Mega City!

The past week or so has been particularly rewarding birding-wise with three MEGAs and some excellent back-up birds to boot. First up was an osprey - nothing mega about that you might think but its location, in the skies above my house, instantly promoted it to 'monster' status. Yes, a house tick and one of the best birds I've ever had from my humble abode with its tiny garden and general lack of interesting habitat for miles around. YET - it's my 8th raptor species here and furthermore the last 3 house/ garden ticks have been in a league of their own. Just a week before the osprey I was going through some pics of redpolls that had been visiting my feeder last winter - one was quite clearly a mealy! Not sure how I missed it at the time, but there's no question as to its I/D. The other five star bird from last winter was waxwing, with a number of birds which visited on 4 separate occasions and got me grinning from ear to ear.

mealy redpoll - retrospective identification!

A look at my first pied-billed grebe for 15 years was next on the agenda when I was offered a lift for one at Rutland Water, a locality tantalisingly close to Cambridgeshire on a very typical date for an arrival of this rare yank. The bird was present just 2 days so I was lucky to see it on its second. I went with Brendan and together we arrived rather late, with a longer walk than expected. We had views to around 100 metres, with a summer plumaged great northern diver and a single osprey providing distractions from the star bird.

After missing the 1999 crag martin in the Midlands/ Yorkshire (I was in New Zealand and I wasn’t confident I could get to it in time, it being an unpredictable hirundine n’ all) I was delighted to hear last week of the presence of one at Flamborough, though somewhat dismayed to realise that news had broken some two hours before I knew anything of it! I had Ben for the morning so I may not have been able to go but still…thtat's amateurish!

I hastily laid plans and decided to hot foot it north without trying to fill the car. I just wanted to be there as soon as possible. But I was still behind with news and it took a long time for news to come through to me that it had done a bunk. By this time I was just an hour away and I decided to divert to Hornsea Mere, aware of how the last bird had shown up at reservoirs and gravel pits.

As I drove in to the car park a female mallard was being gang-raped by a bunch of drakes. I broke up the party a couple of times but my efforts were futile and their efforts immediately resumed. Here I met Will Soar and we spent the rest of the afternoon checking the hirundines, with 150+ sand martin present and up to 3 swallows. A black swan, female long-tailed duck & velvet scoter along with a pair of tree sparrows and 40+ goldeneye and a sleeping fox provided welcome distractions but there was no sign of the martin.

non-crag martin

After some local fish and chips we headed to the Crown & Anchor pub in Kilnsea where we joined Ash Howe and headed onwards to the Warren at Spurn where we spent the night.

We were up at 6 and vis-migging all morning, hoping for a lucky flyover. A few migrants appeared – little tern, whimbrel, wheatear, LRP and a handful of hirundines, mainly swallows, but still no martin. The other 2 left at 11am, just 20 minutes before a serin flew over – excellent for me but unlucky for them. That was to be my lucky flyover but 20 minutes after I left, it apparently returned to the obs and showed well in the bushes along with a 2^nd bird – it was my turn to feel gripped off when I saw the photo later on Twitter.

sunrise at Spurn

flyover serin - honest!

With no crag martin sightings for some 24 hrs I headed for home but was stopped in my tracks roughly half way by the news the martin had been sighted again, still in the area of Flamborough Head, though it had been lost to view. I waited at the services for more news. It came. I burned rubber and the VTEC engine system on my trusty Honda Civic Type-R got me to Flamborough in record time. True birding in the fast lane!

As I neared Flamborough it started to rain. This was not good news and I was convinced I'd miss the bird. But on arrival it was showing well at North Landing and soon afterwards was swooping over our heads, sometimes just 3 or 4 metres away - bloody awesome, and 15 years of hurt instantly evaporated!

crag martin!

Last birding trip of the period was one made after work to the Ouse Washes. One particular site near Pymore has racked up an extraordinary collection of rarities in recent weeks, including a drake green-winged teal which was my target on this visit. I joined Nene Washes warden Jon Taylor and started scrutinising a tiny flooded dyke in the distance, the only water for miles around. The light and distance involved made for tough viewing but eventually a rare teal did materialise - but despite being a drake with a white vertical stripe between the breast and flank it wasn't the green-winged, it was the relocating drake Baikal from Fen Drayton! Soon afterwards the GWT appeared, trying to impress the female teal with its head-bobbing display. There wasn't time to search for the nearby great white egret or American wigeon and apparently the following day a pair of glossy ibises and a ruddy shelduck were present on the same area of water as the teal, and a day later still, a cattle egret showed up nearby at the Welches Dam reserve. A real purple patch for one of the best birding sites in this part of the country - As Arnie once said - 'I'll be back!'

That lil' bit o' water - Rarity Central!

Tale of a Teal and a Perplexing Pipit Puzzle

Since my last update I’ve seen a few bits n’ bobs. The dusky warbler in Suffolk – an elusive little thing, I was surprised to see it on arrival, but failed to get decent views in the 3.5 hours I waited.

 

Then there was the teal. A drake Baikal in fact, just 20 minutes from home. It was found on a WeBs count a fortnight earlier and news wasn’t released at the time as it was assumed to be an escape. But when Mike Everett came across it and put the news on the Cambirds Google Group it was MEGA’d by the info services – ensuring it was taken seriously by the birding community.

