More Questions Than Anthus

Warning. Another niche post coming up...

Rock Pipits again. This is the sort of thing I never do, so I am somewhat in the dark re methodology. Still, it seems wise to get some stuff down in writing so that there is a kind of order about it all.

First, a photo of Rockit Land...

The best Rock Pipit habitat lies between the river mouth (top left) and the seaward end of Cliff Road (bottom left corner of the two pale fields) though I have seen them by the Hive Beach car park (bottom right) and on the holiday park (top left).

Yesterday was my fourth visit to the...ahem...'study area', where I have tallied between 7 and 10 Rock Pipits each time. I have photographed as many as possible, and discovered that they are individually identifiable by comparing tertials and visible coverts. As I have managed to photograph more right-hand sides than left, henceforth that will be my aim with every bird: get a decent snap at least of the right-hand side. Thus far I have pics of 13 different individuals. I have also identified one definite petrosus, though that ID is based on the assumption that only petrosus will be singing and displaying at the moment. And right there is my first question: is that assumption a safe one?

So, here are all 13 birds. A few are captioned where appropriate. The extent of subtle variability is rather surprising. At least, it is to me.

The first Rock Pipit I photographed (on 9/3) - next to the Hive Beach car park - and coincidentally the first photo too. Yesterday (15/3) the same bird was in subdued song and giving brief display flights by the end of Cliff Road. So, until I know different, this one is labelled Anthus petrosus petrosus.

Legs can look very pale in some lights. This individual has a lot of yellow on the bill, while on many birds it is completely black.

Nice to get a pic of the outer tail feather on number 5, which has an obviously pale grey wedge, but with some clean white on the extreme tip. Petrosus?

Those tertials are evidently not all the same age.

Another seemingly pale-legged bird. Very pale ground colour to underparts too. In fact, I would say it is basically white.

Rear views like this are dead useful for identifying individual birds, but can't always get them.

Again, the rear views of this bird show tertials are not all the same age.

Hopefully I will be adding to that collection in due course, but even the current total of 13 different birds is a bit of a surprise. Certainly there are more than I would have guessed. Also, that's the minimum count; I doubt I've photographed every bird present.

Questions then...

• I have definitely photographed the same bird on different dates a few times, but is the current population resident and stable, or are some birds moving through?
• Several of the photos appear to show evidence of moult in the wing. What does this indicate re age or subspecific ID, if anything?
• Black bills. Bills with yellow on them. Does it mean anything? Should I care?
• Leg colour. Is it significant in any way?
  
• And the obvious one: are any of the above littoralis? And if so, which, and why, and to what degree of certainty?

Here's a bird which featured in the last post, having a stretch. Unfortunately I didn't (knowingly) manage a pic of the right hand side, so I don't know if it features above, but look at those outer tail feathers. They are definitely tipped white...

I would say with some confidence that this bird's left-hand outer tail feather is tipped clean white. The underside of the right-hand outer tail feather also looks very white, but I think this is misleading and prefer to stick to the upper side only when it comes to determining its true colour.

All these questions simply reveal to me how little I know. I don't own Pipits and Wagtails by Per Alström et al, nor Moult and Ageing in European Passerines by Jenni & Winkler, and what there is in my scant library is of little help. I briefly toyed with the idea of purchasing the above tomes (60-odd quid each!) before realising I would only be interested in a few pages, and came to my senses. Paul Chapman kindly sent me a screen-shot of a relevant page from Svensson's Identification Guide to European Passerines, which says this:

[Re petrosus] Pale portions on outer TF always greyish-white, never pure white.
[Re littoralis] Pale portions on outer TF greyish-white, or greyish white with purer white near tips.

Hmmm.

So there we go, that's the story so far. At the moment I plan to continue visiting regularly, and to photograph as many birds as possible. Ideally I shall continue into the breeding season, for obvious reasons. If the enthusiasm holds, I might even have a look for breeders a bit further west, along the cliffs between the mouth of the River Bride and West Bay, flanking Bridport Golf Course. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...

While Not Looking for Wheatears

In years past I have spent a good deal of time looking for that first Wheatear, usually much too early in March. Because repeated failure is disappointing, these days I really try not to do that. Instead I just bumble along - ideally with some distracting little project or other - knowing that Wheatear will just come along anyway. The littoralis Rock Pipit challenge is ideal. It keeps me busy, but at the same time in habitat which Wheatears happen to love. I've been Rock Pipit-ing a couple of times since the last post, and seen a maximum of ten on a single visit. I have photos of at least nine different birds so far. Any littoralis yet? Well...

