Three Days

2023 birding has been great, but in three days it will all be over. Birders love January 1st. A fresh start, new plans, gym membership. But always there is first a little look back...

By sticking mainly to a pair of very local patches this year I did learn a lot of useful, birdy things about the Bridport and West Bay area, and had a few nice surprises, but by early autumn was more than ready for a change of scenery. My first visit to Cogden in August was like a lungful of fresh air. Oh, the easy solitude - despite West Dorset's swarming summer-season masses. The calm pleasure of it all was almost a spiritual thing, and I knew that my 2023 dabble at patch-working was over. In the end, Cogden produced some of my most memorable moments of the year...

One of maybe six Grey Phalaropes, including three in one visit.

After two in 2020, this was my third Cogden Wryneck, and the best performer.

A little influx of Ring Ouzels along the south coast on October 9th included these three at Cogden in the afternoon, following four in the morning.

West Bay did try very hard though, and will still be my seawatching venue of choice. How could it not be? At least four Leach's Petrels, my first Lyme Bay Sooty Shearwater for yonks, two Pom Skuas, 35+ Arctic Skuas, and the ludicrously extravagant gift of a close-in Great Shearwater...

If I were forced to chose a Bird of the Year, this is it. Great Shearwater, West Bay, September 20th.

Along with that singleton, there was also the incredible sight of some 30 large shearwaters - of which three were definitely Great - passing distantly offshore on October 13th. A sign of the times, perhaps?

One of West Bay's other attractions lies just inland of the harbour. The tiny Brit estuary can hardly be described as a bird magnet, and typically might give you little more than a handful of Mallards and Herring Gulls, but ju-u-u-st occasionally does better...

It took a while, but this August Garganey was probably my first decent find of the year.

My first West Bay Caspian Gull. Very, very welcome.

Waders are always at a premium locally, especially on the deck. I've certainly never put so much effort into papping a Redshank!

I already knew that vis-migging at West Bay's West Cliff can be very rewarding, and not just in terms of birds passing overhead, but was still a bit surprised to see a Cirl Bunting there. Nicely picked up by Tom Brereton...

West Dorset Cirl Bunting records are certainly on the up right now. Good news for a change.

I am normally pretty good at passing on bird news, and have rarely needed to keep anything hush-hush, but when word reached me of a Grey Phalarope at a slightly awkward site, I had no qualms about being rather selfish for once. As a consequence I enjoyed one of the best hour's birding ever. I just sat there and soaked it up...

October 8th - Grey Phalarope in late-afternoon sunshine.

2024 will be the same, but different. The same local focus, but no listing, and absolutely no boundaries. My aim will be simply to enjoy whatever comes along. The last few years have shown me just how exciting the birding can be in this joyously underwatched corner of Dorset, so I am quietly confident of a few thrills. But such moments are rare, and I look forward once again to finding ways to glean interest and fascination from the more everyday birds, to getting distracted by plants and insects, and to smiling a lot.

Thanks to all NQS readers, and I wish you too a smiley 2024.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

So, the moth trap has been out. I'm pretty sure it hasn't previously seen any action in December, but a vague Met Office mention of incoming air from 'the Tropics' tempted me. Friday night: zero moths; Saturday night: five moths...

Angle Shades is always welcome. Migrant? I really don't know.

A furry little December Moth, enjoying its NQS debut. There were two of these.

The other two moths were Epiphyas postvittana, or Light Brown Apple Moth; a familiar, everyday micro.

No longer having a Twitter account means I am completely out of the loop, moth news-wise, and have no idea whether migrants have been dropping in from warm parts afar. Nevertheless, I'll put the trap out again tonight. I guess there might be a chance.

I'm currently deep into some very overdue DIY at home, and a recent garage deck-clearing operation to make some work space saw me stow all my mothy paraphernalia until next season. It hadn't seen any use for several weeks, so I've surprised myself somewhat by getting it out again. And doing so has got me thinking about how my second - but first full - year of mothing went. Pretty well, I reckon. Not the migrant-fest of 2022, but still some cracking moths, including a few Dorset scarcities (rarities?) like Tissue and Royal Mantle, as well as my first Clifden Nonpareils, Lime Hawk-moth, etc. I suppose any normal blog would do a mothy review of the year, but I don't think that will happen here. There was a time when I kept a careful tally of the number of species recorded, how many were new for the garden and/or year...but, well, I kind of let it slip.

