The Birdwatching Tram

I do miss living next to the Axe Estuary, but my work takes me there often enough to keep the withdrawal symptoms at bay. However, back in January I was unexpectedly offered an excuse to go there for a different reason. Would I like to be one of the Seaton Birdwatching Tram guides? I didn't have to think too hard about that one.

So. This morning I had a date with a tram. This was a 'learn the ropes' session. Steve was guiding, and I was taking notes...

Once the tram reaches the estuary, this is the view looking north.

Many moons ago - before Black Hole Marsh and the Seaton Wetlands were really a thing - clandestine, out-of-hours walks along the tram line were a naughty indulgence for some of us. I saw my first Seaton Wryneck exactly thus, expertly found by Phil. The tram line gives a unique perspective of the Axe Estuary and marshes, and superb views of its inhabitants. As well as the birds, today's sell-out trip provided a tram-full of lovely punters with a sunbathing Fox and three Roe Deer. In addition, it is just so peaceful out there...

Bird-wise, we had some great highlights. Like this...

Med Gull, one of several.

And what a treat to discover that everyone on board was absolutely nuts about gulls!

MED GULL??!! QUICK!! WHERE???!!!

I assume that such impeccable taste in birds is perfectly normal for the Birdwatching Tram clientele.

Arriving at Seaton Marshes, we were hopeful that the long-staying Axe Patch Coot might put on a bit of a show. Sure enough, there it was on the lagoon, right out in the open. Until it saw us...

Coot. Quality Axe Estuary bird.

Best of all was this Great White Egret, loafing on Colyford Marsh, initially with a Grey Heron...

Great White Egret. Still feels pretty rare to me.

Then it was back to base. At this point we had tallied 57 species, but a brief Black Redstart on a rooftop overlooking Sheep's Marsh at the south end of the flood plain took us to 58.

In addition to aforementioned highlights, the usual spectacle of whistling Wigeon, creaking Teal and chattering Blackwits made for a splendid soundtrack. Some terrific birds on a beautiful February morning, and a friendly, appreciative audience. Two hours just flew by...

Heading south. Black Hole Marsh coming up on the right.

Obviously I am now obliged to shamelessly promote the Birdwatching Tram experience. Dare I suggest that any NQS readers might want to coincide a visit with one of the following dates, book a ticket and come say hello?

• Saturday 18th March at 08:30
• Saturday 1st April at 08:30
• Saturday 15th April at 08:30
• Saturday 29th July at 18:00
• Saturday 12th August at 18:00

I am also due to lead a couple in September too, but the dates are not on the official website yet. Click HERE for more details and to book tickets. Like I said, shameless.

Or you could go for one of the Sunday dates, and meet Steve. To be fair, he is pretty good actually.*

Obviously the subject was not broached openly, but there might have been some unspoken agreement involving the best Birdwatching Tram find of 2023 and a nice pint.

 

*Okay, very good.

A Saturday Afternoon

A leisurely late-afternoon stroll around my Bridport North patch was a delightful way to spend a couple of hours. One addition to the Patchwork Challenge tally, a Peregrine...

Ropey silhouette shot as it hung in the wind on the west side of Watton Hill, upsetting the local Herring Gulls.

Best of all, though, were two Firecrests in the spot where I saw one a few days ago. This time I had a camera with me...

Hard to beat a stunning male Firecrest.

Well hidden, but this one is a female.

This afternoon's extra Firecrest brings my local winter count to a very unexpected six. Four of them are in the Bridport North patch; two locations with two birds apiece. I am no expert, but would not be surprised to learn that the habitat in both spots was potentially good enough for breeding. That would be rather lovely.

There is a lot of very nice-looking habitat in my Bridport North patch. Time will tell whether it is actually as productive as my imagination suggests, but I hope so. There were very few people about this afternoon (I expect they were all at West Bay, getting drizzled on) but I do know that much of it is very popular with dog walkers. The evidence is everywhere, and I accidentally brought some of it home on my right boot. I hate that.

The West Bay Rock Pipit count is now at a minimum of 13 birds photographed. Given a reasonable image it is amazing how individually identifiable they are. The tertials and coverts are probably the most helpful feature, and the 'face' too. Here is a little collage to illustrate this: three different head shots, and three sets of tertials...

