Frustration on Shetland and a Dark Shadow over St Abb's

On Tuesday, with Mark and Dave, I visited St Abb’s Head for the Sardinian warbler on my return from Shetland. We had already missed the trip target (thick-billed warbler) and at St Abb’s we added the skulking Sylvia to the dip list! A takking lesser whitethroat tried its best to convince us and a yellow-browed remained unseen in a clump of sycamores. It was my first visit to this site and I remarked as we waited for our quarry that all would be forgiven if an Eleanora’s flew over, a bird I could well picture at this setting in October.

Perhaps 25 minutes later a large dark falcon rocketed through the valley.
 

From the very first glimpse I was convinced from its structure (chunky with fairly short wings) it was nothing more than an exceptionally dark (melanistic) juvenile female peregrine. I fired off some shots in the seconds it was in view and a quick analysis of the photos later failed to change my mind. Yet it was scary and needs highlighting. Surely such birds could be the source of some of our claimed Eleanora’s?

So what of the Shetland trip? Though the original target is now perhaps best forgotten, we did get in a weekend’s birding, the highlights of which came in the form of an Eastern olivaceous warbler at Hoswick and a short-toed lark at Sumburgh. I found a probable Siberian chiffchaff in Lerwick which failed to call and we came across yellow-browed warblers (in 1’s and 2’s) at just about every location we checked. Other highlights included merlin, male redstart, whinchat and common crossbill.

Eastern Ollie, with less than 20 British records, still holds on to its MEGA status and this individual represents my second in the UK and my first for more than 18 years. This bird often showed very well but
unfortunately I had wandered off when it gave prolonged views for 5 minutes or so in the sunshine! I did manage however a view of it sat out in the open for maybe 10 seconds so can’t really complain.

The Sooty Show & Incredible Edibles

A packed Thursday saw me up at 3.45am to help out with a bat survey and I used the opportunity to do some birding as well. A juvenile red kite and a few green sandpipers provided the highlight at Ouse & Berry Fen and later I had a first in the form of some sexton beetles beneath felt at Mildenhall - larger than I'd imagined and covered in some parasitic mite, perhaps from the body of an unseen victim.

Stone curlew numbers were down on last week's visit (probably as a result of the differing time of day) but a woodlark overhead was only my second record at this site.

It was on to Cambridge for a three course meal at a restaurant with some friends but when news broke mid afternoon of a sooty/ balearic shearwater at Grafham I hastily made plans to visit. A couple of hours later I was there, watching what is likely to become the first ever accepted record of an inland sooty shearwater in Britain. The only previous contender was a bird in 1988 at the same site - removed after a review last year which concluded balearic could not be ruled out from the evidence available.

The bird showed well off the dam down to about 50m or so and I heard after I left it drifted right up to the shore. It wasn't seen to fly and was probably unwell. There was no sign of it the following day. Bearing in mind this is a southern hemisphere species perhaps it's not a wonder that it never seems to turn up inland but rather that is shows up in such good numbers on seawatches at all. At this time of year sooties can be seen in their hundreds at the right locations and with the right weather conditions (though my personal best is a rather more modest 19!)

Moving back to mammals and last night saw me take a little sojourn down to Wendover where the edible dormice showed very well. They were there when I arrived at dusk and soon the woods were alive with their little calls, the odd individual posing in the beam of a torch. These mammals (often known by their scientific name Glis glis, or a shortened version, simply Glis) have been around since last century when they were introduced to Tring Park and though they haven't spread far they have certainly built up a respectable population density. Non-native invasives they may be but cute they most certainly are too - unless you live in one of the homes they choose to invade (over 400 have been found in a single loft before).

19th-20th September

A busy couple of days saw me help out with a couple of surveys and sneak in a bit of batting and birding too. On the 19th I popped in to Ouse Fen where 5 or 6 hobbies were sat around on posts along Cuckoo Drove. They included an obliging 2nd calendar year bird sat close to the main track. A little later a bittern showed in flight. It's not quite the Somerset Levels or Minsmere but this species is seen now on most visits to the site, proving they're going from strength to strength in the county.

That evening I joined some bat catchers at Grafham. It was quiet but we caught an adult female brown long-eared. There were a good few pips about and we glimpsed a Myotis spp, a Natterer's or Daubenton's (I also think I had Natterer's at Over Village earlier in the evening). Tawny owls were vocal at both sites. I got home about 12.40am.