Looking forward to next year, hopefully there will still be lots of trap deployment, but maybe a more cherry-picking approach to its contents. I foresee a lot less counting.

Bird-wise, yesterday's postal delivery gave me good reason to do a bit of 'looking back'...

256 enormous pages.

Back in the day, the arrival of a shiny new county bird report was a big deal for me. At that time it would have been the London Bird Report. Obviously I would check for entries with the initials GMH attached - in the early years there were quite a few of those - and review any sections I had written. Then I would pretty much devour it from cover to cover. Forty years on, everything is a bit more low-key. Don't get me wrong - the 2022 Dorset Bird Report is an amazing publication. Clearly, a load of hard work went into the production of this tome, but none of it was mine. My name appears occasionally (Barred Warbler and Leach's Petrel records for example) but my contribution was otherwise minimal. I think even my 2022 records were automatically picked up from eBird entries.

Impressed as I am with this fine volume, I shan't be sitting down to read it from cover to cover. I shall browse and dabble, no doubt raising a surprised eyebrow from time to time or sighing at some depressing statistic of loss. Unlike my younger self, I no longer feel involved in the county-level birding scene, but more an outsider looking in. Interested, but not invested.

Looking forward, birding in 2024 will undoubtedly revert to a boundary-free approach. It will be 99% local, but no 'patch' as such, or at least nothing I could in good conscience call a patch.

Casting an eye over what I've written here, I realise some of it reads a bit like something from a 'review of the year' post. That's not intentional, but I wonder if I'm subconsciously wishing the calendar forward two weeks!

Losing It

'Take a seat, Mr Haig.'

I sat.

Next, a number of questions, which I answered as honestly and helpfully as I could.

Then, leaning forward: 'Okay, before we can carry out the test I just need to take a look...'

A few seconds later: 'Well...' and a sigh of disappointment.

Apparently my right eardrum was invisible, completely hidden by a wall of wax. The left side was partially blocked too. No hearing test today. I promised to get them sorted out asap, and rebooked.

A week's dosing with the excellently named Earol was followed by a short but satisfying micro-suction session at a back-alley clinic in town. The chirpy earwax removal chap took great delight in showing me the whopping nuggets of gloop thus extracted.

A few days later: 'Take a seat, Mr Haig.'

A much happier audiologist positively gushed at the sight of my straight, wide, apparently healthy - and now empty - ear canals.

'Wonderful! Wonderful! What a pair of beauties!'

The hearing test was straightforward enough. You wear headphones and listen for sounds, pressing the button on a hand-held pad whenever you hear one. I was occasionally fooled by the faint throb of a drill in a neighbouring property under renovation, but I doubt it made a lot of difference to the result. The result? Hmmm, yes. The result...

My audiogram - explanation below

In the chart above, the black lines represent my hearing thresholds for both ears at various frequencies, where O = right ear and X = left. The blue and red lines are nicked from a 2021 paper in The Lancet medical journal, and represent mean thresholds for Japanese men tested in a massive study involving thousands of participants. Blue = men in the age bracket 30-39; red = age 65-69.

According to the audiologist I saw my hearing is fairly typical of someone my age, and nothing to worry about. He reckoned that hearing aids were unnecessary. Back home I did a bit of googling and came across the Lancet paper. I am not quite in the 65-69 bracket yet, but already I seem to be slightly more deaf than a lot of Japanese blokes older than me. The good news is that I can hear speech okay, most of which registers in the lower frequencies. However, for me the higher frequencies are fading all too rapidly. The audiogram has frequency (in Hz) along the bottom axis and decibels up the side. A lot of birds - like Redwing and Firecrest, say - register at around 7-8000 Hz, which is pretty inconsiderate of them. But there is even worse news...

The decibel scale is not linear; it is logarithmic. As I understand it, what this means in practice is that an increase of ten decibels basically doubles the loudness of a sound. In other words, the ear perceives 30 decibels as twice the loudness of 20 decibels, and 40 decibels as twice the loudness of 30, and so on. Which means - looking at the audiogram above - that the faint 10-decibel Redwing call which the average 35 year-old Japanese birder can just about hear needs to be roughly THIRTY-TWO times as loud before my left ear can detect it.

