Today and Tomorrow

Today

This morning I managed an hour at East Bexington before work. The Sallow Clump of Delight was leaping. Chiffs mainly, but also Goldcrests, Robins and a Firecrest again. Also a Merlin cruised overhead in a leisurely way. That's my third Merlin sighting since I've been venturing out here, compared with just a handful in umpteen years on the Axe patch. Not so many gulls around as previously, but obviously all of them were Med Gulls. There are very few dwellings at East Bex, but as the apex of nearly every roof in southern England bears the silhouette of a Black Redstart, I was hopeful. So far in this exceptional autumn for them I've seen none at all. Unfortunately, heading off to work, that was still the case.

I ate my lunch overlooking the sea at Freshwater Beach, between West Bay and Burton Bradstock. There's a holiday park here, with two or three hundred static caravans. More than enough roofs for a Black Redstart surely? Driving back through the park I crawled along very, very slowly, glancing left and right. Suddenly...

What a corker! And not on a roof!

That was more like it! Encouraged now, I ventured into West Bay, and in about five minutes of carefully trying not to bump into other road users while peering upwards I came across two more...

This somewhat smaller one on a building just south of the main car park...

...and this really tiny one on the tall apartments opposite the Bridport Arms Hotel

It would surprise me if there weren't more Black Redstarts in West Bay; I'm sure my rapid tour of the tiles didn't net all of them.


Tomorrow

I could bore you stupid by outlining the tedious DIY chore that awaits me, but no, instead allow me to tickle your fancy with this...

All this before breakfast, even!

My BBC Weather App is forecasting gusts in excess of 70mph at West Bay! See that dark pink bit there? In my imagination it is a vast, throbbing horde of helpless seabirds, barreling wretchedly into the deepest bowels of Lyme Bay, that grim shore where seawatchers go to die. Those of us brave enough to be out there in it tomorrow are going to be clutching our chests and hyperventilating as a steady stream of Leach's Petrels and Sabine's Gulls struggles past at eye-popping range, and Grey Phalaropes pour down upon us like feathery hail...

As I say: 'in my imagination'...

The reality will be a lot of salty optics and cursing, which will last no more than one hour, tops.


I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but six posts in six days suggests that someone else must be writing NQS at the moment...

Dodgy Birders - Part 2: Getting it Wrong

Today we'll be dealing with honest mistakes. I mention this because the generic catch-all 'Dodgy Birders' encompasses all kinds of really weird stuff, and in this chapter we're not quite opening that door yet...

One spring in the early 1980s I was invited to join a London Bird Race team. Being a relatively new birder I was flattered, because the rest of the team comprised three pillars of the W London birding scene back then, much better and more experienced birders than me. At my suggestion we were trying a place called Bentley Priory for Hawfinch, but after slogging around for quite a while it looked like we were on a loser. There was one final spot to check, and to do so we had to climb a slope and scan the treetops. I hurried up the hill to look. Amazingly, there was a Hawfinch! Perched right up on the highest twigs of a distant tree, like they do. A bit far away for bins, and just a silhouette really, but definitely a Hawfinch. I called to the others, who were trudging up the slope much more slowly than I had, no doubt resigned to the blank. They stopped, turned, looked, and asked: "Where is it in relation to that Greenfinch, Gav?"

When it comes to bird identification, every single birder gets it wrong sometimes. Over the years I've dropped some right clangers, occasionally as embarrassing as that one was!

Does that make me a dodgy birder? I sincerely hope not. You earn that accolade not from a few mistakes, but from a catalogue of persistent dodginess built over time. Every birder makes mistakes. What marks a birder as dodgy is how he deals with them.

Take my not-a-Hawfinch debacle. Let's replay it...

"Where is it in relation to that Greenfinch, Gav?"

• Option 1: "My bad! Sorry lads, I thought it was a Hawfinch!"
• Option 2: "Oh no! It's just dropped out of sight, about 6 feet to the right of the Greenfinch!"

Let's not be coy. Option 2 is a big fat lie. In part 3 we'll explore this area a little further, but for now, let's consider why someone would even consider lying.

