Oxon Space-Time Vortex

Just what is going on in Oxon? First the unseasonal grey phalarope at Farmoor, now it's a January Temminck's stint at Rushy Common and a common whitethroat at Cuddesdon. There is clearly some kind of time warp space vortex thingy going on here which is sucking up wintering birds from sunny Africa and dumping them in grey (but remarkably mild) Oxon.

I seem to go through fits and starts when it comes to twitching county birds that I don't need for my county list. Last year I was remarkably lazy about going for anything but this year I've already gone for a phalarope and a stint just in one week. Mind you, given that they are both in January that would make them Mega rares, if only that sort of thing counted on ones various lists. Now there's a thought: life-listing species by month - it could add a whole new dimension to listing.

Anyway, I manage to persuade my five year old son that he'd be happy sitting in the car playing with his Nintendo DS whilst I made a minor "detour" to Rushy Common for the Temminck's en route from Jericho to Summertown to do the weekly shop. Fortunately the handful of birders peering through the hedge just north of the Rushy Common car park gave me a clue as to where to look and it was all remarkably quick and easy. Mind you, I'm used to seeing Temminck's on Port Meadow where they show down to perhaps 10 or 20 yards, not the 100 yards distance of this bird - not the best of views.

Spot the stint ... (it's in there, honest!)

...any better?

It was quite a feat getting even this grotty digiscoped record shot, taken through a hedge, into what little light there was with the highly reflective water either side of it to mess up the metering. I cranked up the exposure three notches in the end to compensate.

Now if there is a space-time wormhole vortex between us and African (and let's face it, it's the only logical explanation) then let's hope that it brings us something really good that is indigenous to African rather than stuff that we might normally expect anyway just not at this time of year. Now wouldn't that be something!

Farmoor Phalarope

An unseasonal grey phalarope was found yesterday at the end of the day at Farmoor by Phil Chapman. When it was reported as still present this morning I thought that I would go and pay my respects to this dainty wader. They are remarkably hard to photograph as they are forever moving around but with the trusty superzoom I managed a few shots in rather poor light and a surprisingly chilly wind in the pleasant company of Badger and the Paranoid Birder. The great northern diver was also still about which I'd not caught up with until today.

Some oversharpened grey phalarope shots (click to enlarge)

Doing the Hampshire Mega Double

As I keep asserting, and despite recent evidence to the contrary from this blog, I'm not a great twitcher . However, on the back of what had been a rather tiring period of Christmas festivities and then some tiring Cornwall decorating, followed by some intensive work (yes I do occasionally do some) preparing for a meeting this week between my business partner and our main client, I decided that I needed a bit of a treat as a reward for all my efforts. What could be better than a long and tiring day down in Hampshire, I thought to myself! The avian carrot dangling in front of me was made up of two Mega's: a dark-eyed junco in the New Forest and also a Spanish sparrow nearby at Calshot. This twitch met all my twitching requirements, being within two hour's travel and being well established - the junco for a couple of weeks and the sparrow had apparently even been around long enough to breed a mongrel hybrid so was probably set up there for life! To top it all off I even agreed to pop into Ikea in Southampton to pick up some stuff that we still needed for the Cornwall cottage so I could even score some brownie points on the trip!

I didn't feel that a particularly early start was called for and set off at around 8:20 arriving at around 10 am at the Hawkhill Inclosure in the New Forest. I realised that I'd actually been there before a couple of years ago though that time I'd not actually wandered around at all but had merely stopped by the roadside for a tree pipit sighting. The main arena of action was a large clearing between two coniferous woods. The chief areas of focus in the clearing were two patches of fallen trees on which the bird would occasionally perch and so tactics consisted of waiting by one of them for the bird to show. If it showed at the other patch then there was a mad dash over to view it before it flew off. Whilst we were waiting there were plenty of crossbills zipping about to look at, a few woodlarks were knocking about, one flying off quite low over our heads and a flock of five redpolls were also an interesting diversion. Whilst there I also met a fellow Oxon birder (whose name I unfortunately don't know) and also Lee Evans who was in good spirits having seen the sparrow earlier on. The bird itself proved to be highly mobile and whilst I saw it on three occasions over the two hours that I was there, I struggled to take any decent photos of it. The best showing was when it was down on the deck for several minutes about 10 metres from where we were all standing though it was partially obscured most of the time even then as my photos will testify. It was nice to see this American vagrant on this side of the pond (I'd seen several in American when I was last over there) though the views were frustratingly brief.

The best I could come up with on the
photographic front for the junco!

..and my crossbill photos weren't much better

Next it was on to Calshot for the Spanish sparrow where I arrived at around 1pm. Whilst some birders had parked (safely) quite close to the action, I decided to park down in the village where there was ample parking which was free at this time of year. A few minute walk back up the road found a crowd of about fifty birders mostly lined up overlooking a patch of birdless lawn. It turned out that the target hadn't been seen in over an hour and people were starting to look rather disconsolate. I joined them and wondered whether I should have gone for the sparrow first. The area was rather hard to bird: whilst loud sparrow chirping sound could be heard from behind the houses there was no way they could be seen - it appeared that one had to wait for the sparrows to come out and hang about in the surrounding hedges instead. After a very quiet hour, a few sparrows started appearing and one got the feeling that things were moving a little more. Half an hour later and the call went up that someone had the bird in a dense tangle of vegetation at the far end of the lawn so we all hurried round there. The bird was so deeply buried in the bushes that even with someone describing where it was it took several minutes before I actually picked it out, it's very white cheeks giving it away. Fortunately the bird stayed put for about twenty minutes, preening away so everyone was able at least to see it through various scopes that were set up though the views were never very satisfactory. It was a bit like the Question of Sport "guess the sportsman" (I haven't watched this programme for years so don't know whether they still do this section) where they show tantalising glimpses of someone from which you must piece together who it is: one could see only bits of the bird at a time though never all of it, in all its glory. Whilst there I met fellow Oxon birder Jeremy Dexter for whom Wednesday is his regular day off for birding - he'd been mopping up all the local rarities in Hampshire as well. We chatted briefly and then once I'd got my fill of sparrow glimpses I headed off back to the car.

