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.
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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.
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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.
