Gnome's Birding Diary

Oxon Space-Time Vortex

2012-01-21T14:43:00.004Z

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

2012-01-19T12:22:00.003Z

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

2012-01-12T08:49:00.007Z

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

2012-01-06T10:28:00.002Z

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

2011-12-21T13:09:00.003Z

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

2011-11-30T08:38:00.003Z

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.

Otmoor Short-eared Owls

2011-11-21T08:33:00.002Z

Just a bijou blogette to keep things ticking over, what my old professor would call a "pot-boiler". L, our five year old son, who normally doesn't take much interest in birds and whom I've stopped dragging off on birding trips, had been saying for some time that he wanted to see some owls. Accordingly on Sunday afternoon I thought that I would take him down to Otmoor where there have been at least half a dozen short-eared owls of late. This is not normal for Otmoor and some of the more seasoned county birders have been telling me that it was just like the old times - no doubt the result of the explosion in vole numbers this year.

Anyway, when I got down to Otmoor I couldn't believe how many cars there were there and I had to be rather "creative" with my parking. The place was full of people watching the owls or coming to watch the starling roost. Our tactics were to stand by the pump station overlooking Greenaways where pretty soon we were watching a pair of distant owls who seemed to be doing a circuit over Greenaways and around to Ashgrave and the Closes. We watched for a while though once L had seen one he seemed to lose interest and started splashing around in the muddy puddles instead and after a while he started asking when we were going to go back home. There was one Cetti's warbler calling from deep within the hedge which was nice to hear again after the resident birds were completely wiped out by the two harsh winters that we've had. Fieldfares were "chakking" away everywhere and the starling roost was a few thousand birds but they didn't indulge in any great acrobatics.

As L and I walked back towards the car the two owls started hunting over the Car Park field and one perched on the top of a bush long enough for me to get the scope on it and for L to have a good look though he seemed more interested in taking photographs of the pretty red lights on the TV aerial on the hill behind us.

I made a compilation of the various dodgy bits of video that I took though the birds were distant and it was getting dark and put it to some inappropriately gloomy music - Beethoven's string quartet no. 14 in C# minor which has such a wonderfully melancholy first movement and which surprisingly L said he really liked. He did say that he'd like to come back to see the owls again so I feel that I can chalk the trip up as a success.

Bird Guides vs. RBA

2011-11-14T14:25:00.002Z

Astute readers of this blog may have noticed that in my last Cornwall entry I started referring to the RBA text service rather than the Bird Guides one which I have used up until now. I have indeed recently changed allegiance but having recently used both services this does mean that I am in a reasonable position to draw comparisons. Also, as I have my fingers in so many birding blog pies (Port Meadow Birding, Pendeen Birding, the Oxon Bird Log), it does mean that my blogging masterpieces are more thinly spread and I don't get to do so many entries for this blog. Lest readers think that I am some kind of blogging slacker I thought that I'd better write about something even if it's not directly related to what I've seen in the field.

It all started not on my most recent Cornwall visit but the one at the start of October. I was with Dave Parker in the Drift hide and he kept getting texts from RBA about various local birds which would inevitably arrive long before I got the corresponding Bird Guides text. Dave confessed that he'd switched from BG in the end because of this tardiness so this got me thinking that perhaps I too should at least investigate. Accordingly on my last trip down to Cornwall (the end of October one) I took up the RBA free (though you have to pay for the texts) seven day trial of their text service. On the way down to Cornwall I had both the BG and the RBA services running concurrantly so that I could compare. It immediately became apparent that the RBA texts were way ahead of the BG ones, the latter often arriving up to an hour after the RBA one hit my phone. Needless to say I switched off the BG ones that evening and signed up properly for RBA then and there.

The text service is very fast: the texts go out at the same time as the pager message so you can't really ask for more than that. What's more you can apply various filters to which text messages you receive including all the usual parameters such as Where, When and What. You can even enter a list of birds that you either want or have seen and it will use that as a filter for messages. In short it offers all the control that you might need. Why haven't I gone the whole hog and got myself a pager? Well, I carry my phone around everywhere with me, I don't want to have to lug a second gadget around as well. Also for much of the time I don't need instant messages: when I'm at home I'm not likely to twitch anything at short notice apart from local birds and fortunately I'm in the loop regarding county news. It's only really in Cornwall that I want the instant news so the text service is ideal for me. If you're happy to carry a pager around then the main consideration is cost. The pager service costs more than the text one but you then have to pay for the texts (10p + VAT per text) so if you're going to be interested in a lot of messages then the pager may be your best bet. There are also advantages with using texts in that if you are in a signal black spot your text will get through to you once you regain a signal whereas I understand that you just miss the pager message.

There is now an additional alternative which is the phone app. Both Bird Guides and RBA have now released iPhone apps and have or are about to release corresponding ones out for Android O/S phones. I've tried both the BG and the RBA ones and they basically do the same thing in allowing you access to the day's bird news as if you were on their web page but instead via your phone. In addition they give you links to site maps and will use the phones mapping services to plot a route for you if required. I find the RBA App faster in updating though this comparison might not be fair as I was using the old iPhone O/S for the BG one which did seem to cause a few other problems. The RBA one has a great search function which allows you to enter a list of species that you are interested in which you can then search against which is it's a great way of filtering the news for what I'm interested in though unfortunately it doesn't save this list when you switch off the phone. On both apps you can also browse the gallery of photos and get directions to the site etc. In short this is a great way to keep in touch with bird news which I'm sure is going to become more and more popular. RBA have gone even further in using Push technology to send out Alerts for bird news. For the less tech savvy this means that the news appears like an SMS message rather than you having to go and ask the app for news. This offers a real alternative to either a pager or the SMS service. I did a trial of it and there is a bit of a lag with the Alert messages which come between 5 and 10 minutes after the corresponding SMS message so in the end I decided to stick with the SMS but it's certainly worth considering and once you've paid the annual fee there are no per-message costs at all.

A couple of screen shots from my iPhone of the RBA app.

I've not yet mentioned the web-sites themselves. The daily news is laid out in pretty similar ways on either site but there are a few noticeable differences:

1. Bird Guides seems to be the service of choice for photographers with far more photos uploaded to their gallery than RBA which is surprisingly scarce on the photo front. They also have the Photo of the Week competition which attracts some absolutely stunning entries each week.

2. Bird Guides seems to have more weekly articles.

3. When you click on a species link in Bird Guides it gives you a little write-up of the salient identification issues as well as photos. RBA more or less assumes that you know what you're doing on the ID front and just gives the photos.

4. If I could make one change to the RBA web service, it is that it would allow one to filter news against a saveable list - you can do this for their SMS text service so it can be done. As mentioned above, you can do it for the RBA app but annoyingly it doesn't save the list and I don't want to have to type it out fresh each day so saveable lists would be much appreciated.

In conclusion if speed of news is paramount there you have to go with RBA really and with the SMS and App options in addition to the pager you're bound to find a service that suits. For photography and more general web-browsing I think I prefer the Bird Guides site on balance though not so much that I'm going to fork out for access to it in addition to the RBA fees and some of it can be accessed by non-subscribers anyway.

A Quiet end of October in Cornwall

2011-10-30T12:30:00.003Z

Introduction

My wife and our two daughters were jetting off to Paris for a few days so I decided to take the opportunity to head back down for another visit to Cornwall with my five year old son Luke and one of my brother-in-laws in tow. There was plenty of decorating to do but as usual I was hoping to be able to get in some birding in between painting sessions though with Luke accompanying me my birding options would be much more restricted: no sea watching for example and there would be a limit on how long he would wait patiently somewhere if I were waiting on a bird to show. As usual I'd been following the bird news in Cornwall and there had been some interesting stuff about: a couple of red-breasted flycatchers, several yellow-browed warblers and to top it all a scarlet tanager at St. Levan though apart from the original finders this had only been seen once for five minutes in the morning despite a good crowd looking out for it all day. However, a day or so before I was due to come down most of these birds seemed to have cleared out and it had all gone rather quiet.

22nd & 23rd October: Kenidjack

I didn't leave Oxford until late morning after dropping off the Paris contingent at the bus station so it was late afternoon by the time we arrived in Cornwall. I decided to head straight over to Kenidjack which from the RBA texts seemed to be the only place with any birds about that day. We headed down to the end of the valley where a couple of yellow-browed warblers were supposed to be though in the windy conditions they were not very cooperative and I only got very fleeting views of one of them. As it was getting late and Luke was starting to complain I didn't stay too long but headed off to the cottage to get unpacked and to rustle up some food.

The Kenidjack mine ruins

The next morning I put in an initial painting session whilst Luke watched some DVD's. About mid-morning I felt like a break so I decided to head back to Kenidjack to see if I could get better views of the yellow-broweds. This time we took a picnic which I was hoping would keep Luke occupied for a while before he would start to complain about being bored. There were quite a few birders around this morning though once again the yellow-browed warblers offered only rather fleeting views and occasional calls. There were also a couple of firecrests in the garden of the last house which gave the occasional glimpses. One of the highlights was a lesser redpoll (a Cornish tick) which flew over us a number of times calling loudly. To round things off a couple of chough were flying around and calling as Luke and I headed back up the valley for home.

You may have noticed the distinct lack of bird photos on this posting:
this is due to their elusiveness. Instead here are some of the Kenidjack
donkeys which were much more cooperative.

Back at the cottage whilst I was hard at work painting I spotted an interesting warbler in the garden briefly: it had uniform greenish upper parts but a pale silvery underparts with faint darker smudges on the breast. It's supercilium was moderately strong, it's didn't seem to have a particularly long primary projection and I thought I caught a glimpse of a wing bar. Had I been certain of the wing bar I would have claimed it as a greenish warbler but from what I saw I can only have it down as a possible.

My brother-in-law arrived early afternoon. I'd made an agreement with Luke that each day we'd do something that he wanted to do so we walked up to the Pendeen playground and spent some time there messing about on the zip wire.

24th October: Sennen Cove

Today was a bit of a wash-out. It was only moderately windy but it poured with rain all day. With little prospect of doing much outdoors in the end we elected to partake in that great British tradition of driving somewhere to look at the sea from the comfort of our car. I chose Sennen Cove where we parked right down by the harbour and spent some time watching someone daring himself to walk out along the small harbour wall despite the waves crashing over it. In the end sense prevailed which was just as well...

I'd chosed Sennen Cove partly because a couple of first winter yellow-legged gulls had been reported there this morning but all I could find was a first winter Med. gull.

Later that afternoon when the rain finally lifted we headed over to Penzance so that Luke could choose something from the Pirate gift shop as promised. There were no purple sandpipers on the harbour walls though I did find a few turnstones on the jetty.

Penzance turnstones

25th October: Pendeen & Nanquidno

After yesterday's downpour it was pleasantly calm and sunny. First thing, before Luke was even up I nipped out for a quick tour of the garden and a walk down to the lighthouse. The usual three ravens were still about and I found a late wheatear in the field next to the road. In the garden of Old Count House there was a small tit flock working its way along the bushes and at the tail end of this gang was a lovely lesser whitethroat, looking very smart indeed as it poked about in the foliage. It didn't have the pale sandy look of a central asian but even so a lesser whitethroat is surprisingly rare for the Penwith peninsula. In fact John Swann told me a story of how once at Porthgwarra everyone was lined up by the car park sallows looking for a red-eyed vireo. After a while someone called it out and all eyes turned to the bird. Almost immediately after that someone else called out a lesser whitethroat and apparently all the Cornish birders immediately switched to looking at that instead such was its rarity value!

Pendeen rock pipit

Later that morning, after my painting session, we were just contemplating where to go when news broke about an Isabelline shrike by the airfield at Nanquidno so I quickly mobilised the troops and we set off. There, Luke and my brother-in-law waited by the car whilst I went to check things out. Dave Parker, John Swann, Richard Menari as well as plenty of visiting birders were all there but there was no sign of the shrike. It later turned out that according to the original finder it was working it's way along a hedge rather than staying put so was very much in transit which was a shame as it would have been a nice bird to see. Our party decided to nip down to Nanquidno valley itself briefly where Luke had a paddle in the stream with his wellies before we headed back to base.

Nanquidno buzzard - not really much compensation for the lack of shrike

That afternoon I did some more painting whilst the other two headed off to mess around at the local beach. Whilst I was busy painting a window that looked out into the garden I spotted the lesser whitethroat again in my own garden now - a fine Cornish garden tick. I sent a text to John Swann who lives nearby and he nipped over and managed to see the bird for himself.

26th October: Porthgwarra & Marazion

I woke up early this morning and got painting straight away before the others were up and about. Once everyone was awake we had a stroll down to the lighthouse again where today I found a fine male black redstart on the lighthouse buildings.

A record shot of the black redstart - a tricky shot of a dark
bird taken against a very bright background

My brother-in-law set off for home shortly after that and as I'd already done my morning painting session I decided to head over to Porthgwarra to look for the Pallas's warbler that had been showing in the sallows just north of the car park. Luke wanted to stay in the car for a while and I went to stake out the sallows where I found John Swann, Dave Parker and a few others staring at the impenetrable vegetation. The bird had apparently only been showing briefly and very infrequently so it looked like it might be a long wait. After a while with no sign so far Luke got bored so we went off to the shop to get a cup of tea and a flapjack for myself and an ice cream for Luke which we ate back at the sallows. Luke kept himself amused for a while by playing with my old point and shoot camera and he seems to be developing an interest in photography. We did hear the warbler call a few times though it obstinately didn't show and eventually Luke had had enough and we had to leave. I was told that the bird did finally show itself but not for another hour and a half so that would have been a long wait indeed.

After my afternoon painting session we nipped into Penzance for some shopping and for Luke to visit the playground at Marazion. Whilst there I checked out the mouth of the Red River for interesting pipits or wagtails but the best I could come up with was an adult Med. gull.

Med. gulls are always lovely to find

27th October: Lizard & Oldbury-on-Severn

Today was my last day down in Cornwall and I was due to pack up and head off home. The weather was once more pretty appalling with grey skies and constant rain though with little wind to speak of. There was of course the decision of what to do as I headed home and I had been wondering about having another crack at the Pallas's warbler. However the previous evening news had broken of a bufflehead on a small pond just south of Lizard village and I thought that this would be a better target than the troublesome warbler as it would either be there or it wouldn't so there would be no waiting around for Luke to endure. It was also of course a far rarer Cornish bird than the warbler.

I did hear from Dave Parker that it had flown off at 8:30 but that it could return. However I decided to have a go for it anyway and fortunately en route it was reported on RBA as being present. We found the spot without any problems and I took a few photos in the gloomy and rainy conditions whilst Luke messed around taking photos with my other camera. It was a pretty small pond that this bird had stumbled upon and though it was diving fairly constantly it didn't seem to be coming up with any fish at all.

The female/immature bufflehead
For some much better photos see Steve Rogers' site

After a short while we decided to head back to the car and on northwards towards home. En route I thought that it would be positively rude of me not to stop in to pay my respects to the female pied wheatear at Oldbury-on-Severn especially as I would be going right past it. We arrived mid afternoon to find the weather conditions just as grey and rainy as before. A fifteen minute walk found us at the yacht club building which was situated at a gloomy but very atmospheric location by the Severn estuary. With the tide right out there was a large expanse of mud and the dark overhanging cloud and drizzle gave it a very desolate air. Fortunately the pied wheatear was very reliable and was keeping faithful to a small circuit around various vantage points from which it would make regular flycatching sorties. It quite unconcerned by the attendant birders though there were only about half a dozen others, which was understandable given the time of day and the weather conditions. At one point the wheatear landed on a sign not two yards from where I was standing and it was a shame that the conditions were so poor as it would have made a great photographic subject. As it was the gloom and the rather bedraggled state of the bird meant that my photos were more record shots than works of art though at least one was able to get good close views.

The very confiding but rather bedraggled female pied wheatear

After a while I decided to continue home on my journey and given where we were starting off from for a change I chose to go up the M5 and back home via the A40, a route that I know well from visiting Slimbridge. I arrived back home early evening, tired but content with having seen some good birds today.

30th October: Moths & Debriefing

Readers may have noticed a distinct lack of the "moth du jour" section on the blog for my last visit. This wasn't for want of trying but I only found any moths at all on two evenings and I was a bit slow in sending the photos to John Swann who puts up with my inept moth ignorance with great patience. I have put down a moth ID book on my Christmas list so perhaps next year I'll be able to have a go myself. Anyway, there were only two moths that I found and unfortunately the photos of them are rather poor.

A black rustic

Unknown. I've had various guesses from Large Yellow Underwing,
Turnip Moth and Conformist. Feel free to offer an opinion as a comment
on this posting if you think you know what it is.

I like to reflect on my Cornish visits at the end, for my own benefit if nothing else. This time was generally rather quiet. There were the expected yellow-browed warblers and firecrests which were nice to see and I enjoyed finding the black redstart, lesser whitethroat and the possible greenish warbler locally around the cottage. On the downside I was disappointed that the Isabelline shrike didn't hang around and that the Pallas's warbler proved so elusive. On the plus side I enjoyed the en route pied wheatear and I jammed in on the bufflehead which was a great bird to see, apparently a Cornish first so an excellent county tick. Talking of which I managed four more this visit so it's moving along gently and closing in on my Oxon total. Once again the last day provided much of the action with the bufflehead and the off county pied wheatear and saved me from what would have been a very quiet visit on the rarity front. In terms of the bird of the visit award that has to be the bufflehead really which only hung around for the one full day before moving on (being briefly seen elsewhere) so I was very lucky to get it.

Bird of the trip award

Back to Cornwall Again

2011-10-07T17:45:00.004+01:00

Thursday 29th September

Back down to Cornwall for another week of frenzied painting (this time it's all the windows) and birding. As usual I'd been keeping a keen eye on what was about in Cornwall: there were still some hangers on from the initial batch of Nearctic waders with a couple of Lesser Yellowlegs (Drift & St. Clements, near Truro) and a Long-billed Dowitcher at Stithians Reservoir. Unfortunately the long-staying Drift Semi-P had chosen to move on and with just a few days until my arrival the Drift 'legs also departed. As usual I looked about for something to stop off at on the way down and my chosen route for the journey was as follows: Lodmoor in Weymouth for the Red-backed Shrike (as far as I'm concerned Weymouth counts as "on the way"), St. Clements for the Lesser Yellowlegs and finally Stithians Reservoir for the Dowitcher.

I set off earlier a little after 8 a.m. and after negotiating the Oxford morning rush-hour traffic I was finally on the A34 at around 8:30 when after an uneventful journey I arrived at Lodmoor mid morning. Red-backed Shrikes are very hard to come by in land-locked Oxfordshire so I was happy to make a bit of an effort to go and see one. This turned out to be a very easy twitch and within five minutes of stepping out of the car I was watching the bird from a range of about 50 yards in what were rather hazy conditions because of the bright sunshine. I spent a little while taking some digiscoped record shots though the haze meant that the results weren't that great. The wader scrapes themselves seemed rather empty with just a single greenshank, one bar-tailed godwit, one grey plover and 5 dunlin around. Having seen my bird and with a lot of driving on relatively slow roads ahead to get back on to the main route, I didn't hang about but pressed on for Cornwall. En route I got a text saying that there was no sign of the Stithians Dowitcher though the St. Clements Yellowlegs was still around.

The Lodmoor shrike, digiscoped in rather hazy conditions

In good time I arrived at my next destination of St. Clements. This turned out to be a small village on the edge of the River Tresillian which was rather wide and with the tide right out consisted of a vast area of mud. There was a pool, called Tresemple where the bird sometimes hung out but I managed to find the bird on the main river almost as soon as I started looking. It was rather distant but having spent every day for a month watching "my" Lesser Yellowlegs on my home patch of Port Meadow this time last year I found that the dainty features and rapid feeding action leapt out at me even from across the river . In the scope I could make out it's lovely yellow legs though it was too far away for even me to attempt a photograph. Further up by Tresemple pool there were a total of 6 Greenshank and a Spotted Redshank as well as good numbers of Curlew and some loafing gulls.

As I didn't get any record photos of the bird here's some fantastic footage taken by (c) John Chapple

Back in the car I headed off for Stithians Reservoir and was just getting close to it when I got a call from Dave Parker saying that the Red-backed Shrike at Land's End was still about and showing well just below Swingates House. I thanked him for the message and resolved to head there straight after my reservoir visit. At the reservoir I couldn't believe at just how low the water level was with so much of what had been submerged now exposed. There I met a couple of local birders whom I'd met before who'd been there for the last two hours scouring all areas in search of the Dowitcher. I told them about the "No Sign" pager message which at least put their minds at rest regarding having missed it. By way of compensation there was a Wood Sandpiper around and a couple of Wheatears. They'd also seen a couple of Pecs and a flock of Dunlin though these all seemed to have moved off somewhere else by the time I'd arrived. Given how thoroughly they'd already searched for the bird I didn't hang around at all and within fifteen minutes I was heading off for Land's End.

I arrived at Land's End to find another birder just escorting his wife to see the shrike and he was able to show me exactly where it was hanging out so that in a few minutes I was watching it. In the evening sunshine it was bathed in a wonderful golden glow and without the haze from this morning I was able to enjoy fantastic views of this beautiful bird.

