The ups and downs of twitching

Well June flew past.

I was somewhat distracted by rare birds. June is not usually a very busy month for twitchers, but it is right at the end of spring migration and just occasionally there is some poor waif from the east heading in the wrong direction which comes from so far away that it takes quite some time to get here. A hot spell in early summer can bring more southerly overshoots to our shores too.

This June held so many surprises though that the twitching merits a whole blog post to itself.

The first weekend in June a lucky local birder discovered a Red-necked Stint poking around in the mud on his patch, the Blyth Estuary just North of Newcastle. I had only seen one of these in this country, many years ago and not very well in a misty and dusky gloom. So at 2am the next morning I headed up with a friend. The bird was still there, but distant on the other side of the estuary. As the tide turned it eventually flew closer and showed reasonably well to the crowd. It was lovely to see so many familiar faces. My friend and I decided to try the other side of the estuary as that's where the bird had been feeding previously at high tide. We drove round and walked out before setting ourselves up on the edge of the marsh. 

Lying in wait

Red-necked Stint on the left, Dunlin on the right

As the tide rose the waders came over to our side and over the next couple of hours we watched them get closer.. and closer... and CLOSER. The tide tiptoed across the mud pushing the waders ever nearer.

Quite a few other birders saw what we had done and came round and all the waders just paraded unconcerned right in front of us. At times the Red-necked Stint was within 20 feet of us. We just stayed put and admired. This was right up there with the best bird encounters I have ever had. The Red-necked Stint blew me away. 

This had been my first twitch for a while, so little did I expect what the rest of June was to bring.

Two days later there was news of s Dusky Warbler on Lundy, an island which lies in the Bristol Channel, accessed from the north Devon coast. Dusky Warbler is not a particularly notable scarce autumn vagrant, but at this time of year it sounded a bit odd. As the morning progressed, questions were being asked and photos and sound recordings sought. 

Then suddenly we had a SULPHUR-BELLIED WARBLER on our hands, a first for Britain and second for the whole of Europe!!!!!

The infrequent passenger service over to Lundy was fully booked, (for the next month!!) so there was a flurry of activity in a scramble to find charter boats to get us over.  I managed to secure a place on a boat on Thursday. Two days to wait. Then I upgraded to a boat first thing on Wednesday morning. I was much more comfortable with this. Then a phone call. "Can you get to Ilfracombe by 5.30pm today?" Well, that should be possible.

At 5.15 I pulled up at Ilfracombe quay after a fraught 5 hour drive. (I later discovered I had incurred a speeding penalty, my first in 7 years. It was nothing ridiculous.)

I had to watch as two earlier boats departed full of birders from further south. Finally at 6pm our contingency had arrived and we were off on a thankfully fast rib which sped us over a flat calm sea at 40+ knots. There were great views of dolphins on the way but we didn't have time to slow down. The earlier birders had by now seen the bird well but we had no idea what it would do as the sun disappeared from the valley it had found to its favour. 

An hour later we were hurriedly disembarking. Arrival at Lundy is quickly followed by the grim reality of a lung-bursting climb up from the jetty. We arrived at the top breathless, unable to hold binoculars steady or to run if the bird was relocated. It quickly became obvious that the bird had become very elusive and the trail may have gone cold. This was tense. There was not an option to stay on the island, even roughing it, as this is strictly not allowed. We had less than two hours before the rib had to depart.

The Sulphur-bellied Warbler had stopped singing and the trees it had been favouring were now becoming swathed in shade. Then the bird was called and a few brief views through binoculars were a big relief but, if I'm honest, a little underwhelming. The bird was quite distant and its salient features were very hard to pick out. We had definitely seen the right bird, but not very well. Then no further sign as the clock ticked. Along with a couple of others I headed back down the valley anticipating that the bird might follow the sun. Two friends were focussing in on a perched warbler sunbathing in the canopy but it wasn't the right one. Then, as I looked around trying to second guess what the bird might be up to, another warbler was flitting about in a closer sapling. The light wasn't great and it was hard to be sure, but this was a good candidate. As I got several nearby birders onto it, we gradually saw enough to confirm it was the bird. It quite quickly flitted into a deeper area of wood but by now most birders were onto it and between us we managed to keep track of it as it moved quickly through the trees. 

Sulphur-bellied Warbler, Lundy. (not my picture, I hope the photographer doesn't mind me using it)

I won't lie and say it was the most stunning of birds I've ever seen, and I only had one really good view as the sun caught it right and highlighted is sulphurity. But in terms of rarity and the excitement of an on the day island twitch it was right up there.

And that was it. Time to go. The boatman had fun racing another rib on the way back and, faced with a more adventurous group of punters than his usual tourist crowd, took the opportunity to weave the boat about a bit, even throwing in a couple of aquatic doughnuts!

It's not every day you drive to Devon at no notice, bounce across the water to an island, meet up with about 50 of your friends and then get involved in a high adrenaline race back to shore. But that's twitching for you.

