Suffering for your art

The first day of 2017, normally a red letter day in the birding calendar, was a bit of a washout with heavy rain causing me to abort a planned afternoon visit to Swineham. Well it's the 'post-truth' era so much easier to conclude it would be birdless from the comfort of the armchair than to actually go there and prove it. So here are a few pictures from before and after that from two of Dorset's urban birding hotspots - Lyme Regis, which I visited to see my godsons last Friday, and the built up north shore of Poole Harbour, around which I strolled with the family yesterday. The sun shone mightily at both, and photographs were the inevitable result.

Purple Sandpipers often roost on The Cobb at Lyme Regis but they are either distant there or right underneath you making photography difficult - but it was low tide so I caught up with a flock on a rocky shelf at the beach 

The snag was they were feeding on a ledge surrounded by six inches of water and I was only wearing my 'about-town' shoes. So off they came enabling me to wade through the freezing water, lacerating my feet on the barnacled rocks. Well you have to suffer for your art...

Not often you get to see the beautiful purple iridescence on a Purple Sandpiper - but it can be seen on this one (click to enlarge)

A careful approach allowed me to get pretty close

A pair of Dipper were in the Mill stream which runs through the heart of town

A curtsying courtship display with a flash of the white eyelid

One of very few locations in Dorset where Dipper can be seen

Grey Wagtail also frequent the same stream

A misty Golden Cap from Lyme Regis beach

Mediterranean Gulls were also on the beach at Lyme Regis

No longer a rare sight on the Dorset coast

Ethereal sunset looking west from Chideock - we could see the reflection but not the sun itself

Black-tailed Godwits were present in large numbers at Upton Country Park yesterday - the first sunny day of 2017

Also a large Dunlin flock out in Holes Bay

Mixed flock of Dunlin and Blackwits against the backdrop of urban Poole

A good selection of wintering duck were in the bay including this smart drake Pintail

Blue Tit in the woodland at Upton CP

Finally from Upton a backlit male Stonechat

Earlier in the day saw me on the groynes at Sandbanks where a patient approach allowed me to get close to another favourite wader: Sanderling

Sanderling at Sandbanks

The roosting birds tolerated my careful approach and a less careful approach from a couple of dogs, but ultimately a jetski put them to flight - unfortunately an occupational hazard for the Sandbanks Sanderlings

Time with the extended family

There are five species of 'true' tit on the Dorset list - Willow is sadly now lost to the County as a breeding bird, leaving Blue, Great, Coal and Marsh as the most likely to be seen these days. (Long-tailed, Bearded and Penduline Tit are all from closely related families, but are not considered 'true' tits). After Willow, Marsh Tit is the least likely of the 'true' tits to be encountered, but there are a few sites in Purbeck where they may come to feeders in winter, including Arne and, this winter, Corfe Castle. I popped along there yesterday, in the half-hour of daylight which remained after watching table-topping Wareham Rangers U-13s drop three points at home to the Parkstone Falcons. A result, since you ask, which leaves them just three points ahead of second-placed Swanage, who they play in their next fixture - making it a real six-pointer of a Purbeck derby. The light was going as I arrived, and had I known the boys were going to get mugged in a last minute counter-attack I might have invested the 60 minutes I spent before that, watching them spurn a hatful of chances, getting better photos of Marsh Tit!

Marsh Tit, Corfe Castle

The much commoner Blue Tit at Corfe Castle

This Coal Tit was seen earlier in the day at Bestwall

Great Tit among the pines at Swineham earlier in the day

Long-tailed Tit, from the family Aegithalidae, at Swineham

Don't let the bustard get you down

That's what I had to tell myself this morning when it became clear that the chance of adding Little Bustard to my British list had slipped away, or become fox-food, overnight. While the rest of twitch-kind spent New Year's Day hot-footing it to East Yorkshire, I was stuck at home in Dorset, 'on call' for emergencies, one of the additional privileges of rank which I now get to enjoy.

