West Bay YLG

Lockdown restrictions have made me look more closely at my very local birding. I'm glad really. Last Friday afternoon I chanced upon a flock of 50+ Siskins just N of town, in what I would call traditional winter habbo - riverside alders. Also 50+ Redwings, and a group of 9 Ravens mucking about high overhead. Nothing special, but pleasant surprises. Less pleasant, I've learned that most of the nearby farmland is basically dead. Well, perhaps that's an exaggeration, but certainly dead bo-o-o-o-oring. Handy to know for future apportioning of precious birding time...

I've certainly enjoyed poking around West bay, my nearest bit of coast, and that's where I headed late this afternoon. I bumped into Tom Brereton, and we joined forces to check out the local fields. Two Snipe and a Reed Bunting were my first of the year, and then we reached a point where you can check the flooded field over the river. A single Heron and a bunch of gulls. Not loads, maybe twenty-odd big ones and a similar number of small ones. The latter were all Black-headed and Common Gulls, and the former were Herring Gulls. Except one. Sitting in the grass was an adult with a seemingly darker mantle. Subtle, and it took a few moments to be sure this wasn't just an effect of the light, but yes, it looked promising for Yellow-legged Gull. At that moment a shower was passing, discouraging us from trying for a quick, distant snap. Unexpectedly a few of the gulls suddenly jumped up and flew a couple of yards, including the Yellow-legged candidate. Its legs were bright mustard yellow. Yes! Now was the time for a photo, while it was standing among adult Herring Gulls. Camera out, point, focus and...

Pox! Half the flock spooked over nothing and took to the air. This was the only shot I managed. At least the yellow legs are visible, and a hint of slightly darker uppers, lacking the blue tint of Herring Gull.

Unfortunately I latched on to the wrong bird in flight, and got a nice little burst of Herring Gull, as did Tom. Ah well. Still, I'm very chuffed all the same. It's my first Bridport area Yellow-legged Gull, and once again a great reminder to always - always - look at gulls. Quite often I've seen a small gathering in this spot. Never more than maybe 50 or so, but as we all know, it only takes one bird! There are sometimes a few on the river, right next to where it flows into the harbour. If a decent gull ever turns up there, the views will be seriously good. Point blank. I live in hope...

In a tongue-in-cheek illustration of their rarity down here, Steve recently calculated that he has averaged one Caspian Gull for every 19,500 Herring Gulls looked at. So if I diligently endeavour to clock up 100 Herring Gulls every time I visit West Bay I should get a Casp within the next 195 trips. Easy peasy.

Medicine...

The rain today was steady and unrelenting. I tried to summon some enthusiasm for an afternoon walk, but there was no response. Instead I put on a long face and just wallowed in despond.

A good remedy for this kind of nonsense is a trip down Memory Lane. Unfortunately I'm old enough that it's become rather a long lane, but I mostly stuck to fairly recent history. I opened up the laptop and hunted down my old NQS photos. If you are relatively new to this blog you may not know that it had two previous incarnations. The first ran for nearly two years from mid-2008, and the second began in the summer of 2010 and came to a grinding halt in late 2013. The old NQS photos still survive on my hard drive, and I've just spent a pleasant hour browsing through them all...

When the weather is dire and the birding slow, it is all too easy to focus on the direness and slowness, and forget how temporary it actually is. My years of birding in this part of the world have been extraordinarily rewarding, and although a few weeks may seem like aeons, in reality I have rarely needed to wait too long between birdy events of note. I was quite surprised to be reminded just how many decent birds there have been. There are several group photos too, and in a way they are better than the bird pics, evoking the event, the buzz.

So, a bit of a random selection, but here's a drop of my medicine...

Amazing flock of 20 (or was it 21? Looks like 20 in the photo) Glossy Ibis alongside the Otter Estuary at Budleigh Salterton in September 2010

Devon Glossy Ibis watchers

A bit later that year there was a nationwide influx of Lapland Buntings, and we hoped we'd get a share. Eventually it happened. One super-elusive bird in about a million acres of stubble above Axe Cliff. Jammily, a few of us got it on the deck...