Subtly, but significantly, different.

Not sure exactly where I'm going with this project, but at least it keeps me distracted from the lack of much else going on right now. And there is something strangely compelling about making an effort to recognise each bird. Rather than 'a Rock Pipit is a Rock Pipit is a Rock Pipit', seeing them as individuals takes things to a different level somehow, and an otherwise humdrum bird becomes quite interesting.

Gulls are on the move at last. Five Lesser Black-backed passed through West Bay on Wednesday morning (pic below) and while working in Seaton yesterday I spied a few on the Axe Estuary, along with lots of Common Gulls. My scan of the Axe gulls was at least 90 minutes too early though, and I managed to miss a brief first-winter Caspian Gull which dropped in for Steve Waite later on. Such is often the way though, especially at this time of year. Timing is everything; blink, and you'll miss 'em.

My first West Bay Lesser Black-backed Gull of 2023.

Oh yes, moths...

I don't even need two hands to enumerate the moths I've caught this year, but here are some of them...

These two are both Chestnut, I think, but the worn one on the left did get me wondering about Dark Chestnut. Any helpful comments welcome...

Hebrew Character. What a beautifully marked moth.

Common Quaker. A new one for the garden, but only because we didn't start until June last year.

Agonopterix heracliana. Well, probably. There is a scarcer look-alike, so technically this should go down as A. heracliana agg, I guess.

Finally, I think Twitter is steadily going down the pan. The evidence is mounting...

I posted a couple of tweets earlier this evening. Both appeared on my profile page, but neither of them on my regular timeline. So I tried retweeting. Same result. Tellingly, both have had very, very few views. In other words, they are probably not visible to my 'followers'. Recently I have noticed that visiting a Twitter account's profile page almost invariably reveals a number of tweets that I haven't seen on my timeline, despite 'following' that account. I wonder if Twitter has indeed broken? For me, anyway.

Ah well. Even when life is threatening to take away one of your most reliable time-wasters, one can generally find solace in the jaunty carriage of a Black Redstart...

Cheer up, Gav. There's always Mastodon.

Bits & Bobs

Too much work last week, plus a hectic weekend of this and that, equals minimal birding. Still, I did manage to add two species to my West Bay & Eype Patchwork Challenge list: Collared Dove and Mute Swan, both fly-overs. Hardly epic. And while on an errand in town yesterday I came across a lovely bit of Firecrest-y habitat which, sure enough, soon coughed up a stripy gem. That's my fifth Firecrest in the Bridport recording area this winter.

A quick pictorial catch-up...

Sunset last Sunday, and four Purple Sandpipers feeding together at the far end of the West Bay harbour wall.

Black-spotted Longhorn Beetle Rhagium mordax, found in a friend's log pile over in Lyme Regis yesterday. Impressive. I could easily get into beetles...

One of two Purple Sands this afternoon. Love the Limpets and tiny Barnacles on that rock.

The confused ducks today. I wonder what's going to become of these two...

What a surprise! Two 10lb+ Carp in the River Brit by Rise restaurant in West Bay this afternoon.

In angler's parlance, the two Carp are a Common Carp and a 'Ghostie'. I always check the river for fish here, but have never seen anything bar the occasional Mullet. Seeing these Carp was unexpected enough, but a few minutes later a smaller fish swam past from the right, quickly dropping out of sight in deeper water. It looked a bit odd, but I was rather slow to get my bins on it. If I had been peering into the Hampshire Avon or Dorset Stour, I would not have hesitated to call it a small Barbel. With its snouty head shape, greenish hue and coral-tinged pectoral fins, I honestly could not think of any other species which fitted, but my view was so brief...

So there we are. I'm stringing fish now.

As far as I can tell, my Rock Pipit photos now depict eight different birds. And finally, we have a bit of pre-breeding moult! I've just discovered that I came across Rockit 2 again on Thursday afternoon...

Rockit 2 on 9/2. Note missing centre-left tertial!

Same bird on 30/1. I last saw it on 2/2, with centre-left tertial still present.

