2013: Anas Horribilis?

No, not a new species of duck, just a reference to a year when bad luck (and/or bad judgement) combined to produce more than my fair share of disappointment, plus a bit of comedy and no small amount of tragedy. The Queen had one in 1992. An Annus horribilis that is. Then again her house burnt down and two of her kids got divorced in the glare of international publicity, which rather puts my minor setbacks in perspective. But it started going downhill for me in February when ill health prevented a long distance twitch to Shetland for a Pine Grosbeak. Probably for the best as I try not to make a habit of twitching islands, especially those close to the Arctic Circle. If only there were some kind of seasonal opportunity to make a resolution about stuff like that, I'd take it.

Sabine's Gull (Cogden, November): a photographic highlight of 2013

Then there was a hat-trick of long distance dips - for a Rock Thrush (Spurn, bird departed overnight, missed by a day), a Bridled Tern (Northumbs/Cleveland, mobile bird, missed by 20 minutes) and a Great Snipe (Spurn again, killed by cat, missed by a whisker, so to speak). None gave me the option of waiting on news, and while I obviously had the option of not going at all, I hoped that fortune might favour the brave. Sadly fortune was in Aberdeenshire (where another Rock Thrush was found later in the year), or on the Farnes (where the Bridled Tern relocated) or had to go back to work on the Tuesday when I went for the Snipe.

I kept this feather which fell from the lifeless corpse of the Great Snipe - a real low point in my twitching career.

I hung up my long distance twitching boots for a while after that but that didn't work either: the Great Snuff tragedy was cruelly mirrored by a similar fate suffered by a local Pallid Swift (snaffled by a Sprawk, missed by 20 minutes). Untimely deaths also befell a Short-toed Lark I saw (alive) on Portland, and rarities I never even went for, like the White-throated Needletail and a Glossy Ibis on the Western Isles. Of course, death is a fate which awaits many rare birds, but this year they just seemed to be more public and tragic than usual.

This picture explains why I got so little birding done with one arm out of action in November and December - the birdspotter needs two good arms: one to hold bins, one to hold Collins.

Then as the year approached its end I made a failed bid for a Darwin Award and suffered my first ever broken bone, rendering birding, photography and driving all but impossible for most of November and December. I missed a couple of sitters during this period, notably a long-staying Orphean Warbler, a Baikal Teal and any number of Parrot Crossbills. On the up-side, a period of sedentary reflection forced me to conclude that I should not allow myself to be defined quite so much by the length of my list, and perhaps more by the length of my scar:

Selfies were all the rage in 2013 - so here's the scar from my collarbone op in November: breaking this probably cost me three British ticks - almost as painful as breaking it in the first place.

Despite this brush with mature self-realisation, and lest I acquire a reputation for complete haplessness, I should say that I did manage to add six new birds to my British list in 2013. A Hooded Merganser from the armchair early in the year was a cheeky bonus but it took the Kent Dusky Thrush (pending decision from the birding police on racial purity) to bring an end to a record 7 month run without a new bird. A Pacific Swift in Suffolk in June gave me something to show for an exceptional summer when I either couldn't go for or missed everything else.

Pacific Swift (Suffolk, June)

A stonking October put a gloss on the year, starting with a Semipalmated Plover in Hampshire and ending with a Hermit Thrush in Cornwall. Steve Smith was driver for the first three of these (cheers Steve), and Jol Mitchell came along for the ride for the Plover, maintaining our 100% record as a trio, but I managed the Hermit Thrush all by myself, just when I was starting to believe my solo efforts at twitching were cursed. Then, as Britain's birding community was hanging up its bins under the mistletoe for 2013, and bloggers had prematurely published their 'reviews of the year', up turned the Brünnich's Guillemot - long-staying, photogenic and just down the road in Portland Harbour.

Hermit Thrush (Cornwall, October)

It wasn't all tazzing around the country chasing other people's rarities though: sometimes I just tazzed around Dorset chasing other people's rarities; and frequently, if not religiously, I could be found at Swineham, looking for my own, hope rarely fulfilled, but the experience always enhanced by not needing to travel far to get there.

Caspian Tern (West Bexington, July): this carrot-nosed brute was a Dorset tick for me in 2013.

A patch can be a cruel mistress, and while my relationship with Swineham improved overall, I continue to suffer from a form commitment-phobia, and confess to long periods of neglect during which my head has been turned by more exotic locations. When I did pay it more attention than a fleeting booty call though it rewarded me with quality patch ticks like Water Pipit, Jack Snipe, Red-throated Diver, Long-eared Owl and, best of all, White-winged Black Tern. The absence of the year-round floods made it a bit less appealing to bird than last year, but a patch is a patch, and as I'm stuck with it, I stuck with it, if only for the sake of the children who get to see much more of me when I bird locally.