Rock Pipit gives glimpse of outer tail feathers. Interesting bit of apparent whiteness there...

And this one, a different bird...

Quite grey, rather than olive-brown, on the head and upperparts.

I'm not going to claim either is definitely a littoralis, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were. I think I am going to enjoy pottering about on the Burton Bradstock cliffs and surrounding area this spring. Will I get a nice pink one? I am optimistic. In the meantime, it's not a bad spot for Wheatears. Not that I've seen any there yet.

Early-morning seawatching has been a pleasant distraction too. Numbers and variety have tailed off since that first hit (with the two Shags, Bonxie, Blackwit flock, etc) but there were further single Shags on 9th and 10th, and my first Great Northern Diver of the year on the latter date. I've been quietly hoping for a Little Gull or two, but not so far...

Apart from three Curlews overnight on 8th/9th, nocmig has been uneventful, and gull-wise I have nothing whatsoever to report.

On Friday I had to drive to Milton Keynes. This unpleasant chore was lightened considerably by meeting up with my old mate Ric on the return. We spent a delightful couple of hours doing a circuit of Stockers and Springwell Lakes, near Rickmansworth, Herts. Up until twenty years ago I lived a mere ten-minute walk from Stockers. Although I never really gave the place the time it deserved, my Stockers List has some enviable birds on it, like Blue-winged Teal, Ring-necked and Ferruginous Ducks, Gannet, Hawfinch, Ring Ouzel, and my personal favourite, Red-necked Phalarope. While two birds on my Stockers List - Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and Willow Tit - were once regular but now impossible, several birds which Ric and I saw on Friday were either scarce, rare or out of the question in my day. Like Oystercatcher, Little Egret, Ring-necked Parakeet and Red Kite. Those birds somehow made me feel old.

When the rain set in with a vengeance, we retired to the Ricky Aquadrome Café...

Old geezers can certainly pack away the chocolate brownie

I arrived at the arranged meeting spot quite early. While waiting for Ric to turn up I thought I may as well have a little mooch about, so pulled on my boots and reached for my bins. At which point I realised I hadn't packed them. Or my camera. Ah...

Ric saved the day by generously loaning me his lovely Zeiss Victory SF 8x42s. Cracking bins. Cheers Ric!

Oh. Almost forgot. Yesterday afternoon's highlight wasn't even a bird. A nice bit of sunshine got me thinking about Adders. Last year I didn't make much effort to see any, and was rewarded accordingly, i.e., with none. No such slackness this year though. Two beautiful specimens soaking up the March rays...

That eye!

I think this one was just sorting itself out here. I had another look later on, and it was coiled up nicely.

This afternoon's outing was a pleasant walk from West to East Bexington and back. Really there is very little to tell. Certainly I was not looking for Wheatears...

Male Wheatear, East Bex.

March 13th is my earliest Wheatear since I've lived in the Southwest. Clearly, the best way to find an early Wheatear is to not look for one.

A Small Springtime Challenge

This is going to be a slightly self-indulgent post, and little more than a reference library of early-March Rock Pipits. There is a reason though...

Rock Pipits breed along the local coast wherever there are cliffs. The cliffs fizzle out just east of Burton Bradstock, and Rock Pipit is actually quite scarce in the cliffless Cogden & West Bex recording area. However, they are a common enough sight on the clifftop grass and nearby suitable habbo. So I've given myself a modest local challenge: find a spring migrant littoralis (so-called Scandinavian) Rock Pipit among the resident petrosus birds. I have no idea what my chances are, but I am going to keep in mind an encouraging experience from my old East Devon patch, way back in 2009. Like our local cliffs, Beer Head has breeding Rock Pipits. But in the old days I would often find spring gatherings of 10+ birds there; my peak count was 15 on 7th April 2006. Frequently they would be feeding together in a loose flock, and at the time I puzzled whether these could really all be local breeders. Maybe some were indeed migrants? To be frank, I simply could not tell, because plumage-wise they all looked alike. There was absolutely no hint of the distinctive  summer colours of a typical littoralis. That is, until 24th March 2009...

24/3/09. These two digiscoped shots depict the only definite littoralis Rock Pipit I ever saw on Beer Head.

The pinky flush to the throat and upper breast, plus that grey head and diminished underpart streaking are pretty typical of sum-plum littoralis.