Basically it's to save face, isn't it? The shame and embarrassment of looking like a total noddy is simply too much to bear, so we'll just employ the two-bird theory to wriggle out of an awkward situation. Perfectly understandable. Trouble is, look at what happens next...

"Oh, that's a shame. Never mind Gav, at least we know there's a Hawfinch here, so let's stake it out for a while."

Then follows an indefinite period of weasely squirming.

"About six feet to the right, you reckon Gav?"
"Mmm."
"Where that tall, forked twig sticks up?"
"Yes, near there."
"By that dead branch?"
"Yes, yes. That's the spot."

Three more lies. If my conscience wasn't in torment now, there would really be no hope for me.

"Dropped down, you say? To the right? To the left?"
"Neither really. More like immediately behind that forked twig. Can't have gone far..."

Strewth! Another whopper. And now I'm dressing them up with tinsel and glitter. I am truly loathsome.

This is called digging a hole, and the moment I chose option 2, I picked up the spade. Let's say we gave it another ten minutes. No Hawfinch of course, and as we walk back to the car I might be  thinking I'd got away with it. But you know what? My three companions would have clocked it. They were pretty sure there had only ever been the Greenfinch. Not quite one-hundred-percent sure, but close enough. They would compare notes in my absence, remember and discuss all my deceitful wriggling. From that point on I would be marked. Perhaps dodgy birders do not appreciate that fact? Do this kind of thing frequently enough and your name will be mud.

Anyway, in the event I thankfully chose option 1. I held up my hand and my three companions, with the wisdom of their own experience no doubt, put it down to over-enthusiasm and laughed it away.

True, it takes humility to own up to mistakes. But needing to be right all the time is a fatal flaw, and will a dodgy birder make.

In part 3 of the Dodgy Birders series, we'll examine the topic of trust, and why its betrayal is dodginess of the most heinous kind.

Derek Stringer has just claimed the Scarlet Tanager...

A Small, Encouraging Thing

The Little Auk Quest continued this morning. Day 2. Assessing conditions at Burton Bradstock beach first thing, I wasn't too discouraged. Not as cold, and though the wind was lighter it was still basically from the east. I'm usually a glass-half-full kind of bloke, so I expect you can picture me settling onto my special Questing Rock in a cheery kind of way, and adjusting my tripod to perfection with its little spirit level thing. I was ready...

Birds came, but none of them was a Little Auk. Nevertheless, one thing I love about late autumn seawatching here is its capacity to surprise. For example, I wasn't expecting a flock of 4 Goosanders to fly past (plus a single later) because they are seawatch gold. Wrestling with the old Goosanders??Mergs?? chestnut that early in the morning was an unanticipated joy. They're never drakes are they?! And a Sandwich Tern came by also. It feels like a lifetime since I last saw one of them. Other entertainment was provided by 3 Brents, 7 Teal, 18 Common Scoter, 18 Wigeon, a Great Crested Grebe and 27 Dunlin, plus another 3 unidentified waders which were probably Dunlin too. A grey seal went through E. Slowly. And I was jammily looking at exactly the right spot to see 2 harbour porpoises roll together, a new cetacean for me locally.

It wasn't fast and furious, but variety was there, and a gentle flow of action. What more do you need?

I'm nursing a cold right now, so rather than tempt fate by going to work and getting all strenuous, I persuaded Mrs NQS that we should drive to the Abbotsbury beach car park and walk very sedately along the Burton Road a bit. I recently learned that this stretch of coast is very underwatched, and investigating it has been a lot of fun. I've discovered, for example, that 85% of the world's Med Gull population resides here. Even better, the location is home to a rather exciting tamarisk belt. As any birder who's been to Scilly knows, tamarisk is where Blackpoll Warblers live. And anything else that likes to skulk mercilessly. At East Bexington there is a great big windbreak of the stuff just behind the beach. It is alive with birds, but of course they are a nightmare to see. However, all is not hopeless. Bordered by a 4-pixel-wide yellow ring is a sallow clump, and if you stand next to it you will notice skittery little birds flitting in and out of it from the tamarisk across the road. Here they spend a bit of time feeding, and are much easier to see. Until now, all I had managed were a few Chiffs and Goldcrests, but today we found a Firecrest! Yay! I love Firecrests and don't see them anything like often enough. In the absence of Little Auk, it became today's small, encouraging thing.