The shrike was slightly too far away for a super-zoom shot so I had to be content with digiscoping though the light was absolutely perfect.

Tired but very content with my journey down I headed off to the cottage to get unpacked and to russle up something to eat. It had been a most enjoyable start to my time back down in Cornwall.

Friday 30th September

This morning I awoke to find a reasonably thick fog enveloping Pendeen. A quick check on the Land's End webcam revealed that this wasn't just the regular local fog but something more extensive. Accordingly I was in no hurry to get out birding but first put in a decent session of painting. By mid morning things had started to brighten up somewhat so I headed over to Nanquidno to see what I could find. I was particularly interested in a Hawfinch sighting from the previous day and I also wanted to check the fields up by Little Hendra for Ortolan Buntings as this seemed to be a regular spot for them.

I'd forgotten just how many more birders there are down on the Penwith peninsula in October and whereas a month or so ago I could more or less have had the valley to myself now there were quite a few cars parked in the parking area and quite a few birders about though no one had seen anything. I gave the blackthorn a good grilling as apparently that was where the Hawfinch had been yesterday feeding on the sloe berries but to no avail. Up by Hendra House there was a huge flock of several hundred linnet with some goldfinches in amongst them and I spent some time searching through them for something rarer but again without any luck. On the way back up the valley I spotted a Peregrine sitting high on a rock surveying the surround area. Back at the ford I bumped into Dave Parker briefly who'd not seen anything of note either. I decided to round off my rather fruitless visit with a quick yomp over to Tregriffian Farm where the long-staying Pectoral Sandpiper had been remaining faithful to the small muddy pool at the back of the farm. Sure enough he was still there and I took a few photos though it was still misty and the light was poor. Then it was back home for lunch and my afternoon painting session.

It's quite remarkable how small the pool is that has kept this Pec. sand happy for several days now

With no news of anything major to hand I wasn't sure where to go for my afternoon birding expedition so when the Snow Bunting was reported as still being present at Sennen Cove I thought that to start with I would head over in that direction. I decided to have an explore along the north end of the Cycle Track that goes to Land's End and had just started out when I met a couple of birders who mentioned that not only had the Hawfinch been seen again at Nanquidno but also there'd been a Pied Flycatcher there as well. I quickly decided to head back there to see if I could catch up with either of these birds and cut short my Cycle Track walk. On the way over to Nanquidno I nipped into the upper Pay & Display car park where sure enough the Snow Bunting was hopping around in the middle of the field as confiding as this species usually is. I took a few shots from the car window and then headed back to Nanquidno.

The Sennen Cove Snow Bunting

As I pulled up in the parking area there were a couple of birders staring intently into the Sycamore trees there and it turned out that they'd just been watching the Pied Flycatcher and told me that it was appearing regularly at this spot. I settle down to wait for its reappearance but unfortunately it wouldn't cooperate and after about half an hour I decided to try my luck with the Hawfinch instead. There were quite a few birds moving around in the Blackthorn including several Chiffies and a male Blackcap but no sign of the target finch. Back to the car park: still no flycatcher. A quick walk to the ford: nothing. Back to the car park: bingo - there it was! I took some snaps and watched it for a while. I know that Cornish locals don't get too excited about Pied Fly's which are fairly regular down here but back in Oxon they are very hard to get and this was a Cornish tick for me so I enjoyed watching this dainty little flycatcher. After a while I had one more fruitless try for the Hawfinch and then headed off home for food and my evening painting session.

The Nanquidno Pied Flycatcher

Saturday 1st October

Today the weather was full-on gorgeous. There was none of the mist or fog and it was much calmer so it was great to be out and about. With nothing in particular that I wanted to chase down I was in no hurry to get out this morning so instead had an extended morning painting session and it wasn't until about 10:30 that I started to think about where I wanted to visit. With no RBA updates so far to provide any clues I decided that I would head over Polgigga way to see if I could find anything good myself. On the way I stopped in at Sennen Cove to check on the Snow Bunting but there was no sign of it. As I was driving through Sennen just near the church I spotted a Turtle Dove just by the side of the road though it flew off as I drove past.

I parked up at Trevilley and started walking over to Polgigga via the footpath that goes through Nanjizal valley. I soon came across a Clouded Yellow flitting around in one of the fields. On my journey I saw loads of Wheatears and there were plenty of Meadow Pipits buzzing around as well. I was particularly looking out for Short-toed Larks and rare pipits for which this area is a bit of a hot-spot though without any luck. I grilled all the starlings on the wires at the lane but there was no sign of the Rose-coloured Starling though it hadn't been seen yesterday either. Next I walked along the footpath that heads west from Higher Bosistow as a couple of Dotterel had been reported in the recently tilled field there. I soon found the field but the only occupants were more Wheatears and six Skylarks. There was nothing further of note on my return journey.

I got quite excited at seeing this Clouded Yellow. By the end of the day I'd seen half a dozen or so and realised that they weren't actually that unusual.

I know very little about dragonflies but I believe that this is a Common Darter

I had been thinking of heading straight back home but news had come through that the Hawfinch had been showing again at Nanquidno so I popped into a shop to buy a sandwich & drink & decided to eat them at Nanquidno whilst starting at some Blackthorn bushes in case the Hawfinch should decide to pop out of them. I arrived to find the car parking area almost full and John Chapple there staring intently into the field opposite. It turn out that he was watching a trio of Yellow Wagtails which were following the horses around the field as is their wont. Yellow Wags are hard birds to come by in Cornwall so I was pleased to get this county tick. I went over to the Hawfinch area where in the company of a couple of visting birders we waited and watched. After a while I decided to try a bit further down and left the others. Soon after they started gesticulating wildly to me so I ran back only to discover that it had shown briefly but had disappeared again. Having seen the bird the other two went off but I stayed put, being joined by John, Laurie Williams and a few others whom I didn't know. We passed a very pleasant hour or so chatting away and during this time John picked out a pair of Redstarts on the hillside opposite, again not an easy bird to see in Cornwall and yet another Cornish tick. John said that he charged half a pint per county tick and a pint for a lifer so that was already a pint I owed him, an absolute bargain as far as I'm concerned. A number of siskins flew over and I saw four more Clouded Yellows whilst waiting for the finch so it was clearly a good day for them. Back in the car park the lovely Pied Flycatcher was showing again by the car. However my afternoon painting session was long overdue so I headed for home.

The Nanquidno Pied Flycatcher, still as lovely as ever!

I'd just walked in the door when I got a text from Dave Parker saying that there was a Tawny Pipit down at Polgigga. After a couple of phone calls, one to Dave and another to Paul St. Pierre, who'd actually found the bird, I decided that I would have to have a try for it though it was getting late and I'd still not done my afternoon painting. Still you can't turn down the chance of a Tawny Pipit so I sped back off towards Polgigga, parked at Trevilley once again and yomped quickly down to Nanjizal. I soon found the exact field were Paul had found the bird and spent a good hour searching carefully down each furrow but apart from a load of Wheatears there was nothing else. There was one moment of excitment when one of the Wheatears started flying low and fast towards me. At first I couldn't work out what was going on until suddenly a Sparrowhawk appeared and took the Wheatear in a puff of feathers before flying off with his prize. A sad end to such a lovely bird but very exciting to see the hawk make its kill. As it was getting dark I eventually headed back to the car, scouring the other large earth field carefully on my way back but to no avail. Back home I had to put in a good evening painting session to compensate for such a long day out but with two county ticks I couldn't really complain.

Back by popular demand (well Badger likes it) is the "Moth du Jour" section. Today's offering is a Setaceous Hewbrew Character (ID as always courtesy of John Swann). My mothing consistes of turning on the outside light in the evening, catching what I find in the area in a glass, taking it inside to photograph and then releasing it again.

Sunday 2nd October

Today was once more sunny and warm which was great for being out and about but good birds seem to be a bit thin on the ground in Penwith. Whilst I've been getting Cornish ticks to keep me amused, the truth is there hasn't been anything really good about for a while. Sure there are a couple of Pec. Sands, some Wrynecks and a Black Kite or two but I seem already to be acquiring a rather blaisé attitude to stuff that would get me really excited back in Oxford. There was nothing in particular that I wanted to see from yesterday (I've given up on the Nanquidno Hawfinch) so in the morning I thought that I would just have a wander around locally to see what I could find and so that I could crack on with the painting. In general, if there's nothing particular to go after I want to be able to bank some extra painting time to compensate for times when I have to drop everything for something good.

During my Pendeen wander I kept hearing a distant down-slurred call which had me thinking of Red-throated Pipit. I could never see the bird but I was hearing so many that either there was a mass invasion of RT pipits or it was something else. Eventually I heard one well enough to realise that they were actually of course Siskins flying over though you wouldn't tend to associate that species with the open farmland of Pendeen. On my local wander I found a Clouded Yellow, at least half a dozen Small Coppers and a rather worn male Common Blue. There were still loads of Wheatears about and several Whinchat as well.

There were loads of wheatears about near the cottage this morning. They are such lovely photogenic birds. This one has a couple of crane fly legs sticking out of its mouth still

A couple of Small Coppers thinking about getting frisky

The combination of the heat and the fact that I hadn't slept too well meant that a post-lunch Power Nap was called for and I felt much better for it. I'd just started my afternoon painting session when I got a text from Dave Parker: the two Dotterel were back in their field between Higher Bosistow and Raftra and the Tawny Pipit had been reported as well. I hurriedly finished the window that I was on and then set off towards Polgigga once more. There I met up with Dave and another birder (whose name I've unfortunately forgotten) who were watching the two Dotterel in the field. There was also a Golden Plover and a Whinchat but no sign of the pipit which apparently was seen by friends of the couple who'd found the Dotterel but by no one else. Dave and I decided to have a trawl around the surrounding fields to see if we could turn it up but despite a thorough search of all the bare fields we couldnt find it.

Digiscoping conditions were far from ideal and I only took three shots of the Dotterel. Fortunately this one came out ok.

I drove home, stopping in at the Sennen Cove car park where the Snow Bunting had been reported again but I couldn't see it on a quick drive around the car park and also at Nanquidno where a brief wander down the valley revealed nothing at all though it was getting late by now. So it was back home for dinner and more painting.

Moth du jour: Square Spot Rustic

Monday 3rd October
This morning I awoke once more to bright sunny conditions. With nothing particular that I wanted to see having been reported I decided on having a long painting session and then to do a bit more local Pendeen birding. By the cottage itself there were far fewer Wheatears around this morning and just one Whinchat. I wandered up the road into Pendeen itself, checking out the small roadside pool and the Calartha Farm copse before having a look in at Pendeen church. The habitat here looks great for finding something and today I managed a nice Spotted Flycatcher. As I walked back to the cottage I could see a bank of fog and mist heading in off the sea and sure enough within half an hour Pendeen was enveloped in a thick fog which, judging from the Land's End webcam, seemed to stretch all along the North coast.

Who ate all the flies? I'm normally struck by how slim and long-winged Spotted Flycatchers look but this one looked distinctly portly.

After another long painting session, by mid afternoon I was ready to sally forth once again. In view of the foggy conditions I elected to head over to the other side of the peninsula to Marazion where I managed to catch up with the very confiding Pectoral Sandpiper which allowed approach down to a few yards. I also had a wander along the east side of Marazion marsh just to explore though I didn't see anything of note. Back on the beach at Marazion there were three pale-bellied Brent Geese on the shore and I had a quick rummage through the Rock Pipits and Wagtails by the mouth of the river for anything rarer but without success.

The Marazion Pectoral Sandpiper was incredibly tame & it was a shame that conditions were so gloomy as otherwise it would have been an opportunity for some great photographs

The three Pale-bellied Brent Geese

Rock Pipit

I nipped into Tesco's for some provisions and decided on the way back home to check out the two Black Kites which were apparently showing well just past Drift. I pulled into the layby to find Paul Semmens there photographing the two birds which were showing almost constantly, flying at low altitude at a distance down to 100 yards. I took some record shots but conditions were pretty gloomy. Then it was off home for something to eat and a final bout of painting.

A record shot of one of the two Black Kites

Moth du jour: Autumnal Rustic (ID as always courtesy of John Swann)

Tuesday 4th October

Once more it was a reasonably nice start to the day though the mist and fog rolled in even earlier than yesterday and Pendeen was once more fog-bound before 10am. I did a quick check of the local Pendeen spots again on the way to get some milk from the local store but there was nothing of note. After my morning painting session I decided to head over to Hayle for a change of scenery and to check out the waders and gulls. I'd timed it so that it would be high tide and indeed all the birds were conveniently located close to the Hayle bridge by the causeway when I arrived. There was nothing of particular note with the highlights being an adult winter-plumage Med. gull, 3 Sandwich Terns, 1 Grey Plover and a handful of Black and Bar-tailed Godwits. Ryans Field held just four Godwits and a quick check at Copperhouse Creek found just a few Ringed Plovers in amongst the Curlew.

Hayle birds at high tide

On the way back I popped into Marazion where the Pec. Sand was still as ridiculously tame as ever and the three Brent Geese were still there.

Up close and personal with the Pec. Please note the bird was feeding away quite happily whilst they were there and was in no way put off by their close proximity.

The three Brent geese were still around

I'd got back home and was making a sandwich when I got a text from Dave Parker saying that at Porthgwarra there was a Red-backed Shrike, 2 Snow Buntings and most interstingly a Red-throated Pipit which had been flying around for the last five minutes. This sounded as though the Pipit might actually be gettable so I went straight back out the door and arrived some half an hour later where I soon met up with Dave. Apparently only the two of us were foolish enough to go searching for the Pipit in the mist on Porthgwarra. We spent a good couple of hours tramping around the moor chasing after any Pipits, hoping that one would give the diagnostic call but to no avail. After a while the fog became so thick that all sensible birds would be hunkered down and we had to admit defeat. The highlight of the trip was when we spotted a very white moth which flew down and landed not too far from where we were standing. From my previous PG moth experience I was wondering whether it might be a Crimons Speckled moth (one of only a handful that I can actually recognise) and low and behold indeed it was. Excitedly I texted John Swann about it only to be told that Mark Wallace had actually already found it earlier in the day (along with the Shrike, Pipit and Buntings). Still, it was nice to find another Mega, albeit a mothy one. For the second time in a few days I headed home from a fruitless session searching for rare pipits with Dave. Hopefully it will be third time lucky!

Moth du Jour: my second Crimson Speckled Moth find of the month on Porthgwarra!

Wednesday 5th October

This morning the weather was much more typical for October with wind, grey skies and patches of fog. As today was my last full day here before heading off home I wanted to finish off one more window before going out for some birding. I had to be back by mid afternoon as my brother-in-law was coming down today: some friends of his and he were going to be using the cottage from tomorrow for a few days so he was coming down a day early to get things ready for them and for me to show him the cottage ropes.

As a snow bunting had been reported at Pendeen yesterday just past the lower car park I was planning on nipping out to check it out once it had got properly light. However whilst I was still thinking about this a text came through on RBA reporting it as present this morning along the track to Manor Farm. I finished off half the window and then popped out where sure enough there it was. It was more flighty than they often are and wouldn't let me get too close before flying off over the wall though it soon came back again. Just at that point I met up with a visiting birder who was staying at Calartha Farm. It turned out that he'd found the bird this morning (and yesterday) and was back for a second look.

Light conditions were so bad that in the end I resorted to a bit of video footage of the bunting

I returned home, finished off my window and contemplated my birding for the morning. I was waiting on news about a Glossy Ibis that had been seen at Stithians yesterday morning but so far I'd not heard anything. I therefore decided to nip down to PG to have another look for the elusive RT Pipit. This time I decided to walk in from Arden Sawah farm for a change which gets you onto the west side of the Moor a lot quicker and gives you some farmland fields to search through to boot. On the moor I met Dave Parker and Mark Wallace who'd just found two more Crimson Speckled moths. Honestly! These are clearly Trash Moths rather than Megas: I'd now seen four of them in the space of a few weeks! Mark was exploring some of the more obscure corners of the moor and we tagged along until I got a text saying that the Ibis was showing at Stithians so I decided to head off for it. On the way I pulled over at the Polgigga cricket pitch where there were loads of wagtails (it's well know for them). In amongst the pieds/whites I managed to find a single Yellow - not such a common bird for Cornwall.

I arrived at Stithians at just about the same time as Richard Menari (whom I met a few days earlier at the Dotterel field) so we looked around together. Far from it being a simple matter of tick & run there was no sign of it. We even had a good snoop around south of the causeway in the Southern Cutoff area but there was nothing more than a single Grey Heron. After a while we admitted defeat though Richard decided to check out the Northern Causeway on his way home and took my number in case he should find it. He had no luck and I headed back to Pendeen, stopping off at White Gate Cottage just to check that the Snow Bunting was OK (it was). I was just back in the house making a cup of tea when (you guessed it) Dave Parker rang. Apparently the Ibis was showing at the Norther Cutoff right now. Drat and Double Drat! I didn't have time (or the energy quite frankly) to head straight back out again as I had to get the cottage ship-shape. I would have to try on the way home for it tomorrow though it clearly was being elusive. I spent the rest of the time getting the cottage ready and packing for tomorrow's departure. It had been a rather frustrating day with only a nice Snow Bunting and a Yellow Wagtail to show for my efforts. Still that's birding - if it was easy all the time we'd soon get bored with it.

The bunting this afternoon when the light was at least a little better

Thursday 6th October

On my last morning down in Cornwall I awoke to the predicted strong north-westerly wind: clearly a Pendeen Day and given how close I was it would be rude of me not to at least pop in first thing for a sea watch before heading home. In the car park I met Dave Parker who was just getting out of his car and soon after we'd installed ourselves in front of the light house a couple of other birders turned up including a chap whom I'd met with and chatted to the previous day at Stithians whilst not seeing the Glossy Ibis. It turned out to be a most enjoyable sea-watching session: for a start "callable" birds were coming almost constantly with a steady stream of sooties, balearics, arctics & bonxies, with some more interesting stuff turning up occasionally to spice things up. The highlights were two Great Shearwaters going through at a reasonably close distance, a juv. Sabines that I didn't get on, a few Grey Phalaropes, plus lots of the commoner stuff. What's more it was a nice small group, we were all sitting close together so you could easily hear what people were saying (important for someone like me who finds it difficult to hear with background wind noise these days) and we all got on well. In this group I felt confident enough to make a fool of myself by calling a kittiwake as a possible Sab etc. Unfortunately all too soon I had to leave to head back to the cottage though all in all I'd say that it was probably one of the most enjoyable sea-watches I've had so far.

Back home I had to have breakfast, pack the car and get my brother-in-law up to speed on how the heating etc. worked so it wasn't until around 10:30 a.m. that I finally departed. Naturally enough, I wasn't going to head straight home without stopping off somewhere and first port of call was back to Stithians Reservoir where the finicky Glossy Ibis had been reported on RBA as showing again this morning. This time it all worked out as it was supposed to and I turned up to find plenty of other birders all watching the Ibis which was there feeding away in one of the pools by the shoreline. It was rather distant but one could get reasonable enough views so I took some digiscoped shots for the record and headed on up the A30.

The Stithians Glossy Ibis

The second port of call was Davidstow Airfield or "Mordor" as it has been christened by Badger: he'd gone there a couple of days ago for the semi-P to find Davidstow completely fog bound and a desolate birdless wasteland. I must admit I do find birding there really difficult: if the bird you're looking for isn't in one of the obvious big pools then there is a vast area to search through and I have spent several fruitless hours there in the past looking for stuff. This time I chose some different tactics: after a quick check on the main pools I decided to look at the other cars there to see if any looked like they were watching something good. I saw one near the road which had been stationary for some time so I headed over and sure enough there was the Semi-P by the side of a large puddle right next to the main road. The great thing about Mordor of course is that when you do find a bird you get cripplingly good views and I watched this delightful Nearctic vagrant down to just a few yards. At one point someone (a non-birder) turnd off the main road and drove at high speed right through the puddle where the sandpiper was. I felt sure that the bird must flush or even worse be run over but it just scuttled out of the way and seemed remarkably unperturbed. The guy who'd been watching the bird before me told me that there was also a Snow Bunting on the next cross runway and sure enough when I went to look there it was, remarkably my third one in a week down here in Cornwall. On my way back to the road I took pity on another car whose occupants were looking around forlornly and told them where the semi-P was which they much appreciated. With a long drive ahead of me I pointed the car in the direction of Oxford and headed for home.

Close...

Closer...

Closest!

...and a bonus Snow Bunting

Moth du Jour: Lunar Underwing

End of Visit De-briefing

So another trip to Cornwall has finished and I'm back home in the relatively birdless county of Oxon. Now, Jonathan Lethbridge does warn against providing lists within blogs as it is apt to cause over-excitment amongst birders but I shall throw caution to the wind and provide one of the main birds that I saw during my visit

2 Red-backed Shrike
1 Lesser Yellowlegs
2 Pectoral Sandpiper
2 Black Kite
1 Glossy Ibis
1 Semipalmated Sandpiper
2 Great Shearwater

Those amongst you who have been paying attention might have noticed that almost half this list was obtained on the last day which went some way to redeem what was quite frankly a rather quiet week by Cornish standards.