This is the Rock Pipit that I confidently (or recklessly) called littoralis when first encountering it on 29/1. Well, at least it's doing the right things so far...

The Great Fall

Not long now. Spring is coming and, with it, an influx of migrants. At least, we hope so. On the local coast here in West Dorset, decent arrivals seem a rare thing. And autumn is little better. In twenty years I can remember very, very few autumn days when the number of grounded migrants has been anything but underwhelming. My records tell me that my best Wheatear tally is 100 at Beer Head on 22nd August 2008; Willow Warbler, 60 at Beer Head on 2nd September 2005. And locally I've never seen more than three Redstarts or Pied Flycatchers in a day. Maybe I've just been unlucky, and there have been monster falls that I just wasn't around to witness, but I doubt it.

Still, this is the Southwest. Maybe things are a lot different on the east coast. Well, possibly. But I would be surprised if it wasn't a similar story there. The numbers might be bigger, but I'll bet they are still not a patch on what they once were.

An autumn Redstart. Always a nice prize.

An autumn Pied Fly. Just one is a treat.

On 3rd September 1965 I was six years and four months old, and blissfully unaware of the birdy drama unfolding that day in East Anglia. Following ten days of rubbish weather in Scandinavia during the latter part of August, things had suddenly changed. Anticyclonic conditions set in over central Scandinavia at the start of September, and the impatient birds responded instantly. There was a mass exodus.

At the same time, a curved band of heavy rain was stretched from south-east England and the Low Countries to north-west Germany. It moved slowly north up the English coast, as the cloud of migrants came south and west, being squeezed ever closer to East Anglia. On 3rd September, hundreds of thousands of birds were grounded by the weather, with an immense, unprecedented concentration in Suffolk.

The heart of the action (with thanks to Google)

Along that 24-mile stretch of Suffolk coast, an estimated half-a-million birds dropped out of the sky on 3rd September. Early the next day, at Walberswick, one observer (D. J. Pearson) estimated the following along two miles of coast: 15,000 Redstarts, 8,000 Wheatears, 4,000 Pied Flycatchers, 3,000 Garden Warblers, 1,500 Whinchats, 1,500 Tree Pipits, 1,000 Willow Warblers, 500 Whitethroats, and smaller numbers of Spotted Flycatchers and Robins. Oh, and not to mention at least 40 Wrynecks, 20 Ring Ouzels, 20 Bluethroats, a Great Reed Warbler, an Icterine Warbler and two Barred Warblers. Is it worth mentioning the glut of waders too, including a Kentish Plover and three Temminck's Stints? Probably.

At Minsmere, observations by  H. E. Axell (the warden) and colleagues over approximately 150 acres of the reserve on 3rd were equally staggering. The arrival began very suddenly at 12:15, just after the wind had freshened from the south-east, and birds were still trickling in come the evening. Again, numbers had to be approximate, but 7,000 Redstarts, 4,000 Wheatears, 2,000 Garden Warblers, 1,500 Pied Flycatchers, 750 Whinchats and 500 Willow Warblers are hard to count. Rarer birds included 25 Wrynecks, 25 Bluethroats, two Icterine Warblers, ten Red-backed Shrikes, three Ortolans and a Tawny Pipit.

At Covehithe the fall was estimated at a density of approximately 100 birds per acre, which closely matches the Minsmere figures. And it is this description of bird density that allows me to get some sort of handle on the frankly incredible numbers...

A regulation soccer pitch is not far off two acres, so we're talking almost 200 migrants per soccer pitch. If that's hard to visualise, try 16 migrants per penalty box...as far as the eye can see! I don't know the Suffolk coast very well, but can certainly picture the walk out to the old lifeboat station on Blakeney Point, a bit more than three miles from the Cley beach car park. Though the Norfolk coast didn't get more than a tiny fraction of the birds, just indulge me for a moment. Imagine that shingly slog being decorated with migrants at the kind of density seen in Suffolk. Extrapolating Mr Pearson's Walberswick counts, you would wind up with c23,000 Redstarts, and...er...yes, ridiculous, isn't it?!

Half-a-million birds over a 24-mile stretch of coast is one bird every three inches, or 7.5 cm. Mind officially blown...