I was in London when news broke but got it at last light, having spent an hour trying to find the right spot on a right wild goose chase – or should I say plastic duck chase? Who knows where it’s from, but with the species now firmly established in Cat A of the British list I don’t see why this one won’t be given the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway I had a MEGA on one of my local patches so was happy to give it the benefit of the doubt, returning a few days later for seconds. These two trips gave me my first migrants of the year (garganey & sand martin though I’d also had a few singing chiffs and blackcaps prior to this) and some notable mammals – badger and weasel crossed the road in front of my car on the outskirts of nearby villages and a large bat was hunting over the guided busway close to where I’d parked on my first visit. It could have been a noctule but was inaudible and quite low-flying (and possibly not quite big enough) leaving me with thoughts of Leisler’s. I returned with a bat detector on my second visit but couldn’t relocate it, neither did I notice the nearby mink, which was apparently lying freshly dead on the busway just yards from where I parked.

A quick stop at Connaught Water a few days later failed to produce the hoped-for smew (and no mandarins either) but there was a nice sinensis cormorant in breeding plumage.

continental cormorant (sinensis), Connaught Water

I don’t usually check these but as this one was conveniently close with an obvious whitish head and some deep orange bare facial skin I thought it would be a continental one so grabbed a passing shot, one that shows the correct shape of facial skin for this form, with the rear border falling at roughly a right-angle to the gape-line. A useful plate illustrating this difference can be seen here http://www.irishbirding.com/birds/web/Display/sighting/48370/Continental_Cormorant.html

Yesterday I headed to the Ouse Washes for a few hours. The Washes were graced with typically good numbers of birds – 2 pairs of garganey, 50+ ruff, a few hundred black’wits and at least 80 pintail were all noteworthy. A spoonbill over the back (present since the previous day) represents only my second county record, and a flyover yellow wag was my first of the year.

And then I came across this pipit.

 

I’ve had some tricky gulls to sort out recently but passerines have generally been straightforward. Not so the small blushing pipit creeping about near Welches Dam Hide. It was on its own and so was I. And I didn’t know what it was. It spent much of its time part hidden in the vegetation in windy conditions and took on different appearances as the sun peeped in and out of the clouds; I went from water pipit to Littoralis rock but it was clearly neither of these, and I was forced to consider other options – coutelli water pipit and Siberian buff-bellied (spp japonicus) can both show similar toned underparts to this bird but I’m not that familiar with them, though I knew the whole rock-water-buff-bellied pipit complex consisted of birds with plain mantles, unlike the one I was watching. I knew meadow pipit can sometimes be rather pinky-orange below, but this bird had a grey head, too, though several other features seemed to fit meadow pipit. It was time to get some photos and sort it out afterwards.

Aberrant meadow pipit ('whistleri-type' or erythristic), Ouse Washes

Aberrant meadow pipit ('whistleri-type' or erythristic), Ouse Washes

Aberrant meadow pipit ('whistleri-type' or erythristic), Ouse Washes

Aberrant meadow pipit ('whistleri-type' or erythristic), Ouse Washes

Aberrant meadow pipit ('whistleri-type' or erythristic), Ouse Washes

 After doing some reading up at home I was happy the bird was an aberrant meadow pipit, one of the ‘funny’ ones occasionally misidentified as red-throated pipit and regularly attributed to the claimed Irish & Hebridean race whistleri, but possibly just an erythristic (excess red pigment) form of nominate pratensis. Among the features which indicate this bird is a meadow pipit are the small pale bill, virtually complete white eye-ring only broken marginally at either end (more obviously in front of the eye in rock/ water-types), clean cut black streaking below, heavily streaked mantle, streaked crown, indistinct supercilium and pale legs. Its call seemed less squeaky than a normal mipit's and it didn't call on take-off. It shows moult contrast on the greater coverts but I think this can be shown by both young and older birds, rendering ageing perhaps unsafe at this time of year. Of note is the fact that the pinky-buff of the underparts is echoed throughout the bird's plumage forming the ground colour of the mantle and also showing through on the grey of the head. Could this be more suggestive of a pigment condition perhaps? Personally I'm not sure I buy the whistleri theory - only a tiny proportion of whistleri look anything other than nominate pratensis and some individuals seen elsewhere (eg here) have been in heavy moult and perhaps more local in origin than from the Celtic West. 'Whistleri' is however a good search term for Googling if you are wanting to see more pics of these birds. There is a marked peak in records in March and April and this bird fits the pattern neatly - what are they and where have they come from? We may yet find out. For another at this time of year in Cambridgeshire (from 2006) see here. 

A couple of my own pics taken in the Hebs last year appear below and show just how similar most birds are to nominate pratensis. For further reading see Richard Porter's article on these aberrant type meadow pipits in Birding World (2005) with particular reference to one photographed on Blakeney Point.

meadow pipit (pres race whistleri), Harris (August 2013)

meadow pipit (pres race whistleri), Harris (August 2013)

 And to finish with I noticed this pair of great tits at my garden feeder this morning. The female is very washed out - they're like chalk & cheese! Could this be down to simple variation? The colours are similar to some juvs I seen but it's too early for a juvenile and there's no yellow flanges. I've seen some odd great tits before, including a couple of melanistic-looking ones in the Midlands. Or perhaps it could even be a bird of eastern origin? Comments welcome! 

References
Porter R. 2005 Birding World Volume 18 number 4