As far as commoner birds were concerned there were also:
3 Snow Bunting
1 Pied Flycatcher
2 Dotterel
4 Yellow Wagtails
2 Common Redstarts

As always I thoroughly enjoyed my trip. I have enjoyed getting to know the local sites better and also the local and visiting birders whom I've generally found to be a helpful and friendly bunch. It was great to see more Nearctic waders and my personal tally for this autumn is now 10 different ones, all but one (Slimbridge semi-P) being in Cornwall. As far as my Cornish county list is concerned I managed to add a surprising eight birds to this and whilst I'm rather coy about the exact total whilst it is still so small I can reveal that I have now passed the 200 mark and I am fast closing in on my Oxon county total.

As for my next visit, I'm going to be back in a couple of weeks time at the end of the month, this time with my five year old son Luke in tow as well as my other brother-in-law with perhaps the rest of the family joining us later though they're off to Paris for a few days of girly shopping at the start of the week.

Finally, the bird of the trip award goes to.... the Land's End Red-backed Shrike which was so great to see at close quarters in such lovely evening light.

The Bird of the Trip

Farmoor Photos (than Necessary)

2011-09-23T16:15:00.000+01:00

I have still been slogging away on my patch. Not that the patch has been completely birdless: I did manage to find a Little Stint on the flood puddle the other day but in general it's been depressingly quiet. To compensate I've been spending more time at Farmoor which has been enjoying a great run of form of late. Not only have there been more Curlew Sandpipers (six) in one month than in almost the last decade in the county (I exaggerate but slightly), there's been a White-winged Black Tern, three Black-necked Grebes, a Little Stint, the small and yet painfully gripping matter of the Citrine Wagtail and then a ridiculously tame Lapland Bunting which has been the first twitchable one in the county certainly for the last decade (there have been a couple of single observer fly-overs) if not far longer. Indeed I was amazed at how many of the top county birders still needed it for their list and it makes it pretty much a local Mega. It turned out that the bird was actually found a day earlier by a couple of local birders who weren't really in the birding scene loop and didn't appreciate what they'd discovered though fortunately it was independently discovered the next day by Dave Lowe, who has become a bit of a bird-finding machine of late what with the county-first Citrine Wagtail a few weeks earlier. When it was found, I hurried down immediately only to discover that it had flown off so departed to do my household shopping chores, only to hear that it had been re-found an hour or so later so I had to hurry back down for it (much to the despair of my long-suffering VLW). In the end it stayed for a good few days and was much admired by all and sundry from far and wide.

My modest photographic efforts with the much-photographed
bunting. In fact we had so many shots of it on the Oxon Bird Log
that we had to ask people to stop posting photos!

Apart from that I've been taking the opportunity to photograph some of the Farmoor goodies that often present themselves at ridiculously close quarters, especially the smaller waders. Below are a selection of my shots. I was quite pleased with them until I saw some of the offerings from proper photographers with proper expensive cameras. At the end of the day one has to decide whether one is a birder or a bird photographer and I don't want to give up carrying my scope around so for now at least I'm sticking to my super-zoom.

With all these shots you can click to see them in their full size should you wish.

There's nothing quite as lovely as a Wheatear!

...and Little Stints are just gorgeous

..even the humble dunlin is great to look at at close quarters.

Not as close as the waders but pretty close for a Black-necked Grebe

This juvenile Arctic Tern looked rather ill and I was
about to go and pick it up when it flew off

Slimbridge Semi-P

2011-09-20T08:56:00.002+01:00

It's been a great autumn for Nearctic waders so far thanks to a couple of Hurricanes/Tropical Storms coming at just the right time. Down in Cornwall in particular it's been amazing and in fact it's easier to count the American waders that they haven't had yet than those that they have. Of course none of these strays have penetrated inland to Oxfordshire but on Sunday I noticed the WWT at Slimbridge seemed to be having a purple patch with Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper and a Dotterel, all on the estuary and it was particularly the semiP that caught my eye. Now my usual "rules of engagement" for twitching required that I wait to make sure that it nicely bedded down and reliable. However, as Slimbridge is quite close and I hadn't been for a couple of years despite being a WWT member I thought that I would take a punt on it the following day.

The key to birding the estuary at Slimbridge is the tides and high tide was at around midday so around 10:15 am I set off west arriving at around 11:30. On arrival I headed straight for the Holden Tower where I soon discovered that the wardens were doing a guided walk down to the estuary to look for some of yesterday's rarities. I hurried out towards the assembled group of a couple of dozen birders though from a distance it didn't look like they were particularly keenly watching anything. When I got to them it turned out that my initial assessment was incorrect and the SemiP was there only about 30 or 40 yards away though hunkered down in a hole in the mud so you could only see the back of its head. The next hour or so was spent watching the back of its head waiting for the brief moments when it would wake up and have a preen before going back to sleep. After a while the bird moved position a bit and some of the other birders drifted away leaving more space and I found a better vantage point so I was able to see the whole bird though it was still asleep.

There were lots of views of it hunkered down asleep (Click to Enlarge)

After more patient watching the rest of the Dunlin and Ringed Plover flock started to get more restless now that the tide had turned and the Sandpiper woke up, had a little wander around and then started a good preen. By taking repeated digiscoped photos as it preened I was finally able to get some reasonable shots of the bird caught between preens. Suddenly it stretched its wings, the whole flock flew off out to the estuary to re-start feeding and the show was over.

Of about 150 photos taken these four actually show
the bird in a reasonable pose (Click to Enlarge)

The last photo, stretching its wings about to fly (Click to Enlarge)

Thanks largely to my Cornish efforts I have now managed to see Pec, Baird's, Buff-breasted and SemiP for this year and I'm really hoping to be able to see more of these wonderful American vagrants this autumn. Bring on the storms I say!

Cornwall in September

2011-09-15T09:19:00.003+01:00

Tuesday 6th Spetember: Hayle & Drift
For some time I'd planned to do a lot of the cottage decorating in the autumn for obvious reasons. I'd made a mental note to make at least one visit in September and perhaps a couple in October. I'd not really given much thought as to exactly when in September I should come down but instead kept an eye on what was happening down in Cornwall. I was suitably gripped off by the Western Bonelli's warbler at Polgigga and when a Baird's sandpiper turned up at Hayle shortly afterwards I started thinking that I'd missed a good slot in which to go. I then realised that if I wanted to visit in October I should really get down there quite soon as I like to leave a respectable interval between visits so that I can do a reasonable amount of work and not annoy my business partner too much with constant absences. I therefore decided that now was as good a time as any though I did rather have a nagging feeling that I'd missed a really good birding spell. As far as conditions were concerned it had suddenly got rather windy and the forecast was currently for a very windy week so there should be plenty of sea-watching opportunities if nothing else. I'd originally intended to head down on Monday but my wife reminded me that the tyres on the car were getting dangerously bald so I put it in for a service on Monday instead, intending to go down first thing on Tuesday morning. However the garage didn't have the tyres in stock so it wasn't until early Tuesday afternoon that I got the car back again and I set off west into the strong winds and squally rain.

The delay with the car, the weather and the fact that there was an accident on the A30 which meant further delays only added to my rather dark mood when I pulled up at Hayle at around 6pm. Fortunately the rain had now stopped though it was windy and cloudy. One look at the wonderful estuary though and my mood was immediately lifted: it was just after high tide and not twenty yards away were a flock of five juvenile curlew sandpipers together with loads of other waders and gulls. I felt like a pig in clover: my favourite birds are waders and gulls and to have a whole load of them to sift through was great. Apart from the curlew sands (a Cornish tick) there was not much else of particular note apart from the usual waders and gulls but I took plenty of photos and then with an hour of daylight left headed off towards Penzance.

Hayle Curlew Sandpipers photographed in poor light (Click to enlarge)

A couple of pectoral sandpipers had been reported earlier in the day at Drift reservoir so with the light fast fading I headed off there for a look. In the strong wind there were literally hundreds of hirundines hawking low over the reservoir so I had a good scan for red-rumps but to no avail though I did turn up a flock of nine Arctic terns which were picking flies off the water. I made it to the hide and opened up the slats to find a flock of half a dozen waders on the point not thirty yards from me: the two juvenile pecs (another Cornish tick) , 3 dunlin and 2 ringed plover. Although it was nearly dark I had a go at some video and photos for the record. It soon got too dark to see so I headed back to the car, drove back to the supermarket to stock up on provisions and then headed over to Pendeen to open up the house. It had been an enjoyable start to my visit.

One of the pectoral sandpipers taken in near darkness (Click to enlarge)

Some video footage of the two birds

Wednesday 7th September: Pendeen & Hayle

I wasn't down here just to go birding of course, I had set myself the task of painting all the doors in the cottage whilst there which was going to entail a fair bit of work. I decided that the best way to combine this work with the birding was to do a session of a couple of hours work first thing, then have a morning birding session, then back for lunch and an afternoon painting session, followed by an afternoon birding session and then after dinner I'd do a bit more painting before relaxing in front of the telly with a beer in the evening. This policy should mean that I do five or six hours solid painting each day as well as getting some good birding in.

I woke up nice and early and got my two hours painting out of the way by 9:30 which left the rest of the morning for birding. With a good stiff westerly blowing Pendeen was obviously the place to go so I walked down to the lighthouse where the large numbers of cars parked there indicated that there was going to be a good crowd the other side of the building. The fact that a Madeiran Petrel had been seen there the previous day was of course an added incentive and indeed there were a couple of dozen birders there with plenty of visitors as well as some locals. I always like to choose where I sit carefully when there are lots of people: you want to be sitting near some people who know what they are doing and I find that I can learn a lot as well as pick up some good birds by making sure that I'm within earshot (not always very far in a strong wind) of some experts. Today I found a nice spot sitting next to Brett Richards (a very well known sea-watcher at Flamborough Head who seems to spend a fair bit of time sea-watching down in Cornwall these days) with a couple of locals nearby as well. It was immediately obvious that conditions were good with something interesting coming by very frequently as well as a near constant stream of manxies. There were quite a few terns going through, mostly Arctic's and Sandwich as well as plenty of skuas and smaller shearwaters. I manage to spot a very distant (three-quarter's distance) large sea mammal leaping clear of the water and landing again with a huge splash. I asked John Swann who said that it could be a basking shark which do leap like this though in my mind this was much bigger than that and I was thinking whale of some kind though I guess I'll never know. After a while someone called out "Leach's" which lead to the usual trying-to-get-on-someone-else's-sea-bird-stress-syndrome. The other people around me seemed to manage to pick it up OK but try as I might I couldn't seem to find it though in my defence petrels are pretty damn small. Almost immediately however, someone called out "large shearwater", followed by "it's a Great" so I gave up on the Leach's and tried to get onto that instead. This seemed to take a while as well but I managed to find it and watched it shearing lazily past at a reasonably close distance (by large shearwater standards) until low and behold it caught up with and then overtook the petrel so I managed to get both birds in the scope at the same time - nice! These two proved to be the highlight of the session though apparently I'd missed another Leach's and both grey and red-necked phalaropes before I arrived and a couple of birders around the corner claimed a probable Wilson's though it was only seen briefly as it headed straight out to sea rather than going past and no one in the main party saw it. As things started to tail off at midday I decided to head back to the cottage for lunch and my afternoon painting session.

John Swann (c) took this photo of me with the latest version of my wind and light shield, created by using a spare pair of waterproof trousers. Note that it's important that my ears are left uncovered so that I can hear what other people are saying!

When things started to tail off I got my super-zoom out and messed around for a while trying to take photos of passing gannets. As I'm sure any self-respecting sea-watcher will recognise, this is the left-hand of the Wra (the three rock reef at Pendeen) - click to enlarge.

I'd been so taken with my wader and gull session at Hayle yesterday that I decided for my afternoon visit I would head back there again. I knew just how large the expanse of the estuary was at low tide so wanted to head back at high tide where the waders would be forced into a much smaller space and hence would be easier to find. This was actually a rather naive understanding of the situation because, depending on the height of the tide, the birds can be forced into all sorts of different corners including by the Old Quay House, Ryan's Field, the Tempest factory and even up by Carnsew Basin. However I was blissfully ignorant of this and by luck the height of the high water was low enough so that there was a small expanse of mud still exposed right by the Hayle bridge where I had positioned myself. To start with there were just the usual waders including the five curlew sandpipers from yesterday so I set about taking some more photos. After a while though I spotted a small wader with unfeasibly long primaries, an even scalloped pattern on it's back and a neat warm brown breast band. Crickey! it was only the juvenile Baird's sandpiper wandering around about twenty yards from where I was standing! This bird had been seen last week but hadn't been reported for several days and I had assumed (like others I expect) that it had moved on. I quickly pointed it out to the other birders present, sent out a couple of texts to some local birders and then put it out on the Information Services. I then spent a very happy time clicking away with the camera at this very obliging bird.

The Baird's sandpiper (Click to enlarge).

Other birds of note included three sanderling, 1 turnstone, 1 knot, a Med. gull and on Ryan's Field a whimbrel and a couple of common sands. All too soon it was time to head back home for a bite to eat and my evening painting session to look forward to. Not that I minded as it had been a great day's birding.

Thursday 8th September: Drift, Hayle & Marazion

Thursday dawned, not with the strong winds that had been forecast at the start of the week but with hardly a breeze and instead a thick fog. Now Pendeen is especially prone to fog which is often very localised so if you go over the hill towards Penzance or further west you soon find yourself clear of it but this morning a quick check on some local web-cams revealed that it was actually quite extensive. With no prospect of sea-watching, today I thought that I would take the opportunity to catch up with some of the commoner waders that I still needed for my Cornish list. So after a prolonged morning painting session (to give the fog a chance to lift) I headed off to Drift reservoir where I was hoping for spotted redshank and ruff, both of which had been reported yesterday.

I arrived to find it still rather misty though clear enough at least to see to the far bank. As I walked along the bank I met a couple of birders who were leaving who reported seeing one of the juvenile pec. sands (the count had now gone up to four birds!). In the hide itself I found Dave Parker staking out the north-west arm. He said that he'd never seen the reservoir so low at this time of year though of course the resulting exposed shore line was great for waders. However the low water had exposed a small "cliff" which dropped off away from us as we were sitting in the hide so that there was a large area which was hidden to view. Consequently it was a matter of waiting until birds wandered out into view. There were plenty of ringed plover in view and a green sandpiper in the creek and Dave had seen a juvenile dunlin briefly. After a while the spotted redshank waded out into view giving me another Cornish tick before it went back out of sight. A couple of common sandpipers were working their way along the far bank. I spotted an Arctic tern hawking over the reservoir and then another flock of six birds came through. As it was just a matter of waiting we passed the time very pleasantly chatting away and Dave filled me in on past local birds and the local birders. After a while Paul Semmens joined us, apparently he does the birding commentary for the Scillonian crossing. As there was not much about he said that he would go and check the north-east arm which required going back up to Sancreed and then around to the other side. We asked, only half jokingly, if he could flush the birds from that arm back down to here and he said that he would see what he could do though it would take about half an hour to get around there. Sure enough within about half an hour we started to get some birds coming round to our side. First a pair of greenshanks, then a ruff and a knot came in and landed on the point very close by, the ruff being another Cornish tick. We were hoping that the smaller waders would come through but either he didn't manage to "flush" them (larger waders are usually more skittish) or they'd gone to another part of the reservoir. Eventually we'd had enough and walked back together with Dave taking the opportunity to point out some rare plants which had quickly established themselves on the exposed mud of the reservoir side.

A record shot of the knot and the ruff in the mist

Back home I did my afternoon painting session and then contemplated my afternoon birding outing. A buff-breasted sandpiper had turned up at Hayle and there was a juvenile pectoral sandpiper at Marazion. Moreover a juvenile little stint (which I still needed for the county) had been seen at Hayle the last few days so I thought that I would head off there for high tide once again. As I arrived, I had the pleasure of bumping into John Chapple, whom I'd met a couple of times previously at Treve Common (greenish & melodius warbler the first time and woodchat shrike and sub-alpine warbler the second) who was there with his camcorder looking for material for another of his superb videos (see his excellent blog). He was looking for the Baird's sandpiper whereas I wanted to pay my respects to the buff-breast so we went our separate ways. There were a few people looking at the buff-breast from the road side of Ryan's Field as it was at the back of the largest island there. As it was rather distant I had to resort to digiscoping rather than using the super-zoom but a few shots managed to come out OK.

Digiscoped shots of the buff-breasted sandpiper (Click to enlarge)

As there was no sign of the little stint, after a while I decided to head on back home but thought that I would pop in briefly at Marazion to check out Dave Parker's juvenile pec. sand. This was partly as it was on a part of the marsh that I wasn't so familiar with so at least it would be a chance to learn some more about the site. Just as I was walking down to the marsh I got a text from Dave saying that he was at Hayle and had just found the little stint all the way up at the North end of Carnsew Basin on the seaward side. I decided that it was too late to head back there now and carried on at Marazion. I soon found the standing stone by the pool on the eastern side of the marsh and sure enough there was the pec. sand skulking around at quite a close distance. The light was terrible but I had a go with the super-zoom and at ISO 400 managed to get a record shot or two.

The Marazion pectoral sandpiper (Click to enlarge)

After that it was back off home for food and more painting. It had been a good day with two more Cornish ticks and a couple of nice Neartic waders to boot.

Friday 9th September: Nanquidno & Hayle

I woke this morning to more fog and little wind so once again there wasn't going to be any sea-watching on offer. Once again I did an extended morning painting session to give the fog a chance to lift and then for a change I thought that I would go to Nanquidno where a wryneck had been reported for the last few days. I also wanted to explore the valley a bit further as I'd only ever birded around the ford area previously so this would be an opportunity to get to know the area a bit better.

At around 10am I arrived, parked up and headed down the valley. There were plenty of birds around, mostly mixed flocks of tits and chiffchaffs which I grilled for something more interesting but to no avail. Down at the wryneck spot I met a couple of other birders, from Southampton but who had a place in Penzance and we had a good chat. They'd been there for a couple of hours but there had been no sign of the wryneck though they had seen a pair of spotted flycatchers. Given their lack of success I decided not to bother staking out the area for very long and instead made my way over to Little Hendra which is a place that I'd heard of in the past for things like ortolan and lapland bunting in the various fields but had not visited before. This was also an opportunity for me to test out my new OS map app on my phone: it gives you an OS map and a "you are here" spot which makes it very easy to navigate your way on footpaths and tracks as it updates in real time. As long as you have a phone signal it works really well and I soon managed to navigate my way to Little Hendra where indeed there were plenty of good looking fields around though they were all empty apart from a few rooks. A couple of juvenile green woodpecker (not such a common bird on the peninsula) flew over as did a sparrowhawk and a couple of calling chough but apart from that it was all quiet. I made my way back to the wryneck spot (still no sign) and then back to the car and home for lunch.

That afternoon it was back to Hayle once more, this time to look for the little stint. I mentioned this in passing to Badger back in Oxon and he was amazed to learn that I had got pec., buff-breast and Baird's sands all before I'd got little stint in Cornwall - but that's Cornwall for you! It was quite a high tide today so there were no birds at all at the Hayle bridge and I decided to explore the Carnsew basin where Dave Parker had seen the stint yesterday. As I made my way along the sides of the Basin a sparrowhawk flew up and over the course of the afternoon I saw it a number of times as it made unsuccessful attempts on the roosting waders. A flock of 7 sandwich terns were flying around noisily and diving into the river. Up near the top of the Basin I met a birder who said that he'd just managed to find the Baird's sandpiper in amongst a group of waders that were on the seaward side of the Basin by the bend. When I asked he said that he had also seen a little stint in amongst them so I hurried on. Unfortunately it had started to rain quite hard and it was rather windy so viewing conditions were not ideal. As I grilled the waders a local called Brad turned up and we looked together though neither of us could find anything apart from the usual suspects though few birds had already started flying off from this location as the tide had now turned so it's possible that they'd moved off.

The palmations on it's foot got me excited for a moment until
I read up that ringed-plovers have small palmations between the
middle and outer toe too!

Some of the usual suspects on the estuary, taken
a couple of days earlier in better light (Click to enlarge)

As I was keen to find the stint I decided to work my way back towards the bridge and Ryan's Field to see if I could track it down. At the car wash I came across a group of birders peering intently into the gloom at the rapidly expanding area of exposed mud which the waders were repopulating as the tide ebbed. They were all looking for the Baird's though I asked them all if they'd come across the little stint. After a while one of them picked the stint out from the other waders and indeed there it was, albeit rather distant, another Cornish tick. I helped them to look for the Baird's for a while but to no avail though there was a nice mixed flock of terns on the estuary, comprising 15 arctic and 20 sandwich terns. Eventually it got too dark and we all went our separate ways. With another Cornish tick notched up I went back home for my evening painting session.

Saturday 10th September: Porthgwarra & Nanquidno

Saturday had originally been forecast for very strong winds. In fact a couple of Oxon birders had been planning on coming down for it though as the day approached the forecast kept being downgraded so by the time it was Friday evening I suggested to them that it wasn't going to be the spectacular blow they were hoping for and indeed so it turned out: it was indeed windy but not enough to travel all that way just for one day. I decided that I would still pop down to Porthgwarra but as usual I would do my morning painting first of all.

