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!
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.
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.
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
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:
(c) Graham Cox
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.
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.
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.
All scarce+ records for Oxon by month - click on image for larger view
Buff-breasted sandpiper records by month across all counties
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!