October 2010 - Axe Cliff Lapland Bunting

Happy Lap watchers. Crouching slightly: Larry (see below)

Maybe it seems inappropriate to pick autumn birds as a tonic for my malaise? A good point. Thankfully I was able to find something which very much fitted in with the calendar. However, it goes back a lot further than the above...

Late January/early February 1989. Norfolk, W London, the Northeast. An eclectic mix of species. My eye is drawn to the Smew count, the Ruddy Ducks and the Yellow-legged Herring Gulls (a sign of things to come!) - how the birding scene has changed! Oh, and the Cormorant thing.

The Cormorant thing drew a crowd. Crouching slightly: Larry. Tall, underwhelmed bloke in the foreground has no idea a blog will one day emerge.

So there we go. It cheered me up somewhat. Loads more where that came from!

Dodginess Revisited

Cirl Bunting is a rare bird in Dorset. Any observer claiming one in the county had better write a convincing description. A female? Ha! Nice try, sunshine. Show me!

Yes, I can imagine that an unphotographed, single-observer female Cirl Bunting in Dorset would have quite a rough ride. However, at West Bexington there are currently two. The first was independantly found by Mike Morse, Alan Barrett and myself on January 1st, and Mike and I both got a photo. I'm sure nobody doubts the record for a moment.

In this photo is just one female Cirl Bunting, not two. Tricky.

But supposing the bird was a female Pine Bunting. And suppose it was just a single observer. And no photos. And the bird was never seen again. Even if views were astounding and the description absolutely bang-on I cannot imagine many reputations surviving something like that 100% unscathed. Or am I just a cycnic...?

In October and November 2019 I wrote five posts about the 'dodgy birder' phenomenon. For a variety of reasons I find the topic fascinating. Whether they like it or not, birders do seem to acquire a reputation. I've written before about the reputation thing, and it's interesting how much it relies on a birder's ability to find and identify scarce or rare birds, and - crucially - on other birders believing that they have genuinely seen what they say they've seen. A birder's rep does not appear to stand or fall on their ability to accurately determine the local population of breeding Robins, or stuff like that. No. It's all about finding, and about identification, and about oddities. And about trust.

So, dear reader, let me ask you a rhetorical question: Do you care what kind of reputation you have?

I expect you do. A few might not, but most of us do. I do. I would not like to think that I had a dodgy reputation.

I happen to live in a fairly well populated part of the country, with other birders not too far away. I also carry a camera, and try to photograph any decent birds I see. So when I am fortunate enough to find a bird worth sharing, frequently I am able to do just that. But if its stay is brief, chances are I'll have a record shot to corroborate my sighting anyway. I post stuff on Twitter too. In other words, in the main my birds are out there in some way, either multi-observed or photographed, or both.

That said, on occasion I have boobed. For example, last year I tweeted a Hobby photo that was actually a Peregrine, and a gull which was probably just a first-winter Yellow-legged I originally posted as a part-Casp hybrid thing. Annoyingly I knew the 'Hobby' was a Peregrine when I was watching it, but changed my mind after looking at the photos. However, the gull definitely had me fooled. My point is this: I am clearly fallible. On occasion I misidentify birds. That fallibility is bound to affect how others view me. But I have absolutely no idea what sort of birdy rep I have, because nobody ever tells you! Still, in a couple of simple ways I make efforts to minimise the possibility of too much scepticism about my records...

In 2020 my best finds included 5 Caspian Gulls, a Red-backed Shrike, a Golden Oriole and 2 Wrynecks. Of that lot only a single Casp was seen by anyone else. Thankfully I got photos of everything except the Golden O. But suppose I hadn't? Suppose I didn't carry a camera? Some of those birds were searched for by others - the shrike, the oriole and at least one Wryneck - but in vain. Would my reputation have been affected? If I wasn't me, how would I have viewed this...er...fortunate observer?

To be fair, most of my decent finds through the years have actually stuck around to be seen by others, but as 2020 shows, that's not always the way...