I arrived mid morning to find a rather modest crowd assembled at Hella Point, mostly visitors, and to discover that it had been a very quiet morning. I settled down and after a while someone picked out a great shearwater which was reasonably close. Apart from that there was one close arctic skua, a sooty and a few bits and bobs, all rather quiet though some of the visitors were very pleased to get the great shearwater. After a while the sun moved round so the whole of the sea was very brightly lit and it became very difficult to see anything. I now started to appreciate why the Sea-Watch South West team stop between 12 and 2 each day: it's just impossible to sea-watch if there is any sun on the water when looking due south. I therefore took the opportunity to explore the moor instead to look for the wryneck which had been reported the last few days. I initially scoured the gully just round the corner from the Coastguard Lookout but with no luck so I decided to head over to the Dried Up Pool. As I was wandering down the middle of the three tracks that lead to the Wall I spotted a moth fluttering about by the side of the path. As readers will know, I know next to nothing about moths but am interested enough to photo any that I do come across and I generally try to work out what they are (usually by asking John Swann!). It was a very striking white moth with small black and orange dots on it. I soon forgot about it and went back to my wryneck hunting though once again I had no luck with it. I did hear a rasping fly-over call which had me thinking citrine wagtail though it only called once and I never saw the bird. As I was wandering around I started to get texts from people back at Oxon: apparently a first winter citrine wagtail (a county first) had been found at Farmoor reservoir and I felt suitably gripped off at missing it. After a while I trudged back to the sea-watching point to learn that things hadn't improved since I left.

The moor is still looking very pretty with a lovely contrast
between the purple heather and the yellow of the gorse.

whilst not finding the wryneck I came across this
toad in the middle of the path

At that point I decided to head off home and was just walking past the coastguard cottages when I got a text from Dave Parker saying that a black kite was lingering over Najizal valley. That wasn't far from where I was so I got out the scope on the off chance that I could spot it from where I was and blow me, there it was! It was soaring over in the Najizal direction being mobbed by a kestrel and with a buzzard for company. I watched it for a few minutes as it appeared to move into Porthgwarra air space over the moor though at the far (Nanjizal) end. I sent Dave back a text saying where it now was and then headed back to the car and headed for home, pleased with the bonus kite sighting which went some way to compensate for the Oxon citrine grip-off.

As I was nearing St. Just airfield I got a Bird Guides text saying that the wryneck had been seen that day at Nanquidno still so on impulse I turned off to take a look. I decided that I would stake out the spot for a while and spent at least and hour and a half staring into the bracken and brambles but to no avail. There was a peregrine buzzing around and the chough were still there but that was about it. Various other birders came, stared unsuccessfully and went off again before I too gave up. As one of them put it "wrynecks, they're right buggers!".

Back home I had plenty of painting to be getting on with as I was intending to head back home tomorrow so I needed to finish everything off. That evening I was checking up on sightings on Cornwall Birding where I spotted a reference to a Crimson Speckled Moth which had been seen at Porthgwarra. This reminded me of the moth that I photographed earlier in the day so I Googled the image and low and behold this was indeed what I'd found. I guessed from the fact that it had been mentioned on the web-site that it must be quite a rare moth and after exchanging some e-mails with John Swann I learnt that in fact it was a Mega in the moth world and that the last one that had been seen in Cornwall was in 2006. It's a shame that the full impact of its rarity is lost on me: had it been the bird equivalent I would have been suitably elated but I've not knowingly seen most of the commonest of moth species and this was just another one that I didn't know though I would definitely recognise one if I saw it again.

Here's the Mega moth: a Crimson Speckled Moth,
possibly the rarest thing that I've found to date!

Sunday 11th September: Homeward Bound

Sunday morning it was time to pack up and head off home. Of course I stopped in at Hayle briefly but there was nothing of particular note and my journey back home was uneventful. Just as I got back into Oxford I stopped off at Farmoor for a quick wander round to stretch my legs after the long car journey and to have a quick scour through the wagtails on the off chance the citrine had returned but of course there was no sign of it. The white-winged black tern, a confiding little stint and a black-necked grebe were all still on show which were nice to see.

Looking back, despite my initial reservations I'd enjoyed some good birding down in Cornwall. Highlights had included three pectoral sandpipers, a Baird's sandpiper, a buff-breasted sandpiper, a couple of great shearwaters, a Leach's petrel and a black kite. It never ceases to amaze me just how many Nearctic waders they get down in Cornwall. Whilst I was there there were 7 pectoral sandpipers, 3 buff-breasted sandpipers and 1 Baird's sandpiper and since I've come back there have also been greater and lesser yellowlegs, semipalmated sandpiper, long-billed dowitcher and I've lost count of the buff-breasts now, it's quite remarkable. Oxon on the other hand has had a good autumn so far with a single pec. sand and is still awaiting its first buff-breast and Baird's. Anyway, I can't wait to get back down to Cornwall and I feel that there will be more decorating required in the next few weeks.

My favourite view at Pendeen, looking rather stormy and misty

More Farmoor Stuff

2011-09-05T08:05:00.000+01:00

Since my last entry I've been back to Farmoor a couple of times. The first time was the previous Saturday when just as I was finishing the weekly supermarket shopping I got a call from the Wickster (Tom Wickins) saying that there was a juvenile curlew sandpiper at Farmoor. As this was a much-needed county tick for me I dropped the shopping off at home and then legged it over there. As I arrived I met a departing birder who told me that it had been flushed ten minutes previously by a walker. I thought that I might as well take a look whilst I was there and was working my way up the causeway when Badger (Jason Coppock) called up from the far end saying that it had just landed right next to him. I got a brief view in someone else's scope but then a walker put it up and off it flew, showing off it's white rump, but reasonably high and was lost to view. That was about the poorest view of a county tick that I'd ever had, most unsatisfactory. As I was out very much on borrowed time with afternoon family commitments, I hurried back only to discover later that it had come back again and was giving excellent views to all and sundry.

Jeremey Dexter, (the finder) took this excellent photo and
has kindly let me use it as I had such a crap view of it myself.

I also went on my weekly Wednesday evening trip to Farmoor, looking for some good gulling in the company of Badger. The gulls were rather poor that night but we spent some time playing with our respective new toys: in my case the Canon SX30 super-zoom and in Jason's case his new digital camcorder. Here are the fruits of my efforts:

Juvenile ringed plover, conveniently close along the causeway

The obligatory yellow-legged-gull-on-a-buoy shot

Whilst I'm on the subject of Farmoor I just want to refer back to my previous post about identifying juvenile terns. I'm sure most readers already have this nailed down but I wanted somewhere to post these photos here for my own reference if nothing else. Ian Lewington and Roger Wyatt have kindly let me use a couple of photos to illustrate the grey rump ID issue:

juv. common tern (c) Roger Wyatt
note the grey rump wedge and well-marked dark outer tail feathers

juv. arctic tern (c) Ian Lewington
note the clean rump and the pale "W" effect on the trailing edge of the inner flight feathers on the left hand photo. There is of course the very narrow and well-define black trailing edge of the primaries if you get a good underwing view.

Farmoor Terns

2011-08-26T19:18:00.000+01:00

I've come to realise that one of the aspects that I enjoy most about birding is working through difficult bird ID issues. I've talked in the past about the difficulty of gull ID and why I therefore enjoy the challenge so much. Well this week I've had the opportunity to look into another tricky area of birding ID, namely juvenile terns. There have been some good terns turning up at Farmoor this week with arctic, common, black and little all present to varying degrees. In fact on Wednesday morning there were at least 30 black terns (which buggered off during the day) and a juvenile little tern which was present all day until about ten minutes before my arrival for my now regular Wednesday evening gulling spot. I had been looking forward to getting to grips with the various terns and was most disappointed to find nothing more than a couple of juvenile common's by the time I got there. To put a further damper on things it was rather windy and this made peering at distant gulls in the roost rather problematic so all in all it was a less than satisfactory outing. I did manage a passable shot of a juvenile dunlin along the causeway shoreline. That's one nice aspect of Farmoor: you get far closer to dunlin than you ever would on Port Meadow. I am always amazed at just how small they are when you see them close up. But that notwithstanding, it had been a disappointing evening's visit: even the number of yellow-legged gulls was noticeably down on last week.

Juv. dunlin on the causeway (click to enlarge)

The (or another) little tern was present for Thursday evening and reported again first thing on Friday morning so mid morning I decided that a return trip to Farmoor was called for. In addition the weather was wonderfully overcast and drizzly and looking ripe for something juicy to drop in. I arrived to hear and then see a whimbrel flying off to the east which was a nice start and boded well for the visit. Steve Young arrived at about the same time as I did and we passed a very pleasant couple of hours watching the comings and going on the reservoir. There was a greenshank and a few common sandpipers and dunlin on the wader front and the little tern was still about as was a juvenile black tern and a "commic" tern that we spent some time discussing. When watched in flight, it's relatively clean wings and what appeared to be a relatively short bill (Steve even took a photo of it with the bill looking nice and short) had both of us (and others both before and after us) convinced that it was an arctic. However when it landed on the barley bails the bill looked a lot longer and eventually, with the help of Roger Wyatt who had arrived by then, we came to the conclusion that it was actually a juvenile common tern. One key ID feature for separating juvenile common and arctic terns which I'd not been aware of before is that commons have a thin wedge of grey which extends from the back down into the tail which is absent in arctic. This ID feature was actually relatively easy to pick out, at least compared to things like bill length and jizz which in flight and at a distance are very difficult on juvenile terns. So if you get a juvenile "commic" with a grey wedge then it's a common (or a juv. roseate which ID we did entertain briefly though that has a much more marked "saddle").

I put together a bit of video from the various snippets of footage that I took whilst I was there.

As well as this nice ID snippet I had the opportunity to study the other terns more closely. It was interesting to note just how small the little tern looked especially in flight. It had a very characteristic fluttery bat-like flight and long swept back wings reminiscent of a swift. In addition it had quite a contrasty paler "W" thing going on in the wings (á la kittiwake) which was rather noticeable. I was also rather taken at how small the black tern looked next to the common tern, and in fact at one stage got briefly confused by the size into thinking it was a second little tern before the squared-off rump and dark colouring (and Steve!) all put me right.

Digiscoped videograb of the black and the little terns on the barley bails

All in all it had been a most informative Farmoor trip, getting to grips with some of the harder birding ID issues and I came away having thoroughly enjoyed my visit which had more than made up for the Wednesday disappointment. In the continued absence of my patch, I think that I may very well be paying more visits to Farmoor over the coming weeks.

Random Farmoor cormorant

Getting Out and About Again

2011-08-23T10:48:00.000+01:00

I feel a bit bereft at present: my lovely patch floods have all dried up and I don't really have the appetite to pop out there on a daily basis just to count the lapwings and yellow wagtails. I realise that I've been rather spoilt having such a great patch a few minutes walk from my door and because of this I've hardly visited any of the other county sites for quite a while so it was time I started getting out there once again. According to my research, things should be picking up in August now but besides a noticeable increase in passage waders, there hadn't actually been much to entice me out so I was just going to have to make the effort for myself.

As regular readers will know, through persistent visits to Port Meadow I have developed a penchant for gulls and waders so in order to pander to this preference I've decided to start making regular visits to Farmoor. At present Wednesday evening seem to be a good day for me as my VLW plays tennis on Tuesday and Thursday. Therefore last week I popped down to the concrete bowl after dinner where I passed a pleasant couple of hours in the company of Jeremy Dexter looking through the gull flock. The roost was still rather paltry though our esteemed County Recorder had picked out a cracking adult Caspian the previous week. We had no such luck ourselves though at the very least there were plenty of yellow-legged gulls to ogle and a flock of 5 common sandpipers fluttering around the place.

A juvenile yellow-legged gull, not a very close-up shot but
the photo belies the fact that it was nearly dark when I took
it so there was not much shutter speed to play with.

Further to my cause of getting out, yesterday I decided to go to Lardon Chase near Streatley (just over the border in Berks) to see if I could find any of the second brood Adonis Blues. Butterflies are a relatively new interest for me, acquired in order to pass the time during June and July so I was keen to see all the local specialities including this gorgeous blue. When I arrived some directions from a helpful National Trust man soon had me combing the steep south-facing chalk slopes and it wasn't long before I found a pair. There were plenty of Meadow Browns and one or two very tatty Common Blues and a little while later I found a couple more Adonis males. Their blue colour really is very striking when you see them "in the flesh".

These photos don't really do these stunners justice

On the way back I thought that I would pop in at the Drayton floods, known locally as 1066 as I really needed my wader fix. There were at least 7 green sandpipers though not much else apart from a few straggler ducks. I had a half-hearted go at digiscoping the sandpipers though they were so distant that I didn't make much of an effort. As it turned out one of them was reasonably in focus so I should have tried a bit harder to get a better-composed shot.

A green sandpiper's backside!

So I've been getting out and about a bit. There are few more sites I want to go to still: Aston Rowant for the Chalkhill Blues and the Silver-spotted Skippers, Otmoor for the Brown Hairstreaks as well as the currently-present whinchats and redstarts as well as my weekly Farmoor visit. With any luck something good will turn up in the county soon by way of compensation for the massive Cornish grip-fest that is now underway in the south west.

Cornwall in August - Part II

2011-08-12T15:06:00.001+01:00

Thursday 4th August
Another coastal walk today from the Gurnard's Head back to Pendeen. The weather was wonderfully sunny to start with but soon clouded over. Not much of note on the bird front though I managed a few photos.

Wheatear on a wall at Pendeen

A couple of Wall Brown butterflies near the Gurnard's Head

Ravens

A rather tatty Meadow Brown

Friday 5th August

This morning I thought that I would take a look at Cot Valley. It was too early for interesting wind-blown vagrants but some crossbills had been seen there a couple of times so I thought that I would have a try for them. It was remarkably quiet there and the only point of interest was a hidden but noisily squawking juvenile bird of prey. It took a while to ID it but by flicking through my BirdGuides call recordings I managed to pin it down as a juvenile sparrowhawk.

Our family outing for the day was over to the beach by St. Gothian NR. On the way there I got a text from John Swann saying that there was a wood sandpiper at Drift reservoir. As I still needed it for the Cornish list but was en famille for the day, I had to grin and bear it, hoping that it would stay until the evening. Whilst at St. Gothian I took the opportunity to have a quick walk around the pit though the only bird of note was a common sandpiper.

St. Gothian Common Sandpiper

On the way back from our day out I asked to be dropped off at Drift reservoir to see if the sandpiper was still there. From the hide I managed to pick out 6 common sandpipers, 1 greenshank and a single green sandpiper but there was no sign of the wood sand. I knew, though, that there was a blind spot right in the corner of the north-west arm which I wanted to take a look at. However, as I went to take a look something must have spooked the hidden waders because suddenly a flock of a dozen sandpipers flew up calling loudly. The birds seemed all to be green sandpipers but then I heard the distinctive call of the wood sand. The flock circled around together for a while but rather high so I couldn't pick the target bird out from the flock. After a while it split off from the rest and flew around calling for a few circuits on its own before I lost it from sight. It hadn't been the best view of a wood sandpiper that I'd had but it was nice to get it on the the Cornish list.

Drift Reservoir, looking quite tranquil this evening

Moth du jour: Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing - ID courtesy of John Swann as always. I don't run a trap but instead take a look at any moth that I come across. I do occasionally switch the outside light on for an hour or so to try to attract the odd moth but my ID skills are so lamentable (I think that I can ID half a dozen species only at present) that I would be overwhelmed if I had more than one or two to deal with each day.

Sunday 7th August

Saturday was rather quiet: I chose to have a lie in rather than getting up early and for our family activity we mooched around Penzance and Marazion so I only managed a quarter of an hour at Jubilee Pool where I picked out another ocean sun-fish as well as 1 sandwich tern and 1 fulmar. I did get a call from John Swann saying that his moth trap was heaving with moths so I went over for a brief look. I came away completely amazed at the sheer variety of moths which to my inexpert eye all looked confusingly similar but John and his wife were expertly sorting through them all.

Whilst I was out and about on Saturday news came through on the information services about a probable Atlantic Petrel that was watched for five minutes off Porthgwarra which got me thinking about paying a visit there. The Sunday forecast was for a moderately strong south-westerly wind so I got up at six and was sitting down at Gwennap Head at around 7am. In previous posts I've discussed how locals tend to use Hella Point instead of Gwennap Head but I wasn't sure today whether there would be many other locals about as the wind forecast was only moderate so I'd decided to seek out the Sea Watch team to be sure of company on the two hours that I'd allotted myself for my morning session. There were a couple of chaps at GH whom I assumed were part of the Sea Watch South West team but later learnt that they were just a couple of birders and that the SW team normally watch from lower down the Head. They were both very proficient though (certainly more than me anyway) and were continually calling out very distant birds in a very helpful manner including marking the moment when the bird was actually passing over the Runnel Stone, giving one a good chance of finding it had one not already connected. One thing that I noticed was that it was much more convenient having the Runnel Stone directly opposite rather than diagonally distant as it is at HP.

There's always a problem with what to do about photos when blogging about a sea-watching session. I took along my Canon super-zoom to try it out on the Runnel Stone which is about 1.5km south from Gwennap Head so the fact that you can just about read the writing on it is quite impressive. I did try taking photos of Cory's as they went by but failed miserably to capture any of the birds.

It turned out that I'd jammed in on a really good Cory's day and during the two hours I was there I personally saw 19 Cory's, 6 sooties, a bonxie, 6 or so balearics, one common and half a dozen commic terns. The two chaps had a few more birds that I didn't get on to and had seen one or two Great Shearwaters go by before I arrived but none passed while I was there. It was good to get more hours sea-watching experience under my belt though I'm going to have to work on my stamina: at present I find that after a couple of hours my eyes grow rather tired and I find it difficult to focus, especially on the tiny specks that are literally a mile away. I can only assume that this comes with practice.

On the way back to the car at PG I came across these two Small Pear-bordered Fritillaries. The upper one is presumably a tatty old first generation (Ed.: apparently this is not actually likely according to John Swann) and the pristine new lower one a second generation. It's only the south-west apparently that has a 2nd generation of SPB Frits.

I'm sure that you must all be agog with anticipation, wanting to know what today's moth is going to be. Well it's apparently (thanks to John Swann once again) a Bright-line Brown-eye.

Monday 8th August

With the wind forecast to be reasonably strong and to swing round from south-westerly to north-westerly overnight naturally my thoughts turned to Pendeen this morning. It seemed like I wasn't the only one to think this and when I turned up at 6:30 there were already half a dozen people there with more arriving whilst I was there so that there were at least a dozen by mid morning. As usual I only had a few hours and had to be back at the cottage by 9:30 but that still gave me a good three hours watching. Unfortunately the birding didn't quite live up to expectations and things were a little slow. There were a few sooties going through and the odd balearic but by 9am it was starting distinctly to slow down. I managed to pick up a stormy briefly though lost it again almost as soon as I found it. Other bits and bobs included a bonxie (which I didn't get on to), an arctic tern and a swift (!) travelling low and fast with the manxies. That's what makes sea-watching so fascinating: yesterday when the wind wasn't that strong there was a huge Cory's passage and then today with a much better wind it was all somewhat disappointing.

In my previous posting I mentioned the fact that I was struggling with my eyesight after a couple of hours of watching. Today I had a policy of religiously swapping eyes at frequent intervals in order to avoid getting over-tired and this seemed to work well. What I also clearly need to work on is where I sit: this morning I plonked myself down in front of the others only to find myself rather exposed in the wind. When Dave Parker arrived he sat down next to me only to remark immediately that it was too windy and he promptly moved. The issue that I have with the wind is that it tends to make my eyes water and then I can't see so clearly. Today I took to shielding them with one hand as I watched and this worked rather well. I also found that this also blocked out peripheral light which made it easier to concentrate so I am considering rigging up some kind of wind & light shield to attach to the scope. I remember reading in some book of birding anecdotes that someone always used to sea watch with a tea towel over their head, presumably for the same benefits that I mentioned above. Clearly something to work on.

As usual it's rather difficult to provide a sea-watching photo so
here's a rock pipit that I took yesterday whilst down on the beach
with my son L.

Moth du jour: a Brimstone, part of the huge
catch in John Swann's trap the other day

Tuesday 9th August

Today was down in the planner as a DIY day. Our various relatives had all finally left (not that we hadn't enjoyed their company) and with a rendezvous planned tomorrow with some friends who were holidaying in the area, today was the only free day to make inroads into the outstanding decorating tasks. With no decent sea-watching wind forecast I allowed myself a lie-in this morning as these early starts had been catching up with me.

I was in full flow painting a door when I got a text from Dave Parker saying that there was a turtle dove (which I still needed for the Cornish list) in the car park at Drift. However, there was too much decorating to do and I had to reign in (with help from my VLW) my instinct to drop everything and head off to see it. Later on, however, the children had reached their limit for amusing themselves whilst we worked (you can tell this by the amount of noise that they start making) so I took the two younger ones off to Marazion for the traditional café drink and snack by the beach. On the way back we stopped in at Drift briefly where the turtle dove was still there feeding on the bowl of grain that has been placed just outside the house there. Unfortunately I didn't know about the bowl until I'd put up the four doves (there were three collard doves in addition to the turtle) which went to sulk on some telegraph wires. The best photography angle was from the road so we ended up doing a drive by shooting with my daughter Beth manning the camera as I crawled along in the car. Unfortunately I'd set the exposure far too high (I'd been trying to photograph the bird into the sun beforehand) but it's still come out OK. Beth is actually proving quite a dab hand with the camera.