I didn't travel all the way home that night. Instead I stopped off at Ham Wall in Somerset where I slept in the car until dawn. A River Warbler had taken up residence and, as I'd only ever seen three of this very rare warbler in Britain, it seemed rude not to pop in and see it. The mist hung thickly over the marsh but the River Warbler showed really well. River warblers are not much to look at for the non birder. The main attraction is their song which they blast out incessantly, a reeling trill delivered with head raised and mouth wide open. This nature reserve is an amazing place with some very rare birds but I didn't really have time to wait for the mist to lift as the previous day I had dropped everything and deserted the farm. I did hvae time to stop off closer to home for a singing Great Reed Warbler. Another reed-dwelling species, these have an incredibly loud song which they deliver from the top of a reed if it's not windy. Unfortunately a fresh breeze kept the bird out of sight more than I would have liked but it did show very well a few times.

River Warbler, Ham Wall

Great Reed Warbler, Besthorpe, Notts

I returned home after a truly unique warbler hat-trick.

There was no sign of the Sulphur-bellied Warbler that day so the haring about of the previous day had been worth it.

Little did I expect to be doing something very similar the next Tuesday, but that's what happened. This time it was an EGYPTIAN VULTURE on The Scilly Isles, the first in this country in over 150 years.

It was found on Monday, but there was no chance of a same day twitch this time. Again, all scheduled services were full. So another long drive down to the tip of Cornwall. 

Newlyn Harbour at sunrise before we caught our boat

This time there had been time to arrange teaming up with birders coming down the M5 from further North. There were three boats chartered across for the day. Ours was leaving first, at 7am, but was the slowest with a 2 1/2 hour crossing ahead of us. Positive news of the bird on the way had as hyped up. It was being watched perched in a tree, albeit from another island at a distance of 4km. The journey seemed interminable. As we approached the archipelago the bird was still there, but then bad news. The chopper arriving onto Tresco had flushed the bird. no-one had seen it go but it was no longer on the branch. But it was a fine morning and surely on such a day the vulture would be flying around and soaring. As long as it didn't thermal too high before we got there, we were still in with a very good chance.

By now the two later boats were passing us and it wasn't long before we again had positive news. They were watching the bird distantly sat in a tree. We were less than 10 minutes away. Nothing could go wrong. Birders on the other boats were celebrating and we would soon be too.

OH HOW WRONG! Another message. It's not it.

It took a while for that to sink in. The other birders had now been dropped off on Tresco and their boat met ours midchannel so we could transfer onto it to land. My knee had been in pain since the Lundy twitch so I left other birders to traipse across the island in search of the vulture. I climbed to a very handy viewpoint and spent the next few hours in the sun with a beautiful view across most of the Isles of Scilly. The only thing missing was a vulture.

We had a view over most of the archipelago

Constant scanning revealed nothing

Mid afternoon and it seemed the trail had gone cold. Surely a vulture would have shown itself by now. A band of dejected birders boarded the inter island boat back to St Mary's, the main island on Scilly. But just as we climbed up the slippery stone steps of Hugh Town quay, news came through that the vulture had literally flown over our heads during the boat journey. This seemed unlikely given the number of very alert birders on the boat.

Then another message. A second sighting. Then nothing. We met up with birders who had been looking out over the channel from Hugh Town. No one knew anything about these sightings. Another couple of hours of forlorn scanning drew a blank. It was lovely to be on Scilly again, but this was the fourth trip in a row I had failed to see a bird which was apparently still on show with the quay in sight.

And that was it. A slightly less optimistic chug back to Penzance and a 6 hour drive home. 

Thems the highs and lows of twitching. What to make of the vulture sightings that day, well no-one can be sure but some  people were convinced they were watching the bird. 

Hopefully it won't be another 153 years till the next opportunity.

I leave the twitching tales there for now, but June had even more surprises up its sleeve including a very rare Least Tern near Dublin and the return of the Bempton Albatross.

The Bempton Albatross
Stuck in the wrong hemisphere
Read more in a future blog post

The Booby Prize - persistence rewarded

It's been a while since my twitching obsession disrupted my life quite as much as it did last week.

We'll get the sniggers out of the way before we go any further.
The bird in question is called a BROWN BOOBY

😏😂😂😂

You should know by now not to come to my blog for bird photos. There are none unless I shamelessly steal them from someone's twitter or Facebook account. If you want to know what a Brown Booby looks like, you'll have to Google it!
I'll cut the story short, a week last Sunday a photo appeared, taken in Kent of what appeared to be a Brown Booby flying along the Kent coastline some 6 days previous. This seemed unlikely, as there has never been one in this country before and Brown Booby is a tropical species.
Having said that, the photo looked quite good, despite being a bit blurry, but a look-alike gannet could not be ruled out with the 100% confidence that would be needed for such a bold claim.

Then intriguingly last Monday a possible Brown Booby was reported fishing off a beach in Cornwall, seen by a good birder but without binoculars as he was at the beach for the day with his family. Oftentimes when there is a possible sighting of an outrageously rare bird, there is a flurry of further possible sightings, all fed by subliminal suggestion! But this was a good birder and one not with a tendency to get over-excited.
Furthermore, there were mysterious unconfirmed reports of two further sightings at the same beach earlier in the day.

This still wasn't enough to have us heading all the way down to Cornwall (400 miles each way) on a blind goose chase. There was no sign of the bird for the rest of the day.

