Bonus birds on Scilly

While the Cliff Swallow was the main target of Saturday's visit to St Mary's, the time of year meant that there was always likely to be a selection of other good birds to see even had it not been there.

Lesser Yellowlegs, Porth Hellick

Compare and contrast to this Greater Yellowlegs from Titchfield Haven, April 2015

The Lesser Yellowlegs in context of the habitat at Porth Hellick Pool

A dainty and attractive wader

A long-staying Lesser Yellowlegs was our first American vagrant of the day, entertaining us by strutting around outside the seaward hide at Porth Hellick at point blank range while we waited for the Cliff Swallow to wake up. It was accompanied by several Greenshanks, Dunlin and singles of Green and Common Sandpiper - though the juvenile Temminck's Stint which I had hoped would stick until the weekend seemed to have moved on.

I have seen several Lesser Yellowlegs, but not since my first at Abberton Reservoir in 1998 (before I was into photography) had I seen one so close

The white rump was obvious in flight

This reminds me of the cartoon Roadrunner

A good view of the open wing and tail

On leaving Porth Hellick, a few Wheatears punctuated the walk around the perimeter of the airfield as we ambled through the heat of the midday sun which had by then burnt off the grey clouds of early morning. The Standing Stones field in the Old Town proved to be a bit of a migrant trap with a Red-backed Shrike and a couple each of Spotted Flycatcher and Whinchat providing some variety. A Clouded Yellow which buzzed quickly past was my first of the year - Scilly is always a good place to see them.

Common Sandpiper, Porth Hellick

Dunlin, Porth Hellick

I thought we might have another American vagrant on our hands when Rowan said 'Dad, what's this Black Duck?' Hopes were dashed when I raised my bins to this iridescent freak-show reject!

Small Copper at Porth Hellick

All too soon Rowan and I had to return to the airport for our 1425 return flight - but it had already been a memorable day. A brief cruise around Davidstow Airfield on the way home failed to produce the hoped for Buff-breasted Sandpiper (one was found there today) but that still couldn't wipe the smile off our tired and happy faces. Looking back I can't quite believe I agonised so much over whether or not to go, and next time I have resolved to be more decisive. For me, that will mean eschewing the usual full business case development process in favour of just the outline version, slimming down the cost-benefit analysis to a mere 10 pages, and restricting the normally extensive stakeholder consultation to just immediate family. And maybe a few close friends...

Juv Red-backed Shrike near the Old Town

Spotted Flycatcher in the same field as the Shrike

The Flycatcher shares a branch with a Whinchat

Rowan gets the hang of photography at Porth Hellick

A wader week

My travels over half-term enabled me to catch up with some common and some rarer members of my favourite family of birds: the waders. Diverse, colourful, and capable of amazing migrations, and, in the case of rare ones, generally untainted by the possibility of escapes from cages like songbirds or collections like the waterfowl!

This stunning summer plumaged Curlew Sandpiper was at Titchfield Haven in Hampshire (#192)

Superb views from the Meon Shore hide

An arctic breeder, Curlew Sandpiper winters mostly in Africa

Also at Titchfield Haven, the Greater Yellowlegs, a very rare vagrant from America - I couldn't resist going back for seconds

The plumage has advanced significantly since I first saw this bird in April. Compare the bolder, darker streaking on the head, neck and flanks with...

...this shot taken on 11th April. They breed in the boreal regions of Canada and Alaska and migrate as far south as South America

Also along the coast from the Yellowlegs, this tiny Red-necked Phalarope (#193) spent a day at Sidlesham Ferry Pool in West Sussex. Here with a much larger Black-tailed Godwit

I arrived late in the day when the bird was distant and against the light. A few pairs breed on the northern and western isles - one fitted with a geolocator clocked up a 16,000-mile round trip during its annual migration, flying from Shetland across the Atlantic via Iceland, south down the eastern  US, across the Caribbean and ending up off the coast of Ecuador and Peru

On leaving Bempton last week, I went to Frampton Marsh in Lincolnshire where a pair of Black-winged Stilts had appeared

This is the female

And here the pair - male on the right. A widespread species across Europe, Asia and the Mediterranean, 'our' birds are thought to come from populations on the near continent

Commoner waders at Frampton included Lapwing...