The undoubted high point of 2019's Dodgy Birder series was Appendix A: A Dodgy Birder Responds, in which Alan Vittery, a birder evidently labelled dodgy by the British Birds Rarities Committee, offered a case for the defense. Here was a very sharp birder, who had found many multi-observed rare birds, having his records not just doubted, but discredited. I know that I am not the only reader who found Alan's account fascinating and thought-provoking...

Well, in a sense there is a sequel. Alan has written a book. It is entitled A Date With a Bird, and is a 12-month, day-by-day summary of his birding diary highlights from 1955 to the present day. It is a beautifully bound, 280-page hardback, illustrated with many photos and one or two paintings. There is only one drawback: the book is not for sale. Although it is intended to be available as an Amazon e-book in the near future, Alan has had just 100 paper copies printed. However, he has been kind enough to send one to me. It is, as he suggests, a book for 'dipping into' rather than reading cover to cover, and I am in the process of doing just that. A small number of entries are relevant to my own birding history, in that I either saw the bird or experienced the event. But the vast majority are not. It is a superb read, and at some future time I will devote a post specifically to it. Every single one of Alan's major finds and discoveries is listed. It is jaw-dropping stuff.

There is no question that circumstances have led to Alan Vittery's reputation being irreparably damaged in the eyes of some. However, I take my hat off to his determination nonetheless to make so many of his significant records available for posterity. And simply as an anthology of amazing days in the field the book is a brilliant read.

As I say, A Date With a Bird will be the subject of a future post...

The Elusive Purp

Several weeks ago Tom Brereton found a Purple Sandpiper at West Bay.

In all the years I've lived in this part of the country I have never seen a really local Purple Sand. By that I mean somewhere I bird regularly. It is a species notably absent from my old Axe patch list at Seaton - we couldn't even find any historical records. Small numbers winter a few miles to the east of it at Lyme Regis, and to the west at Sidmouth, but it's like there's an anti-Purp forcefield in between. There is a nice rocky area at Seaton Hole, a spot where Purple Sands would look right at home while pausing briefly on passage, but no dice, they just won't use it. At least, not when anyone's looking. They won't even fly past if there's any chance an Axe birder might see them.

Now that I'm in Bridport my local birding covers a wider expanse of coast, but again no wintering sites. Lyme is a few miles west, and the nearest birds the other way are on Portland. However, West Bay undoubtedly holds promise, with some excellent rocky groynes and the harbour wall itself. And it was on the outer harbour wall that Tom found a Purple Sandpiper at the beginning of December, only his second in many years birding here. For me it was finally a chance to see a genuinely local Purple Sand.

As soon as I could, I was on the case. No sign. And again. No sign. And again...etc...

Umpteen times I have tried and failed. It's not been a hardship because I am beginning to enjoy poking around West Bay, looking for birds. Slightly frustrating though. It's been seen at least a couple more times that I can think of, but not by me. And then a few days back we had Storm Christoph battering West Bay with a massive sea, so I guessed the Purp would do the prudent thing and head off somewhere a bit more sheltered.

I thought West Bay might be fairly quiet in this afternoon's rainy weather, so headed down for a walk. Out on the harbour wall...nothing to lose...

I stopped at the end, looked down at the waderless rocks and then had a quick scan of the sea. Nothing. My body was already half-turned to continue on, but my eyes fortunately decided to have one final check of the rocks. I so nearly missed it...

Initial view. Freshly emptied, and bedecked with little raindrop jewels...

I thought it was never going to unfold, but finally...

Purple Sandpiper in all its rotund glory.

My final photo was a blur of open wings, and when the viewfinder was clear again it was gone. I have no idea where, it just vanished.

In the The Birds of Dorset I notice there's a bizarre 1970 West Bexington record of a Purple Sand in a flooded field, but let's face it, they're a pig to get anywhere away from their winter haunts. Amazingly the species is on my London list, courtesy of a bird on the Thames at Teddington, but even that was on a lump of rock or concrete or something. I always thought the best chance of a Seaton bird would be a fly-by, but you'd want very good views. It would certainly be a bold call!