But what happened the next morning changed everything. Undeniable photos of a Brown Booby feeding just off the beach at St Ives, Cornwall, just a couple of hundred yards from the previous day's sighting.
News came through early enough to jump in the car and head straight to Cornwall (I actually waited a while for my mate Neil to make his way over to me from Norfolk).

Brown Boobies have a habit of hanging out on offshore rocks or even on boats in harbours. There had to be a chance of connecting with this bird today.

The drive down to Cornwall was a relatively smooth one. There was no further news on the bird, except a couple of claims of distant flybys several hours after the initial report to keep our hopes up.

St Ives is a lovely coastal tourist destination, but parking is an absolute nightmare. We ended up parking on the outskirts of town and yomping for half an hour down to St Ives Island, where a myriad of birders were already congregated.
It was a good social occasion, but essentially we spent four hours just staring at the sea, acquainting ourselves with the variable plumages of young gannets, the closest look-alikes for a Brown Booby.
Meanwhile, analysis of photos was indicating that this bird was probably not the same as the bird a week beforehand in Kent. Astonishing.

By sunset we had decided to stay the next day. The Booby Prize would be worth the effort. We found some digs near Helston and suffered the worst curry I have ever had. Beware curries in Helston!

Last knockings and still no sign 😟

Early next morning saw a crowd assembled back at the small Chapel on St Ives Island. (Good to see the chapel still being used for a form of religion - twitching!) This point gave us quick access to both the beaches where the bird had previously been seen. It also gave sweeping views over Carbis Bay, about 6 miles across. The most likely place for the bird to roost and perch up during the day seemed to be Godrevy island at the far end of the bay with its rocky stacks and lighthouse, but it had been checked as thoroughly as possible without success.

Looking west from St Ives Island. The bird was initially spotted feeding just offshore here, but not while we were there!

Today's weather was squally. Every time the rain came in, visibility across the bay worsened. The only good thing was that it brought the seabirds, including streams of shearwaters, close into shore. St Ives used to be the prime seawatching site in Britain until parking became such a nightmare and drove observers elsewhere.

By 10am the mood was damp. Even the most optimistic of us were starting to think that this was not going to happen.
Then a call went up. What was maybe, possibly, probably the bird was feeding with gannets off the beach. 3.5km away!
We could see the bird in question all the way across the bay but the weather came in again. I was on it for 5 minutes, but never gained conclusive views. It was almost certainly the Booby, but this situation was not ideal. A few had better glimpses and were convinced. Many were unconvinced and some were adamant the bird was just a young gannet. It is entirely possible that many never actually got onto the right bird, for what I saw was pretty convincing, just not cast iron.

Still, this was positive. Surely the bird in question would come back at some point in the day and some people were heading over in that direction to confirm the sighting if it came back.

But no. Not another sniff. All day. Not a dicky bird.
We stood there all day and just got wet.
Debate raged. Had people seen the Booby? Had people let their desire to see the Booby cloud their judgement? On the whole I thought I had almost certainly seen the right bird, but after much wavering I decided I couldn't justify ticking it on my list.

The drive back to Fenland was a slightly dejected one. We wanted to stay another night really, but both had things to do back home and there had been no confirmed sightings for a day and a half.

Next morning I awoke and was relieved to see that there was still no sign of the Booby. We had made the right decision to drive back. I rolled over, only for the phone to instantly announce the bird was fishing just offshore in the same place as whatever we had seen yesterday.
I won't repeat the words that came out of my mouth.

Neil and I resolved to do what we needed to do at home and then head back down to Cornwall overnight. The bird was not seen for the rest of the day, but a possible pattern of morning sightings was emerging. Fortunately for me it was Neil's turn to drive.

This time we headed for the beach car park in the bay where the bird had been seen. We arrived back at Gwithian Beach at 2am and attempted to get a few hours sleep. By first light there were maybe 80 others with the same plan, many with a similar story to ours.
We set up telescopes in the dunes and stared at the sea. We watched the tide go out and in again. We watched the surfers descend on the beach and leave again. Apart from a brief visit into town to get Pasties, cash and petrol, we sat there all day. Nothing.

Even worse, a Brown Booby had turned up in NW France, just 250km as the Booby flies. Brown Boobies are not exactly common on this side of The Atlantic and there was a distinct probability that we had been searching all day for a bird which was now in France.
Being stubborn / persistent / stupid, we decided to stay overnight and try again in the morning. Our chances of seeing the bird had slipped from an optimistic estimate of about 80% in the morning to somewhere in single figures.

An excellent fish and chip supper in the evening lifted our spirits slightly, as did news that the French bird was a full adult and not our bird. We clung onto the hope that one possible sighting by one single observer today may mean that the bird had not actually departed and that we had just got very unlucky.

Brown Booby Day Four
Day 4 went pretty much as Day 3, except we had more squally showers to deal with just to dampen the spirits further. I had set a deadline of 10am (though this would undoubtedly be stretched).
By 9.30 I was at a pretty low ebb. There were only about six of us left outside searching. Most others were taking shelter in their cars.