This Lapwing was at Titchfield Haven

Redshank, Frampton Marsh. A Temminck's Stint and a White-rumped Sand passed through the day after I did!

Avocets seemed to be doing well wherever I went - they were breeding successfully at Blacktoft Sands in Yorkshire, Frampton Marsh in Lincs and Titchfield Haven in Hampshire

This bird at Titchfield, photographed from the same hide as the Curlew Sandpiper at the start of this post, appeared to be making a nest scrape

 

TGIF

Last year I managed a British tick every month until July, but after a disastrous start to 2015, Little Bustard-wise, this year did not exactly get off to a flyer. It wasn't just a lack of opportunity but a lack of rarities which I have yet to see, the inevitable diminishing returns of twitching taking their toll.

Red-throated Pipit: a long way from home, but at least I didn't have to identify it 'on call'...

Workshy and retired birders will scoff at this, but conscientious breadwinners, burdened by full-time employment, will surely recognise what I mean when I say that there is nothing worse than a short-staying mega which turns up during the working week and bales before you have even plucked up the courage to ask if you could be relieved of parenting/shopping/DIY duties on Saturday for a bit of R&R. If travelling the country in a state of heightened anxiety can be described as R&R.  

...and thankfully it turned up the day before I went 'on call'

Spring is usually the time of maximum frustration as short-staying megas tend to turn up at inconvenient times and not hang about. Spring 2015 seems to have bucked the trend though, with the star birds turning up on weekends, lingering for a bit and even coming back for seconds after an initially brief stay. So much so that, since the start of April, I have been able to see a Greater Yellowlegs and a Hudsonian Godwit within one county of my home in Dorset, a Great Blue Heron in slightly farther afield Scilly, and a Red-throated Pipit on the edge of the Peak District. Three of which were new British birds for me in consecutive weekends.

Hudsonian Godwit - a mere (Meare?) 60 miles from home, and on a Saturday

News of the Yellowlegs and the Godwit also broke sufficiently early in the day to allow me to nip out before the rest of the family were fully mobilised and get back before I was really missed. Even the Pipit could have been twitched on the day of its discovery, though being 5 hours away I am not sure 'I'm just popping out for a paper' would have cut the mustard by way of an excuse, so I had to wait until the following day for that.

Greater Yellowlegs - even closer at 56 miles from home. And a big thanks to the staff at Titchfield Haven who returned my lost memory card - a credit to Hampshire County Council who run the reserve!

Of course this fortunate streak must come to an end - probably this weekend, as I am again 'on call' and have to stay within an hour or so of HQ - precisely the constraint which deprived me of the chance to clap eyes on the Little Bustard at the turn of the year. So I guess I'll just sit tight, ride it out and put away my twitching boots for the next few days. Unless of course that breeding plumaged male Rock Thrush decides to pitch up on Portland. Preferably on Saturday...

The Great Blue Heron arrived on a Tuesday, but had the decency to stay until the weekend



Greater Yellowlegs at Titchfield Haven

My only previous Greater Yellowlegs was seen distantly on a Scottish trip, so much so that my photos looked like they had been taken from back in England. When another was found in neighbouring Hampshire today a short-range twitch seemed on. Brett phoned to suggest sharing a lift and a couple of hours later we were arriving at Titchfield Haven, hustling for parking and shelling out for permits at the reserve centre where I bumped into Paul, last seen when we went Cuckoo-dipping to Cornwall. We all made our way briskly to a packed Meon Shore hide but the haste proved unnecessary as the rare American visitor was asleep some distance away.

It remained so for some time before eventually making its way on to the mud and heading towards us. After some aggro with a Black-headed Gull it flew off calling to a pool nearer the road, and the hide emptied out as birders followed in its general direction. We stayed put, chimping to see what sort of shots we had got. A couple of minutes later, Brett was just remarking on the Greenshank-like call given by the Yellowlegs when a Greenshank-like call rung out from nearby. I looked up and there it was, on the nearest island not many yards out from where we stood. Cue smoke from the motor drives...