Strewth!

It would be easy to see this in a very negative light, but I am grimly hanging on to my 'late middle-age' status while I still can. After moaning about one or more of the joyous delights that come with decrepitude, an elderly friend is fond of shaking his head and saying, 'Don't get old, Gavin.' To be honest though, I'll happily take that over the alternative.

This and That...

I seem to have embraced the sentiments of the previous post's title a bit too zealously, and have done virtually no birding in the fortnight since. Even so, there is a ton of stuff to blog about. Here is some of it...

First, a nice bit of good news. Almost three years ago I was fortunate enough to get this photo...

Female Cirl Bunting (foreground) and Yellowhammer, West Bexington, January 2021.

Several weeks back I had an email from Ed Stubbs at Birdwatch magazine, asking if they might use the image in an upcoming article. And if you turn to page 38 of the December edition, there it is, in an inspirational piece about winter bunting flocks. As well as the obvious fame bestowed by such exposure, there was fortune too, and I am fifteen quid to the good.

In an earlier edition of the same magazine (November? October?) was a thought-provoking opinion piece by Matt Phelps, in which he bemoaned the negative tone that pervades much of birdy Twitter. I've recycled the relevant Birdwatch mag but my memory tells me this was the gist of it: Matt suggested that the depressing tendency of 'older' birders to dwell on the glory days of yore - when Tree Sparrow flocks were a driving hazard and every suburban garden was carpeted in Turtle Doves - is essentially a discouragement to younger folk taking up the conservation cause, and that we should focus more on the success stories.

I cannot help wondering if Matt has underestimated the ability of youthful enthusiasm to triumph over adversity. I am sure that most twenty-somethings regard the doom-mongering utterances of grumpy has-beens as exactly that. And rightly so. I mean, what do they know? Okay, so there might well have been Redstarts and Wood Warblers bursting from every leafy glade fifty years ago, but there were virtually no breeding Peregrines in the whole of southern England. But look at them now! So put that in your wrinkly old pipe and smoke it, Mr Fart.

That latter fact was brought home to me by some other recent reading material...

Cover image nicked from web, but I do have the book and have just finished reading it.

Although the name rang a bell, I think Kenneth Allsop was just before my time. His star rose principally in the '60s, as a journalist and TV presenter mainly of current affairs, but his first book (Adventure Lit Their Star - published 1949) was about Britain's first breeding Little Ringed Plovers. Kenneth Allsop was a birder. For the last three years of his life he resided at West Milton Mill, just down the road from where I live, and was a vigorous environmental campaigner. Prior to reading this book I had no idea he was largely responsible for the preservation of Powerstock Common's oak woodland. The Forestry Commission were already in the process of felling it for conifer planting when Kenneth Allsop and a couple of friends intervened. The book cover features nearby Eggardon Hill, an area which in the early '70s was being prospected for oil and gas. I find it hard to believe that 120ft drilling rigs were blotting the landscape of the lovely West Dorset AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) back then, but apparently so, and KA was instrumental in galvanising local opposition.

The book is about those final years, and how he used his various public platforms (including the BBC and Sunday Times) to turn a spotlight on individuals, companies and organisations wreaking - or allowing - environmental havoc. It is also about the resistance and opposition he faced, and about the almost inevitable emasculation of his influential voice. Kenneth Allsop took his own life in May 1973. He was more than ten years younger than I am now. He was not a saint, but I know two people who worked for him at that time, and both have only fond memories and kind words.

The book is both inspiring and depressing. Plenty that KA railed against is as much an issue today as it was then, but there have also been many environmental battles fought and won in the last fifty years. I don't think Matt Phelps need worry too much. Clearly there are always willing combatants, and the grumpy old moaners aren't going to change that.

Winding Down

As the year winds down, so do I. Winter is my least favourite season, and with advancing age seems ever longer and more unrelenting. I am definitely not built for it.

Winter isn't even here yet, and look, already I am moaning about it. You would think I might use the remaining six weeks of the year to seek out those chilly-season specialities currently missing from my Patchwork Challenge list, but I really cannot be bothered. Instead I shall just plod about as per usual, wherever the mood takes me. I'm not going to add to the PWC 2023 tally by visiting Cogden or West Bex but have been to both in the last few days...