The scrum of birders all trying to pick out the
deeply-buried sparrow from the undergrowth

Some nice close-up video of the sparrow, shame it was so obscured.

I had been contemplating nipping in at the ring-billed gull at Gosport whilst I was in the neighbourhood but it was getting rather late so I set the Sat Nav app for Ikea and headed off for a spot of shopping. Fortunately I managed to get everything on my list before headed back up to Oxford, arriving home at around 6:30 pm, tired but pleased with a day out in the sunshine getting brief glimpses of a couple of megas.

Least readers of this blog feel too frustrated at my poor photographic attempts, here's what both birds actually looked like, courtesy of Jason "Badger" Coppock. There's also a rather nice video someone else took giving a feel for the twitch itself here

Here's what proper views look like, (c) Jason Coppock

Stormy December Cornwall

Firstly, Happy New Year to all my readers. Regular readers may already have figured out that whilst I'm down in Cornwall I do daily updates on my Pendeen Birding blog. When back, I compile all the updates into a single Gnome blog entry, which is presented below.

Tuesday 27th December

I was due back down to Cornwall again for a final decorating push before the cottage was to be inspected at the start of the New Year. Having survived Christmas with the various rellies I was looking forward to getting back to my beloved Penwith peninsula to clear my head in the fresh air and to catch up with some great Cornish birding.

As usual I had a look to see if there was anything interesting to stop in on en route but the best I could come up with was a Richardson's Canada goose of unknown origin in Somerset. There were also a few birds that I wanted to see in Cornwall itself, namely a surf scoter off Jubilee Pool and a ring-billed gull at Tolcarne beach. In the event I didn't set off from Oxford until 10am, later than I intended, so given the paucity of daylight I decided not to bother with the goose but instead to head straight to Cornwall. Despite the roads being a bit busy with traffic I made it from Oxford to Penzance in a record breaking 4 hours and that's without going unduly fast. I was just parking up by Jubilee Pool to have a crack at the surf scoter when an RBA text came through that the ring-billed gull had been seen at Tolcarne early afternoon so I decided to head down there instead. There, despite scouring all the gulls the best that I could come up with were a couple of adult Med. gulls and a couple of eider (one female and what I presumed was a first winter male) along with a curlew, an oystercatcher, a little egret and the usual gull suspects.

Digiscoped shot of one of the Tolcarne Med. gulls

With not much light left I couldn't hang around too long but instead headed back to Jubilee Pool where I passed the rest of the time until dark scouring the sea. The incoming breeze seemed to have brought in quite a few sea birds with at least 20 kittiwakes, a great skua, a few gannets and what was a possible adult Sabine's gull all out in the bay. On the sea itself viewing conditions were not at all easy with the choppy sea ensuring that the birds were only visibile for brief moments at a time but I managed to find a Slavonian grebe over towards Long Rock, at least four great nothern divers dotted around the bay and about twenty common scoter and the surf scoter (a brief view) off Jubilee Pool itself.

To round things off on the way to Pendeen I caught a glimpse of a barn owl in the headlights on the road to Newbridge. It has been nice to get back to some Cornish birding and I was looking forward to getting in some more before the rest of the family joined me in a couple of days.

Wednesday 28th December
Today I woke up rather early so decided to get on with my renovation tasks as soon as possible in order to give me more birding time with the limited amount of daylight available. Accordingly at around 9:30 I felt that I'd earned a decent break and so set off for Mounts Bay once more where I spent more time unsuccessfully looking for the ring-billed gull in the Tolcarne/Wherry area and also the surf scoter at Jubilee Pool. The scoter flock was rather mobile this morning thanks to a couple of gigs out on the much calmer sea. With the wind a strong westerly today, the Bay was rather sheltered and calm, certainly a lot flatter than yesterday's choppy conditions. In flight one was able to get a better idea of the large scoter numbers with the flock numbering perhaps about 60 birds. Despite spending a fair bit of time looking for the surfie I wasn't able to pick it out today and so didn't improve on my brief views from yesterday. There were at least five great northern divers around the bay today and someone else reported the Slav grebe again.

I also popped over to Marazion for a while on the strength of a text from Dave Parker informing me that the water pipit was still about on the beach. I must admit that I'm not that confident with separating water and rock pipit in winter plumage and spent some time photographing what subsequently turned out to be a rather grey rock pipit (thanks to Dave Parker for putting me straight on that).

This rock pipit allowed quite close approach
so I was able to get some shots off with the Canon superzoom.