After an extended display of feeding and preening, the Yellowlegs took off, did a wide circuit of the lagoon, climbed in height and headed off to the south and out of view. Birders were still arriving as it was in the air but we couldn't get them on to it, and it wasn't seen again before dusk.

 

Photo ticks

Following a recent recount, it turns out that the Paddyfield Warbler (below) I saw in Sussex earlier in the year was the 400th species of bird I've photographed in Britain. My British list is 428 so there are quite a few that I have seen but not photographed. Most, but not all, of the 400 are on my website, and only shame prevents me from uploading those that aren't.


Paddyfield Warbler - my 400th UK photo tick

Which raises an interesting question - when is a photo tick not a photo tick? The normal rule for seeing a bird - 'if you can't ID it, you can't tick it' - could be applied. But there are one or two among the 400 which I have seen perfectly well enough to identify, but of which I only have a crap photo. As a statement of fact, rather than aesthetic judgement, I have photos of them whether I like it or not, even if its a blurry dot. Take my recent Greater Yellowsmudge pictures (below). It was the Greater Yellowlegs (it called, flew around to reveal a square white rump and stood next to a Greenshank for size comparison), but could you rule out Lesser (or, indeed, bumfluff on the lens) on the strength of this photo?

Is it a (i) Greater Yellowlegs (ii) Lesser Yellowegs (iii) Daddy Longlegs. FIIK.

Or should the rule be, if a stranger could identify it, then that's OK? But then which stranger? And how competent would they have to be? Take this Goshawk (below). 'Pigeon', my mum would say. But I bet Goshwak worshippers could tell what it is. The best birders could probably identify some of my blurry dots which I couldn't if I was the stranger being shown the same photo. So what does that make me? [Ed: a bit too neurotic perhaps?] Ok, ok, perhaps I'm over-analysing it. It's my list. I make the rules. And right now it's a whopping 400.

Is it (i) Goshawk (ii) Sparrowhawk (iii) lint on the sensor?

Has it got the legs?

Yellowlegs, that is. My uber-dip of 2011 was undoubtedly the Greater Yellowlegs in Northumberland which ruined a perfectly good twitch by not showing for me. A few days off and a hire car last weekend provided an opportunity to catch up with it again as it had been present every day for about 3 months at the Loch of Strathbeg in Aberdeenshire. I wouldn't twitch that far in a weekend let alone a day, but a mini-break with a day on the Isle of May and a return journey via the grouse moors of County Durham provided the padding for what would otherwise have been a ridiculously long way to go for a single bird. My brother put me up in Stirling for a few nights, which gave me a chance to see my nephew on his 5th birthday, adding the veneer of a respectable family visit to the enterprise.

Greater Yellowlegs. Honest. I was wearing hat and gloves as it was so cold, but there was still a wicked haze over the Tower Pool making even digiscoping difficult. 

 Arriving on Friday and with family civilities dispensed with, I set off north from Stirling early on Saturday morning. Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen and Peterhead came and went, and just when I thought I was going to fall off the map I reached Strathbeg. With no one around I set up the scope full of hope but careful scanning produced nothing. Just as I was contemplating a nervous breakdown another birder turned up who had seen the Yellowlegs the previous day and was able to point me roughly in the right direction.

A terrible flight shot - but even in this the square white rump can be seen

I had been looking too close, but on scanning the more distant Tower Pool we saw the bird almost immediately, it's legs aglow despite the great distance. A 700m walk to the Tower Pool hide produced a slightly less appalling view, but from here I was able to compare it with a Greenshank with which it was associating - apart from the obvious difference in leg colour it looked a shade bigger, paler and more speckled. I even heard it call and was treated to a fly-around which revealed the square white rump.

Adult Little Gull

A sense of relief was accompanied by a burst of adrenalin which kept me going as I watched a stunning adult Little Gull, its 1st summer companion and a healthy flock of Tree Sparrows near the visitor centre.

Adult Little Gull

A couple of hours later, as I wandered up the Ythan Estuary searching for the semi-resident King Eider (unsuccessfully as it turned out), my body and brain slumped in unison and one crumpled, exhausted twitcher retired to the car for a lie down. Unfortunately the car was one of those tiny Peugeots which could not be laid down in, so I had to settle for a power nap before heading back to Stirling.

Tree Sparrow