More holiday snaps

Having a lovely time in Cornwall blah blah weather has been fine blah blah spent most days on the beach blah blah, the usual postcard drivel, so here's some photos. 

My first Wheatears of the year were seen last week at Marazion

Several males were along the seafront and on the coastal defences

And just the one female

I spent a few hours checking Mount's Bay for a 1st winter drake Surf Scoter and eventually caught up with it from the sea wall in Penzance

This shot shows the diagnostic white patch on the back of the neck and cocked tail

And here showing the pale belly of a first winter bird

A Little Tern was also fishing in the shallows in Mount's Bay

Raven, St Michael's Mount

Rock Pipit, Mount's Bay

Choughs are becoming easier to see around the Cornish coast these days

This one flew over us as we walked the South West Coast Path

A few Whimbrel were seen on migration

An old friend hoves into view off Mousehole

Meadow Pipit enjoying the sunshine

Sparrowhawk hunting at Porthgwarra

At my age, I need a little help with birdspotting. Rowan at Porthgwarra.

Chiffchaff, Tintagel

Fulmar, Tintagel

Our last day in Cornwall was spent at Tintagel.

We spent the previous week telling the children that this was the citadel of Arthurian legend, and how we would find out about the round table, Arthur's exploits and those of his sidekick Merlin. Just about every interpretation board erected by English Heritage pointed out how it was unlikely Arthur ever went there, even if he existed. Which was doubtful. So that rather p***ed on our bonfire.






Holiday snaps

I'm on holiday with the family so am allowing myself the luxury of posting loads of photos without attempting to compose a coherent narrative. Liberating. I should do it more often.

I stumbled across this juvenile Glaucous Gull on a late evening visit to St Ives on Friday having left the camera behind. Fortunately it was still there yesterday.

Initially hidden behind some rocks it was eventually tempted out by someone's thrown away chips

With a Herring Gull for comparison

We considered buying some more chips to bring it closer but this proved unnecessary

Quite a brute!

Showing some aggression

Turnstone, St Ives

I had to get young Rowan to herd these tame Turnstones into the right position

 

Earlier in the day a Fulmar cruised the cliffs at Godrevy

Male Linnet, Gothian Sands

OK it's not a Crag Martin, bit still nice to see a Sand Martin

Several were perched on the fence at Gothian Sands

Rock Pipit, Gothian Sands

This Dunlin was one of a small party in the surf at Marazion today

A single Sanderling was also at Marazion

Not just good birding in Cornwall. A fair bit of this going on too.

My jam jar overfloweth

A brief visit home between holidays sans famille on Wednesday meant I could indulge in a walk around Swineham and a Chinese takeaway. The first of these was pretty good, adding a drake Garganey and Black-necked Grebe to my patch list and the number of birds I've seen within walking distance of home - a rare double these days. Both birds had been found by Marcus at the weekend and while I was doubtful they would await my return, my run of jamming in appeared to be continuing. Still a few Wigeon, Teal, Shoveler and Tufties on the gravel pits, and after that it would have seemed wrong to have crispy duck for supper, so I eschewed it in favour of an untickable but palatable sweet and sour chicken. But after three consecutive posts based on jam, the jar had to run out eventually - and so it did today as I started a short holiday in Cornwall to hear that a pair of Black-winged Stilts were on the patch. Doh!

A Little Gull on the pits was the third good bird of the evening.

A terrible photo - but summer plumaged Black-necked Grebe is a glamour bird for Swineham so any picture will do.

 

Another dollop of jam

Last year I made a habit of arriving at the scene of a rare bird sighting just hours after it had vanished or suffered an untimely death. This year, I seem to be catching up with them just before they disappear. Which I must admit is preferable.

Red-rumped Swallows have a habit of turning up in Dorset the minute my back is turned so it was no surprise one was found at Lodmoor the morning after I headed off for a long weekend in Devon. I headed back to Dorset early enough on Tuesday to look for it before work more in hope than expectation. On arrival I had the good fortune to bump into the finder Daragh Croxson who gave me the low down on its routine and minutes later it was swooping, hovering and chattering low over my head in brilliant early morning light. I couldn't stay long but the few pictures I took came out OK. A very characterful bird, which had gone within a couple of hours of my departure.

