It's weird - last year my birding trips were few in number and modest in target but this year here I am posting about my second national sortie within a week. After my epic DIY trip down to Cornwall during the week this was a much more straight-forward affair. My attention had been caught be the long-staying White-throated Sparrow at Barcombe in Sussex. This had been around for a couple of months at least but initially the location was heavily suppressed. Gradually news has been leaking out but for a while it went quiet and we all assumed that it was gone. However on Thursday evening it was reported as still being around "recently" which must have prompted someone to go and check it out the next day. With news breaking of it still being present on Friday I decided that I would see if I could go and see it over the weekend. In the end I was too tired on Saturday after a long week so I opted for a Sunday trip.
As my journey there would take me right past my VLW's brother's place in Surrey we arranged for me to drop her off there. All her siblings were going to be there as sadly her eldest brother is very unwell so it would be a good opportunity for her to catch up with the rest of her family. This did mean that we left later than I otherwise would have done had I been flying solo and what with the detour to drop my VLW off it wasn't until midday that I finally arrived at Barcombe. Fortunately I was able to grab the last parking space in the small car park next to the recreation ground and I was soon tooled up and hurrying over to the twitch area. From reading on the internet, the bird had been giving visitors quite the run-around in previous days and was by no means guaranteed but I arrived to find that a picnic table on a small bit of decking had been well seeded up and all the twitchers were standing around it, at a reasonable distance, waiting for the bird to turn up. It all seemed very relaxed and civilised!
The seeded picnic table is on the left behind the red life buoy stand
I asked someone how frequently the bird was showing and the answer seemed to be every 40 minutes or so. I was also told that it would not linger long on the table, perhaps a minute at most so I got my superzoom camera all primed up and ready in preparation.
Time passed, I nibbled on my packed lunch and drank my tea. There were other birds to watch with several flycatching Chiffies about, a singing Nuthatch and various miscellaneous fly-overs. It was probably a little more than 40 minutes after my arrival when someone called the bird out, sitting to the right of the decking area in a small tree. I managed to see it clearly enough for a couple of seconds before it flew off. Having now actually seen my target I felt more relaxed and I went back to waiting for better views.
A little while later I heard it singing for the first time, a thin clear whistly song. Sometime after that and it was back on the decking though again only for a matter of seconds. So now I had seen it twice but still had no photos. I waiting some more and finally it landed on the table and fed for about a minute. I papped away as best I could with my superzoom and managed to capture some reasonable record shots of this lovely looking bird.
All in all it was a very smart looking bird, with very striking yellow blobs on it's forehead either side of the bill, the lovely stripy pattern on its head and it's white bib. This strong head patterning was very much a contrast to the muted drab colours of the rest of it, with grey underparts and rich brown upperparts. The jizz was certainly different from our Old World Sparrows and with its long cocked tail it was rather striking.
All too quickly it was off again and that was the last time I saw it. It did have an extended singing session deep in the copse, though not in any way viewable. I hung about as long as I could in case it showed again but it was not to be.
Conscious of the time and that I had to go and pick up my VLW on the way back, at around 2:30pm I was back in the Gnome mobile and heading back to Surrey and my brother-in-law's place. There I had a reviving cup of tea and a chance to catch up with the rest of my VLW's family. Then it was back on the road and back to Casa Gnome. It had been a nice straight-forward twitch, with my third Nearctic lifer within a week.
Regular readers will know of our cottage in Pendeen and how I have been visiting every year, sometimes alone and sometimes en famille. They will also know of the relentless DIY tasks that are involved in maintaining a cottage in such a beautiful but wind-swept location. For a few years now we'd been asking ourselves how much longer we wanted to keep on doing this. It never quite felt like a holiday if we always had chores to do. But it was the grief of the pop-up campsite counter-blanaced by the rampantly buoyant property market in the South West that finally pushed us to do something about it. So it was that we decided to spruce up the place a bit and then to put it on the market to see what we might get for it. With this intention I volunteered to go down for a few days to try to get it ready. Of course there was the small matter of a couple of decent birds, namely the Exmouth Mockingbird and the Newlyn American Herring Gull, to be seen en route that made the prospect more palatable. I should also add that whilst strictly speaking one is not allowed to visit second homes until 12th April, it is permitted for selling purposes so I was complying with Government Covid guidelines.