White-winged Black Tern (Swineham, October): patch gold, in monochrome.

Photographically it was a rewarding year, all the lifers above being snapped for the record though only the Guillemot with any distinction. Fortunately I have low standards so I was happy with that. More successful photographically were a series of pelagics in August, and a trip to Scilly from where most of these embarked.

Great Shearwater (August, off Scilly): one of many highlights from four August pelagics.

Best birding day in 2013? A toss-up between a January bird race around Poole Harbour, and a Lyme Bay pelagic with Dorset birders and my old mate Matt Jones, taking a break from his miserable job of showing Stewart Island Kiwis to tourists for money, to revisit his native Blighty.

Sooty Shearwater (Lyme Bay, August): another pelagic highlight

Rare bird of the Year? Contenders for me include the Pacific Swift - the unlikely combination of a rare bird and an even rarer opportunity to drop everything as news broke to go see it - and the Hermit Thrush - the irresistible draw of a Yank in an idyllic Cornish valley in October. But for sheer chutzpah it has to be the Brünnich's Guillemot - mega-rare, very obliging and just down the road. Most photogenic bird of the year though was probably the approachable Sabine's Gull which graced the Dorset coast for a few days in October. Exquisite plumage + co-operative bird + too big to be killed by cat + good light - large crowd = happy days. A juvenile Dotterel with which I spent a happy hour on Bryher ran it a close second, and an Otter-dodging Black-bellied Dipper in Norfolk takes third place for charm.


Dotterel (Bryher, August)

My Dorset list profited reasonably well from in-county birding, with such scarcities/rarities as Bluethroat, Green-winged Teal, Caspian Tern, Icterine Warbler, Rosefinch, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Red-breasted Flycatcher, Penduline Tit, Surf Scoter and Black (as well as Brünnich's) Guillemot being added to the county list. The county list seems to be gaining increasing importance for me, despite being based on an arbitrary medieval boundary subjected more recently to a random act of gerrymandering in the 1974 local government re-organisation. Silly really, but then so are most lists I suppose, so it's in good company.

Black-bellied Dipper (Norfolk, March)

And speaking of lists I suppose I ought to consider resolutions for the New Year. I do so with some trepidation as it was a quiet pledge to myself to aim for '500 before I die' that led to some of the rash decisions to go for stuff I would normally be more reticent about that led to the sorry dips mentioned above. 300 for Dorset before I'm 50 seems a bit more realistic though. Currently in the low 270s, with five years to go, assuming that Darwin Award comment doesn't come back to haunt me.

Bluethroat (Portland, March): a slightly tarty Dorset tick for me, but no less attractive for that. I waited for ages, then three came along at once.

All in all then, 2013 was not that horribilis at all, there was certainly more success than failure, and even the failures have, I hope, provided some amusement for the readers of my more confessional posts. Writing them has certainly been cathartic for the author and I dare say there'll be more to come in 2014. Happy New Year.

Brünnich's Guillemot (Portland, December): bird of the year for Dorset and beyond.

Waders And The Lost Lark

The title of this post came out of a ridiculous game we played to pass the time during an August holiday on Scilly, putting bird names into song and film titles. Winning song entries included: Coot 66 and If You Wanna Be My Plover by The Spice Gulls (suggested by George, aged 10); Dove Is In The Air; (Girls Go Crazy 'Bout a) Sharp-tailed Sand; and Kittiwake Me Up Before You Go-go. You get the idea.

Juvenile Dotterel photographed on Bryher in August

Having milked songs to death, we progressed to film titles (Starling Wars, The Spotshank Redemption, etc etc). Fittingly, giving Ian Fleming's inspiration for his most famous character, the James Bond movies provided a rich seam of potential (Goldfincher, Skylarkfall, Mooncraker...). You'll be playing it yourself soon, mark my words.

 

I was too early for Dotterel on a trip to Scotland in spring, and wasn't expecting much in the way of landbirds on Scilly in August, so this was a bonus

After driving each other quite mad with a week of this, our last day saw us on Bryher, where a juvenile Dotterel and a Short-toed Lark had been seen on Shipman Head Down. This is a large area of heather-clad high ground at the north end of the island, with convex slopes on all sides. I wandered around for an hour failing to find either bird, and was on the point of rejoining the family on the beach when I stumbled across the Dotterel on the path a few yards from where I had started looking.

