Of whites and wings

With all the birding by bike lately I've been something of an absentee father so when it was 'suggested' that I take my youngest son to a tennis tournament this afternoon, I could hardly say no. The competition - an away fixture between local rivals Wareham (my son's team) and Swanage - started at 1400 and we arrived in good time for a quick warm up before hostilities commenced. My lad looked the part with pristine white kit, Nike trainers and cap but went down 6-1, 6-3 in the first match, an unflattering scoreline which didn't quite reflect the effort he put it. 

The match was over in about 45 minutes at which point news came through of an Iceland Gull at Lodmoor. I know what you're thinking and just don't: the thought of ditching him there didn't enter my head. But I confess I did start to wonder whether the tennis might finish in time for me to get home, kit up and cycle down to look for it after the match. Four pairs of boys were competing in the first round of matches and it turned out that there would be only one more set of matches after this - a game of doubles to complete the tournament. No problem then - a quick couple of sets and we'd be home by four, I thought, and I could head off guilt free with parental duty fulfilled. 

Before the doubles could start, however, the singles had to be completed, and after the brevity of my own son's match, I hadn't factored in the possibility of two of the older lads slugging it out Nadal v Federer style in the 3rd and final set which eventually ended almost hour later after an Isner-esque number of games. Following this marathon the combatants understandably needed a breather before the doubles could start, and it didn't seem appropriate to say 'can you get on with it please. I've got an Iceland Gull to see'.

When it finally got underway the doubles was mercifully brief (two crushing defeats for the gallant Wareham lads) and both games ended about the same time. I don't wish to belittle the tragic effects of Covid-19 but one of the teensy silver linings is that they appear to have dispensed with the laborious ritual of handing out tacky plastic medals and other tat at the end of kids' tennis tournaments for fear of passing on infections, so after the briefest of the customary courtesies we were free to go. 

Arriving home just after 1700, the bike was packed and ready to go within 15 minutes, and I headed out into a brisk south-westerly wind. It was a measure of its strength that it took me 90 minutes to get to the outskirts of Weymouth compared to 75 on my previous twitch for the Black-winged Stilts, and it was approaching 1900 when I arrived at the post box on the north side of Lodmoor. The Iceland Gull had been reported from the pool visible from here but there had been no news since the original message four hours earlier, and no sign when I arrived. I was a bit relieved to be honest: it had been a tough journey and I had resolved to get the train home if the bird wasn't present.

But then I scanned beyond the pool to the West Scrape and was sure I could see the Iceland Gull in the distance. It was too far to photograph and I knew that my neurotic self would talk me out of the fact that I had seen it if I didn't get a better view, so I tazzed around to the west side of the reserve to find the white-winged spectre disconcertingly absent. Then it appeared from behind some vegetation and any doubt about the identification was finally removed. I took a few photos, went anti-clockwise around the reserve to check the Common Tern colony for a Roseate (there wasn't one) and headed for home. Gleeful townsfolk appeared to be cheering me on - I thought modestly 'it was only an Iceland Gull' - but it turned out they were Leicester fans celebrating their FA Cup victory.

I think it was the cycling coach Sir David Brailsford who came up with the philosophy of 'marginal gains' - the idea that if you break everything down that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1%, you will get a significant benefit when it's all put together. Readers of the post about my previous Lodmoor twitch may recall that I made the mistake of wolfing down a bag of chips in Preston on the way up out of Weymouth before attempting the steep climb to Osmington, resulting in chronic indigestion. I wasn't going to make that mistake again, so, inspired by Brailsford's example, I took a leaf out of the Team Sky book (the marginal gains book, not the testosterone patches book) and applied it to the journey home: rather than scoffing supper from the Preston chippy at the bottom of the hill, I scoffed it down at the top this time. Dave - I don't think he'd mind me calling him that now we're basically in the same game elite sports-wise - would have been proud.

It was raining by now so supper was in fact taken in the exotic environment of a bus stop which proved surprisingly warm as well as dry. I worried for a moment that a bus might actually stop thinking I wanted to get on, but then remembered this was rural Dorset and I was more likely to be offered table service from the pub down the road than to see a bus. Thus satiated, my progress from that point on was so rapid I thought the chips might have been spiked with nandrolone, but it was of course just the wind which had so impaired progress on the way down now hastening it on the way back.

I arrived home at 2130 having not just added Iceland Gull to the year list but achieving another couple of important milestones: 1000 miles cycled since I acquired my handlebar mounted GPS-gizmo in mid-February, and my first sub-12 stone weigh-in since the end of the first lockdown. Not a bad hat-trick for the day, even if the tennis was not quite as successful as the twitching.