Recent activity...

Yeh it's been a while since I updated this but with other more pressing matters taking the front seat of my life during mid-October, I didn't really get out and about. Highlights are pretty much restricted to the last 7 days. Last Tuesday (2nd November) I made a pre-work visit to King's Mill Res' in order to bag the 1st winter drk Fudge Duck. This bird represented the second of this species I had seen at my former 2nd home (the first being in November 2002 which was sadly seen to be wearing some shiney silver jewellery around its ankle).


Above - Mikipedia giving the motors precarious position some serious thought.

With the news of the American Bittern in Cornwall showing well near Wadebridge, I begrudingly decided to head down there overnight on Bonfire Night with Mikipedia and Stoke reprobate Phil Locker. Before first light saw me slamming my motor onto a 45 degree muddy grass bank and trudging aimlessly in the dark towards the tower hide at Walmsley Sanctuary. Despite arriving at the hide in the pitch black we were already too late to get front row seats as the hide was already packed to capacity with the usual geriatric numpties sat debating the latest episodes on Birdforum and the cost of their recently purchased waterproof attire! Anyhow, during the next hour or so, we managed to squeeze ourselves into the wooden box and aquired a few decent scope views of the target (284) as it stealthly strode along the ditches. Sadly, the volume of complete and utter twats in the hide forced me & Mike to evacuate back to the motor to recompose whilst Locker endured a further 45 minutes of viewing. We then headed to short distance to The Lost Garden of Heligan near Pentewan where we duly handed over an extortionate £10 to enter and fairly quickly snapped up the Green Heron (285) as it paraded in front of the in-awe Joe Public in 'The Jungle'! Once again, boredom quickly set in so we decided to do one back to the Midlands via Exminster where, after a bit of work, we managed to snare ourselves a pair of cool Cirl Buntings (286). A pretty rewarding yet knackering trip (for me at least). I arrived back in Notts at c5.30pm and headed directly to a Bonfire Party until around 10.30pm when I finally retired to bed after being awake for 41hrs.



Above - Phil 'The Lobbster' Locker showing off his recently purchased package!

Spurned but jammed!

Upon hearing that my 'arch' year-listing rival had cleaned up at Spurn on Saturday, I decided that I best head over to the peninsular on Sunday (10/10/10) and bag myself a piece of the action! Foolishly I had also been roped into a 'Rouge Juice' fuelled evening of debauchery on the Saturday evening so the chance of me crawling out of the pit early Sunday morning was in the balance! Thankfully, my alarm managed to rouse me and despite only having 3hrs kip, by 6am I had collected Mikipedia and was cautiously heading towards the coast. A necessary 'Golden Arches' pit-stop and an even more necessary stop for paracetamol ensured that our arrival in the 'birding zone' was later than we had wanted. Anyhow, instead of heading straight to the peninsular, I made a somewhat fortuitous decision to drop in at Sammy's Point and within minutes of exiting the motor, we were met by ex-Notts birding veteran Ian Smith who nonchalantly muttered that a Pallas's was knocking about a few hundred yards away. We scurried along the coastal footpath, clambered under barbed wire and began scouring the scrub for the target. A good 45 minutes passed and in that time I experienced quite possibly the largest fall I had ever been amongst! Goldcrests & Robins numbered in their thousands with slightly lesser numbers of Siskins, Bramblings & thrushes screaming thru overhead. Soon the Pallas's Warbler (282) was located some 70yds away and showed extremely well for some 20 minutes! This was c10am and high hopes were kicking in! We soon found out that Archer was bagging all manner of class up in Cleveland but despite our best efforts to dig out some rare & scarce, the best we could muster in 6hrs was a Great Grey Shrike, Ring Ouzel and a host of Redstarts, Chiffys etc...oh and a self found 'possible' OBP which I had to let go due to the brevity of the views - call was spot on tho'!
Getting bored and tired, we retired to the Crown & Anchor and as the day started to come to a close and thoughts of heading home quickly started to fill my head as I sat in the car, the inevitable 'late-in-the-day' Spurn surprise hit. A chap came cruising thru the car-park and declared that a Radde's had been snared next door at Kew & was about to be released! Thank f*ck I hadn't done one 20 minutes before! Soon after we were being treated to stunning in-hand views of this striking Phyllosc (283). A pretty rewarding end to an exciting yet frustrating day!




Above & below - Radde's Warbler being paraded to all & sundry!

Back in the groove?

Having not done any birding for over three week (due to a combination of factors), Saturday 9th October saw me lazily lounging at home, surfing the net and quaffing copious amounts of coffee! I was casually browsing Adam Archers recent tall stories (these being somewhat reminiscent of an ornithological equivalent of some shit Tolkien would scribe - pure fantasy!) when it suddenly dawned on me that the chunky brummie had moved considerably ahead of me in the Bubo listings! With not enough daylight available to muster an assault on the coast, I decided to hit Draycote Water and snare a bit of Yank Duckage for the year! Collecting 'Hugo a Go-Go' (AKA Mikipedia) from Kirkby-in-Ashfield, we caned it down to deepest Warwickshire.

Upon arrival we headed to the last reported area along Hensborough Bank but after nearly an hours searching, we failed to locate the bird! Thankfully, a birder on a bike came trundling along and informed us that the bird was showing well in Toft Bay. We immediately headed back to the motor, caned it around to the main car park and walked at pace down to Toft. En route, Dave Hutton gave us the heads up that the bird was showing pretty well and within 15 minutes I was watching my 7th (sleeping)UK Lesser Scaup (281). Although not the best way to kick start a flagging year-list attempt, it certainly got me back in the groove...


Above - Duck Soup!


Above - Sleeping Lezza Scaup!!