The Dotterel with the sea in the background

Dotterel are often confiding but I had to be patient and stay low to gain this one's confidence enough to get close, and despite sporadic cloud cover, the constant feeding action of the bird and my own chronic indecision about camera settings, I was eventually able to get some decent shots.

I posted a square cropped version of this shot on Birdguides a couple of weeks back which proved quite popular - photographer Artur Stankiewicz commented he'd like to see more of the background - so here you go Artur 

The Short-toed Lark eluded me, although it was still present later in the day, but I wasn't complaining. With a hatful of rare seabirds and a Dotterel under my belt, I saw better birds on this trip than on some of our late October visits to the islands.

Vote early, vote often

It's feast or famine with me at the moment. In July I was stringing out blog posts about butterflies on the rare occasions that opportunity combined with sunshine, the latter more prevalent than the former. Now after a couple of weeks off in August I've got so much to write about I literally don't know what to post next. That's where you come in, Dear Reader. For democracy is coming to this blog in the form of a poll which, unless the internet is playing a horrible trick on me (or you're viewing the mobile friendly version, in which case desist), you should be able to see at the top right of this page. A few words of explanation:

While a few kindly regular readers often text me or email comments on posts, only a small number ever leave a comment. Apparently, they tell me, it's a bit too much of a faff as you have to log in to do it. I know the feeling: you click the comment box to leave the most important observation ever, and by the time you've mistyped your email address, forgotten a password and squinted at the characters designed to make sure you're not a robot or a spider or whatever they call them, it doesn't seem that important any more. The poll, by contrast, requires no such effort.

My most prolific comment-leaver, Michael, one of my oldest friends (he's at least 50) isn't even into birds - politics is more his thing. Brett gives a thumbs up now and again, confirms my tentative identifications and offers tips on which way up to hold my camera. Jol sends texts in lieu of comments. His wife Caroline can't even manage that but she does dictate texts to him sometimes. Anj makes encouraging noises but only when I write not about birds. A few of the other Dorset birders urge me to keep going from time to time, which makes me feel slightly less like I'm pishing into the wind, to mis-apply a piece of birding terminology.

A significant proportion of my comment-leavers are not, apparently, genuine admirers. Take this one for instance: on a post called Rock Pools and Pipits, a misguided marketing man at a manufacturer of swimming pool paraphernalia left a complement and encouraged me to visit his website to peruse his wide range of swimming pool related products. For reasons I have still to fathom, another desperate commercial enterprise adorned my bitter post about dipping on a Rock Thrush with the almost irresistible offer to sell me a stairlift.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not fishing for comments - to be perfectly honest if no one ever read this or said anything I'd still write it: with my deteriorating memory it's sometimes the only way I can tell what I did last week. It's like a diary that I just happen to leave lying around on a park bench in that sense. But in my job as a meddlesome pen-pusher (I threw that in for Brett, who takes a dim view of bureaucracy, my chosen profession) I'm always banging on about the importance of community engagement, so it's time to practice what I preach. My initial editorial policy was, after all, based on that of Pravda (that's for Michael, fellow politics graduate, Brunel class of '91): it took me about a year to even allow comments. Then another year to realise that there weren't any. So don't squander this opportunity to make your vote count.

Yes indeed, after the Berlin Wall and the Arab Spring, this poll is my version of democratic revolution. You don't have to log in, and it's a secret ballot so I can't hunt you down if you give me the answer I don't want. Though I'll be crushed if those who I've name checked don't vote at least. I know where some of you live. At the end of it all, as well as giving the impression that I care about your views, this convenient device will have bought me some time while I decide what to do next regardless of your opinions. Just like in a real democracy in fact. In the process, you will be transformed from a passive slave to my propaganda into an empowered cyber-citizen. I know, I can feel the rush too. Transparency is obviously important, so you should be aware that I will rig the vote if it looks like going the wrong way.

I appreciate the blog post titles don't necessarily give you much of a clue, so the manifesto for each is below, with a teaser pic for each:

YouTubenose: seabirds in the sunshine from the Isles of Scilly.

Waders and a lost lark: birds from Scilly which weren't seen on pelagics. Vote for this for yet more bird-based punnery and my favourite photo from August.

Book of the month: a shameless plug for a new book in which I have some photos published. I'm not on commission, or the plug would be more shameless, and on more widely-read media than this.

Warbling around Portland - twitching warblers with me and Bobby McGee