This was the most effort I had ever put into seeing a bird. At times like this we wonder why we do it.

A few minutes later, the answer came! Andy sat next to me. "Hang on! Surely this is it!" he exclaimed. Fortunately for me the bird was right under Godrevy lighthouse so I got straight onto it. I tried to give myself reasons why it was just a gannet, but no, this was it, THE BOOBY, no question.
We shouted and gestured wildly for everybody else to come out of their cars. I didn't dare take my eyes off the bird as I called directions, but I really wanted to look behind me to see the complete commotion.
That feeling, after four days of persistence, to finally see the bird was amazing. Resilience and perseverance can be in short supply these days but they bring rewards in the world of twitching.

The Brown Booby was flying about and diving in amongst the gannets, though still distant. After a while, and with everyone now on the bird, it sat on the water and drifted awhile before again taking off and flying straight across the bay and straight towards us. It then gave amazing views as it fished just offshore before continuing along the coast, eventually heading out of view past St Ives Island where we had been viewing from a few days before.

There was a real buzz of excitement around the place. I see these people maybe just a few times a year, I never know when or where it will be, but we all meet up with a single purpose.

Neil and I decided to head down to the very tip of Cornwall to see another bird which I had only seen a couple of before, a Western Bonelli's Warbler. A little pale warbler, this could not be more different from the Brown Booby. It called loudly but was a little bugger to see well. Just as we were leaving this bird and contemplating the long drive home, more news on the Booby. For the first time in six days it had perched up on a rock - a rock that we had spent several hours staring at a few days before. 
We headed back through heavy traffic towards St Ives, but before we got too close the bird flew off and disappeared.

Time to go home.

Broad-leaved Everlasting Peas - home to Long-tailed Blue butterfly

There was just time to pop in and see a rare Long-tailed Blue Butterfly on the way home. We finally rolled back onto the farm just after 9pm, half way through Sue's party to celebrate 30 years of teaching. I had a swift couple of beers to celebrate.

After the event
The Booby was later seen passing a seawatching point to the south-west, the first time as far as anybody knew that it had headed this way. Despite this, the immense rarity of a Brown Booby still lured people down to Cornwall the next day, but they were to be disappointed.
Many though had learned their lesson and did not give up. A week after the second Brown Booby for Britain had turned up, they stayed overnight only to again be disappointed in the morning...

until, that is, on the south coast of Cornwall, Britain's third ever Brown Booby was discovered sitting on a rock.

Remarkable stuff. It seems that Brown Boobies come in threes. With the bird in France (their first ever) demonstrably different to our three, it would seem there has been an unprecedented influx of this tropical seabird into North Eastern Atlantic waters.

Who's to say there won't be more in the coming days.

What a hobby!

From the Himalayas to Shetland

Wondering where I've been for a while?

Here.



Makes a change from The Fens!
It's the third time I've visited this area of Northern India for birdwatching, which was very nice as I'd seen most of the bird species before and was more able to focus on enjoying them rather than chasing new ticks.

But a conversation in the middle of the holiday had me seriously twitchy.
We had just discovered that after four days of no phone data we could hitch a ride on the WiFi of another hotel in the mountain village. With our newfound contact with the outside world, the conversation went something like this:
Rob: There's a Scops Owl on Orkney
Me (after mulling this over for a while): What's a Scops Owl doing in Britain at this time of year? Where is it?
Rob: Bixter
Me: Isn't that on Shetland?
Rob: Oh, it's not a Scops Owl, it's a Tengmalm's
Me: TENGMALM'S ***!!!**???***!!!

This news didn't spoil my holiday, but it did have me thinking about what to do when I got back to the UK. As the days went on I went from deciding not to go at all to looking up flights for the end of the week after I got back. I would need to put a few days of work in first.

We flew back on the Monday, arriving back on the farm at about 9pm, my body clock on 2.30 in the morning.

I went to work on the Tuesday but crumbled and ended up driving to Aberdeen on Tuesday night for an early morning flight onto Shetland.

By Wednesday morning I was watching a Tengmalm's Owl.

The garden where the Tengmalm's Owl eventually settled for a few days.

Highly nocturnal, the owl needed refinding every morning as it changed it's chosen roost tree.

This made it even more important to make the pilgrimage before the twitch tailed off - numbers were needed. 

Spot The Owl - It took some finding in such a large garden

Every now and then a bird arrives which really gets the twitching juices flowing. Hugely rare, a checkered history which meant just about every birder in Britain still needed it, an owl and a fantastic location in Shetland.

What a start to the year.

A Swift End to a Game of Cat and Mouse

The Swift
A lovely Sunday afternoon digging potatoes came to an abrupt halt with news of a rare Swift in Yorkshire.
Initially identified as a Pacific Swift, this would have been rare indeed, but not one to set the panic alarm going as I was lucky enough to catch up with one in Suffolk a few years back.
But the identification soon came round to White-rumped Swift, the first ever record for Britain! It was surely brought up from North Africa on the same unusual southerly airflow that had Holbeach setting record temperatures in the same week - 79 degrees F in mid October.
A quick calculation told me that I could never get there before dark - news an hour earlier and I wold have been busting a gut to get there.