Blyth's Pipit, Calder Park - quite a leggy bird with neat mantle stripes

Showing shortish hindclaw (shorter than Richard's)

Plenty of artillery still lined up for the Pipit

It was the first time I'd been on call, and as it was only for 2 days over the turn of the year I figured that would be as safe a time as any to be out of circulation. Unfortunately, both days were the only ones on which the Bustard chose to be twitchable. As well as not being able to leave the county, I was unable to drink, so drowning my sorrows was not an option. Plus I had to be within an hour of HQ, so I couldn't even join other Dorset birders on a New Year birdboat around Poole Harbour. So much for that well meaning New Year resolution in my last post to be more positive about life. Well let me tell you, people, positive sucks!

Blue Tit, Pugneys CP

Goldcrest, Pugneys CP

I guess this must be a 3rd winter Yellow-legged Gull - unless anyone can put me straight? Quite striking in the field/lake/whatever.

I must say being unable to leave Dorset felt like a new and particularly cruel kind of torture in the circumstances - a real twitcher's nightmare. And I'm not sure whether it's worse or better that there were no emergencies after all either. Had armed rebels seized the Corn Exchange in Dorchester and I been called in to negotiate, or at least organise pizza, then missing out on a Little Bustard might have felt worthwhile. I certainly had an incentive to bring an early end to a siege. But as it was, the emergency hotline never rang, other than with offers of lifts to see the Bustard, which of course I had to turn down.

Black-headed Gull, Pugneys CP



Coot, Calder Park

Moorhen, Calder Park

As you may have gathered from the photos, I headed north this morning anyway as soon as the end of my stint on duty would allow, and was over half way to Yorkshire when news came through that there was no sign of the Bustard. But I was sufficiently far up the M1, and sufficiently had the hump, to press on and look for the long-staying Blyth's Pipit near Wakefield anyway to salvage something from the day, and also to keep myself within striking distance in case the Bustard should be relocated later.

Redwing - not many of these around home at the moment

Treecreeper, Pugneys CP

Jay, Pugneys CP

The Pipit, so elusive early in its stay that many went away with only flight views, certainly rescued the day from disaster. I parked the car, walked 100 yards and papped it less than 10 seconds after picking my spot at the end of a line of admirers. Many of these had also been heading for the Bustard which made me feel a bit better - a problem shared etc.

Drake Goldeneye, Pugneys CP

Female Goldeneye, Pugneys CP

Male Kestrel, Pugneys CP

The Pipit then flew to a patch of waste ground next to a KFC to where the twitch relocated. A young attendant came out of the restaurant, I presumed to shoo away the smelly birders who were parking but not purchasing, but no: he offered anyone carrying a tripod a 10% discount! I would have taken him up on the offer had I not thrown mine in a skip with the telescope at Leicester Forest East services.


Female Bullfinch, Pugneys CP

And a pair

Bullfinch

After a bit of aimless watching the long grass, I figured I could spend the rest of the day there and not do any better than my initial views, so decided to check out nearby Pugneys Country Park, where I saw my first Bufflehead many years ago, returning from a Scottish trip with Matt Jones. Local gen suggested that this site might produce a Willow Tit - I managed to hear one in a fast moving tit flock but could not clap eyes on it.

The habitats of Pugneys: plastic...

...footballs...

...plastic AND footballs

After a couple of hours just birding the angst of twitching had substantially receded, and I was ready for the long journey home, but still sufficiently distressed to need the soothing influence of Classic FM all the way. Sibelius and Schubert I didn't much care for, but Liszt hit the spot as I approached Wareham with the perfect composition to sum up my day: 'Consolation No 3' (this was my 3rd Blyth's Pipit after all). I took it as a sign, and spent the rest of the evening with him and his mate Brahms.

An unfamiliar call like a manic Fieldfare was eventually explained by this character, sat in a hedgerow at Pugneys.

Sick as a Parrot? I know how you feel. Apparently it's a Port Lincoln Parrot, native to Australia. A celebrity in local news - and top marks to the Wakefield Express for eschewing 'Twitcher's flocked...' bylines in favour of 'Pugney's Parrot has beautiful plumage'. FACT.

Kestrel. Pic of the day.