Shuffling back to the car, bunged up to the eyeballs with catarrh, head throbbing, nose like a tap, I was well chuffed.

The Sallow Clump of Delight

Quest for a Little Auk

In this neck of the woods, Little Auk is a major birding prize. But, if it's going to happen, now is the time...

I've seen ten late-autumn Little Auks in Lyme Bay, all of them fly-bys. Four E past Branscombe on 3/11/06, two W there the following day, one W past Seaton on 10/11/07 and three there (2E, 1W) two days later. And I think I am right in saying that all those sightings were the result of a specific effort to try for Little Auk. Something about my hyper-tuned birdy senses told me that I should go out right there and then, and embark upon a quest for Little Auk. Or it might have been the weather patterns, or their presence down the E coast, or something...I don't know...

Anyway, I scored!

I got the very same feeling in my water a couple of days back, and was unwise enough to post a prediction on the patch WhatsApp group: '...someone will get Little Auk before next weekend.'

Obviously this needs to come true if it's not to look like my birdy senses are shot to bits. So, starting this morning, I began this year's quest...

Burton Bradstock beach. Little Auk Quest. Day 1.

It was freezing first thing. Strong ENE. Nasty. Thankfully this spot is sheltered in such conditions. By 09:00 the highlights were 26 Dunlin, 3 Sanderlings, 2 Turnstones, c.10 unidentified waders, 6 Brents, 5 Common Scoter, 2 Wigeon and a Teal. A few Med Gulls too, but as you know, they have lost their right to be counted. Everything bar 2 Scoter flew E, though a little group of Dunlin climbed up and flew inland over my head.

No Little Auks today. We quest on...

Dodgy Birders - Part 1: Bird Identification

In May I turned 60. This makes me nearly old. I've noticed that when you get fully old, you can say exactly what you think about stuff and totally get away with it. It seems to be a privilege tolerantly afforded to the not-here-much-longer. I optimistically assume I'm not yet in that category, so it may be that I won't quite get away with what I plan to write over a few posts...

A topic which has fascinated me for many years is that of dodgy birders. If I were to write an NQS glossary, it would include this entry:

Dodgy Birder: a birder whose sightings you cannot trust one little bit.

Of course, dodginess can feature in many hobbies. In angling, for example, it might involve a fish's claimed weight, or the quantity of a multiple catch, but can also include various behaviours, like poaching waters for which you don't have a ticket, nicking swims that you know have been carefully prepared by another angler, and so on. But the dodgy angler is another blog post altogether. Dodginess in birding generally involves the identification of one or several birds, the numbers seen, and, in the worst cases, the actual existence of those birds at all. So, let's begin by examining a fundamental question...

Why is bird identification important?
I know folk who cannot separate a House Sparrow from a Starling. And interestingly, they don't care. But that's because they're not birders. Birders do care. Birders care greatly about identification, because it is birding's keystone. Our hobby simply could not exist without it; there would be no field guides, no lists, no counts, no common birds, no scarce birds, no rarities, no bird reports, no surveys, no ringing data, no population monitoring, no species-focused conservation, no reintroduction schemes, etc, etc. And whole branches of birdy science would be redundant. Taxonomy, for example. Hmm. Actually, that one might not be so bad...
Anyway, there are lots of activities where identifying birds is not a vital, integral fundament of the thing, but birding isn't one them.

So, next question...

Why does correct identification matter?
Well, if you bird alone and never interact with any other birders in any way whatsoever, and keep all of your nonsense to yourself, it doesn't matter. You can muck stuff up (or make it up) all you like. Feel free. But if you are not a birding hermit, correctly identifying what you see matters a great deal, from the very moment your sighting is shared with another birder. And there are several potential reasons. As an example, let's say matey has identified a pukka rarity on his local nature reserve. What might be the consequences of sharing this discovery with another birder?