A couple of hours sleep and I was up again, heading through the night toward Hornsea Mere on the Yorkshire coast. I wasn't the only one. In the dim light of dawn a steady stream of birders were heading across the fields to the last known place where the bird was seen as it drifted off in the gloom last night. Our best hope was that it had headed to roost or hooked up with a group of house martins and would return to feed over the mere in the morning.

But birding does not always go to plan. Six hours stood in that field and I finally succumbed to the idea that this rarest of rare birds might just have slipped the net. Reluctantly I returned to the car and began the journey south. I was hoping to be home in time to accompany Sue to the vets with Boris - nothing too worrying but I did want to be there.

I tentatively drove back across the Humber Bridge (I am not great with heights and don't like crossing this bridge), but no sooner was I across than I started receiving messages that the swift had been seen at Spurn, a long promontory off South Yorkshire which funnels migrating birds along a narrow spit of land. Details were sparse, but I had no option but to turn around and head at breakneck speed back over the Humber Bridge, through Hull and along the torturous country roads which lead down to Spurn.
By the time I arrived the sparse details of the sighting had become even murkier. Today was starting to feel like a waste of a day, one to forget. The first sniff of a really good bird all autumn, for it has been a poor one birding-wise, and it had ended up with a disappointing end.

The Cat
As we stood dejected on a windy and desolate stretch of Yorkshire coast, the birding gods looked down and decided to shuffle the pack a little.
Phones and pagers whirred into action as news of a Grey Catbird came through - at Land's End in Cornwall, a mere 8 or so hours away.
Grey Catbird has a certain reputation among twitchers. The only previous record was on Anglesey. It was found on an October Thursday 17 years ago. The bird was highly elusive, but stayed around until the Friday. At that point I was confined to waiting for weekends to see rare birds and so I joined a small army of weekend birders in the hunt for the bird. There were various shouts and alarms, but to cut a long story short most people left disappointed. A compound full of tall gorse had been pretty much flattened over the course of the day but there had been neither sight nor sound (yes, it does miaow!) of the bird all day... except that some people were adamant they actually had seen it - these people became known as the Saturday Catbirders.

And that was it, Grey Catbird into the annals of birding history but not onto most people's lists.

I decided to head straight for Cornwall. The earlier I could get there, the more sleep I could get in the back of the estate car. And so at 1 in the morning I rolled up in a field in deepest south-west Cornwall. There was one other car there but we knew there would be many others arriving through the night. I put the seats down, laid out a selection of coats that live in the car, and tried to get some shut eye.

The Mouse
Well, that was the plan... until I heard scuttling in the roof of the car. It couldn't be, could it? Then chewing and more scuttling. The mouse (though it sounded like there might now be a family) which had been setting my car alarm off for a couple of weeks now, was clearly still living in the innards of the car!
A sleepless night ensued, only enlivened by an unsuccessful game of splat the mouse as it scuttled around in the roof space above my head.

This probably explains my bleary-eyed lack of sharpness in the morning. As the sun rose there were a couple of hundred birders ready for the Catbird show, a couple of hundred birders bearing the scars of that Anglesey bird of 17 years ago. We stared into the bushes where the bird had last been seen. For two hours we stared.
This was turning into a bad couple of days.

Then suddenly the mood changed. People were seeing the bird. A woman next to me was excitedly exclaiming that she was watching it. But the only words that came out were "I've got it. I've got it". My bleary eyes were not seeing whatever she was seeing and pleas for directions were met with "I've got it. I've got it".
Other people had it too. In fact just about everybody... except me. There's always one person who doesn't see what everyone else is seeing. And on this occasion it was me. Not a nice feeling.
By the time the bird flew I was surrounded with people quietly celebrating and congratulating each other. This was not going well for me!

Then another call, further up the line. By the time I got there the bird had disappeared again. This sighting was less convincing and I just didn't know whether to stay put or go back to where I was when the bird was first seen. 

Then another call, from where I had been standing! By the time I got there, the bird had dropped into thick cover, but I was more certain that I was just a few seconds away from seeing the bird.
Time to control the breathing and have faith that fate would indeed be cruel if the bird were never to show itself again. A really helpful birder next to me did everything he could to help me get onto the bird and then up it popped into the middle of a small sallow.
Grey Catbird!
All the effort had been worthwhile. I went from being ready to quit birding forever to enjoying the bird and celebrating with everyone else.
I never heard it miaow, but the Catbird eventually gave itself up and showed very well.

Hopes of more American birds turning up in Cornwall were high so gradually people left the site and fanned out into the valleys of Cornwall to find that elusive mega. I found myself down by Minack Theatre following the coast path. Really I just needed some wind-down time before making the journey back to Lincolnshire.

I was supposed to be chairing an open meeting of the Smallholders Committee in the evening, but it was unlikely I could make it back in time and I would be in no fit state.
And so I slowly headed back across country. My car was almost broken as one of the exhaust brackets was detached and the brake disks were badly warped. The long journey had exacerbated the problems which were combining to make for some very uncomfortable car handling. By the time I rolled back onto the farm I was feeling pretty bumped and bruised myself.