After a while I'd had enough of searching through distant sea duck flocks and loafing gulls and headed back to base where I passed a productive few hours sanding and painting some old tables. Eventually as the light was starting to fade I felt that I needed another break and so decided to nip over to Sennen where yesterday a near-adult Iceland gull had been reported (I'm guessing by Martin Elliot) in the field opposite the Post Office. I wasn't really holding out too much hope but I thought that I would go and take a look anyway. I arrived to find a tractor ploughing in the field in question and all the gulls flying around all over the place. I decided to wait for them to settle and watched them as they swirled around. Some of them started to head off towards Sennen Cove and as they did so they flew quite low so that I was able to get a good look at them as they passed. Suddenly there was the Iceland gull, looking very obviously pale with striking white primaries and I could make out some brown feathers in the surrounding otherwise-grey wing which marked it out as not yet fully adult. I watched it as it flew towards the Cove and then decided to head over there to see if I could relocate it. Down by the harbour there were not many gulls around: a few were trying to loaf on the Cowloe though the very strong winds were making that rather hard. I watched the waves roaring into shore for a while and managed to pick out a great northern diver quite close in over towards the beach. It soon got too dark to see so I headed back home for something to eat and the prospect of some more work this evening.

This photo doesn't really do justice to the rather
stormy conditions in the Cove.

Thursday 29th December

The wind has been consistently westerly and rather strong for a couple of days now which has meant that the only relatively sheltered place is over on the Mounts Bay side of the peninsula. Therefore, for a third day running I made my way over there. Given that the rest of the family as well as some relatives were all descending on the cottage later this afternoon, I decided that I would head out more or less first thing and have a good birding session before returning to tidy up the cottage, do a bit more renovating and await the arrival of the various guests.

I started off once more at Jubilee Pool in the company of Linton Proctor, Paul St. Pierre and another local though despite our collective efforts we weren't able to find the surf scoter this morning. There were a couple of great northern divers in the bay, the large flock of common scoter as well as an unusual great crested grebe. Next it was over to Marazion for another look for the water pipit. There I met with Dave Parker, sporting a beard which I'd not seen on him before (perhaps his winter plumage?). He'd not seen the pipit that morning by the main road so I decided to walk over to Marazion to see if I could turn it up. Over behind the Godolphin hotel there were loads of pied wagtails, a few rock pipits, some loafing gulls, a flock of twenty odd turnstone, a few oystercatchers and a single bar-tailed godwit. On the way back, by the Red River mouth I found the water pipit. When you see the genuine article there is no doubt at all as to the ID which made me wonder why I'd struggled yesterday. The very white underparts with clean streaking were very striking as was the paler, more mid-brown unstreaked back colour and strong supercilium and moustachial stripe. I suppose it's the old birders adage: if you only think you've got an ID then you haven't. There's no substitute for seeing stuff for getting it straight in your mind and I feel much more confident about water pipits now.

After that it was back to Tolcarne beach where I met Linton again and also Tony Mills though he didn't stay long. Another local turned up who'd apparently seen a little auk or two in St. Ives bay that morning. We hung around for a while to see if the ring-billed gull would turn up though it never did. There were three Med. gulls (2 adults and a 2nd winter) and a couple of common gulls knocking about, one of which was sporting a nice ring around it's bill. Whilst I'm told the original sighting is no doubt sound, one can't help but wonder whether some of the subsequent reports might have been of this bird instead.

The "ring-billed" common gull...

..and some other Tolcarne birds, snapped on the
superzoom whilst waiting for the gull to turn up.
Unfortunately I didn't turn down the exposure enough to
compensate for shooting white birds so they're somewhat
burnt out in places.

A final stop off at Jubilee Pool failed to turn up the surfie, so it was off to Tesco's for some shopping and then back to base to get ready for the arrival of the guests. Once I'd got home of course the surf scoter was reported again as showing distantly - grrrr!

I don't know what birding opportunities I'll have from now on with the guests and family around - we'll have to wait and see.

Friday 30th December

Rather foul weather today with fog in Pendeen & rain for much of the day though the forecast strong winds didn't materialise. I only managed to snatch about twenty minutes birding today down at Jubilee Pool where once again I failed to see the surf scoter despite much calmer sea conditions. This bird is becoming a bit of an issue for me. I reckon I got the briefest of views of it the first day that I was down here but I've now subsequently spent so long not seeing it that I'm starting to doubt my original sighting and would really like a decent view of it. Once again not sure how much birding I'll be able to do tomorrow though I hope that I can snatch at least a brief session.

Here's a gratuitous rock pipit photo

Saturday 31st December

Another very misty and drizzly day today. We started off with some drama when we realised that we'd run out of heating oil for the cottage so we had to make a dash down to the local supplier at St. Just in order to buy some drums of oil to tide us over until they resumed deliveries in the New Year. We passed a very challenging hour or so trying to poor the oil from the cannisters into the tank in windy conditions without getting kerosene all over ourselves.

After some more cottage work in the morning, given the weather it was decided that the afternoon outing would be a shopping trip to Penzance for those who were interested. I dropped the shoppers off and after nipping in to pick up a travel cot for the cottage, with an hour and a half until I was due to pick them up again I made my way back to Jubilee Pool for yet another session there. I'm really starting to know this area quite well now: I know that the common scoter flock is generally right over to the right of the large black and red pole, that there's usually one female common scoter who hangs around on her own around there, that there are a couple of great northern divers dotted around the bay between the pole and the Mount and I'd more or less figured out from speaking to other birders that the surf scoter was generally on it's own in the distance over towards the Mount. Accordingly I spent most of my time scannning in the this area and after a moderate amount of time I managed to pick it out in the distance - not the best of views but it was good to get another sighting of it. I also managed to pick out an arctic skua which was chasing the gulls. The mist would periodically move in so that one could not see far enough for the surfie and when this happened I spent time looking at the birds along the shoreline: there were rock pipits, a few purple sandpipers, a dozen or so turnstones and an oystercatcher to keep me amused. Finally at around 4 pm the mist looked to have set in for the rest of the day so I made my was back to the rendezvous point to pick up the shoppers and to head off to Tescos.