Well, the next few minutes/hours of their life might be profoundly influenced by that identification...

• They might start running immediately, with inherent risks to their physical wellbeing.
• They might jump in their car and burn a lot of fossil fuel, with inherent risks to the planet's wellbeing.
• They might stand still in a cold, draughty spot for a long time, inviting nasty chills and shrivelling.
• They might share the sighting with their birding buddies, with obvious ramifications.
• And so on...

A rarity is an extreme example, but it doesn't take much - just an interesting migrant, or passing seabird maybe - to influence what another birder might do now that he wouldn't have done otherwise. When we touch the lives of other birders in that way - the very second we interact with them based upon an identification we have made - surely we bear a responsibility? They're not just some indifferent Joe Public who couldn't give a monkey's what name we give the boring brown thing. They're a fellow birder, a comrade of the anorak, and that should very much mean something. Shouldn't it?

Pied Wheatear twitch, Scilly 2010

A good number of birders (Mrs NQS and I included) hurried breathlessly to this spot on St Mary's because someone shared an identification he'd made. Correct ID clearly mattered to him, and in this case he had happily got it right. But there is always another possibility...

In part 2 of the Dodgy Birders series, we will address the 'Getting it Wrong' scenario, and the options open to us when we do so, with special emphasis on dodginess...

A Nice Rarity

Mid-morning on October 16th I tried a half-hour seawatch from Burton Bradstock. Conditions were unexciting. The wind was moderate - certainly not too strong to prevent me from sitting on one of the benches just above the beach - and it was dry. Highlights included a gorgeous adult Little Gull, 7 Brents and a drake Tuftie. Quite pleasing, especially the Little Gull.

That's a typical example of a short, impromptu seawatch producing some nice goods. I sat down with no expectations whatsoever, and was pleasantly surprised.

The opposite of that scenario is when you go to bed with a howling hoolie blowing outside, knowing it's going to be blasting away all night and filling Lyme Bay with storm-blown waifs. You're so excited that sleep is impossible, and you're up and out before dawn. Settling into your favourite seawatching spot, you are absolutely bursting with expectation...

Well, that's how it used to be.

Unfortunately I am a veteran of countless really, really bad Lyme Bay seawatches following a night of howling hoolie, and I now know better.

Nevertheless, I was up fairly early yesterday morning, and in position at Cogden by 08:00. It was still really windy. The sea was rough as you like. By 09:00 my tally was a paltry 2 Red-throated Divers, 2 Brents, 9 Common Scoter and 50+ Gannets. Disappointing. But so, so predictable. When the rain began, that was all the excuse I needed to call it a day.

I have had good results from stormy seawatches locally. The only 2 Leach's Petrels I've seen while seawatching in Lyme Bay were off Seaton seafront after a late-autumn night like Friday, and I found my first Seaton Grey Phalarope in the heaving surf a few days prior, likewise following a stormy night. But, rewards like that are not the norm.

Here's a fun fact. On September 2nd, 2009, at opposite ends of Lyme Bay, both Portland Bill and Berry Head had record day-counts of Sooty Shearwater: 177 at PB and a staggering 582 at BH. Seaton had...

None at all!

I can't recall if that was following a stormy night, but I expect so; sounds absolutely typical.

And on a different note...

I suspect this might be the rarest thing I find this year.

Convolvulus Hawk Moth larva, Bridport, 21/10/2019

I found this wrinkly wonder quite close to my house, and at first glance thought it was some sort of poo. Understandable I think. Anyway, Twitter to the rescue, and it was identified for me within seconds. Steve Nash, a self-confessed 'moth geek' who runs @MigrantMothUK, has found just one in 40 years of moth-geekery. I don't want to seem ungrateful, because it was a privilege to encounter such a rare and impressive beastie, but next time I'll take a Bluetail thanks.

The Mediterranean Gull

This is a Mediterranean Gull...

A super-smart adult on Burton Bradstock beach

The date of my first encounter with one of these lovely gulls is lost in the mists of time, but I can remember the location precisely. It was right here...