Arthur keeps me company in bed

The next five days are a blur. I don't know whether it was pushing myself so hard (but I've always done that) or just unlucky, but I almost immediately came down with a fever which had me laid up in bed for five days.

Anyway, I am just about fixed now, though still a bit tender. The car is fixed too.
We are raring at the bit, ready for more rare birds!

The Mouse (Part Two)
On the second day of my sickness I heard a dripping inside the wall of the downstairs toilet. We have been looking for a leak as a couple of long-term damp patches and a drop in boiler pressure indicated there was a problem somewhere. The drip was getting worse through the day so we eventually took the decision to call an emergency plumber - not a step to take lightly. Astronomical does not describe it, but eventually we managed to get somebody to come out without having to sell all our limbs.
It didn't take long to find water. As the plumber investigated downstairs, I started unscrewing floorboards upstairs, where the cause of the problem quickly became apparent.



Mr Mouse had been at it again!
As for the car, two trays of bait have been consumed and one field mouse has been caught in a trap.

Going For A Song

Tuesday 15th May 2018

Going For A Song
Last night I WhatsApp'ed my birding mates... Test week. I am ****ed if something turns up this week.

To translate for those that don't know me outside of smallholding, I am a part-time primary school teacher. Part of my job is to prepare and support Year 6 children for their tests, for the poor things have a series of impossible hoops to jump through. It is a result of endless educational 'improvements' so that successive governments can either lambast teachers for not doing their jobs properly or boast about how good they are since they have successfully taken the child out of Britain's children.

The second part of my message refers to my habit of dropping absolutely everything to head off to far-flung parts of Britain to see rare birds, especially ones I've not seen before in this country. This happens more and more infrequently as the list of birds 'needed' goes down.

And so to Tuesday morning. I was not required at school today, but Wednesday and Thursday would be 100% obligatory attendance. It was a slow start to the day. Even the incessant hungry bleating of the two bottle-fed lambs failed to stir me from my slumber and it was only just before 9 that I finally woke up. This, I hasten to add, is not usual.
I checked my phone to see what the day had already brought and there it was.

SONG SPARROW. 7:49.. FAIR ISLE. TRAPPED AND RINGED IN PLANTATION.

I need that.
In case you don't know, Fair Isle is essentially a huge inhabited rock which juts up above the sea in between the Orkney Isles and the Shetland Isles. There are ways on and off. A boat three times a week and a daily flight. These go from Shetland Mainland. To get to Shetland Mainland requires a 15 hour boat journey from Aberdeen or a scheduled plane flight from said same city or further south at a cost.
There is one other way. To fly up there from further south in a small plane. In fact, that is pretty much the only way to reach Fair Isle in a hurry. But my extended sleep this morning surely meant that all such options would have been already bagged by others who share my impulsive and compulsive hobby.
With the next two days tied up, I resigned myself to moping around in the garden all day. I would start to make plans for Friday, but not right  now.

I attended to all the animals and it was while I was feeding the turkeys that my phone rang. Did I want to fly to Fair Isle today? You bet!
The precise details of our flight, including the pilot, the plane and the departure airfield, were still not clear, but I needed to start driving North towards the various options. If I left it until the plane was sorted, I wouldn't be able to get to the airfield soon enough.
So I headed cross country to the A1. This road is infuriating when you are in a hurry, as you basically travel at the speed of the slowest lorry or motorhome. There were even two tractors today.
As I approached the first airfield option, I received a phone call that we were flying from further North, up in Yorkshire. The pilot was driving down from Newcastle and should be with the plane by about 1.30pm. There was time for me to jump cars in with my other two birding friends and our arrival time at the airfield should be about the same.
With a flight time of about two and a half hours we should be landing on Fair Isle before 5pm, which would give us a couple of hours to see the bird before we would need to head off again. The last option to top up with fuel was 8pm at Sumburgh on Shetland Mainland. It is not possible to land and take off from Fair Isle landing strip with a full tank, so a refuel on the way home is necessary.

The plan was falling into place, except that the bird, released in to the bird observatory garden at 8.30am, had only shown once briefly at 11am. After plane preparations and putting fuel in, we eventually took off at 2.15pm with no further news of the bird. The weather was glorious so there were no hold ups. We could identify every feature of the landscape as we headed up the East coast and out across the sea towards the islands. I even had enough phone reception to ascertain that the bird had shown again briefly at about 2.30pm.
So that was two sightings in six hours. We would have two hours on the island! Goodbye finger nails.

I have only been to Fair Isle a few times, each time on a small plane, and I am averaging just over one new bird for each trip.
Savannah Sparrow and Siberian Rubythroat 2003. Chestnut-eared Bunting 2004. Swinhoe's Petrel 2013.
As we approached the island I hoped I could make it five lifers in four trips (or more!)

Fair Isle on a clear day

The view down over the island. We did a pass over the bird observatory before dropping down to land on the air strip.

We were concerned that nobody seemed to be looking into the observatory garden as we flew over.

Did this mean the bird had flown?