For a bird that is so regular along this coast, albeit very site-faithful, you wouldn't think it would take 18 years to finally get one on my local list. Still, one or two Axe birders have been waiting considerably longer! The elusive Purp.

Caspian Gulls in the Southwest

It's fair to say that my job doesn't require a lot of brain-time. Which means I was able to spend most of this afternoon thinking about Caspian Gulls, and still earn a few bob. Steve and I had been chatting earlier about Casps on the Axe, and their occurrence more generally in the Southwest. It's the sort of topic and discussion that I could easily see being formalised into a paper for Devon Birds, but Steve rightly pointed out that it would be out of date before it was printed. So I'll squeeze it into a blog post instead.

A serious paper in a serious journal is a wonderful thing of course, but hamstrung by all sorts of annoying constraints. For example, it needs to be accurate and reliable; it needs to be data-driven and able to withstand critical scrutiny; it needs a great, long bibliography to prove the in-depth research and studious application of the author. And once written, it needs to pass an editorial review, wait 18 months for a publication slot, another six for printing, and then finally - about three years after inception - it'll be in the reader's hands. Wonderful.

Happily, a blog is able to circumvent all this inconvenience.

Today I am privileged to be able to publish a first for NQS. A proper scientific paper, with a bit of data and stuff. Its title...

Caspian Gulls in the Southwest

The history of Caspian Gull in these islands is an interesting one. In the 1980s Caspian Gull wasn't even a bird. Then suddenly it was. In the 1990s a few diehard gull anoraks invented it for the purpose of making the average birder's life difficult. Unfortunately they made a schoolboy error - they accidentally called it a subspecies of the much commoner Yellow-legged Gull. The average birder doesn't give a monkey's about subspecies because you can't get an extra tick for one. So Caspian Gull remained an anorak's bird, and therefore very rare because nobody else could identify one. The error was rectified in 2007 when Casp was shoe-horned into a non-existent gap in the systematic list and promoted to a full species.

At this point all average birders were faced with the unwelcome necessity of seeing a Caspian Gull in order to tick it. But hardly anyone knew what they looked like. Cue massive learning curve, and utterly coincidental massive increase in sightings, bringing us to where we are now in 2021...

Current status: Caspian Gull is now a scarce but regular bird in many parts of the country. There are localised hotspots in London and the home counties where they occur in especially good numbers,  congregating wherever white, sliced loaves are abundant. However, in the granary and wholemeal-rich Southwest, Caspian Gull remains a rare bird. How rare?

Well, first let's define 'the Southwest'. That's Dorset, Devon, Somerset and Cornwall. If you google 'the Southwest of England' your results will include other places, but that's far too complicated for this author. And while we're keeping things simple: Due to not having the right books and lacking the desire to do any research whatsoever, he was unable to determine the official status of Caspian Gull in either Somerset or Cornwall. However, his gut feeling is 'mega' in Somerset, and 'very rare' in Cornwall. Though the situation in Cornwall is clouded by the fact that two or three individuals (or possibly more...or maybe less) keep hanging around, coming back each year, and in various other ways being awkward. It makes a Cornish Casp look less rare than it really is. The trouble with Cornwall is that it is located at the far end of England. Caspian Gulls get there, and then stop, realising there's nowhere else to go. Anyway, that's enough of two counties which barely register on this author's radar. Let's press on with the important ones: Dorset and Devon.

Dorset is where I currently reside, so we'll begin there. Up to and including 2019, the Dorset total was 32 records, with 26 occurring in the ten years 2010-19. Casp is officially listed as a 'rare but increasing passage migrant and winter visitor'. The period 2020-Jan 25th 2021 is a complete mystery to me, but it would be entirely reasonable to assume there's been at least two more, because I saw them. And various statistical analyses would undoubtedly suggest others occurred too. I'll bet.

Devon sources whom I trust implicitly (cheers Steve!) tell me that the county total stands at 43 individuals. In the same ten-year period of 2010-19 the count was 31, with only three earlier records. Interestingly, the combined total of 34 closely matches the situation in Dorset (32, remember?) at the same point in time. I'm sure this is significant for some reason, and likewise that said reason will be quite fascinating when someone works out what it is. As an aside, it should be noted that the current Devon database is partially unverified due to one observer having failed to send in four records as of now. This author is duly chastened and has promised to rectify.