So that's what I'm looking for. In the meantime, here are a few I found today. Of at least seven [correction: six!] birds present I managed to photograph four [correction: three!] but all of them looked pretty much the same...

Bird 1

Bird 2 [correction: this is actually bird 1 again, despite being photographed about half a mile away!]

Bird 3 [correction: bird 2!]

Bird 4 [correction: bird 3!]

At present, none shows the slightest hint of littoralis-ness. Possibly because they are all petrosus. But whatever, I shall revisit and try again in due course. Let's see what happens.

The Lone Seawatcher & Other Tales

Up-Channel movement is a big feature of spring migration, and south coast seawatchers no doubt look forward to it each year. Well, those in Kent and Sussex. West Dorset is not quite the same thing. As well as the Channel being rather wide here, Lyme Bay is well off the main track anyway, so birds need a bit of encouragement to come within range. A decent wind can help. This morning's forecast was good. A strong breeze from somewhere a bit E of S. The West Bay shelter beckoned.

By 08:25 my tally included four new species for the #LocalBigYear list: Curlew, Shag, Bonxie and Black-tailed Godwit...

This morning's eBird checklist

To add a little context, I saw just one local Shag last year, and no Blackwits at all.

The first Shag was distant, but instantly recognisable. It's funny, a few miles west, at Seaton, Shag is a common sight. A few pairs breed on the local cliffs, and I've had the occasional three-figure count while seawatching there. But here it's all Cormorants, and Shag is scarce. The second bird was a nice, close adult; I could easily see the yellow gape.

The Black-tailed Godwits tested me somewhat. The perils of being a lone seawatcher...

By fluke I picked them up very early, well to my right. They were incredibly distant, just a speckled smudge which occasionally popped up above the waves. A flock of something. Auks? No, they look too small. Not ducks either. Waders? Yes, they must be. But definitely not Dunlin or similar, which would be invisible that far out. Bigger waders then. But what? There were 20 or so but I was struggling, and even zoomed right up I couldn't get anything on them. But as they came more level with me I began to see wing bars. And considering the range involved, these were very strong wing bars. The penny dropped. Black-tailed Godwits! Dashing flocks of Blackwits are a regular sight on the Axe, and they can certainly hammer along when pressed, like these were. But they are not a regular sight locally. In fact, that flock was only my second record. I would have appreciated a bit of company right then, one or two fellow seawatchers to discuss the ID with and confirm my conclusion, but I'm happy enough with it all the same. I'm fairly sure they're the first I've ever seen while seawatching, certainly since I've lived in the Southwest.

It was great to get some Pintail too (a pretty rare seawatching sight for me) and the early Bonxie. The forecast is promising more of this helpful wind, so I think it will be another early alarm tomorrow.

I am useless at predicting when conditions might be good for nocmig. Sunday night was clear, and I recorded a single Barn Owl, nothing more. When I switched the recorder on last night, conditions felt little different and I was not optimistic. Yet I recorded at least four (probably five) different Oystercatchers and a Curlew! Nice. Here's the best Oyc, condensed from about 75 seconds into 15...

A late sortie yesterday afternoon yielded precious few birds, but there are other things than birds...

Rather him than me. The sea was rough and the wind strong. I wonder where he ended up?

Having gradually come closer and closer, this Hare finally clocks me and freezes behind a handy bit of cover, virtually invisible.

Better than Rabbits

Unanswered Questions

A lot of questions this past week or so...

Around 06:20 this morning I popped outside to retrieve the nocmig recorder and noticed a little group of small gulls heading north. Not a regular sight here. I went back in, donned thick coat and bins, and emerged once more. Fifteen minutes later the movement was over, and I was roughly 200 BHGs to the good, plus 30-odd Common Gulls and my second-ever garden Med Gull. Clearly these were birds which had roosted offshore last night, but why this route today? Was it the northerly wind? Or a regular thing that I've simply never noticed before?

This afternoon, another inland circuit. About 6.5 miles, only a small part of it new to me. Highlight was my fourth pair of Marsh Tits this year. Prior to these I had seen only one Marsh Tit locally. A bit of effort and they seem to be popping up all over the place. Just how many local pairs are there? And how close to home?

Marsh Tit in roadside hedge

At the end of February I added Golden Plover to my #LocalBigYear list. There were 16 in a sea-level field just behind the beach at East Bexington, exactly the same field which held some last year at this time. When I first discovered them (six on 2 March) I assumed it was a one-off, but no, by the 14th there were 36. Is their reappearance this year just a coincidence? Or is the field perhaps a regular stopping-off point for Golden Plover in late winter?