We had received news of the Song Sparrow's continued presence just before landing. This could be good news, but could also mean that it would not show again for a while.
The lovely thing about landing on small Scottish Islands is that there is always a welcoming committee and they always know about the bird. We were very pleased to hear that the bird was now appearing underneath a feeder with some regularity. We were also very grateful to be able to jump in the back of a car - on the floor, no seats! - and get a lift to the observatory.
Viewing of the bird was from the lounge. How very civilised!

One plane load of birders from Essex had got there before us and there were a few over from Shetland Mainland. There were also those who were up on holiday staying in the bird observatory.
We ran through into the lounge to the news that the bird was showing right now!

I always seem to miss being photographed at twitches, 

but I am actually in this photo. 

I raised my binoculars to peer over those kneeling on the floor in front of me and it only took a few seconds to pick up a movement on the ground deep in the vegetation. A couple of seconds later I had views of a stripy brown back and then the bird turned so that all I could see through the tiny gap was its head in full view. The other two hadn't seen it yet, but it wouldn't be long before it hopped to the outside of the garden into full view. I won't describe it. Pictures do the job better.

This bird had come all the way from North America. It was only the eighth Song Sparrow ever to grace our shores (but the fourth for Fair Isle following birds in 1959, 1969 and 1989.) Most long-time birders saw one in 1994 near Seaforth Docks which had undoubtedly hopped off a ship but is still deemed an acceptable tick. That was the last one.
It was one of those birds which, quite possibly, I would never get the chance to see in this country... until today!
We watched the Song Sparrow for a while, enjoying excellent views as it hopped around in the vegetation under the feeder, occasionally coming forwards through the fence and into the open. It was only about 15 feet away from us. We had not expected views to be anything like this.

Pictures courtesy of @FI_Obs twitter feed

The island also had another special visitor. For just over the hill, zooming around over a rocky beach, was a Crag Martin, a bird which I had only ever seen once in this country. It would be rude to ignore it while we were here. It was only a five minute jaunt over the hill, though you had to stand quite near the edge of the cliff for views down onto the beach. It took a while to pick the bird up, but it was obvious when it showed and easy to pick up from the swallows and house martins which were also catching insects. A gloriously sunny day, sitting on the cliff looking down on the beach and watching puffins looping round over the sea, a Crag Martin below us and a Song Sparrow just over the hill. Fair Isle at its very best.

My travel companions tracking the Crag Martin's every move.

We would have stayed longer but wanted to get back to the Song Sparrow, which continued to afford fantastic views over the next hour. We planned to stay till 7.15, but at 6.30pm we received an urgent message from the airfield that the weather was closing in and the wind was switching.
We bundled into the back of a car, sped to the airfield and jumped in the plane.
The weather can turn fast up here and we didn't even have time to bid farewell to other birders.

The pilot taxied down the airfield, swung it round and headed hell for leather into the wind. We took off into low cloud and were buffeted around a fair bit. The pilot had a heading which would clear us of the rocky crags, but it was still a bit hairy as we bumped around in thick cloud.
It was a relief to come out of the gloom and look back on the island which was shrouded in thick cloud.

After a quick fuel stop at Wick, we settled down for the journey home.
It had been quite a surreal day, not quite what I was expecting when I belatedly woke up this morning. Once again Fair Isle had delivered. What a magical place. Maybe one day I will return and stay for longer than a few hours.

Views from the plane were spectacular as the sun went down somewhere round about Teesside.
Our landing was smooth as could be and we bade farewell to the pilot before heading back down south.
I rolled back onto the farm at just past one in the morning.
It had been quite an eventful last sixteen hours.

Tomorrow, SATs tests. Poor kids.

Hedwig comes to town

Friday 9th March 2018
Snowy Owl!
What a great way to end the working week. Straight home on a Friday night, pick up the dogs and off to Norfolk with Sue to see a Snowy Owl - the type to be seen in Harry Potter movies and known as Hedwig.
Now some birds are small, brown and boring. Only an enthusiast like me could ever get excited by them, and to be truthful most of the attraction is in their rarity on these shores rather than their aesthetics.
But a Snowy Owl. That is a very different story. There's nowhere to go wrong really. An Owl. Huge. Attractive. And rare.
This was only the fourth Norfolk record in the last 100 years. Rumour of one in the area earlier in the week remained just that until a couple had walked into Titchwell visitor centre with a photo. But days had passed and this seemed like a missed opportunity for everyone. Until lunchtime today, when the bird was relocated sat on the edge of Scolt Head island, separated from the North Norfolk coast by a muddy channel. Fortunately it was viewable, albeit distantly, from the coastal path at Burnham Deepdale. Better than that, the bird was quite likely to just sit there until the approach of dusk.
We pulled up at the site and it was a short walk out onto the seawall. The owl was quickly picked up in the telescope, perched on the ground on the far side of the muddy channel. It was livelier than I thought, constantly moving its head up and down and looking around. After about quarter of an hour it flew and it was massive. Luckily it landed in view, but the next flight wasn't long and this time it landed half obscured by the coastal scrub.
No photos I'm afraid. I am reliably informed it was just under 1km away!

This was only the third Snowy Owl I had ever seen. With darkness coming upon us and the bird unlikely to show any better, we headed back to the farm. In terms of time away from the farm and jobs missed, this bird was almost a freebie, though I have been managing to dig up and move some of last years cuttings in the evenings this week.