The West Bexington Mere is in fine fettle right now, and pulling in the gulls.

On this particular occasion the pre-roost Med Gull count reached 160 on the Mere, though more were on the sea. I still haven't quite got used to such abundance.

Storm Ciarán has ripped a significant breach in the shingle bank at Cogden, and dumped a heap of pebbles on the beach flora.

We had our granddaughter Gracie today, and while she took an afternoon nap I popped down to West Bay to see if any Black Redstarts had taken advantage of the welcome break in south-westerlies to visit the beach. And yes, three had. At the time I wasn't sure how many of them I'd managed to photograph, but it turned out that I had caught them all...

Black Redstart #1. Note split fringe in shortest right-hand tertial.

Black Redstart #2. Photographed in the act of heading E towards the harbour with #1.

Black Redstart #3. This one remained on the rocks just W of the West Pier throughout.

Black Redstarts were a fixture in West Bay last winter, with at least four birds involved, including a gorgeous male. Three female types today was a promising sign that this winter too will be rewarding in that regard. I hope so.

Black Redstart #1 or #2 on the West Pier wall, prior to heading off towards the harbour.

Black Redstart #3 again.

Another winter feature of West Bay is the small population of Rock Pipits. Today I counted 15, all but one in the West Pier area. Knowing that Mark Cutts is engaged in a colour-ringing programme on Portland, in association with the Bird Observatory, I eagerly checked each one for a black plastic ring. Or any ring actually. Predictably, nothing.

I am confident that some of these Rock Pipits will be littoralis birds (the migratory, so-called Scandinavian Rock Pipit) but will not be getting too obsessed with them this winter.

There was just a single Rock Pipit on the wet field inland of Rise restaurant this afternoon, and from some angles its supercilium was quite striking. Could well be littoralis...

The same Rock Pipit.

A recent feature of West Bay winters has been Purple Sandpiper, with up to four at the start of the year. I couldn't find any today though, despite the West Pier rocks looking superb with the tide out. Actually the low tide encouraged me to photograph the harbour for posterity...

The inland half of West Bay harbour at low tide, from part-way along its western side. The wide-angle shot makes it look bigger than it is The swollen River Brit gushing into it mid-shot.

And the seaward half, ditto.

Birding-wise the only plan I have for 2024 is to have no plan. Next year I'll be back to pottering around the local area; no targets, no goals, no boundaries, maybe a silly project or two as the fancy takes me.

Next year? I think I've already started.

Leach's Central

The forecast said SSW gusting to 40-odd mph from the early hours, plus loads of rain. A seawatch this morning was inevitable.

I arrived at 07:07 and, as per usual, the first things moving were ex-roost gulls, mostly Black-headed. Exactly eight minutes in I picked up a small, dark bird amongst the gulls, very close inshore but off to my right. It was a Leach's Petrel. I expected it to head east past me and provide some crippling views, but it failed to make any headway and ended up drifting slowly away west instead. I also expected it to be the first of a few, but it was the first of one. The rest of the seawatch was dire: 21 Med Gulls, four Dunlin together and singles of Red-throated Diver and Gannet. I am almost desperate enough to include the probable Common Scoter, but not quite. By 09:00 I'd had enough.

I really was not surprised to see another Leach's Petrel, but honestly...

What is it about West Bay?!

I've said it before, but will repeat here for context: in all my years of seawatching from Seaton I saw just two Leach's Petrels, both on the same stormy November morning in 2005. Up until Sunday, even Steve had only recorded the species once on a Seaton seawatch (see here). West Bay has been way more productive:

• 2nd November 2022: 10+ Leach's Petrels (probably 14 or 15).
• 8th November 2022: 3
• 24th November 2022: 1
• 3rd January 2023: 1
• 1st November 2023: 2+ (a third petrel sp was almost certainly Leach's too)
• 8th November 2023: 1

Based on my previous Lyme Bay seawatching experiences at Seaton, a total of 18+ Leach's Petrels across six dates in just over a year is nothing short of amazing. I'm not sure what West Bay's secret is, but look forward to seeing if it continues to be as generous. I hope so.