The Drift turtle dove (c) Beth Hartley (aged 13)
The overexposure is my fault and I had to
PhotoShop out some blurred foliage but it's still not too bad.

Wednesday 10th August

We were due to head back home tomorrow so today was the last day for an early morning outing. The forecast had originally been for a good south-westerly throughout the day but it changed to fairly calm first thing and then strengthening during the day. Nevertheless, with lots of DIY to do and some friends coming over in the afternoon, the only opportunity that I was going to have was first thing in the morning and I would have to make the best of it.

I arrived just before seven o'clock and with only one local at Hella Point I decided to head to Gwennap Head. Up on the cliffs I came across a pair of chough loafing around at a very short distance and rather looking as though they'd just woken up. Cornwall has enjoyed a good breeding year for chough with four pairs producing a total of 15 fledglings so it was great to see these iconic birds making a come-back. At Gwennap Head this time I actually managed to locate the Sea-watch South-West team including Chris Griffin who'd put me onto the black kite recently and who'd found the plain swifts. There was also another birder there who was going to have to leave shortly as his family would be waking up soon so I was thankful that all mine like a lie in whilst on holiday so that I could at least get in a few hours birding in the morning.

The two chough. Unfortunately they were in the shade

otherwise this photo could have been nice and sharp.

In terms of the birding itself, conditions were rather calm and it soon became apparent that sightings were going to be thin on the ground. The highlights were 1 sooty, 3 bonxies, a few balearics, 3 common scoter and 1 juv. Med. gull.

I know that readers must be wondering about my on-going crusade to improve my sea-watching viewing techniques. I'm still swapping eyes over regular which I find most helpful and today I made a great break through in terms of my wind & light shield: I'd borrowed my five year old's waterproof and threaded the eye piece of my scope through the sleeve (it was just the right size) so that the main body of the coat could be draped over my head, strategically blocking out all the wind (not that there was much today) and light (of which there was quite a lot). Whilst Luke will want his coat back I at least now knew what I needed to find so I'll perhaps take a look through his old coats for something suitable.

On the way back to the car a Painted Lady flew in off the sea and settled, exhausted on the heather for a short while before flitting off inland. I also found a holly blue on the way down to the car park.

Thursday 11th August
Well, our two weeks down in Cornwall have passed all too quickly. With lots of packing to do and a long drive back there was no question of getting up early for a cheeky bit of birding and there are no further sightings to report.

It was a shame in a way that we'd come down at the start of August rather than the end of it when there was likely to be more interesting birds to chase but I can't really complain. At the beginning I'd said that chasing passage waders and sea-watching were likely to be the main activities and so it has proved. I was pleased to have caught up with the Drift wood sandpiper and the black kite was a wonderful bonus. I also found myself enjoying the sea-watching more and more and can't wait to return and do some more. I was really lucky to have jammed in on the one good Cory's day that there was and it was great to see more of these elusive large shearwaters. I even managed six new Cornish ticks during the two weeks.

I also wanted to make some initial comments on the new Canon SX30IS after a couple of weeks of using it. My initial response is that I'm very pleased with it. The super zoom is pretty amazing, in fact I did a test with my brother in law who had a 300mm lens on - we both zoomed in fully on the Pendeen lighthouse and then compared image sizes: mine was twice as large. Does that mean that the effective lens length is therefore 600mm (I'm not sure if that's how it works)? Anyway, for my purposes it's great because it's so light that you don't even notice carrying it around at all and even at full zoom there is no noticeable distortion. The only downsides to the camera are:

it's crap at macro shots (well what do you expect with a superzoom camera) and I use the old TZ7 instead for macro work
It's very slow between shots with a delay of between 1 and 2 seconds so you can't rattle off a burts of shots quickly. However if you need to take a lot of shots then you can always shoot some zoomed in HD video and do a grab.

All in all, it suits my purposes admirably and I'm very pleased with it. The rate at which new superzoom cameras are improving is pretty amazing so I dare say in due course one will be able to get a super image-stabilised zoom and the ability to shoot rapidly all in the same camera.

In terms of coming back down to Cornwall there is still lots of wood work to paint so "regrettably" I'll have to come back down again in a few weeks time. I get a sense somehow that there will in particular be a lot of work that will be required in October ;-)

I leave you with another photo of that most iconic of Cornish birds, the chough

Cornwall in August - Part I

2011-08-12T14:58:00.000+01:00

Those of you who have been following my exploits on my sister blog Pendeen Birding will already have seen all of this but for those who didn't then here's part one of my fortnight down in Cornwall.

Thursday 28th July - Coming Down
We were due back down to Cornwall for a combined summer holiday and also to do a bit more work on the cottage. As usual I'd been keeping an eye on what was going on down in Cornwall and had also been doing some research into sightings during this period in past years. It was still rather early in the autumn season so there were not likely to be many vagrant birds, rather it seemed that sea-watching and the odd Neartic wader would be the main things to be looking out for. I also still needed some of the commoner waders for my Cornish list so my basic strategy was going to be to go sea-watching when the conditions favoured it and otherwise to check out the local wader hot-spots on a regular basis.

To add to the anticipation, this week I'd decided to treat myself to a new camera. It's long been my attitude that I didn't want to lug an SLR around as well as my scope so up until now I'd been using a small Point and Shoot Panasonic TZ7 with 12x zoom. However, I'd been thinking of getting a super-zoom camera and after some research had decided on the Canon SX30 IS which had an incredible 35x zoom. I was looking forward to putting this new beast through it's paces on some of the Cornish bird life.

We were coming down on Thursday but had friends visiting us in the morning so we weren't going to set off until the afternoon. Before we'd even left I got a text saying that there was a wood sandpiper on the Hayle estuary though by the time we actually got that far for some reason my family weren't too inclined to hang around while I scanned the estuary so frustratingly we had to drive past it. Still, it was great to be back in Cornwall and I was looking forward to visiting all the local spots once more.

Pendeen sunset

Friday 29th July

My usual tactic when I'm down in Cornwall en famille is to get up early and doing a couple of hour's birding before spending the rest of the day doing family stuff. As discussed in the previous entry, in the absence of good sea-watching conditions waders were going to be the order of the day. Accordingly, the first morning I was up at around 6am with the intention of checking out various potential passage wader spots. First stop was the Hayle estuary where the tide was on the way out. I was keen to see if the wood sandpiper was still about but despite careful scrutiny I couldn't find it anywhere. Apart from the usual suspects the best I was able to come up with were one adult Mediterranean gull and one common sandpiper. Next it was on to Marazion and as it was still nice and early there were quite a few waders about on the beach, namely: 7 sanderling, 3 dulin, 2 ringed plover, 1 whimbrel and a juvenile Med. gull. To round things off I stopped off at Drift reservoir which I'd not visited during the summer before and the water levels were quite a way off their highs revealing a decent muddy shoreline. Down near the hide on the opposite shore there were a couple of greenshank and at least 4 green and 4 common sandpipers. Unfortunately however, there was no sign of the juvenile little ringed plover that had been reported recently.

The juvenile Med. gull on Marazion beach first thing. It appears
to have a slightly deformed upper bill which extends beyond it's
lower bill to make a slight hook.

Our relatives, who'd been staying in the cottage the previous week, were still around in the morning so we went for a quick walk down at Zennor (a buzzard and a sparrow hawk being the pick of the sightings there) before they headed off back home and we went back to the cottage. Just as we arrived I got a text from Dave Parker saying that the Black Kite that had been around for the last couple of days was lingering near the St. Just airport. Usually in Cornwall Black Kite sightings are just single-observer fly-overs (SOFO's) so to have one lingering was a rare thing indeed. I managed to wangle a pass from my VLW and sped off in hot pursuit. I had assumed that Dave would be there with others watching it but when I pulled into the layby by the airport there was no one there. I therefore gave him a quick ring only to find out that he was stuck at work and that it had been seen at Carn Brae (a nearby hill) so I went off there where there was at least a good vantage point though given the sunny conditions it was rather hazy. Another message from Dave: it had now apparently moved off towards Kelynack so I trained my scope in that direction and spotted several soaring birds. I fancied that I could make out kite-like wings on one of them though it was hardly conclusive in the haze so I headed off in that direction to see if I could get a better view. There didn't seem to be a good vantage point there and I decided that I'd probably used up all the time that I had on my brief "twitching pass" and started to head back to the cottage. As I drove along just passing Bosavern I spotted a chap with a long lens looking intently into a field so I slowed down, wound down the window and asked if he was looking for the Black Kite. In response he pointed in the sky and blow me if it wasn't right there circling over the field! I did some "creative parking" and hurried to join him, bringing the new camera with me and during its pass over us I managed a record shot.

My effort as the kite flew over

Whilst we were watching the bird I got chatting with the other chap who turned out to be Chris Griffin, whom I'd met earlier on in the year a couple of times at Nanquidno, once when we were looking for a Melodius Warbler and another time for a Golden Oriole, and who is currently staffing the RSPB centre at Land's End for the summer. It turned out that he'd been having a very good day: that morning he'd found a couple of small swifts at Nanjizil which he reckoned were Plain Swifts which would be a first for Britain!

A fantastic photo by Chris Griffin (see his great blog).
It's interesting to note that it's missing quite a lot of flight feathers
which gives it a very distinctive notched look which you can also see in my photo

I was conscious of how long I'd been away already (I'd told my VLW that I wouldn't be long) so I didn't linger long before heading back to base, most pleased with my afternoon sortie. It had been a productive first full day back in Cornwall.

Saturday 30th July

Today was such a wonderfully sunny day that we decided just to hang around the cottage and nip down to the local beach for a while. I got up early as usual and just wandered around the local area, putting the new camera through its paces. So far I'm really pleased with it and even at full zoom the photos come out pretty well. The only short-comings that I'm finding so far are that it's really slow between frames (I'm used to that from my previous camera though) and it's not so good for macro work (my DCM TZ7 is much better). Below are the fruits of my labours, you can click on them to enlarge them if you wish.

The wires outside the cottage are great spots for snapping the local bird life and feature in several of the shots.

I seem to be being drawn inexorably towards mothing. This chappy landed next to me by the house so I took a shot. As I know very little about moths I usually end up asking local export John Swann to ID stuff for me. This one is a Bee Moth and is actually a micro moth though it's larger than many macros you come across

This is at full zoom from at least 50 yards away so I'm very pleased with how it's come out.

I was trying to get a bit arty with the composition here.

A ridiculously back-lit stone chat. I've tried to salvage it in Photoshop.

Those wires again.

This evening the sea was flat calm and in the distance one could see some sort of disturbance. A quick scan with the scope revealed a convergence of gannets and porpoises so there must have been a shoal of fish there. There were at least a dozen of the porpoises and there could have been many more.

Sunday 31st July

The calm conditions lead to the inevitable Pendeen fog today so I decided to nip over to Hayle for another check of the waders. There was not much of particular note with 4 Med Gulls (1 adult & 3 juvs), 2 Sandwich Terns and 1 Common Sandpiper being the only birds worthy of mentioning.

Hayle curlew

On the way home I stopped off at Marazion where I met up with Dave Parker. He'd just received a text to say that a black tern had been seen off Jubilee Pool so we both nipped over there. Dave thought that he could see it in the distance over towards Newlyn and I too caught a glimpse of something dark though there were lots of birds flying around by the harbour there. I had a scan with my scope and spotted a distant tern on a buoy though it looked like a sandwich tern to me. I even drove over to Newlyn to have a look for it but couldn't see any sign of it. Unfortunately, one that got away.

Later that morning we decided to go for a walk from Trevilley over to Porthgwarra. Unfortunately it was foggy even down there with the only thing that I spotted being a pair of returning wheatears.

Corn flowers at Trevilley

Monday 1st August

With things still very quiet at present I thought that I would take the opportunity to work on my Cornish list. I'd noticed that yellowhammer had been reported at Tregilliowe farm (near Crowlas) a while back so I made some enquiries with Dave Parker who gave me all the necessary details. Accordingly today I used my early morning pass to go and check it out. It turned out to be a very nice piece of habitat with classic yellowhammer farmland and hedgerows together with areas of heather and scrub. Almost as soon I was out the car I heard the familiar "little bit of bread and no cheese" song and after a bit of searching I managed to locate the bird. In total I found at least three of them together with a delightful family of green woodpeckers. There were some nice coniferous copses and small woods which I am told can be good for crossbill during irruptive years though the best I could manage was a mixed flock of tits, chaffinches and young warblers. Over by the woodland near the pools itself I heard a distant nuthatch (not such a common bird on the Penwith peninsula) and there was a whinnying little grebe on the pools itself.

Strictly a record shot of the yellowhammer. This was a good distance away and was taken at full zoom on the new camera.

One of the young green woodpeckers

On the way back I stopped in at Marazion (well it would be rude not to) where there were 10 sanderling and the usual juv. Med. gull on the beach and I heard one of the green sandpipers on the marsh.

That afternoon we took a trip to St. Ives for a look around. On such trips I always prefer to go to the island where there were a couple of adult Med. gulls flying around. I took the opportunity to have a go at some fully zoomed-in flight shots with the new camera. Whilst they aren't masterpieces the truth is that I would have been able to get any shots at all through digiscoping and my old P&S camera zoom just wouldn't have been up to it.

Some Med. gull flight shots. The latter one is heavily cropped but I'm quite pleased with it.

There are lots of juvenile gulls around at present

The moth du jour is a Drinker, identified as always by John Swann

Tuesday 2nd August

I decided to have a lie-in this morning and so didn't make an early morning sortie today. In the afternoon we took advantage of the lovely weather and we all went for a long coastal path walk. There was nothing of particular note but the weather was perfect and there was always something to see. A returning wheatear on the cliffs and a brief chough sighting were the bird highlights of the walk.

Stonechats are always obliging photographic subjects

A female common blue

linnets

male common blue

A fresh 2nd generation small pearl-bordered fritillary

Wednesday 3rd August

This morning I decided to do another early morning wader check. Hayle was the first port of call where I arrived to find the tide fully in and the remaining birds hemmed in around the south-west corner. There were a couple of whimbrel there and a flock of six sandwich terns flew in, did a circuit and them flew off again. Ryan's Field was predictably packed out with at least 20 redshank, a similar number of oystercatchers, 3 common sandpipers and 3 Med. gulls all sitting out the high tide.

Next on to Marazion, where the complete lack of wind meant that the sea was mirror calm. This was great from the point of view of seeing what was around and I soon spotted a drake scoter though try as I might, I couldn't turn it into one of the rarer ones that that have been occurring up north and it resolutely remained a common scoter. A distant splash in the water caught my eye and I saw a strange wobbly fin flopping about on the water's surface: an ocean sun-fish! I'd heard that they were being seen around the coast but it was nice to see one of my own. To round things off, on the beach there was an adult and a juvenile Med. gull

Back in Pendeen I had a wander around the various nooks and crannies in order to look for Grayling butterflies. Last time I was down I'd been excited to find a rather early one but now they were out in good numbers and I found several with no trouble. There was also a rather late female silver-studded blue, a common blue and a small copper.

One of many Grayling. I think that this one was laying eggs

Moth du jour: either a Common or a Smokey Wainscot.
I was told afterwards that you need to check the underwing
colour to determine which one it is.

Cornwall Frolics

2011-08-03T11:37:00.000+01:00

I'm down in Cornwall yet again. I'll do a full update on this blog when I'm back but in the mean time should you be interested you can follow my goings-on on my dedicated Cornwall blog Pendeen Birding.

Rosefinch Wrangling

2011-07-21T20:00:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm not much of a twitcher. What's more when I do consider making a sortee it is generally rather restricted in a number of ways:

I don't generally go at weekends due to family commitments but as I work for myself I can give myself time off during the week
I don't like travelling too far - for one thing any dip would be too painful and my VLW already thinks I'm mad to travel any distance for what's "just a bird" so I limit myself in general to two hours in the car (though exceptions have been made)
I prefer the bird to have been around for some time so that it's well established and predictable. This way I can read up on where it's been seen and I know that there's a good chance of it still being there so there's less chance of a dip.

When I do go, I like to plan my trips in advance, plotting out the route and writing it down on a scrap of paper- I don't have Sat Nav or even want it and in fact enjoy learning different routes to places. As I'm usually on my own I like to look on Google Streetview to help with navigation and it's amazing how this makes key parts of the route look familiar. I also use Streetview to suss out where I can park when I get there so all in all it's a well-planned operation.

The common rosefinch at Melbourn, near Cambridge fulfilled all the "can I twitch it" criteria having been around for a good week now. Apparently it was discovered when a motorist pulled over to let a cyclist go by on the single track road and heard it singing through his open car window so who knows how long it had been there. I'd had my eye on this bird all last week but as I ended up going to Daventry to see a greenshank (grrr!) I felt that I couldn't take a second day off that week. All this meant that I had to wait until Monday of this week before I could justify another trip.

Having done my prep on the bird over the weekend on Monday morning at about 9am I set off and it was a surprisingly short 1 hour and 35 minutes later that I arrived in Fowlmere Road near Cambourn (M40, M25, exit at J21a onto A404, A414, A1(M), A505 and A10 in case you're interested). I figured that after a whole week of the bird being there there wouldn't be vast hoards of twitchers any more (and so it proved) so I parked carefully on the verge rather than the pager-recommended golf car park and as soon as I got out of the car I could hear the rosefinch calling in the distance with it's familiar "Yes, I told you so" call. I know that it's conventionally written as "Pleased to meet you" but to my ear my version suits better. It was calling from the garden of "The Old Barn" house though it was not visible at all. I'd read that it moved around and would periodically appear on a convenient tall tree or even venture into the field opposite but for about half an hour it doggedly called away invisibly from behind the house. A few other people turned up: an old couple who'd been looking further up the road in the wrong place and who didn't know what a rosefinch song sounded like (they hadn't done their homework!) and a local guy who was more into botany and kept on saying things like "is that it in the walnut tree there" or "what about the apple tree" which wasn't very helpful to people who didn't know their trees. Eventually I spotted it singing in the top of what I was told by the tree man was an apple tree. I got it in the scope and everyone had a look but it then scarpered before I was able to take any photos. The bird would stop singing for long periods and I was told that it sang best in the morning and in the evening so as it was now midday it started to take long breaks from its singing.

After a while the others got bored and left but I hung around, wanting to get some photos. Whilst I waited I put the news out on the information services that it was still there. Soon after a twitcher from London turned up and then a local guy who lived close by and who'd seen the bird quite a few times in previous days. No sooner had he got out of his car than he gave a masterclass in "rosefinch wrangling", doing a reasonable whistling impression of both it's call and song. The bird responded quite well to this initially, we got some reasonable views for a short while and I even managed to digiscope some video footage of it.

In this video you can hear the "wrangler" whistle and the bird respond

The bird seemed to get bored with this call and response routine after a while and moved off presumably to feed. It called again occasionally for a while but then tailed off so we all decided to call it a day and I headed back home with another successful sortee notched up.

Addendum
I came across this lovely photo of the bird taken by Mike Lawrence from his blog "Back in Birdland" which I thought that I'd share with you all (with kind permission I should add). I particularly like the "happy" expression of the bird in this shot - very often rosefinches don't look that attractive in photos .

Melbourn first summer common rosefinch, (c) Mike Lawrence Back in Birdland

Daventry Debacle

2011-07-13T20:40:00.000+01:00

I'm not much of a twitcher. I do go occasionally but I have family commitments and so generally my twitching is restricted to birds that have been around for a long time so that I can go and see them on a day that fits in with my family life and also so there's less of a chance for a dip. I also generally won't travel for more than two hours to see a bird though I will make an exception for something good that has been around for long enough (e.g. the Frampton oriental pratincole). Anyway, my usual twitching rules were rather bent today when Badger (Jason Coppock) sent me a text tempting me to go for the reported greater yellowlegs that had pitched up at Daventry Country Park, well within my two hour travel radius and whilst it was not strictly fulfilling my "settled and well established" criteria the fact that it was being reported regularly throughout the morning meant that it was highly likely it would stay for the rest of the day at least.

Jason was getting together a car-load from Oxon to take a look and I decided to tag along. There was a certain amount of complication involved in the rendez-vous with the others but eventually we were heading off towards Daventry with eagre anticipation. En route I learnt that there was some history with this species with several members of the team having dipped horribly on a couple of occasions in the past so this was very much a revenge twitch for them. For myself on the other hand, I'm such a low lister that it was just another of many birds that I needed and having had the privilege of finding the lesser 'legs on my home patch of Port Meadow last year it would be nice to see it's larger cousin.