Lord of the Jynx (Torquilla)

This evening I received the following snippet of info. A pretty well known British Birdin' celeb' has been giving it some proper smack induced story telling on a 'Home Counties' Birdin' Yahoo Group (please note, to avoid the threat of (im)possible legal action, I have refrained from giving the authors name -

''This really has been one of the birding events of all-time in Buckinghamshire - such a well-loved, well-enjoyed and cripplingly-showing rarity(?). Once again, I ensured its safety until dark, making sure it roosted safely in its chosen Beech tree for a fourth night (a bird such as this could be a sitting target for a local Sparrowhawk). It flew to roost at 1915 hours and kept on feeding until just seconds before. It must be really heavy by now after consuming so many ants. As darkness fell, it was another calm evening, although quite cloudy, with a light SSW wind - pretty ideal leaping conditions - but not as ideal as the last two moonlit nights.''

To be honest, the above is pretty sad! It's like something bleedin' Tolkien would write! One wonders if he knocked one out and gave it a secure circle of salty water to protect it from demons and goblins! I have visions of this particular character dressed in some middle earth garb, armed with a bow & arrow, furtively keeping watch for marauding Sprawks from the depths of a small Hawthorn bush, eye(s) darting left, right and...left! All said & done tho', credit where it's due....

The year-list hits 280.

Above - Coton Lakes, Warwickshire - Leach's Oasis!


Since my last load of incoherent drivel on here, I've managed to add another four species to my list of birds seen this year...

• Arctic Warbler - Holme, Norfolk - (277)


• Western Bonelli's Warbler - Bempton, East Yorkshire - (278)


• Wilson's Phalarope - Gibralter Point, Lincolnshire - (279)


• Leach's Petrel - Coton Lakes, Warwickshire - (280)

Below are a series of images of characters 'papped' during the above excursions:

Starting to lose the will...

Tuesday 7th September saw a juv Red-necked Phal' (274) arrive at Draycote Water in Warwickshire, so after work, I caned it down there and added it to the year list! A small swarm of 6 Black Terns (275) were also added (146 mile round trip!). Wednesday 8th September had been booked as an holiday off work due to promising weather conditions & in the anticipation that something a bit good would turn up. Early morning saw me at my least favourite local Derbyshire hot-spot, Ogston Reservoir, collecting Little Stint (276) for the year. A glance at the pager revealed the continued presence of an Ortolan Bunting at Spurn - tempting but with it's supporting cast already under my belt, I decided to hang on a little longer and see if anything else was discovered by the guys at Spurn or even Flamborough so I headed up on to Beeley Moor in search of another species that had eluded me this year so far. It was while eagerly scanning the moorland rocks and fence posts for my quarry that news of a Red-throated Pipit & Red Breasted Flycatcher had been located at Spurn. I gave the moors another 40 minutes and then decided to head up to Spurn. Minutes later, another message announced that the Pipit was in fact just a Tree Pipit but the Fly' & Bunting were still showing! I left Derbyshire and headed NE anyway but as I left Hull and started the last c20 mile, the pager declared that there was no further sign of the Flycatcher! Hmmm, two down, one to go, surely the Ortolan would still be present, it had been showing all morning in the same spot apparently! Arriving at Spurn at c3.15pm, I headed straight towards the narrows but at the Obs. I was informed by 'The Gatekeeper' that the Bunting had gone missing and hadn't been seen for a few hours!!!! I decided to take his advice and not hand over my three gold nuggets and instead parked up at the Canal and tried to dig out some migrants for myself - A lone Pied Flycatcher was the only bird I saw! Stood all alone with the wind gently nudging the grasses and bushes, a milky sunlight giving the area a strange sepia colour and no other humans within sight, one would perhaps think that it was a scene of magical bliss but on the contrary, it was confusingly eerie and depressing so I Headed to The Crown & Anchor area to find civilisation! Cliff Farm held two Spotted Flycatchers, 3 Redstarts, 3 Garden Warblers, a Whitethroat & a Blackcap! Thrilling stuff eh?!

With thoughts of home starting to insidiously slip into my mind, I made one last incongruous concerted effort to bag something good and decided to have a look around Sammy's Point in the vain hope of relocating the RBF. This area was a little better for migrants with c15 Redstarts, 10+ Spotted Flycatchers, Wheatears and Garden Warblers but alas no RBF (A further disappointment came in the form of a pager message as I arrived at Sammy's saying that a Barred Warbler was about to be released at Crown & Anchor car-park, the exact spot I had left some 5 minutes before!). Feeling pretty dejected and f*cked off, I headed home. As I hit the M62, I dropped 'Definitely Maybe' into the CD player and with just me in the motor, nothing to rush home for and needing to calm down, I took it steady for once! £40 worth of fuel down the bleedin' drain! The final kick in the balls tho' was to come when I got home, a cursory glance at the pager revealed a message stating that the Ortolan was still present around Post 47 at dusk..........the pager hit the wall...at pace!



Sammy's Point at dusk...so f*ckin' what!

Saturday 4th September...

Really can't be arsed to write a load of drivel about another utter dogshit day in the f*cked up county of Y**kshire so i'll keep this brief - early morning at Flamborough: dipped Olivaceous Warbler, meagre compensation gleaned in the shape of two year-ticks - Barred Warbler (272) & Rosefinch (273). F*ck all else. Drove to Grimston: dipped Booted Warbler. Arrived home to discover a Great Snipe had been found at Spurn.



The biggest Barred Warbler twitch in history??!

Rick Moranis (of 'Honey I shrunk the kids' fame) looks pretty confused after the shout of Barred goes up only to reveal a House Sparrow!!



Even Tony Christie had had enough!