. Yuck.

But. You've got to be in it to win it!

The hackneyed cliché. The tedious truism. I gathered waterproofs, retrieved wellies from the garage, and headed out...

And within five minutes I accidentally flushed a Short-eared Owl! Ha! Interestingly it was a spot I'd always fancied for the species, and here it finally was, my first Dorset SEO. It headed away east, over a hedge and out of view. It dropped low enough to make me suspect that it wasn't going far. Meanwhile I continued in the opposite direction. Five minutes later and there was another! This one was airborne already, and landed some distance away. I wondered briefly whether it was actually bird number one doubling back past me, but I don't think so.

And then I cocked up. I tried to skirt around well above where it had come down so as not to disturb it, but from a distance had completely misjudged the spot and inadvertantly put it up. Stupid. It went east, and again, seemingly not far. But I felt like an idiot...

Short-eared Owl

The originals were badly underexposed. These have been subjected to brutal processing to get something presentable.

Down to the beach then, which I hadn't had time for yesterday.

Straight away there were Wheatears. By the time I cut inland for the return leg I'd counted 17, plus 2 Whinchats. My first double-figure count since August. Clearly something was happening today.

I got the camera wet more often than I probably should have...

Damp Wheatear.

And another. Some of the Wheatears were a lot more bedraggled than this.

I couldn't get anywhere near the Whinchats, which were together, but met them both again on the inland coast path as I headed back. They were still mighty skittish though...

Whinchat. Distant, appalling light, wind in my face, rain tanking down (quite obvious in the photo), so I really shouldn't have bothered. Just can't help myself...

That was pretty much it. I added 2 Chiffs and 5 Blackcaps before I got back to the car park, at which point I noticed how wet I was. Soaked. Plus I had been plagued all the way round by a rogue sock. For some reason my left sock kept working its way down my ankle until it was all scrunched up beneath the arch of my foot. Whereupon it was welly off, pull up sock, welly on, and away we go...only to find myself tutting with annoyance within minutes, and going through the whole saga again. I think the problem is an old-man thing. My boot socks are elderly, but there is plenty of life in them yet. The elastic is knackered, yes, but they aren't worn out. Basically they work okay. They do. So why throw them out?

Even as I type I can sense the rolling of eyes. Like Sandra's did when I recounted this tale of woe.

Anyway, I'll close with a photo taken yesterday, in a brief bit of sunshine...

Chiffchaff.

Just a smart little Chiffchaff, but maybe a Yellow-browed Warbler one day soon...?

You've got to be in it to win it!

Again?

Slightly less than one year ago I wrote a post entitled 'My Happy Bird', following a visit to Cogden that involved a Lapland Bunting. That post rekindled what had been a very quiet blog. At the same time, something else happened. I rediscovered birding. It is hard to convey in words exactly what this has meant to me without sounding a bit melodramatic, so I shan't even try. Suffice to say that I'm pleased it happened, and that the subsequent twelve months have been a blast.

October is here now. Hard to believe that just five minutes ago I was lusting after a skua-laden helping of spring seawatching. And that four-and-three-quarter minutes ago Covid-19 arrived, and suddenly there was no spring seawatching. There was #BWKM0 though, and there was nocmig, and there was a whole heap of other birding possibilities which we had not foreseen. It has all been very surprising. So the lesson I have drawn from the last year is not to be surprised by the surprising. Which is just as well, because otherwise I would have been very surprised this morning...

Recent outings had been uneventful, with often a rather thin sprinkling of grounded migrants, so when I arrived at Cogden just before sunrise and immediately had 2 Chiffs by the car park, and heard a small chorus of ticking Robins and chucking Blackbirds, I sensed birdiness. For a change I went straight to the beach and walked east into the sun. Suddenly a Wheatear was right in front of me, just feet away and not flushing...

Beach Wheatear. Just minor cropping at 300mm zoom. I love that backlighting.

And from the sunny side. That early morning light is so warm...

Four Wheatears in total - more than I've seen on the beach for ages. It all felt very promising. Periodically I would stop and have a scan. A slow sweep of the sea, or a distant hedgerow that was too far for the naked eye to be much use. Doing this I spied a bird on a fence post. The fence itself bordered the inland side of the coast path, viewed from the beach right across the far side of the Burton Mere reedbed. In fact it was too distant to be 100% identifiable with bins. However, my gut was telling me it looked really good for a Wryneck (which I knew was basically not possible because two Wrynecks in three weeks would be too jammy, even for me) and that I had better hurry up and get the camera out. Two shots at 2000mm full zoom, a quick peek at the results...enlarge a bit...and...well, flippin' heck, look at that...

Cogden Wryneck at many, many yards range. Yes!

By the time I got round to the spot there was no sign of it. And as far as I'm aware it hasn't been seen since, which is a real shame. I do get great pleasure from sharing decent birds, and it's been pretty disappointing that locally I haven't been able to do that at all this year. I'd like to think I'll get another chance before the autumn is out, but I suspect I've used up more than my fair share of chances already.

Strangely, despite a roaring start, the morning's final tally was much more sparse than I envisaged. Rather than the hatful I was expecting, those two early Chiffs were joined by just one more, and four Blackcaps, and the only other stand-out bird was a Whinchat. However, do I care? Nope!

Finally, nocmig. I have to say, the autumn has been very, very slow for me. I'm glad that the spring/early summer period was so good, because I would otherwise be finding it hard to maintain some enthusiasm. However, on Sunday night's recording was a new species for me. I shan't bother with a spectrovid, because it would be less than exciting, but this is what it looks like...

Redwing. The first of many I hope.