We arrived in good time and soon found the gaggle of birders all peering in the distance towards the muddy shoreline where there were a couple of black-tailed godwits and another bird. Someone let me look through his scope and I actually said at the time "that looks like a greenshank" only to get the reply "No that's actually the yellowlegs". Fair enough I thought and set about scoping and then videoing it. It's legs appeared rather muddy but the tops did look yellow-ish though much darker than the lesser from last year. It's amazing how one can convince oneself of something when a crowd of people is telling you it's true and I fully admit to being quite happy watching it and thinking it was the genuine article. After a while it flew and I made sure to take a careful look at the white areas as it flew: white rump and a whacking great white wedge up its back. Now I knew that lesser had a squared off white rump with no wedge but couldn't recall what the situation was for a greater and assumed that this was what it should look like so I'm not claiming any great incite even at this stage. Shortly afterward, LGRE came up to me and asked if I had some video footage of it flying. I looked through my various shots but didn't have anything conclusive. However, I told him what I'd seen and he pointed out that a white wedge meant a greenshank and not a yellowlegs. Finally the veil started to be lifted and I realised that in all probability we were all happily ticking a greenshank, albeit one moulting out of summer plumage with rather bright legs. Lee started to ask the other birders there and word started to spread and then we all started to notice how when it was preening it was showing off a vast expanse of white on its back. Doh! Poor old Garry Bagnell (of Channel 4 documentary fame) turned up having driven all the way from Crawley in Sussex only to be told that it was actually a greenshank that he'd come for! At this point the Oxon bunch decided to leave with yet another dip in the name of this species and now I too had a tale to tell of a nasty dip and a bit of a grudge to carry around!

I know that it obviously looks like a greenshank when you watch the video
but it's not so easy when there's a crowd of people and a whole bunch of
pager messages all telling you it's a greater yellowlegs!

A crappy videograb but you can just make out
the white all the way up the back

In psychology there is a concept of crowd thinking which is a much more primitive basic form of thinking where people go along with the perceived wisdom (or often ignorance) of the crowd. This phenomenon occurs in many situations including lynch mobs and even the stock market so it's well documented. Still it was fascinating and also rather scary to see how easily one could be taken in by it.

Some of the assembled throng

The moral of the story is of course always to check for yourself when you go to a twitch and not to be taken in by what the perceived wisdom is. Still it's an occupational hazard with twitching and this has happened many times in the past and will no doubt happen again many times in the future. At least I now have the knowledge of the rump pattern for great yellowlegs indelibly etched into my memory for the rest of my life!

Cornwall in July

2011-07-11T13:13:00.000+01:00

Introduction

I was due to go back down to Cornwall again for a week: there was still much to do and my sister and a friend were coming down and a few things needed to be done to make things habitable for them. As always, I'd been following things down in Cornwall and knew that even down there it was remarkably quiet with nothing of note being seen at all. Given this lack of anything interesting to chase I planned to do some more work on my fledgling Cornish list and also with my new-found interest in butterflies I thought that I would take this opportunity to chase down some of the local specialities. On top of all this, July marked the start of when things begin to get interesting on the sea-watching front so I would keep a weather-eye on the charts and if there was a good wind I was planning to get in a spot of sea-watching.

Sunday 3rd July

With nothing of particular note to stop in on on the way down to Cornwall I thought that I would take a look at some Cornish sites along the north coast en route. The plan was to work on the Cornish list and also to take a look at some sites that I'd not yet visited. I'd been making some enquiries (thanks are due to John Swann and Colin Selway for their help with this) and had been given a few tips on where to visit for various species.

My first port of call was Walmsley Sanctuary near Wadebridge where the target bird was red-legged partridge. As I walked across the field towards the hide a flock of 5 stock doves flew up which was an unexpected bonus county tick. It turned out that they bred near there and there were even a couple of youngster sitting on some poles in front of the tower hide. All was quiet on the pools themselves with a couple of herons, a lone wigeon and a few miscellaneous ducks about. In the hide I met a nice couple from Heligan whom I'd met before at Marazion. They'd heard some partridges near the other hide so I went to take a quick look though all I could find in that area were a couple of soaring buzzards. I wandered back, scouring the fields and thought that I heard a distant calling bird but couldn't pin it down.

One of the young stock doves near the hide

Whilst there I thought that I would nip over to the other side of the road to take a look at Dinham Flats as part of my getting to know new Cornish sites. After walking through a couple of fields I found the hide though with the tide right out there was not much to see apart from a single little egret, a few shelduck and some black-headed gulls. As I returned to the car however I heard a male partridge singing from just the other side of the hedge from me. I crept forward to take a look but he heard me and I heard the whirr of wings as he sped off so I ran forward and managed to see him flying across the field. Result!

A shelduck on Dinham Flats

Next stop was Trevose Head to look for Corn Bunting. This turned out to be fairly straight-forward and I had no sooner turned off for the Head when there one was on the hedge right by the road though it flew off before I could take a photo. Despite already having achieved my goal I decided to go and take a look around anyway. It was all rather scenic though not as rugged and beautiful as the Penwith peninsula (to my eyes at least). I had a quick wander around and found a couple more corn buntings on the tamarisk hedging that lined the road. One male was singing by the road side so I got out and did some digiscoping. Job done, next stop Penhale Dunes.

Unfortunately this corn bunting remained partially
obscured by the tamarisk the whole time

I'm a sucker for a lighthouse photo so here are
a couple from Trevose Head

I wanted to visit Penhale Dunes for the butterflies, in particular the silver-studded blues which are a localised and rare small blue butterfly which you don't get in Oxon (that I know of). I'd done some research and managed to find the appropriate layby by the footpath and set off across the dunes. One aspect of nature that I particularly enjoy is exploring different types of habitat so it was nice to spend some time in amongst the dunes. At first I didn't spot very much but as I ventured further I saw the odd dark-green fritillary zip by though in the wind they weren't hanging around at all. After a while I spotted what looked like a dried up pond area which was sheltered by dunes on three sides which looked rather promising so I went over to take a look. Sure enough it was full of silver-studded blues as well as up to three dark-green fritillaries. I spent some time trying to take photos but many of the blues were past their best by now and they wouldn't easily let me get very close so I never got the classic closed-wing shot of them showing off their silver studs. Still it was great to see them all and I walked back to the car a happy bunny.

A couple of silver-studded blue shots

A very heavily-cropped record shot of a dark-green fritillary,
the only shot I was able to get though at least you can see the
dark green wash on the lower underwing which gives it its name.

It was getting rather late in the day now so I headed on down towards Penzance, just nipping in briefly to the Hayle estuary where it was high tide and a few waders were waiting it out in Ryan's Field. On to Pendeen to open up the house and to have something to eat. It had been a long but very enjoyable trip down.

Monday 4th July

I decided to start off my day with a sea-watching session at Pendeen though the wind wasn't particularly strong. There was a steady stream of manx shearwaters going by and I counted a total of 520 between 07:00 to 08:45 though there was little else of note. I had lots of work to do in the cottage so much of the day was taken up with that though by early afternoon I needed a break and fancied a wander around the local area to check out the butterflies. I gave John Swann a call and he helpfully came down to show me where to find silver-studded blues in the area though we only managed to turn up three of them with a small copper as a bonus. He also said that grayling were to be found in the area which, as a coastal butterfly, was a species I was keen to catch up with though they normally don't come out for another couple of weeks and we didn't manage to see any.

I found this lovely garden tiger month around the
back of the cottage though unfortunately it had been injured
and wasn't going to last long

Tuesday 5th July

Again I had lots of work to do and with no wind to speak of (it was actually quite a nice day) there was no point in any early morning sea-watching. By late afternoon I'd had enough of work and decided to take a jaunt over to the Lizard peninsula to see if I could find a hobby at the pool at Croft Pascoe. This turned out to be a shallow pool on the downs near Goonhilly which was known to be a good dragonfly spot. Indeed there were several of these beasts quartering over the water though I don't really know my dragonflies yet so couldn't tell you what they were.

Croft Pascoe Pool was full of dragonflies but unfortunately no hobbies

There were unfortunately no hobbies to be seen but I noticed a small forest area nearby and decided to pop in to take a look. This turned out to be a great piece of habitat with a mostly coniferous wood and an area of more sparsely separated trees with heather in between that looked great for species like nightjar, woodlark and tree pipit though unfortunately there wasn't very much of this area so it was probably too small. The wood itself though was alive with birds and simply by standing still and watching and listening it was possible to spot all sorts of species. There was a delightful family of young chiffchaffs working there way about the place as well as loads of blue and great tits. I heard a familiar call and soon managed to spot a male siskin on top of a neighbouring tree - this was another species that I needed for the Cornish list. By watching the canopy carefully I soon spotted a coal tit working its way through the trees which was again another Cornish tick - in my defence there aren't many suitable coal tit areas on the Penwith peninsula itself. Finally a secretive spotted flycatcher was the icing on the cake and a third Cornish tick. So despite not finding my target hobby I'd managed to come away with a handful of ticks for the list, a most productive trip.

Wednesday 6th July

Today was forecast to be a strong south-westerly wind so clearly a Porthgwarra day. I had some things to do first off and was intending to head down there a bit later once I'd finished my various tasks. By late morning I was ready and set off for PG, en route getting a text through from Bird Guides that there had been 90 Cory's shearwaters through from 8 to 9:30 in the morning. This looked highly encouraging and so it was with some optimism that pulled up at PG, parked in my usual location and headed off to towards the cliffs. Whilst Gwennap Head is the well known sea-watching point in actual fact the locals tend to use Hella Point and so it was to this latter location that I headed. When I arrived there were half a dozen birders including Dave Parker and Martin Elliot and they'd had over 600 Cory's go through earlier though of course it had all died down by now. Soon after my arrival most people headed off leaving just myself, Martin and one other birder whom I didn't know. I soon managed to show off my true sea-watching calibre by making the classic school-boy error of calling out a juvenile gannet as a Cory's but once I'd destroyed all my credibility it was quite useful as I could then ask lots of questions of these sea-watching experts with no reputation left to lose! Amongst the things I learnt was that early in the sea-watching season PG is generally better than Pendeen which comes into its own later on in the year. We also discussed spotting Yelkouan shearwaters and the two sub-species of little shearwater, all most educational.

It turned out to be a reasonable little session with a total of five Cory's going through, 6 sooties, 1 arctic skua and 1 storm petrel. Martin had quite a few more stormies than that but it's very difficult to pick up someone else's stormy at any distance. Martin told me that in the past on good Cory days things are often good in the morning, tail off during the day and then pick up again late afternoon so he stayed on after I left mid afternoon. He turned out to be right and a couple of hundred more Cory's went through as well as a single great shearwater later on. I'd thoroughly enjoyed my PG session and by the end I'd managed to get my eye in a bit more, learning the different lines that the difference species went through so I didn't feel like such a novice.

I found this interesting spider down by Pendeen,
I've asked on twitter what species it is and will report
back once I find out

Yet another lighthouse shot, this one is of course Pendeen

Thursday 7th July

I was intending to head back on Friday but with stronger winds forecast for then than Thursday I thought that I would get as much done today as possible to leave me with some free time for a final session on the Friday. I did have to make a run to the dump at St. Erth and so of course it would have been rude of me not to pop in to the Hayle estuary for a quick look. I am finding that I am increasingly drawn to this spot, I think that it's because it offers waders and gulls which is of course what I specialise in on my home patch of Port Meadow. I managed to catch it just past high tide so there was plenty of water and plenty of birds as well. Across on the far side were a number of gulls including four Mediterranean gulls (2 summer plumaged adults and 2 1st summers). On the wader front there was a greenshank, 4 black-tailed godwits, numerous curlew and in Ryan's Field there were a couple of common sandpipers.

Back at Pendeen I went for a mid-afternoon walk around the local area. I nearly managed to lose my camera as it fell out of my camera pouch though fortunately I knew that I must have dropped it in the last 40 yards and so by tracking back and forth across the cliffs I was able to find it. I managed to find some more silver-studded blues and also found a grayling, which I was most pleased about. I worked late into the evening to get as much as possible done to free up time for my final day tomorrow.

A well-camouflaged grayling

Friday 8th July

I was up very early cleaning the cottage for the forthcoming guests and packing things in the car. I had been vaguely contemplating going back home "via" Pembrokeshire for the very smart looking lesser grey shrike there but I finally decided that this was just too circuitous a route even for me so with a good south-westerly wind forecast I decided that another PG sea-watching session was what was required and so at around 7:30 am I was back at Hella Point though when I arrived the wind was much more subdued than forecast and there was only one other person (a non-local) there. Gradually throughout the morning though more and more people arrived (Dave Parker was the only one I knew) so that by the time I left at around 10:30 there were about a dozen people there.

Things looked quite promising initially with a couple of stormies and a sooty almost as soon as I sat down but it quickly tailed off so it was very quiet with just the odd stormy for our collective efforts. After a while it started to get a little better and my final tally was 3 stormies, 6 sooties, 1 arctic skua, 1 pom and 1 bonxie. After I left it all seemed to kick off though and as well as a good number of Cory's going through at some time in the early afternoon a Wilson's petrel went through and even lingered for five minutes around the Runnel Stone. Most gripping!

I went home to pack and then headed for home, stopping off for a final look in at Hayle as I was going past. There it was similar to my previous visit with three Mediterranean gulls (1 s/p adult and 2 1st/s) and the usual waders.

Hayle common sandpiper at Ryan's Field

Conclusion
It had been another most enjoyable visit down to my favourite part of the country. Given that it was July I'd not been expecting much and so to get a total of seven county ticks was quite a good effort. In addition it had been great to catch up with some local butterfly specialities. My sea-watching sessions had only whetted my appetite further and I was already looking forward to my next visit down there.

Surviving June

2011-07-01T15:14:00.001+01:00

With the June doldrums once more upon us I have been casting around for something to do. I did almost go on a couple of twitches: after some prompting by Badger, the Suffolk roller at the start of the month had me ready to head off the next day on news but it turned out to be a one day wonder so instead I earned some brownie points by going off on a furniture hunting expedition with my VLW. The other almost-twitch was the Hertfordshire night heron that turned up at Stocker's lake. Once again I was ready to head off the next day on news but the bird did a runner.

Aborted twitches aside, I was recently inspired by one of my favourite blogs "Wild Wings and Wanderings" by Karen Woolley. This year she has been posting much more on butterflies and plants (particularly orchids) and one particular post on black hairstreaks caught my eye. This is a rather rare butterfly but it turns out that one of the top spots to see it is at Whitecross Green wood in Oxon where she and her chums managed to catch up with it. It was getting rather late for them as due to the warm spring they were several weeks earlier than usual. Nevertheless I thought that I would go and take a look and this has rather lead me down the slippery butterfly spotting slope. I don't know what the butterfly equivalent of birder is, 'flyer perhaps? I'd had a brief interest in butterflies as a boy and I knew the common species already so I thought that I'd give it a go. The trouble is of course that there aren't that many species of butterfly about and I don't think that there is the same degree of vagrant butterfly appearance as there is for birds so the scope for twitching them is limited but I wanted at least to catch up with some of the more interesting species that occur in and around Oxfordshire. Importantly, butterflies are abundant at a time when birds are scarce so it could work quite well. I know that this is a slippery slope and before you know it I'll be mothing with the best of them but it will do me for now. So this posting is mostly about the various local butterfly trips that I've made in June.

Whitecross Green Wood

My first trip was to Whitecross Green wood to chase after black hairstreaks. I'd not been to this spot before which consisted of lovely mixed woodland with a criss-crossing grid of grass rides. The grass was kept long in the rides apart from a couple of tracks and it was ideal for butterflies and orchids. On the bird front there were plenty of the usual warblers about as well as lots of mixed tit flocks working their way through the trees. As mentioned above the black hairstreaks were very early this year and although I found the hot-spot for them from an internet description despite extensive searching there were none to be seen and I'm guessing that they are now all finished for the year. I did see a brief fly-by white admiral as well the usual grassland common stuff. I also met a lady 'flyer from Yorkshire who had come down to Collard Hill in Somerset for the large blues and who was heading back via this site to look for the hairstreaks. We got talking and it turns out that she does butterflies in the summer and birds in the winter with the butterflies taking priority.

early purple spotted orchid or so I was told

some random bug

Otmoor

My next trip was to Otmoor which I'd not actually been to at all this year so I decided to combine a butterfly hunting trip with a run. I scoured the bridle way behind the car park field extensively (the "Roman Road") though there was nothing of interest. I think that it's too late for the black hairstreaks there and too early for the browns. Near the new hide a hobby was perched on a fence post giving nice views and there was a lesser whitethroat in the hedge between the first and second screens but the best that I could come up with on the butterfly front was a small blue which showed by the car park field but too briefly for a photo. Still I was pleased to get a sighting of this species which isn't one of the ones that I get on my patch on Burgess Field.

A very tatty painted lady

This comma posed nicely

Wantage Ridgeway

This wasn't actually a butterfly trip but I needed to pick up my younger daughter from her bronze Duke of Edinburgh trip so I decided to go a bit early and have a wander along the ridgeway here which wasn't an area that I'd been to before. I didn't see anything particularly interesting on the butterfly front but I did manage to hear a singing male quail in one of the fields.

An orchid of some sort

Meadow cranesbill I believe

Bernwood Forest

At the weekend a couple of purple emperor butterflies were seen just over the border in Bucks at Bernwood Forest so I thought that I would try there as it was another place that I'd not been to yet. I arrived to find a couple who were just leaving who told me that they'd just seen a couple of purple emperors just around the corner on the main track by a dog poo litter bin. Apparently purple emperors like feeding on dog poo and there was a sample close to the bin which it had been enjoying. When I turned up there were a couple of people there and I was told not to worry as it they were creatures of habit which were bound to turn up again any moment. Of course I knew from twitching experience that often this is the kiss of death and the bird is never seen again and so it proved. I did see one very large butterfly fly high across the path which was probably it but it wasn't really a proper sighting. White admirals and silver-washed fritillaries would occasionally zip by and it was great to see these wonderful species around in such numbers. I went for a wander down to the grass Meadow which was teeming with the grassland species and had a look around before coming back to spend some more time waiting by the poo bin.

The fabulous meadow which was teeming with grassland species

The original finder who'd been waiting patiently all this time had in the mean time found a purple hairstreak which had fallen from an oak tree whilst still hatching and which was now looking a bit damaged as it struggle to inflate its wings. Still it was nice to get such close views of what is normally a tree top species. Eventually I gave up waiting and headed home but I was keen to get back to see if I can catch up with the purple emperors.

the damaged purple hairstreak

I did at least manage to photograph a white admiral this time

Bernwood Revisited

True to my word I was back again at the end of the week, this time a little earlier having learnt from experience that later on in the morning the butterflies tend to skulk in the canopy and are more elusive. I staked out the area by the poo bin and within a few minutes I had my first purple emperor sighting. Unfortunately I fluffed the photo opportunity as my camera was on the wrong setting so I waited around some more and in an hour and a half had a total of three rather brief views. It's amazing how such a large butterfly can disappear once it flies into the foliage of a tree. Whilst waiting there were a number of fly-by silver washed frits and quite a few purple hairstreaks were now on the wing up in the canopy, flashing their purple upper wings occasionally. I was most pleased finally to catch up with the emperors though will most likely be back in order to see if I can actually nail a photo of one.

This silver washed fritillary actually sunbathed
for long enough for me to get some shots off

Conclusion

So my fledgling butterfly spotting habit has got off to a reasonable start. I'd managed to see a few interesting species, had been to a few new locations and had managed to keep myself occupied throughout June so I can't really complain. With the water frustratingly fast drying up on my local patch just as the autumn passage gets underway I may well chase some more butterflies next month unless some decent scarce or rare turns up within striking distance. Next off, I'm off to Cornwall again though it's just as quiet in the south west as in Oxford at present so I'll probably end up chasing some butterflies there as well.

Just How Bad is June?

2011-06-28T18:00:00.000+01:00

I was twiddling my thumbs waiting for someone decent bird action but of course, being June, there was precious little around. This got me wondering just how bad this month actually is compared to others. Now, messing around with numbers on computers is what I do for my day job so I thought that I could apply some of these skills to this important matter. In order to answer this question I started playing around with the Bird Guides database query functionality (yes I know I clearly have too much time on my hands). This is actually quite a cool tool in that you can search the entire Bird Guides database for sightings since they began in November 2000. I've come up with a simple yet effective way of measuring relative "performance" for various criteria such as counties or species which is to count all the first sightings within the database (to avoid multiple reports of the same bird) and there is a convenient tick box for this when doing the searches. This is slightly over-simplistic as it may count things like "no sign" or erroneous reports and if a bird moves location it will be counted as a separate record but on the whole it's going to give a rough idea of the relative counts. To illustrate what I mean and to answer my original question, below is a chart showing just how bad June is. This is a chart showing all "scarce or better" records for Oxfordshire by month since BG records began.

All scarce+ records for Oxon by month - click on image for larger view

From this I hope that you can make out that May and September are the best months for some hot scarce action but rather depressingly that July is even worse that June with only 9 scarce+ since 2001.

If you want to make some comparisons, then here are the June records for three counties. Oxon birders may want to look away now!

All Scarce+ Records in June since 2001
Oxon: 11
Cornwall: 111
Norfolk: 305

So Oxon basically gets about one scarce+ record a year in June though there hasn't been one yet this year at all. In answer to the question as to which county is better in June then you can say that Norfolk is nearly 30 times better than Oxon. That is depressing!

