The Slimbridge White-spotted Bluethroat

Birding has been depressingly quiet in Oxon this spring. On my local Port Meadow patch the floods dried up mid way through April and I haven't even bothered to visit for the last couple of weeks. There was the brief flurry of interest with a Temminck's Stint over towards Witney one day (I'll blog about that separately) but that's been about the only decent bird this spring. So this weekend, with nice weather forecast, I decided to treat myself to a bijou birding sortie. Nothing too long distance but just a nice morning out somewhere. One target which had caught my eye was the White-spotted Bluethroat at Slimbridge. This had been reported regularly for the last week or so as back on territory for it's fifth consecutive year. One has to feel for this bird, gamely returning each year and singing its heart out all to no avail. Still, it was a nice opportunity to see a bird that I've been meaning to visit for a number of years now. The main reason why I'd not been to see it previously was that I'd already seen a Bluethroat, down in Cornwall at Land's End, back in October 2008 (see here). Now, that had been a first winter male so it wasn't possible to pin it down to the White-spotted or Blue-spotted subspecies. So this would be a sub-species tick for me. I therefor decided to pay a visit on Saturday to try to see it. In any event, it was always nice to visit Slimbridge in the spring time.

From my research, the bird seemed to show best first thing in the morning and as a card carrying member of the Simbridge WWT I was allowed early access at around 8am to the reserve. So I was up at 6am and left the house at 6:40 arriving at Slimbridge after an uneventful journey on the quiet roads at just before 8am. There were about half a dozen of us with a similar idea who assembled by the side gate to be let in by the warden just after 8. We all yomped off on the ten minute walk down the Summer Walkway to the Shepherd's Hut overlooking Middle Point on the River Severn. 

The Bluethroat reedbed

The Hut overlooked an area of reedbed, roughly divided into three by lower, grassy areas. A few strategic long bare twigs had been set up with one in each of the three sections apart from the one directly in front where there were two. The distance from the Hut to the back of the reedbed was about 80 metres so it wasn't exactly close viewing though from our elevated vantage point we could see well enough. A couple of people were already there when we arrived and they reported that the bird had been seen already that morning so hopefully it was just going to be a matter of time. Indeed within about 10 minutes of my arrival I spotted it on the furthest of the two twigs in the reedbed in front of us and called it out to the assembled group. It stayed up there singing away for a good couple of minutes offering clear views. I busied myself with some digiscoped video (which came out rather hazy) and some phonescoped shots.

A passable (given it was hand-held) phone-scoped shot of the White-spotted Bluethroat

 

 

 

Some rather hazy video - set the quality to HD 1080

After its initial showing it showed regularly enough, often in the reedbeds when it was partially obscured and sometimes back on its favourite twig. We could often hear it singing away it's scratchy little song.

Fellow admirers of the Bluethroat by the Shepherd's Hut

The weather was beautiful, the bird was regularly on show and we were being serenaded by Reed and Sedge Warblers along with a distant calling Cuckoo. This was just what I needed to recharge the batteries! I got chatting with the person next to me who lived reasonably locally. He told me that he's been to see this bird for the last five years and that this was the best it had ever shown. Apparently the first year you would have to wait several hours for a brief view of a few seconds. I was suitable grateful that my views were so good by comparison. No doubt the improved weather was a contributing factor in its relative showiness today. Also maybe it's just getting desperate to attract a mate after all this time.

After a while things started to go a bit quiet and I decided it was time to head on. So I ambled back towards the main part of the reserve, stopping off at every vantage point to see what was about. The main birds about on the estuary area were a few Greylag and Canada Geese the odd Shelduck as well as a couple of distant Cranes from the release scheme. Back in the main reserve I stopped off at each hide to see what was about. I decided to set up an eBird day list just for fun and busied myself with ticking things off. I arbitrarily set myself a target of 50 birds just to make it more interesting.

The Peng Observatory had lots of lovely Avocets fussing about the place and generally making quite a racket. According to a Slimbridge Tweet there were some wild Pochard in the Eider pen which duly went on the day list. I made my way over to the Zeiss Hide, which is the other main hide for viewing wild birds apart from the Estuary Tower. Here I found the Glossy Ibis but couldn't see the Garganey that had been around yesterday. Redshank and Lapwing were to be seen on the water along with more of the usual stuff. I spent some time surveying the scene and taking it all in

A distant photo of the Glossy Ibis using the SuperZoom Camera

Next I headed over to the South Lake Discovery Hide where Cattle Egret and Black-tailed Godwit went on the list. Everywhere birds were busy in the spring sunshine, feeding, preening or loafing.

A rather over-exposed shot of the Cattle Egrets

My day list was tantalisingly close to my target on 49 species but I felt I'd had enough so I headed over the café for some refreshments before my journey home. Back in the car I fired up the Gnome mobile and headed off, still looking for that elusive last tick. I decided that the canal would be my cut off for the list and fortunately as I was waiting by the swing bridge for it to re-open to traffic a Starling flew over, giving me my 50th tick. 

As I drove back I reflected that this had been the second trip in a row where the prize had been a subspecies. I am more and more inclined towards including subspecies in my listing. It means that some of the great birds that I've seen over the years such as Eastern Black Redstart, American Horned Lark, Azorean Yellow-legged Gull, Steppe Grey Shrike etc are all recognised for the quality birds that they are. After all, it's "my list, my rules" !