Jubilee Pool birds, taken with the superzoom
with the ISO cranked right up

A couple of digiscoped purple sandpipers in the gloom

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Happy New Year and lots of great birding for 2012.

Sunday 1st January

As I got up before anyone else in the household today I went for a brief half hour session down at Pendeen this morning. The wind was from the south west so wrong for Pendeen but it was nice just to see what was going by. I almost immediately had a balearic shearwater go by but after that it was the usual auks, gannets, kittiwakes and fulmars as well as a porpoise just off the reef.

St. Ives black-headed gull

Later on in the day we went to St. Ives. While the rest of the party went for a wander around the lanes, I took Luke (our five year old son) over to the Island where I found a large mixed flock of birds feeding on what must have been a shoal of bait fish. There were about 100 large gulls with a bonxie snooping about in amongst them, 100's of auks floating on the sea and at least 3 balearic shearwaters skirting around the edges.

Trying to get a bit arty with this kittiwake shot taken off St. Ives Island

Monday 2nd & Tuesday 3rd January
As I mentioned in previous posts, I haven't had much time for birder in the last couple of days. I snatched a half hour session at Pendeen before the rest of the household got up on Tuesday. The wind was moderately strong but at least it was in the right direction and the highlight was a couple of balearic shearwaters going through, with the rest of the sightings made up of the usual suspects.

On Wednesday, after going to St. Erth for the recycling centre I had a brief 10 minute stop-off at the Hayle estuary causeway where from the comfort of my car I was able to sift through the gulls and ducks. There was nothing particularly unusual there but it's always nice to take a look and I took a few photos with the superzoom.

Hayle birds

Wednesday 4th January

The stormy weather yesterday was quite something. The cottage is very exposed close to the sea and took the full force of the wind and rain. This gave the weather proofing a good test and sadly some of it was found wanting with rain coming in in several places. It was good in a way that we were there to see this as it meant that we could try and work out solutions but it was still rather depressing to see our carefully decorated interior getting damp and soggy!

This morning was taken up with meetings with the builder (to sort out the leaks), our housekeeper and the letting agency. Whilst we were packing up and getting ready to go I got a few texts and calls from Dave Parker and John Swann, telling me that an Egyptian goose (presumably the Helston bird) had joined up with the goose flock at Drift reservoir. Apparently the bufflehead had also been there the previous day though it had gone back to Loe Pool today. Egyptian goose is a great rarity for Cornwall (it was a county tick for at least one seasoned birder there) so was causing a disproportionate amount of interest. I persuaded my long-suffering VLW to let me stop off there on the way home for a quick look and I managed to find it though it was with the flock on the hillside opposite the hide so it was a rather distant view.

A very distant record shot videograb of the Egyptian goose

After that it was off up the motorway on the long journey back to Oxfordshire which afforded me ample opportunity to reflect on this visit. I always enjoy visiting Cornwall but this time it had been rather tiring what with getting everything ready for the final inspection and coming on the back of a busy Christmas period. The birding had been rather low key with nothing too unusal for the time of year. In fact there had "just" been a bufflehead, a ring-billed gull, a ring-necked duck and a surf scoter in the county but Cornwall does of course have very high standards. Personally I managed four county ticks this time (water pipit, surf scoter, Iceland gull and Egyptian goose) which I was pretty pleased with. I think that the bird of the trip award has to go to the scoter just for the number of hours I put in trying to see it.

Norfolk December Sortie

Regular readers of this blog will know that I don't often head over Norfolk way. This is largely because the distance is more than my self-imposed two hour travel limit - in fact I've only been birding there twice before. However, after a busy work period and with the prospect of a busy Christmas visiting family followed by a final trip down to Cornwall for the New Year I felt that I needed a break in the form of a bit of a birding sortie. With my rules for twitching firmly in mind the western sandpiper at Cley seemed to be well established and easy to see with only the long travel time preventing it from ticking all the twitching boxes. To get around this sticking point I decided to resort to my long distance tactic of heading up one evening, staying at a B&B and then enjoying a full days birding the next day before heading back home. This of course means that I don't have so much driving to do all in one day. I know that hardcore twitchers will think nothing of getting up in the middle of the night in order to do a long round trip in one day but, whimp that I am, it makes it a bit too much of an endurance test and consequently just not that enjoyable which after all is what it's all about.