So it was, after rather a restless night in anticipation of finally getting out and seeing some birds again, that I was on the road shortly after 8 a.m. along the familiar route to the South West. News of the Mockingbird had already dropped on RBA so I was in a relaxed frame of mind as I steered the Gnome mobile on her course. The traffic was light and I made excellent time down to the Exmouth turn-off when some ten minutes later I was parking up in Iona Avenue and getting tooled up. I had done a fair bit of pre trip research in order fully to acquaint myself with the location - for this particular site, knowing all the viewing angles from the different sides was more important than usual due to social distancing considerations and also due to rather strained relationship with some of the neighbours who had got fed up with birders climbing their walls and breaking their fences. So I had carefully read up all the gen on the BirdForum thread on the bird.
To start with I went to the main road where I found a couple of birders peering through a gap in someone's fence into the neighbouring gardens where the favoured Holly bush and Palm trees could be seen. A quick enquiry revealed that they had not yet seen the bird in the twenty minutes that they had been there. I decided to do a quick tour and found the infamous alleyway which was very narrow indeed and no place for any social distancing so I decided to steer clear of there. Down Cauleston Close there was a narrow gap between the houses where the Holly tree could be viewed but it was hardly ideal and felt rather intrusive on the locals. Back on the main road the two birders told me that the neighbour whose fence gap they were looking through was getting very cross and kept putting up barriers to try to block the view. In the end it was obvious to me that the best viewing point was on the opposite side of the road where you had perfectly good scope views of relevant trees without having to intrude on any of the neighbours' privacy. Having duly set up it wasn't long before the Mockingbird appeared in it's favoured tree again. In colouring it very much reminded me of a Thrush sized Barred Warbler though with it's long tail and bill that was as far as the comparison went. It would sit still for long periods of time so there was no issue with tracking it or taking photos. It seemed relaxed and content and indeed during the entire time I was there I only saw it fly into the neighbouring Palm trees in order to feed on two occasions so I guess that it had already done much of its feeding for the day. I spent some time digiscoping it and some of them came out OK.
There were not many birders on site: during my time there I saw a total of six others. With the "stay local" restrictions having been eased at the end of last month most people who were going to come to see this bird had already done so. Most of the time the bird was on view, sitting in the tree and doing not very much. The original pair had gone down the alleyway to try their luck but the rest of us stuck to the far side of the road. After about an hour I decided that I had had my fill and headed back to the car. Having now got my head around the geography of the place I realised that, near where I'd parked, there was a narrow gap between the houses on Iona Avenue where one of the Palms could be seen. Just as I took a look the Mockingbird flew up into it and gave me what were the closest views of the entire time while it fed briefly before heading back to the Holly Tree (which was hidden from this vantage point).
This was a great finale for my visit and well satisfied but with much still to do ahead of my I fired up the Gnome Mobile and headed back onto the road. There had been no news on the American Herring Gull so far that day but an hour from Penzance the reassurring "still present" message came on my RBA app and I
could relax for the rest of the trip. Arriving in Penzance I navigated my way straight around to Newlyn Harbour. I had intended to park at Sandy Cove, an area of hard-standing near the shore just as you leave Newlyn but there were loads of "Private Land" message showing everywhere so I guess that this was no longer possible. As I headed back I noticed a parked car on a single yellow line just above the beach where the gull was located. Remembering that it was a bank holiday I realised that I could park right on site and duly did so.
I got out of the car, to be greeted by a stiff northerly breeze. From my vantage point I could look right down on the beach which I recognised from various on-line photos of the bird and which I knew well from many past visits. There were only half a dozen gulls loafing on the beach and none was the bird I was after. Somewhat deflated I suddenly realised how tired I was. Was I going to have to come back later to see it? I stared disconsolately out at the harbour. A few gulls had noticed me lingering and flew closer to investigate - on the off-chance that I might feed them, I guess. One of them immediately stood out in flight as having very dark tail coverts. Even in flight I could also pick out the paler head and the "Glauc" like pink bill with a dark tip. Bingo - I had my bird! Rejuvenated by my success I decided to take my packed lunch and flask of tea down to the beach and to enjoy the company of the bird.