A Pointless Twitch, a Solstice Tree and a Supermoon

Saturday 2nd December 2017
A bird in the bush...

An early morning start up to North Lincolnshire and a housing estate in sunny Scunthorpe. Why? To see a bird of course. A White-crowned Black Wheatear, potentially only the second ever in this country. Turned out to have come all the way from... its cage two roads away, where an 80 year old man kept a bewildering array of bird species, none of which belong in a cage.

It was not an entirely wasted journey as it was a good chance to catch up with lots of my loonier birding friends.

Sunday 3rd December 2017

Bit of a lie-in.

Overnight we lost one of the monster chicks. It was much smaller than the rest, so no surprise really. The others are going strong. They eat and drink constantly! Have now opened their pen so they can wander a little and meet the other poultry - they'll have to learn to stand on their own two feet a bit more.


And now for the big surprise. We have a Christmas tree, a real one, a 10 foot whopper of a one!
Well it was sold to us as a Christmas tree, but I view it firmly as a Solstice celebration tree. I don't do Christmas.
I'm not sure Sue will let me take it down on 22nd December though, or let me open my presents on 21st 😉

Even better we got it for a tenner straight from the ground and only a couple of miles down the road in our nearest village. A couple had recently moved in and wanted to convert an area over for their horses. Hence the need to get rid of the trees which a previous owner had planted as foot high post-Christmas pound-a-tree items from the local garden centre.

The journey home was a bit dodgy but we made it.

I have to admit that decorating the tree was actually quite good fun and it will bring joy and celebration to the farmhouse as the shortest day approaches. Here is the final product.

The day was capped off with excellent, cloud-free views of December's Supermoon.

It was too big to fit on my blog properly!!!

You CAN have your cake and eat it.

Friday 24th November 2017

Black Friday.

I don't often get political on this blog, but I am actually a person with very strong beliefs.

Here's my tweet about Black Friday.

Black Friday is so depressing. Is the whole world now indoctrinated to consume endlessly until the earth is completely screwed? Exponential 'growth' is not sustainable.

As I write this, I'm still getting promotional emails informing me Black Friday isn't over yet. It's Wednesday now!!! As if the concept wasn't bad enough in the first place.

Saturday 25th November

A Sliding Carrot Cake
Finally got round to making my solstice cake today. I don't do Christmas. Solstice is pretty much where it all came from anyway and seems a much more relevant celebration given my lifestyle.
The cake is a spiced orange rich fruit cake.
While in baking mode I made a carrot cake with some carrots freshly harvested from the veg plot.
For tomorrow is the Grow Your Own group get-together and I need something to take along for bring and share food.

During the day news came through of an interesting bird at Staines Reservoirs in West London. I decided to go for it first thing in the morning 'on the way to Lakenheath' where I was due at the get-together at noon.
So in freezing temperatures and a cold northerly wind I gingerly carried the carrot cake to the car, hoping it would survive the extended journey. It didn't even survive the walk to the car as the top layer insisted on sliding off the lower one.
There was only one solution to this. Just take one layer and keep the other for myself!
Seems you can have your cake and eat it.

Sunday 26th November

Lakenheath, via Staines!
Grow Your Own Group at midday in Lakenheath.

Just time to nip to London first to see a Horned Lark at the oh so salubrious Staines Reservoirs

and then Santon Downham in Breckland to see a flock of Parrot Crossbills.
At Staines we had to peer through the railings as the Horned Lark grovelled around quite distantly on the concrete bank of the reservoir. In the UK these are known as Shorelarks, a bird which appears in small flocks on our sandy shores every winter. They are a delightful bird worth a special trip to see every winter. But this individual was one of the North American races, a solitary bird on an inland reservoir. It is a potential tick in the future in the rapidly developing world of DNA and species assignment. But for now it was just a very nice bird to see. Apologies for the photo quality. It never came very close.



Then it was on towards Lakenheath for the Grow Your Own group get-together. I just had time for a short diversion into Breckland to Santon Downham where a flock of Parrot Crossbills had been seen a couple of times. I only had half an hour to spare so was lucky when, just a couple minutes after arriving, the whole flock flew noisily over my head. It was several hours since they had been reported.

They just carried on going over a clearing and disappearing over the trees, but fortunately three birds had split from the group and were perched at the top of some pines. They are like a cross between a Crossbill and a Parrot, hence the name. They snip whole cones off the trees to extract the seed with their secateurs like bills.

Then it was on to the get together and a very pleasant afternoon with friends. I started the group four years ago and it has proved most successful, but today I handed over the reins. I will still be part of the group but I have a couple of new ventures in development. More later.

Monday 27th November 2017

I can do cold.

I'm not a great fan of wet.

I've learned to quite like the wind - I think putting on a few stone in weight has helped with this one as it makes me more stable.

But I don't do cold, wet and windy.

So today I mostly stayed in and caught up with stuff on the computer, like my blog posts!

The chicks we got are still going strong. They have survived a few frosty nights now, so fingers crossed for them. They eat ravenously and make a lot of mess, so I think at the weekend I will let them out of their pen to wander more widely.