I set off just before 6:30 pm and arrived at Cley at a small B&B (Cooke's of Cley) just before 10 pm - it's always nice travelling at this time as there is little traffic. At this point I must just mention this great new iPhone app that I've discovered called NavFree which (as it's name suggests) is a free sat nav app. I'd heard in the past that the iPhone wasn't responsive enough to be a proper sat nav so hadn't bothered to try it but a while ago I thought that I would give one a go - after all it was free. To my amazement I've found that it works really well: the only thing that you have to be careful of is at roundabouts when it says take the 2nd exit, it might count exits differently from you so you need to make a note of the road number it wants you to take and take a look at the on-screen map to check what it means. I know all this is probably very old hat to people with proper sat navs but to me it's been a real revelation and navigated me faultlessly to Cley in the dark. The only point of note en route was a glimpse of a barn owl in the headlights somewhere on the road between Fakenham and Cley. Amazingly this was actually a very late year tick for me (not that I actively year list though I do keep a note for the record). The B&B itself was fine though the room was rather cold. Once there I planned my itinerary for the next day: first stop would be the western sand at Cley follow by a brief look for the Ross's goose which was roaming around with the other geese in the neighbourhood. Next down to Cley beach for some sea watching to see if I could pick up any little auks. After that it would be Titchwell at around midday when the Coue's arctic redpoll often seemed to be reported followed by a period of no doubt fruitless waiting at Wolferton for a mythical golden pheasant and then heading back home.

The famous Cley windmill

The next day dawned sunny but with a bit of a stiff south-westerly breeze. After a full English cooked breakfast I was at Cley RSPB at about 8:20 just in time to get the RBA message that the western sandpiper was on show at Simmond's Scrape. Wasting no time I hurried over there where sure enough it was in amongst the dunlin flock working its way around the various small islands on the scape. It was pretty easy to pick out being of stint size and it's white supercilium was clearly visible. I won't bother going into the finer ID discussion of this bird as it's been done to death elsewhere (see e.g. the bird forum thread) but it was a lovely bird to see and there were only half a dozen birders in the hide at most so there was no jostling or unpleasantness. I spent some time video and photographing it on Simmond's Scrape from Dauke's hide and Whitwell Scrape (Avocet hide) before deciding to move on just before 10 am.

The star of the show - the much-debated Cley western sandpiper
(digiscoped - click to enlarge)

...and here's some digiscoped video footage of the bird

Cley was a most impressive piece of habitat which
was packed full of birds and I'd not even seen half of it -
this is Pat's Pool from Bishop's hide looking across to Avocet, Dauke's and Teal hides

Next a bit of wild goose chasing: the Ross's had apparently been on the pools with the vast dark-bellied brent flock at first light but flew inland with some of them. I drove up Old Woman's Lane a bit where I soon found a large brent flock. I got a bit excited when I found a pale goose in amongst them but it turned out to be a leucistic brent. Without any extra inside knowledge I gave up on this and headed to Cley beach for a spot of Norfolk sea watching. Here one was at the mercy of the full force of the wind but fortunately there was a lookout shelter though the shingle bank was piled up rather high in front of it so that one had to stand in order to view over the top at the sea. Having been used to sea watching at Cornwall where one is inevitably rather high up it was rather weird to be so low down with such a narrow "viewing window" on the sea. A few other people turned up and joined me but it was very quiet: there was a steady stream of divers going both ways, one common scoter and a few auks but nothing of note.

There's the usual problem of photographs for a sea watching sesion.
Here's a shot of a very friendly turnstone that was wandering about right by my feet.

At 11:30 I decided to head off towards Titchwell for the redpoll. On the way at one stage I had to pull over in amazement as thousands of pink-footed geese flew over, skein after skein stretching as far as the eye could see with more coming over constantly. Forgive me for going all "Autumn Watch" on you as I know that this is nothing unusual for Norfolk regulars but it was nonetheless a most impressive sight. There was another flock of geese in a field en route which someone was watching and so I pulled over to take a look at them. They looked rather like bean geese but unfortunately they took off before I could get a decent look.

pink-foot skeins (click to enlarge) -the photo
doesn't really do the vast numbers any kind of justice

I arrived at Titchwell some time after 1 pm where I soon found the requisite gaggle of birders right next to the Visitor Centre all staring intently at one tree. This is generally a good sign when you turn up for a twitch and it turned out to be so in this case. The redpoll flock were concentrating on a couple of alder trees so it was just a matter of working through them whilst they were coming and going. There were a couple of pale mealies in amongst the lessers and a couple of birders soon picked out what they claimed was the arctic though I couldn't get on it. A short while later it showed really well in one of the trees where it was easy to pick out from its very frosty look and small bill. Again the ID has been discussed fully elsewhere so I won't go into all the details.

I didn't even attempt to photograph it -
here are the people watching the bird...

...and here's a photo taken by someone with more skill and a bigger lens than I have. This is the best photo that I could find of the bird on the web taken by (c) Andy Thompson
(see his fabulous Wild about Wildlife website).

Finally on towards the Wolferton triangle, well known for its golden pheasant population though they are very hard to see. Several people on Bird Forum report visiting 20 times or more without success and I'd put in a couple of fruitless hours on one of my previous Norfolk visits so I wasn't holding out a great deal of hope. I had been told about Sculthorpe where there were some goldies which were much easier to see but apparently these ones are released captive birds rather than self-sustaining "wild" ones. It's all a bit random with some people e.g. LGRE questioning the purity of the Wolverton birds but in general opinion seems to be Wolferton tickable, Sculthorpe not. I opted for the "park up and wait" tactics rather than curb crawling and positioned myself part way along the southern section with a good view in front and behind in the rear view mirror. This way I could eat my packed lunch at my leisure, sip my tea from my flask and listen to the radio quietly whilst waiting. All in all I put in about an hour and a half where the best I managed to see was a couple of small deer and a few squirrels but I wasn't really surprised at my lack of success.

This way to fruitless waiting

not a pheasant!

At a little after 3pm I "fired up the Quattro" (volvo actually), booted up the sat nav, set the coordinates for home and headed off into the rush hour traffic that was building up en route, arriving home just after 6pm tired but pleased with my December sortie to Norfolk.