The following day I called in to Lynford Arboretum where two young male two-barred crossbills were showing well with at least 8 common crossbills. Going through my photos afterwards I noticed a juv female next to one of them - how did I manage to miss that in the field?!! Strangely a tawny owl was vocal here too, despite it being mid afternoon!

On the way home I called in to a traditional stone curlew site and counted an impressive 65+ birds. I pay about one visit a year to this location and last year counted an astonishing 88 individuals, though I believe counts of over 100 have been made as both adult and juvs gather from miles around before embarking on their journey south.

September livening up!

Last week was a busy one. A pretty awesome weather forecast for a Norfolk seawatch on Tuesday failed to deliver the goods, though I did manage 2 or 3 sooties, a black tern and a puffin from a 2.5 hr seawatch off Sheringham. I also paid my respects to the dodgy sparrow at Northrepps - put out as a possible Italian, but notably lacking any white around the eye and perhaps more likely to be an erythristic house sparrow or a hybrid.

On Thursday it was an early finish at work to bomb down to Oare Marshes for a spotted crake. This bird showed like a dream, giving great views down to 7 metres or so. The scrape offered excellent views of a wonderful array of waders which included at least 7 juv curlew sands and 4 little stints. An impressive flock of 1,000+ redshank was also present.

Torrential rain on Friday night failed to dampen my enthusiasm for some local mammal trapping at Fowlmere and it certainly didn't keep the rodents away either. A total of 15 wood mice were trapped, with 2 bank voles, 2 common shrews and 3 yellow-necked mice. One wood mouse escaped in Doug's hut and another ran all over Mark before ending up on his head where it launched itself high into the air and made good its escape!

I've only seen one great snipe, on my London local patch at the age of 14. Views were poor with just the head visible above grass in the fading light of dusk. It's always been the one and only bird on my list with less than spotless credentials. I knew I needed to see another and on Sunday I got the chance. One had turned up at Kilnsea, Spurn, the previous day, and to my surprise was still around the following morning. It was time to Fire up the Quattro though in the event I left the Type-R behind and borrowed Liz's slower but more economical Skoda! I collected Robert Smith at Stamford and continued north to Kilnsea, arriving at around midday.

The bird was showing on arrival and wow, was it showing!! I hadn't realised just quite how close people had been getting to this one. A small crowd on the verge were staring into a roadside ditch and there, just metres away, was a very unconcerned great snipe! Just occasionally rarities turn up which have little or no fear of people and those twitches can fast become all-time classics. Last winter I got within 2 metres of the 'pet' buff-bellied pipit at QMR and within a metre of the Suffolk Hornemann's arctic redpoll; pine grosbeak, lancey, isabelline wheatear and yellow-rumped warbler have all allowed me to grill them to a few feet in the past.

Now the irony of this twitch is that I'd left my camera at home! It was a deliberate but stupid move as I thought on this occasion digiscoping would suffice. Digiscoping turned out to be extremely difficult and I ended up inserting my memory card into Robert's bridge camera to get some shots. At one stage the snipe got spooked by something in the ditch and flew out of it towards the crowd, landing just 2 metres in front of me - amazing! It scuttled off and re-entered the ditch a few metres further down, where it started to poke around a discarded can of Strongbow.

A barred warbler residing 100 yards along the road was a handy bonus bird but I had to return to the mesmerising snipe which by now was snoozing in the grass in the corner of the field the other side of the hedge. After a while it had a brief preen and ran back to the ditch and eventually we managed to tear ourselves away.

There are more records of great snipe than any other BB rarity but it remains a tough one to see, with most of the 2 or 3 annual records coming from Shetland. Many are only seen in flight after flushing so to get one like this is all the more remarkable. Long live the Kilnsea great snipe, a true birder's bird!

STOP PRESS - The snipe was found dead on the morning of 17th, thought to have been killed by a cat. A sad end to a wonderful bird and an unfortunate sentence to finish with (above). RIP.

A Once in a Lifetime Opportunity missed!!

This incredible photo of a 10 - 12 ft thresher shark was taken from the Celtic Wildcat off the Pembrokeshire coast on Monday and has today appeared in several national newspapers. I was there on this small boat and I missed it. And for a shark enthusiast like me, oh, it hurts, more than any dip. This photo will haunt me forever, it will also be perhaps the best wildlife sighting I almost had. But I'm delighted for the Sea Trust to whom it has brought much-needed funds and publicity.

On the same trip we had a huge superpod of maybe 500 - 1,000 common dolphins, spread over a huge area, and many had young calves which they brought right up to the boat.