Incidentally, it wasn't just Suffolk that experienced this fall, though it had by far the biggest numbers. For a jaw-dropping read I do recommend the British Birds paper on the event. Entitled 'The great immigration of early September 1965', you can find it in BB Vol 59, no 9 (September 1966).

Sadly, after reading that paper, you are left with the overwhelming sense that this can never, ever happen again. There simply are not enough birds any more.

Puzzling On...

First, the exciting stuff. A long-awaited 2023 Patchwork Challenge tick sailed over West Bay yesterday afternoon: Lesser Black-backed Gull. Get in!

I fear that NQS posts for the next couple of months are going to try the patience of any reader with an aversion to pipits. Sorry, but I am neck-deep already...

Last night I went through all my Rockit pics so far. I seem to have photographed seven different birds. One of them I have photographed on two dates, and another on three. And both those birds were pictured in two different spots, as shown on the following image...

West Bay

Location A is a wet field, extremely popular with dog walkers, who mainly stick to the perimeter but not always. I am not much cop at botany, but am pretty sure I was told that some of the plants (grasses?) in this field are typical saltmarsh species. Whatever, Rock Pipits can often be found feeding here, and being as unapproachable as Rock Pipits reasonably can.

Location B is the pier, or outer harbour wall, with rock armour all along the west side. The far end is roughly 600m from point A. So far I have photographed three Rock Pipits here, and two of them also in the wet field. For some reason, birds are noticeably less wary here.

Rock Pipit 1

The top photo was one of the first I took, back on 29th January, and featured in this post. At the time, I noted that the bird looked fairly swarthy in the field. Certainly it never gave me any littoralis vibes. Yesterday it was on the far end of the pier, and looked quite different. For starters, it has the strongest pair of supercilia that I've seen on any Rock Pipit so far this year...

Rockit 1 yesterday.

Rock Pipit 2

The same day that I first met Rockit 1, I also met the next bird. At the time, I was so smitten by its appearance that it went down as littoralis straight away. Since then I have unwittingly photographed it twice more. But on neither occasion did it particularly stand out to me as obviously littoralis. At the moment I don't know whether this says more about the bird or about the (in)consistency of my field skills. Either way, it is a warning to avoid becoming complacent. Clearly, when it comes to the separation of littoralis and petrosus in winter plumage, I have so far solved nothing.

I am having a lot of fun though.

And I am so glad that individual birds can be identified from photos!

If this collage teaches me one thing, it is this: never trust a photograph's depiction of subtle browns and greys.

My gut feeling is that both the above are littoralis. I hope they hang around long enough to show me a bit of pre-breeding colour. We'll see...

In the meantime, there are sometimes other birds to get excited about...

108 Lapwings. They hang around in the field immediately north of, and across the river from, location A. It is largely undisturbed, thank goodness. It would be nice if someone could just buy it, please, and turn it into the wetland it so wants to be. If any reader has a few bob going spare...?

The Odd Couple. Two months now.

The droopy-winged female-type Black Redstart again.

The male Black Redstart yesterday. Two months since my one and only previous sighting, though it has occasionally been seen by others. Where does it get to?

Finally, and with apologies for this super-early lepidopteral digression, the moth trap went out last night for the first time since December. Just a single moth, which didn't even get inside the trap. A garden first though...

Pale Brindled Beauty. Very nice.

Very little birding time this weekend, and already I'm getting Rockit withdrawal. I do sometimes wonder what I would get up to without these silly puzzles to keep my brain ticking over...

One Month Done

So that's January done. I feel like I've missed almost a third of it, but I doubt my Patchwork Challenge totals would have been vastly different even without the man-flu.

Bridport North - 50 species/52 points

Best 'expected' bird: Dipper. Best unexpected bird: Firecrest.

West Bay & Eype - 63 species/78 points

Best by far: Leach's Petrel. Little Gull also excellent. Firecrest, Goosander and Cetti's Warbler very pleasing too.

Both patches have been a joy to work, and produced one or two nice surprises. Neither is exactly romping away numbers-wise, but I am quite happy to plod along at a modest pace.