Beer with a large helping of jam

We're spending the weekend with the extended family in South Devon (one house, eight grown-ups, five children, several degrees of mayhem) so Claire picked me up after work on Friday night to head off. Checking the pager before leaving I could see that a Great Spotted Cuckoo had spent the afternoon on Beer Head. Barely a detour from our planned route, and after a sweaty canter, I arrived in its chosen field to jam in on it sitting in a hedge where it had apparently spent the previous couple of hours. 20 minutes later the sun went behind a cloud and it dropped into the hedge and it had not been seen again at the time of writing.

 

On good form(osa)

Lest further proof were needed that my family comes before birding (apparently, there are still some doubters out there), I must start by pointing out that I did not ditch Claire on Mother's Day to twitch the Baikal Teal in Cambridgeshire. And she's not even my Mother. Having spent the weekend tending to her every need it was back to work on Monday, followed by further slaving away on Tuesday, before I could book a day's leave yesterday in the hope of catching up with the Teal.

Drake Baikal Teal Anas formosa. It was like a composite of the best bits of a load of other good birds: elongated scapulars like a Garganey; the vertical white stripe on the fore-flank like a Green-winged Teal...

...and the long white crown stripes meeting at the back of the head like a Cream-coloured Courser. As for the teardrop below the eye, it's just pure Alice Cooper.

Jol Mitchell had agreed to co-pilot and we arrived at Fen Drayton RSPB shortly after 0800. Jol and I have a (so far) successful record of twitching together but a more neurotic and indecisive pair you would struggle to meet. So between us we proceeded to doubt and double doubt our perfectly clear site directions and the obvious brown signs pointing us to the reserve. Based on a Google Map we had convinced ourselves we needed to be heading down a road called 'The Busway'. It was a good job we didn't find it and try to drive along it as we may have found ourselves splatted by one of Cambridge's guided buses which were hurtling down their dedicated track at quite a lick.

The Baikal Teal was with a small flock of Common Teal and Wigeon, without which it's origin would undoubtedly be more suspect. Here with a Wigeon....

...and here with a Teal for comparison. A few decades ago Baikal Teal was thought to be heading for extinction, and while the population is still vulnerable to a variety of threats, it is growing rapidly.

On finding the right car park, we set off on the 20 minute hike to Moore Lake. While it was a longish walk by comparison to, say, going to the loo at home, it was flat and mostly on a massively over-engineered cycle path (complete with built in floor-level solar powered lights). So it was quite a shock that a steady stream of birders later followed us into the hide puffing and complaining about what a slog it was. Even allowing for Saharan smog, it did suggest that some of our brethren need to get a bit more exercise.

Not quite as pretty: Egyptian Geese at Fen Drayton

Baikal Teal was not the only tick at Fen Drayton for some birders - many had not seen a guided busway before either. At first it looks like a road but with all the flexibility and cars removed; but think of it like a cheap railway with rolling stock that can be used anywhere and it makes more sense. Trust me, in a previous life I was a columnist for a niche publication called Tramways and Urban Transit. I kid you not.

When we were a few hundred yards from the hide where the Baikal Teal had been seen consistently since Saturday, the pager delivered some unwelcome news: 'No sign of Baikal Teal...' Having convinced Jol I was not playing a sick April Fool joke, we carried on to the hide feeling pretty crestfallen. On arrival, the door opened, and a lady birder beamed at us: 'it's still here!'. I could have kissed her, and seconds later we were scoping one of the most exquisite ducks you could hope to see.

Just time on the way home to twitch a Red-breasted Goose at Stanpit Marsh - our second rare and stunning wildfowl of the day.

Stock Dove, Stanpit Marsh: best of British among the glamorous foreigners.

It was a particularly sweet moment as Baikal Teal was the 2nd of 3 birds which I missed whilst out of action before Christmas but have since caught up with. Only Orphean Warbler left to complete the grip-back hat-trick...