This is the coast road just W of Kelling in North Norfolk. It was some time in the autumn of 1982, and that stubble field was all ploughed up. Mrs NQS and I joined a handful of birders here on this bend to look for a Med Gull that was hanging out with a crowd of BHGs [Thank you, Google Street View]

That bird was an adult, and I made a nice pen-and-ink sketch of its head in my notebook. I was pleasantly surprised at how distinctive it was, with its pure white primaries. I thought to myself "Hmm, gulls aren't as scary as I imagined. I reckon I could do one of these..."

My second Med Gull wasn't long in coming. Within a few days I had indeed found one for myself at Staines Res. Also an adult, I picked it up flying S over the causeway with BHGs late one afternoon. A couple of days later it did it again, at the very same time. That particular bird became so reliable that you could stake it out and predict its arrival within a few minutes. Local birders would turn up and wait for it to appear. Yes, they twitched it. Twitched a Med Gull. In W London in 1982, Med Gull was a pretty decent find!

Until 1963 Med Gull was actually a BB rarity. I no longer have the relevant London Bird Reports, but I'll bet there were no more than a dozen or so records a year in the early 80s. In that context you will appreciate that it was a bird well worth searching for in any gathering of small gulls, and quite a prize whenever you found one. Which wasn't often.

So I've always had a soft spot for this handsome species, because it is probably responsible more than any other for encouraging me to painstakingly sift through gull flocks.

Or perhaps I should curse it...?

Anyway, throughout my time as a birder in the London area, Mediterranean Gull was never common. Not even slightly. So when I moved to Seaton in Devon in 2002 it was still a 'good value' bird. Following a birding hiatus of several years, the move slowly rekindled my interest, and I was delighted to learn that Med Gull was a regular winter visitor to the Axe estuary. Soon I was seeing them quite often, usually just one or two at a time. It became routine to check through  the estuary gulls in order to find them and count them, sometimes even the Seaton Bay winter roost too. I do have records from my time on the Axe, and I can tell you that in the years 2004-2010 I recorded Med Gull some 298 times, that I made double-figure counts on just four occasions, and that my highest tally of 16 (all adults) on 19 February 2010 was never bettered before I moved to Dorset in 2015.

Well, what a difference a few miles make!

Here I am in Bridport now, probably 15 miles E round the Lyme Bay coast from Seaton, and something has happened to my beloved Med Gull. Something dreadful...

Initially there was nothing to worry about. I quickly noticed that Med Gulls were a bit more common, but that was all. I was still noting that I'd seen 4, or 6, or 9, or however many. And then one day I realised that I wasn't being quite so fastidious about the number. It became 'about 4', 'half-a-dozen or so', 'circa 10'. And if the bird was close enough to identify with the naked eye, I sometimes caught myself...gasp!...not raising my bins! Yes, not even bothering to look at them properly.
 
I had barely noticed it happening but, reluctantly, could not deny the obvious fact: Med Gull had lost its value.

Don't get me wrong. I still think they are one of the smartest, most handsome small gulls. Even the first-winter birds are usually neat and crisply marked. But whereas I used to search through a flock of gulls to look for them...well, now I don't. In fact, in the last week or so things have taken a distinct turn for the worse. In an East Bexington field I found a flock of gulls containing so many Meds that sheer curiosity made me want to count them. It was tricky with binoculars alone, but there were at least 44. A day or so later a different field held even more. Here are just some of them...

There were certainly more than 100 Meds in this field

But yesterday was the final straw...

In the afternoon I walked from Abbotsbury to East Bexington, and all along the shoreline was a frenzy of feeding gulls. Huge numbers of mackerel were driving whitebait into the shallow water, and even onto the shingle. There were thousands of gulls and, among them, many, many Meds. Hundreds for sure. Quite possibly they were the most numerous small gull.

What happens when Med Gull becomes the most numerous small gull in a flock? Well, you then start picking through them to find something better...

And what do you call the gulls that you pick through in order to find something better...?

Begins with D. Ends with S.

Just can't bring myself to say it though.

Today I learned that the record Med Gull count for the Weymouth area is 2,200. I was simply amazed by the hugeness of that number, and there's no denying what it means.

But.

Still can't say it...