Cornwall - November

Tuesday 22nd November - Going Down
I'd been champing at the bit to come back down to Cornwall for a few weeks now but unfortunately a pressing work project had prevented me from taking time off. Finally yesterday it was all finished so I hastily arranged a trip down to finish off some of the bits and bobs with the cottage decorating and of course once more to sample the delights of Cornish birding. As always I'd been keeping an eye out for what was about both in the county and en route. The sharp-tailed sandpiper at Chew Valley Lake certainly looked like it needed dropping in on and there was a smart male desert wheatear in deepest darkest Devon all the way down in Brixham. On the Cornish front there was at least one, or possibly two dusky warblers kicking around on the Lizard peninsula and yesterday there was an intriguing report of a possible female/hybrid canvasback on the Loe Pool as well as a female desert wheatear at Porthgwarra. Decisions, decisions... in the end I decided to take a crack at the two off-county birds, partly because I'd have plenty of time to try for the Cornish stuff once I was down there and partly as the Cornish birds seemed more tenuous compared to the off-county birds which were well established and had been reported every day for several days now.

I set off from Oxford at around 8:30 a.m. to find quite thick fog on the Oxfordshire roads. The lack of any immediate news on the Chew sandpiper lead me to wonder whether perhaps the lake was all fog bound though fortunately "still showing" came through about an hour into the journey. I had wondered about getting there by going through Bristol (as the AA web-site route finder had suggested) but the prospect of navigating through there without any Sat Nav proved too much in the end and I opted instead for the easier if slightly longer rounte down the M5 and off at the Weston Super Mare junction. The last bit of the journey took longer than I expect but at around eleven I suddenly found myself at Herriott's Bridge. I knew that I was at the right place because of the hoards of birders amassed at the sides peering into the distance. I joined the throng where everyone was trying to peer through a comparatively narrow viewing gap so it was rather crowded. It turned out that the bird was currently out of sight but shortly afterwards all the birds went up and when they re-settled the sandpiper was in view. It had a little preen and a wander about before taking a short flight a few minutes later to a spot where once more it was obscured. Whilst the others waited for it to re-appear I nipped over the road where the spotted sandpiper was supposed to be. It turned out that it was working its way along the dam wall on the other side of a thick hedge and you could only see it by leaning over the fence and peering at a very acute angle along the length of the wall. There was a certain amount of complaining going on when people in front would block the view of those behind and a photographer got too close at one point so the bird moved off again much to everyone's annoyance. I had brief views of the bird on a couple of occasions between checking out the sharp-tailed situation. After a while with no further sign of the sharp-tailed sandpiper I decided that as I was on a tight schedule I couldn't hang about and headed off. Not the best views that I've ever had and numbers of twitchers and the restricted viewing conditions meant that it hadn't been the most enjoyable of birding experiences but at least I'd seen the bird.

A digiscoped videograb of the sandpiper

Record shot snippet of digiscoped video of the bird -
at least you can see the salient features

Next on to Man Sands beach near Brixham in Devon. Once off the A38 I remembered how tortuous the roads around here were from my previous visit several years ago for a penduline tit and the local cirl buntings and it was a depressingly long time before I found myself at my destination. Actually at the end I got lost and ended up in the wrong NT car park. Fortunately I whipped out my iPhone, used my OS app to download the relevant map (fortunately there was a good 3G signal there) and thanks to the real-time "You Are Here" marker I was able to navigate my way to the correct car park where there were a reassuring half a dozen or so cars in the car park. A nice fifteen minute walk down the undulating Devonshire hills later I found myself on the footpath just above the coast guard cottages where the delightful male desert wheatear showed down to 10 yards on the roof top almost constantly, disappearing from view for no more than a few minutes at most. There were no crowds this time, just a couple of other birders who departed after a while to leave me with the bird all to myself in the later afternoon sunshine. It was a gorgeous little thing - standard wheatears are always lovely anyway and this one had an extra exotic frissance to it which made it all the more enjoyable. As I watched it I wondered whether it was the same Cornwall bird, slowly working its way eastwards along the coast.

The bird was by far the closest when perched on this
chimney pot, only about 10 yards away...

...and here's a more distant shot when the sun actually came
out briefly. I just love the late afternoon light in this one.

As I still had quite a long journey to get to Pendeen I didn't stay too long but headed back to the car and onwards towards Cornwall. I stopped off briefly near Truro to pick up a pair of bedside tables that I'd bought yesterday on eBay for the bargain price of £36 - they turned out to look much better in the flesh than on the photos. Very pleased with this outcome I headed for the cottage, tired but very content with my journey down and looking forward to some more Cornish birding.

Wednesday 23rd & Thursday 24th November

My usual approach is to work on the cottage first thing in the morning then go out birding for a while and to repeat this pattern after lunch. However, given how early it's getting dark now I've changed this somewhat so the afternoon session is now bird first and then work which effectively means that I have two back to back birding sessions. With very little being reported on the Penwith peninsula I've used this double birding session to head over to the Lizard where there have been at least three dusky warblers which I was interested in seeking out: one near the Housel Bay "bufflehead" pond, one near Cadgwith and one at Kennack Sands.