My first view of the American Herring Gull, looking down from where I had parked the car
Down on the beach near the tiny memorial chapel there were a couple walking their dog and throwing sticks for the dog all along the beach. I went over towards the gulls and decided to chuck in a few pieces of bread, as much to try and disuade the dog walkers from encroaching in this area as attracting the gulls. Fortunately, the dog people got the message and kept their activities to the far end and with my bread throwing I had got the attention of all the local gulls, numbering some three dozen or so gulls in total. Most were first winter birds, mostly Herring with a few Great Black-backed in amongst them and of course our Neartic interloper as well. From the numerous photos on the internet of this bird, I already knew how striking it was but it did really stand out from the crowd. To my mind it had almost a Glauc feel to it, with it's pale coffee wash to it, it's chunky size and of course the pink bill with the dark tip. The head was pale and it had a nice milky-coffee wash to the breast. The upper and lower tail coverts were strikingly dark and it had the pale bases to the greater coverts, at least on the outer edge of the wing. One thing that really struck me what the head shape which was noticeably
different from the other Herring gulls, with a more rounded shape to
it. All in all a pretty classic "smithy". I say all this with all the assurance of someone with only text book knowledge of them and who'd never actually seen one in the field before. It was great though that my first should be such a classic bird and one that was showing so well.
I particularly like this photo which nicely shows just how stand-out the AHG was compared to the local birds
The obligatory UTC shot
I sat and munched my lunch, sharing bits of it with the assembled throng. The AHG actually hung back from trying to fight for scraps and merely watched from a distance. Still it was close enough that I could shoot some video by balancing my superzoom camera on my knees.
Between myself and the gulls we soon managed to polish off my lunch and after a couple of reviving cups of tea from my flask it was time to get on.
My first stop was just down the road a Jubilee Pool in order to see if there were any roosting Purple Sandpipers. Sadly the tide was too far out but I did manage to see a few on the small rocky island opposite the monument next to the pool. Then it was on to Sainsbury's in order to pick up some food for my stay before heading over to open up the cottage. With lots to do in a short space of time I cracked on with making a start on the preparations until I was too tired to work any more and so I turned in, dreaming of Mockingbirds and Gulls.
I woke up early the next day with much to do. I won't bore readers with a blow by blow account of all my DIY preparatations - after all this is a birding blog rather than anything else. I did manage to get out briefly in the morning with one of the Pendeen locals who showed me an aberrant Chiffchaff singing in a nearby plantation. So most chiffchaffs go: "jit ja ja jit..." etc. Iberian chiffies go: "jit ja ja jit, weet weet, cha cha cha cha" (as we all learnt to our cost here in Oxon with a weird aberrant bird a few years ago). Well, this bird was going "weet, weet, jit ja ja jit" - a sort of backward half Iberian. It also never once dipped its tail which was most unusually. Not sure exactly what it was then but it seemed to have some Iberian influences. You can listen to a recording here.
Later that afternoon I went up the carn behind Pendeen village to look for a female Ring Ouzel that had been seen there but in the strong wind I could not find it. Once again I worked until I was too tired before turning in for the night.
Pendeen Stonechat
The obligatory Chough photo
I had intended to leave promptly the next morning but in the end I had things to finish off so it wasn't until midday that I finally left. I decided that after such an intense DIY-filled visit I would take a rather leisurely approach to the return journey as a reward for all my efforts. My first stop was at Drozmary Pool near Bolventor on Bodmin Moor where I soon had distant views of the long-staying female Ring-necked Duck and the adult male Scaup. The only other birds there were a female Tufted Duck and a Gadwall.
I also stopped at a service station to eat my lunch and to have a cup of tea before heading on for my third stop at Frampton-upon-Severn Sailing Lake for the long-staying 1w Bonaparte's Gull. This turned out to be a lovely site. After the harshness of the Cornish landscape everything was "soft" and more spring-like. There were hirundines everywhere hawking over the lake with singing Willow Warblers in the bushes. Unfortunately the gulls were all right in the far corner and despite grilling them all very carefully a number of times there was no sign of the Bonaparte's. In the end I gave up and headed on for home, arriving back feeling very tired after an intense few days away. Still I'd managed to see a couple of new birds and things were ready to move ahead with the cottage.
Addendum
The Mockingbird did its credentials no harm by leaving a few days after I saw it. Amazingly, it was picked up in Pulborough, Sussex where it spent one day before moving on. My sketchy understanding is that the eastern subspecies is largely resident whereas the western ones do undergo a migration of some sorts so this could be one of those that has somehow (perhaps with the aid of a ship) made it to our shores. In any event it was a great bird to see.