This tool is also good for determining the monthly distribution of various species. Now Oxon has sadly still not had a buff-breasted sandpiper so here's the monthly distribution which clearly shows that September is the month to look out for this dainty wader.

Buff-breasted sandpiper records by month across all counties

You can also determine the relative scarcity of different species in a given month. So for september for some Neartic sandpipers you get:

Total September sightings since 2001
buff-breasted sandpiper: 223
pectoral sandpiper: 659
Baird's sandpiper: 104
white-rumped sandpiper 58
semi-palmated sandpiper: 54

You can even use this tool to assign very rough probabilities for different species. Thus if you see a long-winged Nearctic sandpiper in September in the distance but you don't see it's rump then the chances are that it's a Baird's rather than a white-rumped by a ratio of a bit less than 2 to 1. However in October (though I've not shown the actual numbers) it's much more likely to be a white-rumped by a ratio of 4 to 1 as white-rumped's have their peak in that month rather than September.

In a similar vein, a phalarope species was seen very briefly on my patch at Port Meadow in April (whilst I was away down in Cornwall). The observer was pretty sure that it wasn't a grey and was tending towards Wilson's though it was distant and into the light so the view wasn't good.

Unfortunately April is not a good month for phalaropes and there are only seven different sightings since 2001 of which one was unidentified. The breakdown is as follows:

Grey: 3
Red-necked 2
Wilson's 1

Unfortunately there are too few records to be able to assign meaningful probabilities to this sighting. But the mere fact that phalaropes are so scarce in April shows that (stringing aside) it's an unusual record.

You can of course use this method to assess how good particular years were. I've had the belief that 2008 (when I did my county year listing challenge) was a particularly good year but do the statistics bear this out?

Well, as you can see from the graph, 2008 doesn't particularly stand out in recent years though there is a noticeable improvement from the first half of the decade. As you can see, for the last couple of years we've had 25 scarce+ events in the year. By way of comparison Norfolk had 545 in 2010. It makes you weep!

So where does this leave us? It confirms that June and July are tough months and that Norfolk is much much better than Oxon. Neither of these things are particularly great insights of course but one can assign actual numbers to these statements and it keeps me occupied as I wait for autumn. Next time I promise a post with some actual wildlife in!

Patch Spoonbill

2011-06-11T17:24:00.000+01:00

Spoonbill used to be a county rarity. Two years ago (2009) I found one on my patch (Port Meadow) though it flew off almost as soon as I saw it and before I could even take one of my famously blurry digiscoped record shots. I put the word out and the various county birder all went into a bit of a frenzy of excitement as they all needed it for their county lists - apparently the last county spoonbill had been more than ten years ago. My bird wasn't seen again though in August of that year a twitchable juvenile turned up at Otmoor thus satisfying the needs of the county birding fraternity.

Last year the same thing happened: a bird turned up for a few hours on Port Meadow in May (though I was out of the county and got back ten minutes after the bird flew off) and later on one turned up in August on Otmoor for a few days. This year we've already had a May fly-over at Otmoor, and on June 7th three turned up at the Drayton floods and on the same evening I found one on Port Meadow whilst doing my evening rounds checking out the patch. Naturally this bird didn't generate the same degree of excitement as the first one and only a few people bothered to come and see it. It just shows how quickly the rarity status of certain species can change. It's the same with great white egret which was a real rarity until a few years ago and is now probably more or less annual within the county. Global warming is probably to blame with warmer, wetter weather attracting various continental herons etc. across more and more. In fact we've recently had breeding cattle egrets, little bitterns and purple herons in the country for the first time so I expect that we can look forward to a lot more of these exotic birds over the coming years. I for one very much look forward to catching up with things like night heron and squacco heron on Otmoor some time in the near future!

Anyway, whilst spoonbills aren't what they used to be, I was still pleased to find it and I spent some time taking some digiscoped photos in the golden evening light.

Some video footage of the Port Meadow spoonbill

Some digiscoped spoonbill photos

Cornwall in the Summer Doldrums

2011-06-04T17:12:00.000+01:00

It was time for me to head back down to Cornwall again, only a few weeks after my last visit but our first guests were going to be arriving and we had lots of things to do before they turned up. Admittedly these guests were my brother and his wife and so were going to be rather tolerant guests but all the same it gave us the motivation to get lots of little jobs finished off. As it was half term the whole family was coming down and that coupled with the fact that there was lots to do meant that there weren't going to be many birding opportunities. In fact it had all gone very very quiet in Cornwall anyway with hardly anything of interest reported since my last visit. To add to all this, a day or so into the visit we all came down with a cold that L our four year old had generously brought home from school so I was often too under the weather to go out birding even if I'd had the opportunity.

To get a measure of how quiet it was, I only got my scope out once for a single sea watching session down at Pendeen (well it would be rude not to since I was there). I had been hoping for a stormie or even a pom or two but the result was lots of manxies and a single balearic shearwater from 6am to 8:20am.

Whilst the gorse and the thrift are now past their
best the foxgloves are all out just now

One advantage of having the fledgling Cornish list to work on is that there is always something to go for even at this time of year and one sunny and calm evening local birder John Swann very kindly called up to ask if I fancied going to look for the nightjars at their usual location. Of course I jumped at the chance and we enjoyed really good views of three birds flying around often at quite close quarters though there was remarkably little churring going on. In addition I managed to convert grasshopper warbler from "heard only" to a full blown tick which was an added bonus.

Whenever I had a spare moment I would go for an amble just around the local area and it was fun to see how the local breeders were getting on with their families. It was all the usual stuff but very enjoyable to see nonetheless.

My photographic offerings are all rather crap this time and were
all taken on my point and shoot camera. Nevertheless this
dunnock allowed me to to approach close enough for me to get a
reasonable shot

As a mark of how quiet it was, the only call that I got of something good being around was on the day that were were due to leave when I got a text from Dave Parker saying that there were 13 red kites currently circling over Kenidjack valley. As we were packing the car I couldn't exactly rush off but a short while later John Swann called with the same news and he explained that in Cornwall there are one or two "red kite days" each year when hoards of them come in and today was such a day. Indeed he'd had one over just up the road at Trewellard. As I packed the car from then on I kept an eye to the skies all the time. When the family was all finally assembled in the car I asked them to keep an eye out for kites but we got to Penzance without a sighting. We were just heading on the A30 between the Long Rock roundabout and the Marazion one when I spotted a couple of interesting looking raptors in the sky circling over Long Rock itself. Despite complaints from the rest of the family I pulled over somewhere safe, got the bins out and walked a short distance where I could get a clearer view. Indeed they were a couple of red kites, a rather jammy end to my stay there. It turned out that Dave Parker had a number of groups of kites over Long Rock that morning so it was clearly a good kite spot.

During the week the wind died away and the
sea became flat calm in Mounts Bay

It had been a very quiet interlude down in Cornwall and with June only just starting it probably wasn't going to get any better any time soon though of course the sea watching season will be getting starting soon. Needless to say someone has to head back down there to finish off a few odd jobs and I'll selflessly volunteer once more to save the rest of the family that burden. If nothing else there are a number of common birds that I still need for my county list there so there's always plenty to do.

Cornwall in May

2011-05-17T10:50:00.000+01:00

Introduction

I had to go down to Cornwall once more: the decorating was now nearing completion but with our first guests due to arrive at the beginning of June there was still plenty to finish off. On this trip down I'd set myself the task of completing the main kitchen/dining area which had had some of the worst mould and damp problems in the building so it would require a fair bit of work to make it look nice. In between of course I was hoping to get some good Cornish May bird action and without the pleasure of the company of the rest of my family I would have plenty of time to get out there though indications from the reports in the days leading up to my visit were that things were once again rather quiet in the area. Sure there was a Bonaparte's gull, an American Golden Plover and a Great White Egret but apart from that, there was very little about.

Sunday 8th May

Despite the quiet prelude Fortune chose to smile on me as on the Sunday morning I was just finishing my breakfast before setting off on the long journey down when I got a call from local Cornish birder John Swann checking that I'd heard about the four Black-winged Stilts which had turned up that morning at St. Gothian's NR. I'd not actually switched my Bird Guides text service over to Cornwall yet that morning and so had missed this snippet of news. With this avian carrot dangling before me I hot-footed it down to Cornwall arriving some four and a half hours later at St. Gothian's NR. It was sunny but incredibly windy there and I made my way over to the far side of the main pool where a few birders were gathered. Sure enough there were the four stilts only about 30 or 40 yards away, trying to shelter from the wind. One of them seemed to be limping as it tried to walk about on the edge of the pool, the others made half-hearted attempts to feed though they spent most of the time whilst I was there just resting and trying to shelter from the wind. They turned out to be one-day wonders as the next day they were gone but it had been a great stroke of luck to have them turn up on the day that I was coming down. No apologies for a large number of stilt digiscoped photos as they were wonderfully photogenic birds.

You can see why they are called stilts, their legs are unfeasibly long

With the stilts safely ticked off it was time to catch up on the other local rarities. After stopping in a the supermarket to pick up some provisions (I'd been caught out by early Sunday closing in the past and didn't want to make that mistake again) I made my way over to the Hayle estuary where I was soon watching the first summer Bonaparte's Gull. There were only half a dozen or so black-headed gulls around so it was an easy task to pick out the American vagrant from in amongst them though it was rather distant when I first saw it.

The Bonaparte's spent a fair bit of time asleep,
occasionally popping it's head up like this...

...and I eventually got a brief look at it's lovely bubblegum-pink legs

The estuary was looking rather empty at this time of year with a few Shelduck and one or two Whimbrel the only birds about apart from the usual Herring Gulls. The American Golden Plover had last been seen on Copperhouse Creek a couple of days ago but had not been reported at all yesterday so had in all probability moved on. Nevertheless I decided to check out the Creek just in case though the best that I could turn up were a few more Whimbrel.

Whimbrel on Copperhouse Creek

Next it was on to Marazion where the Egret was apparently holed up in the Conservation Area in the North West corner of the reedbed. There was a gate from which one could view the area though when I arrived there was only a Little Egret and a couple of Grey Herons to be seen. Fortunately within about ten minutes the Great White Egret made a little flight out of the reeds where it was easily distinguishable from its smaller cousin by it's long neck and long dangling legs.

Having completed my mopping up operation on all the local goodies it was off to the cottage to get unpacked and to rustle up something to eat. It had been a great first day back down in Cornwall.

Monday 9th to Thursday 12th May

As I mentioned earlier, it was very quiet down on the Penwith peninsula and there was nothing out of the ordinary about at all. Fortunately I had my fledgling Cornish list to work on and there were plenty of the commoner warblers for example to chase down which kept me occupied. I got into the habit of doing some decorating for a few hours first and then going out to see what I could find for an hour or two. In the absence of anything particular to go for I would try to visit all the various different locations at least once on my stay. I manage to visit most of the key locations down there and winkled out the various warblers though lesser whitethroat turns out to be something of a rarity on the peninsula so I might have to go to the Lizard in order to get it.

The only rarity news of interest was the occasional report of a golden oriole in one of the valleys. I did try Kenidjack and Nanquidno to no avail. Later in the week when I'd given up on the orioles I went back to Nanquidno looking for garden warblers. As I was listening intently I heard the unmistakable flutey call of a male oriole coming from deep within the woodland near the ford. They have such a wonderfully tropical sound to their call, it wouldn't sound out of place in an Amazonian rain forest. I sent out a couple of texts to some locals and I was then just listening to the bird when another birder drove by, stopped and said that he'd been listening to it for half an hour from the other side but that it had not shown at all. Apparently it sang on and off for a while that day and one lady even caught the briefest of glimpses though there was much subsequent debate with her husband as to whether it was a tickable or not - naturally enough as he'd not seen it he thought that it was untickable!

Nanquidno Ford, where all the oriole action was

In the evening, after dinner, I got into the habit of nipping down to Hayle to check the estuary and Ryan's Field. Somehow there was a part of me that was still naturally drawn to checking the evening gull roost though there weren't that many birds to sift through. The Bonaparte's Gull was still around and I would usually see it, sometimes at reasonably close quarters. Ryan's Field never turned up more than a Common Sandpiper though the day after I left a Temminck's Stint pitched up there. After Hayle I would head over to Marazion with a quick check at the Conservation Area for the Egret (though I didn't put in more than a few minutes there if it wasn't on show) before finishing up checking out Marazion beach. One evening there was a lovely flock of whimbrel there, presumably fresh in off the sea, with a barwit, three sanderling and a couple of turnstones all showing nicely at close quarters in the half-light of dusk.

Whimbrel and turnstone, taken at dusk on Marazion beach

I managed a couple of visits to the moorland areas on the Peninsula which are always wonderfully bleak. There were whitethroats everywhere with linnets and stonechats also about and whenever one came across a patch of small scrubby trees then suddenly there would be a willow warbler singing from within the patch. Cuckoos would often be calling from across the moor and grasshopper warblers could be heard reeling in the distance. I always kept one eye on the skies in case a kite chose to fly over: back in Oxon of course a kite is so common that they warrant hardly a glance but in Cornwall they are scarcer and also much more likely to be a black kite.

Cornish moorland scenes

One lunch-time when the wind was blowing in the right direction I had a quick sea-watch at Pendeen Watch. During a three-quarter hour period I had 51 Manx shearwaters & a summer plumage black-throated diver go past. Nothing too exciting but it's always nice to get in a spot of sea-watching even if it is out of season.

The Levant Steam Engine, near Pendeen

So nothing particularly interesting to report but plenty of walking in stunning countryside which in May was looking wonderful.

Friday 13th May

By Friday I'd had enough of decorating and decided to leave fairly early and then to stop off en route somewhere if I could find something of interest. Fortunately a couple of days ago a text had come through about an Iberian Chiffchaff up at Rame Head which was close to the Devon border. I'd not been to this area of Cornwall at all so I figured that it would be a good opportunity to explore "up county" a bit more. There had been nothing on the information services about the bird since yesterday morning but I figured that I was more or less heading that way anyway and at least it would be an interesting diversion so I decided to take my chances. Accordingly I turned off the A30 at the A38 junction and headed over towards Rame. It was rather a complicated route and I had to stop to consult the map on several occasions but I eventually found myself at the Old Rectory on Rame Head. I parked up and walked a few yards up the path where another birder was loitering. He turned out to be the original finder and the bird was still there and singing away happily. It was very faithful to a clump of three or four sycamore trees and after a few minutes it showed well on a branch very close by. I didn't bother trying to digiscope it but instead attempted a recording on my phone. The finder was a very nice chap who was more into insects but knew his birds well enough to be pretty sure what it was when he found this Iberian treat. Pleased with the success of my warbler twitch I was contemplating stopping off somewhere else on route but when I thought about it I realised that I was actually feeling quite tired by now (the week's decorating had taken its toll) and so just headed for home.

The singing Iberian Chiffchaff, recorded on my phone
(you may have to turn your volume up a bit)

It had been another enjoyable week down in Cornwall with some nice "rares" at the beginning and end and some good solid county listing during the week - I managed another ten ticks for my Cornish list though some of those are just "heard only" at present. An interesting dilemma of course as to whether one counts "heard only" on ones various lists. My personal approach is to require a sighting for my life list but to allow them for year lists and county lists. There is an added advantage to getting a "heard only" tick in that at a future date one can convert it to a full tick when the species is actually finally seen. This way you're acknowledging that you've achieved something through hearing the bird and then you get a second "tick hit" when it's seen - so two ticks for one species.

A wind surfer enjoying the prevailing strong wind on Marazion beach

Port Meadow White Stork

2011-05-04T22:00:00.000+01:00

Usually my birding on the Meadow is a fairly sedate affair: I cycle down, have a scan and a bit of a wander and with any luck I might turn up something good. Yesterday, however, it was anything but sedate and only a mad scramble got me down there in time to catch up with a passing patch mega.

In May, provided there are some decent flood waters still remaining, I switch to checking the patch twice a day as stuff tends to drop in and move on pretty quickly. The birds that had been turning up on the Meadow recently certainly justified the extra attention and in fact the last few days the Meadow has had a real purple patch with channel wagtail, blue-headed wagtail, whimbrel, about 200 bar-tailed godwits so far and 2 wood sandpipers in amongst the usual waders that one might expect at this time of year. Fortunately there are several people visiting the Meadow regularly including Richard Foster, who also lives extremely close and who is becoming as obsessive about checking out the patch as I am. In fact he's been going twice a day for some time already now. Having said that, on bank-holiday Monday I'd not visited the patch by late morning but this was mainly due to the fact that someone else had been there at first light already to see the wood sandpiper from the previous evening so I already knew what was about. I was just on the phone to someone when my mobile went off so I apologised to the person to whom I was speaking and took the call. It turned out to be from Richard saying that a white stork had just dropped in at the southern end of the floods. Given the large number of people enjoying the Meadow in the bank-holiday sunshine he reckoned that it was only a matter of a short time before it would flush. I shoved some shoes on, grabbed my bins and point and shoot camera (no time to wrestle with my scope and tripod), ran for my bike and ignoring my VLW's protests that we needed to discuss something, sped off towards the Meadow. I made it down literally in two minutes and as soon as I was in visual range of the Meadow kept my eyes on the sky in case it was in the air.

Just as I was approaching the southern end a walker ahead of me put up the bird which started flapping lazily and rather low northwards along the floods. It was quite amazing just how large these birds are, they really are huge. Fortunately it came down at the north end of the floods so I sped over towards Burgess Field gate where there were a few people gathered. Fortunately, Jeff Pursey who had a digital camcorder on a tripod was there and he took some footage which I've included below. I took a couple of point and shoot photos with my camera and then made the call to Ian Lewington (the Oxon county recorder) with the news before calling Bird Guides. The BG chap wanted to know if the bird was ringed and explained that the rings can be rather small so I had a good look but couldn't see anything on it's legs at all.

The stork on the ground just to the north of the floods near Burgess Field gate.

Some video footage taken by (c) Jeff Pursey

Unfortunately within a couple of minutes the bird was put up by some walkers nearby and it flapped off lazily and quite low in an easterly direction and I had to make a second call to Ian with the bad news. The next few minutes was taken up in fielding phone calls from local birders wanting to know what was happening so I had to break the bad news to each of them in turn.

Unfortunately taking off again all too quickly

Video footage of the stork in flight (c) Jeff Pursey

Amazingly, the bird was subsequently seen on two occasions that day: flying over Otmoor reserve and then flying over Bicester so it had gone in a fairly straight line from where I'd seen it. On subsequent days it was seen over Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. Graham Cox took these stunning photos of the bird as it flew over Greenaways on Otmoor:

Clearly unringed (c) Graham Cox

In a bizarre twist, when I came home I told my eldest daughter K what I'd seen and she said that she'd seen a very large bird standing on a chimney pot more or less opposite our house the afternoon of the day before. When I showed her my photos she immediately identified it as the bird that she'd seen so it had been in the area for at least the previous night.

Richard later texted me about the recent white stork which had been seen down in Devon. Apparently that one had been ringed and had turned out to be an escapee so I had a look through the excellent Devon Bird News where I found some photos which I've pulled directly off the blog.

You can see that the rings are fairly small but can be seen fairly easily (c) Karen Woolley

Fortunately the Devon bird had a very distinctive missing primary feather, added proof that it wasn't our bird (c) Shaun Barnes (via Gavin Haig)

So, thanks to a timely call from Richard Foster (for which many thanks) I managed to jam in on a great patch and county tick though it was a real shame that it chose a bank holiday to turn up when there were so many people about on the Meadow to flush it so quickly. I shudder to think how I would have felt had I not managed to get down there quickly enough to see it before it flew off. Whilst of course I am delighted to have seen it, it would have been great if it had stuck around long enough for more local birders to connect with what had been a cracking bird. I suspect though, that it's only a matter of time before we get a more twitchable one in the county.

The Wrong Side of Scotland

2011-04-27T08:29:00.000+01:00

We'd arranged a family holiday to Scotland some time ago. It was to be a re-union holiday with some old college friends with whom we'd been on a holiday trip to Scotland when the children had been very young. Given that there were four families negotiating over where to stay certain criteria such as how far we'd have to travel (one family was coming up from Southampton) seemed for some inexplicable reason to be more important than the quality of birding in the area and for this reason we ended up in a large and well-appointed house on the shores of Holy Loch near Dunoon on the Cowal peninsula in the south west corner of Scotland rather than over near Speyside where we should be from a birding perspective. Once this had been determined I was more or less resigned to a fairly birdless holiday experience and apparently I would just have to get on and enjoy the company of my family and friends.

The house overlooked the Holy Loch mussel beds which was actually quite a good local spot and on most mornings I'd take a quick look at what was about though it was always the same birds: loads of noisy oystercatchers, a few curlew, herring and common gulls, a few red-breasted mergansers and shelducks, a pair of teal and one wigeon. There was an arboretum next to the house in which several grey herons were nesting and the strange noises of the young could be heard from the garden.

Oystercatchers were everywhere along the shoreline

We'd go for lots of walks in the surrounding area which was mostly coniferous forests so there were always plenty of coal tits and siskins about and on one occasion a flock of half a dozen crossbills flew over us at the Benmore Botanical Gardens though sadly on this side of the country they were always going to be common crossbills.