Golden Plover x4 - not exactly obtrusive

I thought there were nine or ten, then a Sparrowhawk flew past and 16 heads poked up for a look. This shot of most of them was taken shortly after.

This time two years ago I was a few short weeks away from taking up nocmig recording, a quite unanticipated development. If someone had asked me to predict what species I might get on a regular basis, I can safely say that Moorhen and Coot would not have been on that list. The notion that gangly rails which normally do everything possible to avoid taking wing might be wafting about over our estate at night simply would not have occurred to me. Well, now I know that they do. And I have a question: Why?

I don't have BWP but, regarding Moorhen, Witherby's Handbook says this: '...is fond of flying about at night for no obvious reason, well up in the air.' And of Coot: '...sometimes flies about at night.'

So there we have it. Even the ornithological experts of the day could not answer that one, and I take my hat off to the authors' restraint. It must have been so tempting to speculate.

Here's a recent Coot, flying about at night because...er...just for the hell of it...

Meteorologically speaking, it is spring. Birdy-wise there is much to anticipate, and probably more unanswered questions. Bring it on.

March Primroses

#LocalBigYear - February

January is an easy month to get excited about. The new start, the blank sheet (in some cases literal, as birders crack open a pristine notebook) and every species an addition to the nascent year-list. January is a hard act to follow...

And so it has sometimes proved in years past, with February a big let-down. But this year has been different. Instead of covering the same ground I did in January, and experiencing the inevitable law of diminishing returns, I ventured inland to areas I have previously given little or no attention. And it has been a revelation. To be fair, my species list hasn't increased hugely (from 89 to 101) but the enjoyment quotient remains pleasingly high.

I could single out a few birds which provided special moments, but it seems a shame to reduce this month to a list of species when other factors contributed just as much to February's highlights as the birds themselves. My main pleasure has come from simply broadening my horizons and trying out a few quiet corners of my local area. Quiet corners where birders rarely go. The usual word is 'underwatched' but I wonder if 'unwatched' might be more appropriate in some cases.

One such area provided me with 130+ Stock Doves and four Little Grebes. No big deal maybe, but Little Grebe was a year tick and the Stock Dove count higher than any recorded in the latest Dorset Bird Report! A new spot for me, made very memorable by two common species. Context is everything...

Little Grebe, this one photographed at West Bexington yesterday

At this rate I might have to start calling myself a birdwatcher rather than birder! But seriously, easing right off the throttle has been very good for me this past couple of years, and I can honestly say I am enjoying my birding at least as much as I ever have.

I've had the nocmig kit out on 14 nights since the 6th, and at the moment there are three species on my nocmig list which have yet to feature in any other way: Barn Owl, Curlew and Oystercatcher. In fact Oystercatchers have flown over, calling, on four nights so far. Where are they off to? Fascinating.

In a month's time there should be one or two summer migrants on the #LocalBigYear list, and last year there was a bonus Laughing Gull too. Also in March 2021, Long-tailed Duck, Eider and Pochard. I've always considered March one of the better months for wildfowl goodies, so here's hoping. But as for vagrants, well...

Photogenic Stonechats are a feature of every month, thankfully.

A Dose of Meds

I do bang on about gulls quite a lot, don't I? I can't help it; they have the capacity to surprise and delight like no other group of birds I can think of. The other day I was chatting with Mike, one of the Axe patch birders, and he reminded me of that day two years ago when Mediterranean Gulls invaded the Axe. I had a feeling it was about now, but in fact it was January 29th. From a previous peak Med Gull count of 30-odd, the Axe record jumped to a staggering 123, completely out of the blue. I was fortunate enough to witness it, and of course wrote a blog post to celebrate the occasion. So far this winter on the Axe I've had just the odd Med Gull here and there, but this afternoon there were four. Dazzling sunshine made for low ISO and [relatively] high shutter speeds, so here are all of them...

2nd-winter

2nd-summer, more or less

Adult

1st-winter (on the left-hand end of the line)

Even now, after many thousands over many years, each Med Gull winkled from a flock of BHGs still feels like a precious little nugget. Or, on the rare occasion I've seen them in big numbers, the joy is in the sheer spectacle. Like that time last October when loads flew past me at West Bay, including a sample count of 100 in nine minutes. I wrote a blog about that too.

Not Quite Scilly would be a lot poorer without gulls.