Right then, let's get site specific. The purpose of this paper is to prove that the Axe Estuary is the best place for Caspian Gull in the Southwest. Not the best place to see one necessarily - other boring places that cling needily to their Casps might qualify for that not-worth-having title - but the best place for numbers. As of yesterday the Axe has had at least 23 different individuals. Beat that, anywhere else in the Southwest!

Conclusion: The data are unambiguously incontrovertible: The Axe Estuary rules!

So there we are. The first NQS paper. Written, edited, checked, published and out there in a single evening.

Finally, today's lunchtime thrills were provided by a stonking little Firecrest, a bird I see all too rarely, and have yet to photograph in any way that might truly be called satisfying...

Firecrest compilation - the best three of a bad lot!

Misery Guts

Right now, this very minute, I am being seriously gripped via WhatsApp. As I sit here typing this sorry lament in cold, rainy, dismal Bridport, Steve is taking photos of a lovely 2nd-winter Caspian Gull he's just found on the Axe, and forwarding them to all of us on the local WhatsApp group. It's a cracking bird, and the plumage is unlike any I've seen before. Hopefully there will soon be a mouth-watering write-up on Steve's blog, and frankly I can't wait to see it. Still, that doesn't prevent me from feeling exceedingly gripped just now...

Winter is not my favourite season. And as I get older I like it less. Maybe if I didn't need to work in it I would feel differently, but as things stand it is a period to be endured, and the end of it to be longed for, welcomed and cheered. Yes, every winter I wish a small part of my life away.

And yet I suppose it is winter that provides me with more gull jollies than any other season. In recent winters I've been a bit spoiled in this regard, with a few lovely Caspian Gulls coming my way. There was a brief Casp encounter last month for example, plus that monster Glaucous Gull. A few birds like that make winter bearable. Occasionally there is non-gull stuff too, like the excellent West Bex Cirl Bunting story that began on January 1st. Subtle, tricky, educational, a photographic challenge. All good. So why the whingeing? Why am I so bothered about a bit of modest grippage?

I wish I knew. I'll put it down to winter blues...

While in the garden yesterday I saw a Raven, possibly two. Which means my 2021 Garden List is now on 24. Despite putting in a number of cold garden vigils, that is my measly total. Twenty-bloomin'-four. I haven't even seen or heard a Great Tit yet. Pathetic.

Prior to the Raven triumph I went for a sunny walk in the countryside...

Male Bullfinch brightens a twiggy tangle...

...and so does a Redwing.

Lapwings are rather lovely aren't they?

Nothing 'new' for the year, just a steady parade of the usual suspects. A couple of spots I fancied trying were too busy for my taste, which is another joyous facet of the current winter scene of course. Still, taking a few mediocre photos of common birds in the sunshine was nice.

There was a slim chance of snow today. In the event it snowed inland a bit, but we got none here. Despite my dislike of the cold, a short, sharp freeze-up would be welcome. Though I do feel a bit bad wishing harsh conditions on the birds, the beauty - and the muffled silence - of a snowy landscape takes some beating. In January 2010 we had just such a spell in Seaton. Everything ground to a halt. On January 6th I pulled on my wellies and set out from home in the falling snow. Arriving at the newly-created Black Hole Marsh, this was the scene...

An otter trots across the ice. It was diving into unfrozen holes and catching little mullet. Note the figure in the background on the far right. Shortly afterwards I had joined him on the tramline, which provided a perfect - if illicit - vantage point from which to survey the spectacular scenery up and down the valley.

But we're not going to get any of that kind of weather in the foreseeable future, are we? No, just rain. Temperatures will no doubt be average or above, with a steady, tedious march of Atlantic weather systems dousing us on a regular basis. Just the kind of winter that it is perfectly legal to hate with a vengeance. A pain for working in. A pain for birding in.