Warblers were about everywhere, interestingly mostly willow warbler with some chiffchaffs and blackcaps. I'd read about how climate change was forcing willow warblers further north as they need cooler conditions than chiffchaffs and there certainly seemed to be no shortage of them up in this area. On one occasion I did hear a grasshopper warbler reeling away and cuckoos were also heard distantly in the hills on several occasions. I didn't spend a great deal of time scanning the lochs but on one occasion when I had a brief look on Loch Fyne I managed a couple of black guillemot and a winter plumage red-throated diver as well as a couple of distant porpoises.

There were plenty of eider around which make a lovely whoo-ing noise

I did manage a walk up onto the hills behind the house on one occasion. It was interesting to see how as one got out of the pine trees and up onto the moorland suddenly meadow pipits started appearing. I was hoping for a grouse or two up on top but was unsuccessful. However as we came back down we walked through some classic habitat with sparsely scattered trees and scrub and sure enough I soon heard and then spotted a tree pipit doing its thing. In fact I heard tree pipit on several occasions on this trip though this was the only actual sighting.

In this area there was a mixture of carrion and hooded crows
including all sorts of strange hybrid birds.
This bird seems to be a pure "hoody"

It's always interesting to go somewhere new and to see what birds you can find in the area but frankly it was somewhat disappointing to go all that way and yet not to be anywhere near any of the classic Scottish birds. My VLW was also unfortunately ill for most of the week which rather put a damper on things. For the record though I did very much enjoy the company of family and friends and it was great to catch up with my college friends after all this time. I'll just have to make sure that next time I'm on the right side of Scotland.

Springtime in Cornwall

2011-04-15T12:15:00.000+01:00

Introduction

It was time to sally forth once more to do more work on the house in Cornwall. I was going to be heading down on Monday with my younger daughter B and my brother in law was coming down for a few days to lend a hand. On the Friday my VLW and our son L would come down to join us on the train before we all would leave on the following Tuesday. During this rather long stint we were ideally hoping to finish off all the painting as well as assembling the beds and taking delivery of a number of items. Naturally I'd been keeping track of the bird sightings down there in the days leading up to my arrival and there'd been a few hoopoes around but it had all turned rather ominously quiet just before I was due to head down so I was not overly optimistic as we set off on the long journey but at least it would be a chance to spend some more time in my favourite part of the country and there would always be some more birds to add to my Cornish list.

Monday 4th April

At my suggestion we decided to stop off at a couple of places en route, partly to break up the journey and partly as I quite enjoy getting to know other parts of the county than the Penwith peninsula. The first port of call was Kit Hill where a great grey shrike (not at all common in Cornwall) had been hanging out though it had not been reported for a couple of days and I was not particularly optimistic. We arrived to find it blowing a gale so we ate our sandwiches in the car and had a quick yomp around the summit though in the conditions the birds were sensibly keeping their heads well down and I saw nothing. B was singularly unimpressed with this first stop-off and re-named it Shit Hill.

Next stop was Golitha Falls which proved to be much more successful. This is a beautiful wooded valley through which the crystal clear river Fowey runs. We could see bluebells getting ready to flower and I can imagine that once they are out it must be absolutely stunning but even B was most impressed with this spot. I had originally learnt about it as a good place for catching up with nuthatch and tree creeper in the county and sure enough within a couple of minute of arriving there was a nuthatch piping away in a tree a few yards from the car park. During our visit I didn't manage to see a tree creeper though I was secretly rather glad about this as it would mean that I would have to visit this fantastic spot again.

Golitha Falls

We sped on towards our destination and arrived in good time to buy some food for our stay and to boot up the cottage and get settled in.

Tuesday 5th April

There was one bird which had been lingering for some time in Cornwall which I still needed for the Cornish list which was ring-necked duck. I'd missed the one at St. Gothian but I'd noticed that the Stithians bird whose appearance had been rather erratic, had been reported regularly for a number of days so the next morning I got up early and drove over to Stithians reservoir. This time I made it straight to the southern causeway without getting lost as I'd done on my previous visit. As I pulled up a couple of sand martins were hawking low over the water, battling against the reasonably strong wind. I made my way to the hide and had a good scan but apart from a couple of teal and a few coots and moorhens it all appeared rather quiet. Rather than hanging about in the hide I decided to take a walk along the causeway and almost as soon as I did this a number of tufted ducks swam out from close into the bank and in amongst them was the drake ring-necked duck, looking very smart indeed. I spent a little time taking some digiscoped video from both the causeway and back in the hide but I didn't have too long before I had to be back at the cottage ready to start the decorating so the results were somewhat rushed and were little more than record shots. Still I was pleased finally to have caught up with this handsome duck

The Stithians ring-necked duck

Later that day after we'd all had enough of painting we headed over to Marazion for a stroll along the beach and to see if we could score a cream tea somewhere. On the way I was able to pick out a few sandwich terns hunting over Mounts Bay - a Cornish tick for me.

Wednesday 6th April

Once again I was adopting my tactics of getting up early to get some birding in before a hard day's decorating. With nothing particular about to go for I decided that I would have to try to find something for myself so I elected to head over to Kenidjack and Cot to work the valleys. It was a new experience for me to visit these places in the spring: usually I was there in the autumn or winter when it was rather quiet but today they were alive with singing birds. There was nothing out of the ordinary but there were plenty of willow warblers and chiffies to look through just in case there was something rarer hidden in amongst them. After a while of fruitless searching I headed back to the cottage to start the decorating.

Whilst putting paint on the walls later that morning, I got a Bird Guides text through saying that a gull-billed tern had been seen as a fly-over down at Sennen. Intrigued but dismissing it as untwitchable, I carried on working until a short while later I received a phone call from Dave Parker saying that he was watching the gull-billed tern in the first field south of the Sea View caravan park in Sennen. Wasting no time I dropped everything and sped off in the car, not even bothering to change out of my painting clothes. It takes about 15 minutes to get to Sennen along the rather winding roads from Pendeen and of course there were the slow-moving tourists' cars to get stuck behind but I eventually arrived to find a bunch of local birders all staring into a field which was an encouraging sign! Sure enough the bird was still there with a dozen or so herring gulls loafing in a field - not the usual place to find a tern but I wasn't complaining. I took the obligatory record shots though it was rather hazy so they're nothing special at all.

A digiscoped videograb of the gull-billed tern

Within about ten minutes of my arrival the bird took off and headed south so after thanking Dave for the prompt phone call I headed back to the decorating, very pleased with having made it there in time to connect with the bird. As it turned out however, the next few days it was seen on and off in a field nearby at Trevilly Farm so had I missed it I would have had some more chances to see it but had I not gone for it I would have been kicking myself if it had disappeared, never to be seen again. A great bird to catch up with in Cornwall!

The gull-billed tern, filmed a couple of days later at Trevilly Farm by John Chapple

Thursday 7th April

After a few days of hard decorating and with my brother-in-law due to depart later on today, we decided to make the best of the decent weather and to go for a longer walk. We also wanted to take advantage of having two cars so we parked one at our destination at Porthgwarra and the other at Trevilly Farm from where we set off to walk back to the PG. The sun was shining and the wind had dropped so it was all very pleasant. I'd brought my scope along with me and took advantage of the light to do some digiscoping of some of the birds that we encountered. There was nothing unusual to be seen but it was a very pleasant afternoon's walk

A Porthgwarra wheatear

Meadow pipit

This kestrel was very confiding and posed just a few yards from us

Friday 8th April

Not much to report today. I went to Land's End first thing for a look around though I saw remarkably little apart from the usual willow warblers and chiffchaffs. I did think that I heard a distant bee-eater though I only heard it once so wasn't sure about it though as it turned out later that morning a bee-eater was indeed seen there briefly so it could have been genuine. That evening my VLW and L arrived on the train so B and I headed over to Penzance to pick them up.

Sunday 10th April

A short-toed lark had been seen the previous day in the Polgigga area so today my early morning birding trip was to see if I could re-locate this bird. Polgigga often gets lots of good birds hanging out in the various fields or sitting on the telegraph wires so I was careful to keep my eyes peeled the entire time. I initially worked my way over from Lower Bosistow Farm towards Faraway Cottage but as I neared Higher Bosistow Farm I heard a bird call distinctly close by from within the farm garden. What was noticeable was that I didn't recognise the call at all: it was definitely something that I didn't know. Now I like to think that I know most of my common bird calls and when I hear something that I don't recognise, usually this means that it's something good. Indeed the last time that this happened to me was when I was on my home patch of Port Meadow a couple of years ago when I heard a very distinctive call that at the time I summarised as "I told you so" in a distinct descending tone whistle though the "you" was higher in pitch than the "told". It only called twice and I never saw the bird but a month or so later I came across the call by accident and immediately recognised it as the bird I'd heard - it was of course a common rosefinch (more usually written as "pleased to meet you") which would have been a first for Oxon. Anyway, back to Cornwall but the purpose of this side ramble was to point out that it could well be a reasonably good bird if I didn't recognise the call. The bird called perhaps half a dozen times and I never saw it. When I was asked what it sounded like later, the best I could come up with was a New World sparrow. It didn't sound like a warbler at all yet sounded like quite a small bird (it wasn't a great squawking sound or anything like that). No doubt I'll come across the call in a few months time and will be suitably gripped off when I discover what it was but it was clearly another one that got away.

I resumed my search for the lark and had just got to Faraway cottage and was viewing the bare earth field (one wheatear and a few loafing gulls) when a couple of larks flew up nearby. One was clearly a skylark but the other bird was slightly though definitely smaller. The two flew around together for a couple of minutes with the larger skylark appearing the harass the smaller bird from time to time before they both landed in a nearby field in which a fading daffodil crop had been planted. I gave Dave Parker a quick call and went over to take a look though it was impossible to see between the rows of flowers so if it had been skulking in there then I would never have seen it. I was hoping that it might flush and give a diagnostic flight call in doing so but it never did so became another one that got away.

I wanted to get to know the various footpaths in the area and so walked over to Arden-Sawah farm, to the ruin at Trevean and then back to Higher Bosistow but the trip was largely birdless. Back down near Lower Bosistow farm a curlew flew over but that was it. I headed back to the cottage arriving later than my usual 9a.m. time that I like to be back so I'd used up a few birding brownie points on that one.

A short time later I got a call from Dave Parker saying that a woodchat shrike had been found at Treve Common, near Land's End. Interesting but not too gripping as I already had it for my Cornish list. A while after that he phoned again: now there was a subalpine warbler there as well which I did still need so the grip-off feelings started to well up within me. Initial negotiations with my VLW didn't look to promising so I carried on painting though my brush strokes may have been tinged with disappointment. Next John Swann phoned to say that he was watching both birds so I negotiated a little harder and finally managed to secure a pass to head off for a quick twitch with the proviso that I did some painting that evening instead. Fortunately both birds obliged and were duly seen within five minutes of my arrival. Treve Common is quite a remarkable spot because it doesn't look that special but the hedge that runs along the south-west corner has a deceptively deep ditch that offers a lot of cover and the subalp was skulking around in there. Behind this hedge there was a second hedgerow in which the woodchat shrike was located. Astute readers may remember that it was here that I saw the greenish warbler and the melodius warbler last year in this same area - another great Treve Common double. In fact John Chapple, who found the melodius and with whom I co-found the greenish was there again with his video camera and he managed to take some footage of the warbler that he has kindly allowed me to use.

It was very hazy and the shrike was rather
distant so this is purely a record shot

Some video footage of the subalpine warbler taken by John Chapple

Back from my twitch in good time, we decided to head over to St. Ives to take advantage of the good weather and I was happy to watch L as he paddled in the sea while my VLW did a spot of shopping. That evening I duly did my painting stint and each brush stroke was tinged with joy at another great Treve Common double!

Monday 11th April to Tuesday 13th

With not much about to go for the last couple of days were spent birding locally at Pendeen. It's been great getting to know the local birds with goldfinches, linnets, dunnocks and stonechats all to be seen in the bushes and gorse. As it had been so sunny I'd taken the opportunity to do some digiscoping during my breaks from painting.

Pendeen stonechat

Pendeen chaffinch

One lunch-time I noticed that the wind had picked up and also that there seemed to be a lot of birds going through on the sea. Indeed I could even pick out some shearwaters going past from the cottage so I took half an hour off over lunch for a quick sea watch during which time 258 manx shearwaters and one bonxie went by. It's great to be able to nip down for a sea-watch "on spec" like that.

Tuesday morning was time to leave though I did persuade the family that we needed to stop off at Marazion for ten minutes as reed warblers had been reported there the previous day. Sure enough within a few minutes I managed to hear their monotonous chugging song - another Cornish first for me, albeit "heard only". After that it was off home, this time with the en route stop off chosen by my VLW who wanted to stop at Lostwithial to look in the many antique shops there. The journey back home was uneventful - it had been a great springtime visit to Cornwall and despite initially not looking too promising bird-wise, a few real cracking birds had been seen. I can't wait to get back down there and fortunately for me the decorating is taking longer than we'd hoped so I'll have to head back there fairly soon for some more ~~great birding~~ decorating.

A Duck & A Buzzard

2011-03-23T15:00:00.000Z

A Duck

There's been a drake American wigeon at Rushy Common for some time now. As I already had it for the county I have not been in that much of a hurry to see it but made a note to try and pay it a visit when it was convenient. A while ago we were heading out on a Sunday en famille to Burford and I suggested the scenic route which went past Rushy Common. I managed to persuade the family to let me stop off for a short time to take a quick look and I legged it down the bridleway looking for the duck which was usually frequenting one of the two pools to the right of the path. Viewing was severely restricted (peering through a hedge) for the most part. I did find a small flock of wigeon but there were not Americans hidden amongst them and given that I had limited time I had to head back to the car defeated.

This dip naturally piqued my interest some more so on next day I came out again on my own and spent some time carefully scanning the bridleway pools but still without any luck. After some time I headed back to the car and decided on a quick scan of the main Rushy Common pit itself. There seemed to be something going on at the hide and a committee of three people were walking along the entire perimeter of the pit with clip boards in hand. As they got to the southern end they of course flushed all the grazing wigeon from the grass onto the water and low and behold, there was the drake American. Before you could say "digiscope that duck!" the committee of flushers had continued around the corner and had managed to put the entire flock up in to the air where they circled for some time with some of them peeling off to head off to other pools. At this point I decided that I couldn't wait any longer and headed back home with a nice year tick in my pocket but sadly no photos to show for it.

A Buzzard

The county birding scene has been agog with excitement when Roger Wyatt managed to turn up a juvenile rough-legged buzzard on his patch on the downs. Not only that but he'd obtained some fantastic photos of the bird which he has been kind enough to allow me to use on this blog (which is just as well as I wasn't able to take a single shot). The next day anyone who was serious about their county list was out on the downs and even I, very much a fair weather lister, decided to go for a run in that area so that I could get my exercise and could cover a lot of ground at the same time. Of course it turned out to be thick fog and it was an entirely frustrating exercise wandering around in the gloom with no raptors to speak of at all. I met up with Badger, Paul Wren and John Prowse who were camped out on what would on brighter days have been a good viewpoint. I decided to keep on running (it was too cold to keep still) and managed to run all the way along the Fair Mile to the Cholsey end where I did finally see some buzzards, albeit common ones. On the way back I did get excited when I spotted a distant pale buzzard-shaped blob on a post but as I only had my bins it was hard to tell what it might be, but a phone call to Ian Lewington revealed that a very pale buzzard often sat on the exact post in question and I could tell enough to see that this bird had a pale belly and was not therefore the bird I was looking for. Meanwhile Badger & co. had managed to see a good candidate for the bird but in the fog weren't able to get that clinching view. I headed back for home, leaving the others to their vigil. By the afternoon apparently the fog finally lifted and the people there all got to see the bird a couple of times including Badger's team who had stayed there the whole time - their dedication to the cause puts me to shame!

The pale common buzzard imposter (c) Roger Wyatt.
Note the lack of dark belly

Needless to say, this dip of what is a county mega hurt somewhat so the next day I headed back to the downs shortly after lunch where there were several other birders dotted around the downs. I elected to stand near the head of a valley with a couple of county veterans, Pete Allen & Brian Shaw. The weather was lovely and warm in contrast to yesterday and what seemed like the entire common buzzard population on the downs was using the opportunity to practise some thermaling. It was very pleasant in the warmth to hear the yellowhammers singing and to watch the distance soaring raptors, including a lone sparrowhawk. After about an hour my two companions decided to call it a day leaving me to continue the watch on my own. Their parting remark was that no doubt it would turn up as soon as they left but I was rather thinking that they weren't going to miss much. However, some twenty minutes later I suddenly spotted a couple of birds flying low up the valley so that they were actually below me as I watched them. The second bird was one of the ubiquitous red kites but the first was clearly a buzzard and what's more it had a striking set of pale feathers around the head. Added to that it clearly had a dark belly so couldn't be the resident pale buzzard. By now I was very excited as I watched it fly away from me being harried by the kite constantly. It tried to land on a fence post across the valley and as it did so I was able to see the white tail with the thick well-defined black terminal band - bingo! Unfortunately at that point I made a bit of a school boy error and took my eye off the bird in order to reach for my phone and make a call to report where the bird was. When I looked up I expected to see it still flying over the fields in the direction that it had been heading but there was no sign of it. I can only think that it must have doubled back to escape the attentions of the kite and this was born out by a report of it hovering over Unhill Wood a short time later. From the various reports, it seemed to hang out between Unhill wood, along the Fair Mile and at the valley where I was. The bird was subsequently seen several times over the weekend but then took advantage of the hot weather to soar off to the north on Sunday morning leaving some county birders rather frustrated in not having seen it.

The juvenile rough-legged buzzard in flight (c) Roger Wyatt
As well as the dark carpal patches you can see the very pale
feathering around the head contrasting with the dark belly .

The diagnostic black terminal band on a white tail (c) Roger Wyatt

I waited around to see if it would show again but to no avail. It had been a rather brief encounter with a most interesting raptor and I would have loved to have got some longer views and indeed some photos of my own though of course they would have been no comparison to Roger's fantastic shots - thanks once again for their use, Roger!

A Quiet Cornish Interlude

2011-03-18T10:23:00.000Z

Another trip down to the cottage in Cornwall to do some more decorating. This time I was accompanied by my VLW and sans enfants for the first time that we can remember. While of course it was a delight to spend some time with my better half, albeit just decorating, this did mean that birding time was rather limited so this will be a rather short posting with not much to report.

We came down on the Friday and regular readers will know that normally I like to stop off somewhere "up county" to work on my Cornish list. With my VLW with me there was no prospect of anything extensive but I did suggest that we stopped somewhere picturesque to eat our packed lunch and that the Fowey valley had looked really pretty last time I'd visited. Accordingly we did indeed turn off at this point and I even managed to point out a couple of dipper on the river as we drove down. After finishing our lunch I went on a very short walk to "stretch my legs" and when I returned some ten minutes later I'd just happened to have seen a willow tit along the road a short distance from where we'd parked - what a coincidence!

Normally once I arrive in Penzance I make the most of the remaining daylight and bomb around all the birding hot-spots but for some reason my VLW wasn't interested so instead we did some shopping and headed over to the cottage. We did later go for a short walk around the cottage area to blow away the cobwebs from the journey though the only birds I spotted were the fulmars on the cliffs.

With the days taken up with furious decorating my main birding opportunities were first thing in the morning as I tend to get up before my VLW. On Saturday morning I duly did this an decided to nip over to Prussia Cove, or Kenneggy Cove to be more exact for the first winter drake velvet scoter that had been there for the last few days. I'd been told by a seasoned Cornish birder that he'd seen more surf scoters than velvet down in Cornwall so I thought that I'd better go for this bird. Fortunately the cove was nicely sheltered and it didn't take long to find the bird and despite the distance I attempted some video footage. The only other birds of note were a couple of great northern divers.

The velvet scoter.

Sunday morning I once again got up early but with nothing on the peninsula that I particularly wanted to see I decided to do a spot of seawatching at the lighthouse. At this time of year there's not a lot going on on the sea but within a short time of starting I was had a manxie go by and then a few minutes later a nice balearic shearwater. After that it got rather quiet and a great northern diver bobbing past on the sea was the best I could come up with.

With no bird photos to offer, here's a rather nice Pendeen
sunset on what was a beautiful sunny Sunday

Monday morning was a repeat of Sunday with another early morning seawatch. This time I soon had a very dark balearic go by which had me thinking of sooty though the light was good enough for me to be able to spot the paler area on its belly. Another great northern diver flew past as did a flock of three greylag geese but apart for that it was very quiet. During a break from decorating I did spot a couple of sand martins flying over near the lighthouse though I don't know if they'd come in off the sea or had been following the coast northwards from further south. Three ravens also flew by near the cliff being pursued by a jackdaw. Later that day we went for a walk into Pendeen and I spotted a chiffchaff along the road calling quietly.

I never tire of taking lighthouse photos, here's one
from the coastal path to the south

Tuesday morning it was time to pack up and leave. We did stop in briefly at Lelant Saltings for a quick scan of the estuary though it was very quiet and apart from a few godwits (black and bar-tailed) there was nothing there apart from some distant loafing gulls. It had been a very quiet birding interlude down in Cornwall though I'd managed a couple of Cornish ticks and it was nice to see the migrants starting to come in.