I did my usual stop in the Forest of Dean each way and had a few interesting sightings including lesser horseshoes at their usual roost and the unexpected sight of 15 spotted flycatchers in a flock that also comprised a tree pipit, nuthatch and family of willow warblers, a somewhat bizarre ensemble of birds!

Completing the set!

In 2007 I saw the last British butterfly which had hitherto eluded me - Chequered skipper. As I didn't carry a camera during most of my early butterfly trips I thought it would be worth completing the set again - with photos. And with this clouded yellow photographed recently at Kings Langley, that's all the British species, job done! What a great year it's been for butterflies. Fantastic!

It's been an excellent clouded yellow year this year and there was a recent report of 140 in a single field in Sussex! I looked for them on Therfield Heath 2 days running this week and saw just one. It was too quick for the camera and I failed to relocate it so I turned my attentions to the red kites and the many chalkhill blues present - a couple of minor aberrations noted including this worn female with white internal spots on the hindwing.

I also visited Wimpole a few evenings ago and got some practice in with the detector. One barbastelle noted and one noctule, despite the occasional light rain.

More Celtic Adventures!

Well as usual I’ve not had time to update the blog. That is to say things have been happening faster than I can blog about it. That’s a good thing, it means I’ve been covering miles and seeing stuff rather than sat at a laptop! At such times it’s usually better to let the photos do the talking but boy, there are a lot of photos, so here is a quick summary of what I’ve been up to.

27 July – 5 August – Rat Island & The Scottish Safari

Along with 5 others of my ‘ilk’ I went chasing round Scotland (including the Hebrides) after some unusual mammals. The main target was black rat, with the last substantive colony on the Shiants, uninhabited islands in the Minch, but we fitted in plenty of other targets. Scottish wildcat was a great one to finally get, and beaver was new for me too. That’s something that could be quoted out of context, I mean of course the animal that fells trees and dams rivers!! Actually that’s quite an achievement, how many animals have the ability to do that? A true architect is the beaver!

Beaver, Tayside, Scotland

Other highlights included pine marten, 3 cetacean species (the group managed 7!!!) including a fantastic pod of Risso’s dolphins just off the Butt of Lewis and we had some cracking views of sea eagle and especially golden eagle.

Black rat, Shiants

Risso's dolphin, Butt of Lewis, Hebrides

Razorbill, Shiants

Puffin, Shiants

White-tailed eagle, Shiants

Golden eagle, Hebrides

juv wren, race hebridensis, Shiants

red grouse

Great skua, Shiants

As a group we managed an astounding 34 species but our own individual lists were very different. Of this I only saw 21 species (what was I doing??!!) so when I returned home I extended my own trip list by going straight out to Fowlmere for the evening. The result, 4 more species and a wonderful experience at a badger sett! Anyway it was quite a hardcore trip and the 3 vehicles used notched up over 2,000 miles each. Oops, that’s quite a carbon footprint.

Just days after returning from Scotland I headed for Wales to board the Celtic Wildcat on a cetacean survey day. Alas for the 2^nd time in a week the weather forced cancellation of a boat trip (the other being to St Kilda). It would have been a completely wasted trip had it not been for the glimpses of wild boar in the Forest of Dean caught in my car headlights and the delightful spectacle of a lesser horseshoe roost.

For those who couldn't afford to get to Fair Isle for the net-happy Swinhoe's petrel, one of the features of August 2013 was the influx of long-tailed blue butterflies, specifically the apparent brood which frequented a clifftop at Kingsdown near Dover (where up to 7 adults were reported by a single observer). With France in plain sight it seems perfectly feasible these are the progeny of a genuine migrant from the near continent rather than a bonus purchase of someone’s mange tout from the local supermarket (as happened recently in Cardiff!). I mean even my phone went French for a bit we were so close. I found a female Long-tailed blue when I visited Kingsdown on 14^th, flitting about the Everlasting pea plants growing in pink profusion on the cliff top. An examination of the plants afterwards yielded eggs on about half of them. That’s about 10 eggs in a 20 minute search – not bad at all! We headed home satisfied, stopping off to see the Bonaparte’s gull (again!) at Oare Marshes. Shortly afterwards I sent my photos to a guy in Sussex who had also found LTB eggs in his neighbourhood and was considering pupating the larva. Exciting times indeed for this little continental insect, though the good times may be short-lived as I hear they find it hard lasting out the winter. Then again, surely it gets colder on the continent? Something to look into, perhaps.