It's funny. If today had been a weekday rather than a Sunday, and I'd been working in Seaton, I could have responded to Steve's Caspian Gull find with an instant lunchbreak, and the tone of this post would have been completely different...

Where's that corkscrew...?

One Historic Barbel

The day's incessant rain finally relented late this afternoon and I took a quick walk around the West Bay fields which yesterday yielded 52 Lapwings and some gulls. Still 52 Lapwings, but no gulls. However, flushing four Rock Pipits out of the soggy grass was a surprise...

Two of the four Rock Pipits this afternoon

I can only assume these were birds which normally frequent the seafront, but were forced elsewhere by the dreadful weather.

Anyway, I have nothing much else to say about today's birding, so I'm going to use the rest of this post to document a little tale of minimal interest to most birders. It involves a fish...

In this post I mentioned a boyhood angling mentor named Howard Matthews, aka Ginger. In about 1974 he kindly prepared a little document for me. It comprised a few pages of notes and hand-drawn maps, outlining some angling opportunities to be enjoyed on the River Colne near Uxbridge. I eagerly tried them out, catching the Metropolitan Line train from my local station at Preston Road to the Uxbridge terminus and walking from there. My favourite area came to be where the river flows beneath the elevated A40 dual carriageway, and just downstream of it. In those days that downstream stretch was leased by the Uxbridge Rovers Angling & Conservation Society, of which I was not a member. Still, poaching is par for the course when you're 15 years old, so that was no problem. One swim which featured in Ginger's document (and I can only assume he poached it too) lay just below a nearby weirpool. On the far bank was a large weeping willow, beneath which was a nice clear run maybe three feet deep. I occasionally caught a roach or two there...

A couple of decent roach from the Willow swim. I'm guessing this'll be 1975-ish. Forgive the dreadful photo quality.

I don't recall catching much other than roach here, though my old pal Ric reminded me that either myself or another lad who I used to fish with back then once hooked and lost a big, long fish in this very swim. Which may or may not be significant...

In the mid-'70s none of us kids ever considered the possibility that we might catch a barbel from the Colne. The idea would have seemed preposterous. Barbel were mythical fish which swam only in rivers far, far away. By the time the 1970s were done I'd caught barbel from the Hampshire Avon and the Thames, but certainly not the Colne. Neither had I ever heard of a Colne barbel being caught by anyone else. In the early '80s I stopped fishing and started birding, and that was that.

In early 1985 we experienced a big freeze-up. I had chosen 1985 to go for a London Area year list, and that period of bitterly cold weather played right into my hands, delivering all sorts of species which would have been tricky to see in a normal winter. By this time I was completely immersed in birding and quite unaware of what was happening in the angling world. I had no idea, for example, that anglers in the know were nowadays heading for the River Colne to target barbel. Barbel! In the Colne! Not long after the thaw set in, Ric got an early-morning call from one such angler, Jim Clavin. Could he drive out to witness and photograph a barbel which Jim had just caught from the Colne? Not just any old barbel either, but a monster barbel! Yes, said Ric. Yes he could...

Early 1985 - Jim Clavin with a stunning 12lb 1oz barbel from the River Colne

I think this is a super photo, and it deserves a bit of context. In his book 'Modern Specimen Hunting', Jim Gibbinson lists the biggest fish of each species reported to the angling press during the 1980/81 and 1981/82 seasons. In those days a 12lb+ barbel was extremely rare. Of just five reported in the 1980/81 season, the biggest was 12lb 12oz, and probably only two fish were involved in those five records. Just two were reported in the 81/82 season, the biggest 12lb 10oz. By the 1984/85 season things were not much changed, and a 12lb+ fish would still have been a barbel angler's dream. The fish mentioned above were all from the Hampshire Avon, or the Wensum in Norfolk. The notion that such a beast might be swimming in the Colne, just up the road there... Pah!

Well. Not only was it caught in the Colne, river of my boyhood dabblings, but more specifically the Colne above Uxbridge. In fact it was caught just downstream of the A40. And you've probably guessed already, it was caught in the Willow swim...

Gripped!