I started off yesterday at the pond where I met up with local birder Tim Pinfield who was also searching for duskies and John Foster also turned up for a while also looking for them. Tim and I decided to team up and spent several hours in fruitless search of the hedge north of the pond before moving on to the sallows and woods surrounding the stream that flowed into Kennack Sands beach. The habitat here looked great and there were roving tit and crest flocks as well as good numbers of redwing but try as we might we couldn't turn up the target bird. We also tried the stubble field near Trethvas farm where the six cranes were reportedly periodically hanging out though we failed in this endeavour as well.

The Kennack Sands valley: great habitat but hard work locating stuff

Today, with no news of anything else of interest about I decided to have another try. I'd got some local information from Tony Blunden (who co-authors the fabulous Lizard Naturally blog) including the location of the Cadgwith bird. Tony also said that he reckoned the Housel Bay bird had moved on as he'd not seen it yesterday (which at least explained our lack of success there). I spent a couple of hours staking out the relatively narrow but heavily vegetated ditch at Cadgwith but still no luck despite the help of Tim and a friend who turned up there as well. I then moved on to Kennack Sands again (via the crane field - still no luck) where I passed another couple of fruitless hours before giving up. One of the issues that I was having with trying to find these elusive skulkers was that they are usually located by their call. However there are a number of other birds that can make similar "tick" calls and even trees creaking in the wind can catch you out if you're not careful. I'm also starting to find that my hearing is no longer as sharp as it once was which didn't help matters. After a couple of days of trying to pick out the right sort of tick from impenetrable vegetation I found that it was starting to do strange things to my mind and I was becoming hyper-sensitive to ticking noises! As a result I've vowed that I'm not going to go hunting for duskies again tomorrow unless someone reports one that's actually nailed down to a tree.

Kennack Sands late afternoon

Friday 25th November

As I mentioned yesterday, I was resolved not to visit the Lizard peninsula today if I could help it. Apart from anything else the long trips over there were detracting from my decorating work which I need to press on with. I spent the first half of the morning on cottage work, making some good progress. When it came time to think about heading off somewhere I noticed that there was a reasonable westerly wind and also some bright sunshine. A glance out of my window revealed that there were plenty of birds passing by on the sea so I decided to have a Pendeen session. Despite it being November there were plenty of birds to look at: there was a constant stream of auks and gannets and frequent flocks of kittiwakes going by. I also had a few juvenile skuas: 4 arctics and a pom, all passing by at close range and well lit in the bright light. A great northern diver sped by and an unidentified wader species flew past, struggling against the wind whilst on the shearwater front there were two nice balearics and a single manxie. However the highlight of the morning was when I picked up a grey phalarope just beyond the reef. Shortly after I spotted it, it landed on the sea and I could even see it swimming along before it took off again, only to land again a few moments later. It repeated this pattern quite a number of times and I was just wondering why on earth it was doing this when suddenly a peregrine swooped down and snatched the bird just as it was taking off again. As the falcon flew off a second peregrine flew after it and seemed to be pestering the first one for its prize. I felt sorry for such a sad end to the phalarope but it was amazing to witness such drama.

The Wra in sunny conditions this morning

I had to go to St. Erth to the recycling centre after lunch so I thought that for my afternoon birding sesion I would do something over there. The St. Gothian Sand drake ring-necked duck seemed like an obvious choice and I thought that I would finish off with the high tide at Hayle.

At St. Gothian, all the ducks were in one corner and I soon picked out the drake ring-neck. Unfortunately he seemed to be trying to take a nap and would float around with his head tucked in, occasionally lifting it up whilst he re-adjusted his position before putting it back down again. To try and get a photo I had to keep tracking him in the superzoom lens and wait for the brief head-up moments. After a while he woke up and started feeding so I was able to get off a few easier shots of this very handsome bird.

The very handsome St. Gothian Sands ring-necked duck

I nipped into Carnsew Basin where there was a flock of eight bar-tailed godwits and five grey plover and two knot in amongst the dunlin. I was looking out for mergansers which had been reported there a while ago but there were only three little grebes on the water itself. At the Hayle bridge I scanned through all the wigeon and teal carefully, looking for American infiltrators but to no avail though I did find a pair of pintail. There were only modest numbers of gulls to grill and nothing of note. Ryans Field held the usual curlews, godwits, redshank, oystercatchers and four knot. It was getting dark by this point and I had some errands to run so it was time to leave. It had been nice to see so many birds today - such a contrast compared to the previous two days! I noticed that there had been no reported dusky warblers yesterday and I'm thinking that perhaps the colder weather that started the day I arrived down here cleared them all out- at least that explains my complete lack of success over the previous two days.

Saturday 26th November

I had a lot to do today as I was intending to return home tomorrow. Therefore birding opportunities would be rather limited. However, a long-tailed duck (a Cornish tick for me still) reported at Drift reservoir the previous evening seemed to offer a nice prelude to a hard day's work so I went to take a quick look. There I met up with Tony Mills (see his web-site Not Just Birds), who for a long time has been a "part-timer" such as myself, though recently he finally made the move down. There was no sign of the long-tailed duck though there was a female goldeneye in amongst the tufties by the dam. Down by the hide there was no sign of the recent water pipit and I managed to scare all the bird by letting one of the hide shutters come crashing back down but there hadn't been much to see anyway. Part way round to the hide in some thick cover I heard a "tick" which made me think of dusky warbler (I told you that it had done strange things to my mind!) but it didn't call again and I didn't have the time to stake it out properly. It was probably just a robin anyway.