Failing at Woodcock bothered me briefly. I wondered about trying dusk watches, or even asking to borrow Tom's thermal monocular, but soon realised I don't really care enough. A big species count isn't that much of a motivator for me, but rather the unknown potential, the surprises I might encounter while birding somewhere that I've largely neglected. I suppose I'm not much cut out for a listing competition...

My points target for each patch is 100 and 215 respectively. I'll be pleased if I achieve or get close to them. In the meantime, let's just see what comes along...

Felt a little better this afternoon, so risked a walk around West Bay. A total of four Purple Sands was my best count yet, and a nice surprise. Also, the femalest of the female-type Black Redstarts was by the slipway.

Purple Sand at the end of the harbour wall - one of four.

Black Redstart - much less of a poser than this pic would have you believe. It was in almost perpetual motion.

Almost no white at all in the wing of this one.

Naturally I looked at Rock Pipits. There were at least nine on the field behind Rise restaurant, though four flew off, and none let me get close. Typically these birds are difficult to approach, and take flight quite easily. I struggled to get any photos at all today. Just a handful at range, like these two...

Same as the closer bird in the photo above. Could be littoralis...or not.

A little later I came across three more on the rock armour of the harbour wall. These were far less shy. Was that because of the habitat? Or because they were petrosus? Or because they were littoralis on a wind-up? Who can say? Anyway, I got decent photos of two of them.

Slowly I am building a pictorial library of West Bay Rockits. Like the Burton Freshwater birds I spent time with last year, I would like to work out how many individuals I am playing with here. Whatever comes of it, I know it will be fun...

This one is the first I've noticed with a pinkish base to the bill.

Same again. In this shot the flank streaking appears to coalesce into a messy dark patch. Compare with photo above.

And again. A distinctive little notch in the tip of that inner right greater covert.

The second bird. A more typical yellow bill base on this one.

Same again.

On a completely different note, I'm currently revisiting a BB paper on a massive fall of migrants that occurred many years ago. I was six years old when it happened, but reading the account makes it hard to believe that I was alive at a time when there were actually that many birds. One thing is for certain: it will never happen again in my lifetime. Scratch that. It will never happen again, ever. Hopefully this mind-boggling event will make for an interesting NQS post soon...

A Tale of Two Books

This morning brought lovely news: Low Carbon Birding has won the British Birds & BTO 'Best Bird Book of the Year' prize for 2022. What a well-deserved accolade. To my mind, the book is unique. The ideals it promotes are gaining ever more traction in birders' discussions and - more to the point - actions, and its diverse collection of essays offers a thought-provoking taster for anyone interested in the topic. To have been personally involved in it was a privilege I treasure.

Low Carbon Birding is the second book I have contributed to; the first was Best Days with British Birds, published in 1989. Back then, a typescript was truly a typescript! In fact, my chapter was written almost 40 years ago, in late 1983. Reading it now, I do cringe a bit. Too wordy by far, a weakness that still afflicts me today. My essay is sandwiched between two illustrious names of the ornithological world - Ian Lewington and Guy Mountfort - and many of the other authors are equally well known.

At the time of publication, my favourite chapter was the tale of an epic twitch, from Scilly to Fair Isle in October 1980. I haven't read the whole book for many years now, but plan to rectify that soon. I can absolutely guarantee that I will end up with a new favourite chapter. Yes, the twitch account is a thrilling roller-coaster ride, and very relatable, but in my view belongs to another era. My circumstances back then would not have allowed such weapons-grade twitching anyway, but if they had, would that have been me? I was very surprised to read the following in my own chapter...

The sort of feeling that I enjoyed that morning comes far more often, and with far less-rare birds, on a well-loved and familiar local patch, than it does on infrequent visits to Cley or Dungeness or wherever...So, although I frequent the odd twitch and visit the various coastal hot-spots from time to time, I still find the most satisfaction is to be had locally, and would recommend the patch-flogging philosophy to anyone.

Following several years of dabbling, I had been birding intently for about two years when I wrote that. Twitching did get a stronger grip for a while from the mid-1980s, but it is heartening to know that in older age I seem to have got back to my roots. A nice place to be.