View from the West Bay shelter this morning. Rain and murk meant visibility was rarely more than about 400m, so it was bins only for most of the time. Although this photo suggests that only a thin sliver of sea is available for inspection, the yellow circle illustrates the field of view of my 10x32s. Today's Leach's was just over those rocks to the right.

 

Taken with 500mm zoom, which I think is roughly equivalent to 10x magnification. Sadly no birds to look at here, but then there rarely were.

Elsewhere in West Bay...

Looks good for sinensis Cormorant.

First Purple Sandpiper of the autumn clearly visible in this photo. Vainly it sought sanctuary on the West Pier rocks and the West Beach rocks, but eventually I lost it. Probably flew back to Lyme Regis in disgust.

Purple Sand heading for another soaking on the West Beach rocks. Amazingly the Axe patch has never recorded Purple Sandpiper, so this photo is a cut-out-and-keep search image for Seaton birders.

West Pier froth.

Rock Pipit, pipitting on a rock.

Whodunnit?

I had to get on with some proper work today. Catching up after a load of rough weather is normally a bit of a slog, but today was better than usual because of something that happened before work...

It was just a short visit to West Bay. Maybe 20 minutes around the seafront - where I saw almost nothing - followed by a quick look at the Melplash Showground flood. Not much of a flood now though, rather a soggy field with big puddles. Still, there were a few gulls. And it was here that I saw what is actually a new West Bay bird for me, though it took me a day of periodic pondering to feel happy with it.

So this post is a kind of whodunnit? As you read through the clues, see how quickly you can work out what the bird is.

So, there I am by the showground entrance, coffee perched on a handy wall while I scan the gulls with bins. I'm guessing there were about 20-30 Herring Gulls and 40-odd Black-headed Gulls scattered around, along with four Med Gulls, two of which were first-winters. Since the field flooded I've counted up to 24 Med Gulls at a time but so far no first-winters, so I wouldn't mind a photo or two. I reach down to unclip the flap of my camera bag. Unfortunately, at that very moment the gulls flush.

Dog walkers normally enter through the gate and head right, which is away from most of the gulls. Eventually they may circle around to the far side of the floodwater, behind the gulls. Either way, any gull flush caused by dog walkers - even when dogs off the lead run into the wettest areas, right among the birds - is partial, beginning at the periphery. Normally birds flush in a falling-dominoes kind of fashion, and not too panicky. They just fly out of harm's way, frequently dropping back down somewhere they feel safer. This flush is not like that. It is instant and total. Also, apart from the sudden rush of wings, virtually silent.

I glance quickly around the field, but already know it isn't going to be a dog. So I look up, expecting a Peregrine maybe. Sure enough, there is a bird of prey gliding left over the flood, but it is totally the wrong shape. Surely a mere Sparrowhawk didn't cause that panic?

The bird is gliding quite rapidly south with wings half closed. Too distant to get much detail on it, but I am pretty sure the tail is rounded. It is quickly losing height, though heading away towards the coast. Suddenly it turns, quite low now, and doubles back, landing on the far end of a stone wall that runs east to west, a bit left of my position...

Yellow blob = me; white dot = bird

Just before alighting on the wall, four or five wingbeats. They are ridiculously slow wingbeats, like flapping in slow-motion, and not the slightest bit Sparrowhawk-like. At the range involved (around 180-190 metres according to Google Maps) I am struggling to get a feel for the bird's size, but it certainly doesn't look huge. Obviously I am thinking now of something other than Sparrowhawk! It is basically brown, though too far away to make out feather detail. Try as I might, not even a hint of a supercilium.

How I wish I had decided about two minutes earlier to photograph those Med Gulls. Now I really must get that camera out. But before I can even switch the thing on, the bird is gone. With my naked eye I see it leave the wall, but cannot pick it up again with bins. So presumably it is away low and out of view, perhaps along the river.

Looking up towards West Cliff, I spy a figure at the vismig watchpoint. A quick heads-up phonecall to Tom, and he guesses what I've seen as soon as I describe the flush. In fact, less than 20 minutes earlier he had a possible/probable flying east over Bridport. After our chat I scan the flood once again. Apart from a Pied Wag it is utterly birdless.

So, yes, I have spent a pleasant day on autopilot, replaying this morning's events over and over again. And I have added Goshawk to my West Bay list, presumably a juvenile male.