A hard morning's work ensued and then after lunch I had some errands to run in Penzance itself and thought that I would go via Sennen Cove for a quick look around. I checked out the golden plover flock by Whitesands Lodge though there were no vagrants in amongst them before heading on to the cove itself. I quite like Sennen Cove: back home in Oxford I'm know for my gull obesssion and it's nice to have some of them to look through in quite picturesque surroundings. Accordingly I grilled the black-headed gulls for Meds and Bony's, the common gulls for ring-billed and the herrings for yellow-legged and Caspians though all to no avail. I did spot a purple sandpiper on the harbour wall and I was rewarded with my long-tailed duck tick after all as there was one diving actively out in the bay. I couldn't hang around as I had to get on but it had been a nice birding interval.

The bird life of Sennen Cove - I didn't bother trying to
digiscope the long-tailed duck as it was only spending
a few seconds above water before diving again.

Sunday 27th November

I was due to come home today so had been thinking about what I might stop off at en route. Anything in the south-west region was fair game as far as I was concerned but the only thing that caught my eye was the Hume's warbler ("leaf" or "yellow-browed") at Wyke Regis. Warblers are hard to twitch at the best of times and involve a lot of standing around staring at sallows and the like, which I'd already done plenty of this week thank you very much. Still it seemed to be showing fairly regularly and as long as I didn't have too high expectation of actually seeing it I thought that I would take a crack at it. Several times I've gone to Cornwall via Weymouth so the route was fairly familiar to me. It's actually only about 15 miles further than going directly on the motorway though the roads are of course a lot slower. I packed the car, shut down the cottage and set off (via the St. Erth recycling centre) just before 10 a.m. and with the roads nice and empty on a Sunday morning I arrived at Wyke Regis at around 1:30. I wasn't exactly sure where to park but there were half a dozen cars down near the military camp which I assumed were all twitchers so I parked there. I soon met some birders coming back who all reported that in the windy conditions it wasn't really showing at all and they'd had achieved no more than hearing it call a few times in three hours of getting very cold in the wind. Not looking very promising then! I thought that I would go and put in a stint of starting at sallows for a while and hurried on in the breeze towards the slopes by the Littlesea Holiday Village. Just as I arrived at a small clearing I saw the twitching group coming towards me, obviously following something that was moving in the bushes. This looked more promising and I hurried over towards them where apparently the bird was somewhere in the scrub on the slope. Five minutes of scrub watching ensued and it was clear from listening to those around me that they'd spent a long time not seeing very much and so were rather disconsolate. Suddenly up flies the bird and sits in clear view in a tree not twenty yards from where we were, offering absolutely stunning views with the slope behind it as a backdrop showing off it's wonderfully muted colours. It was a beautiful looking bird with it's grey green tones, strong super and double wing-bar looking very exotic in this setting. It was tagging along with a feeding tit flock and so for the next few minutes we followed it as it worked its way through a comparatively clear area, getting brief glimpses before the flock hit an area of thick sallows once more. I knew that I wasn't going to get any better views than that, jobs a good'un!

I turned around to survey the Fleet behind me with it's vast hoards of brent geese. Someone next to me managed to pick out one of the black brants and managed to get me on it - most excellent, especially as I hadn't bothered to bring my scope (not normally required for warbler watching) and hadn't really felt like checking through the hundreds of birds myself. Having cleaned up so quickly I decided to head back home early - I'd been extremely lucky to get away with such excellent views after so short a wait - if only all twitching could be like that. The rest of the journey was uneventful and I arrived home tired but pleased to be back with the family and most satisfied with my Blitzkrieg twitch.

Just some of the brent geese on the Fleet. There
is a black brant in the picture somewhere!

Chesil Beach is very striking

Retrospective

I like to have a retrospective at the end of my trips down to Cornwall, a chance for me to reflect on the visit and its highs and lows. From the Cornish birding point of view this has been rather a quiet one with not much around, in fact only a bufflehead and a ring-necked duck. The RN duck was very photogenic but wasn't even a year tick for me (not that I actively year list) as I'd seen the St. Stithian's bird earlier in the year. Nevertheless it was a very handsome bird and it gave nice close views.

Another photo of the ring-necked duck

The main disappointment for me was that I missed the fall in dusky warblers. As I had suspected, the clear cold night the day I came down cleared them all off and I spent a couple of fruitless days slogging around the Lizard after birds which had actually gone. Still I learnt about some new birding sites on the Lizard and got to know a few of the Lizard local birders. As far as getting to grips with the dusky warbler calls, I have since come across this video on the fabulous ScillySpider blog which helped me with exactly what sort of "tick" noise it makes.

Two Dusky Warblers Calling on Lower Moors (c) Kris Webb
(benjim1)

The other main local birding highlight was the sea-watching session at Pendeen where the poor grey phalarope was plucked from the sea by a peregrine. The close views of the skuas were also very enjoyable.

Of course as well as the local birding there was the small matter of the en route twitching. Now, I'm not a great twitcher as a rule but I'm finding that breaking up the long journey to and from Cornwall is a great way of seeing some nice birds and this trip excelled on this front with the sharp-tailed sandpiper, the desert wheatear and the Hume's leaf warbler all being most enjoyable interludes which I probably wouldn't have otherwise got to see. As far as the bird of the trip award is concerned I think that it will have to go to the fabulously confiding desert wheatear as much for the picturesque setting as for the gorgeous bird itself.

The Bird of the Trip: the cold weather cleared it out as
well so I was lucky to see it on it's last day there

I'll have to come down again in December to finish things off for the cottage which "goes live" for holiday lets in January. As always I can't wait to be back.