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| Audrey Hepburn |
March birding wise can be a bit of a funny month. Overwintering birds are starting to leave for their spring breeding sites but most summer migrants are still to arrive creating a short term lull. My birding friend Jeremy once described March to me as the month birders choose to go on honeymoon! The first indications of birding delights to come have, however, started to happened with a mass arrival of migrant Chiffchaffs from their African winter grounds in the past ten days. The song that gives them their name can now be heard in the hedgerows all around our house. My wife finds it a rather dull repetitive song but I always find the association of the song with the arrival of Spring very uplifting. The first migrant hirundines have also started to arrive. I say migrant in both cases as as our climate warms both Chiffchaffs and Swallows now overwinter in small numbers the UK.
Gulls divide opinion in marmite fashion amongst birders, i.e. you either love or hate them. The differences between species are often very subtle and plumage variations within a species can often make species seem to merge together. This is compounded by the complex moult cycles that gulls undertake with many taking 5 years to come into full adult plumage. This complexity, and the associated identification challenge, draws black belt birder to Gulls. I have, however, decided I hate them! Read on!
Perhaps the biggest gaping hole in my UK list is the American Ring-billed Gull. It’s a scarce but regular vagrant to the UK in small numbers every year. My problem with making the effort to twitch one is a more extreme case of my American Robin issue in that I have seen literately hundreds if not thousands of them in North American.
With this in mind, a gap in home projects requiring my attention and sunny spring weather forecast for Thursday led me to hatch a plan to explore Chew Valley. This is a location I have never birded before and there was the added attraction of a reported first winter Ring-billed Gull. My plan was to spend the first couple of hours at Chew Valley and then spend the rest of, hopefully, a leisurely day birding at Slimbridge.
I had studied the birders Gull bible, Gulls of Europe, Asia and North America by Klaus Olsen, the evening before and was comparatively confident I could pick out the Ring-billed Gull from the similar Common Gulls.
From the M5 my sat nav wanted to take me through Bristol to Chew Valley just south of the city. I thought this unwise and decided to take the longer route down the M5 to the Clevedon exit and then to Chew Valley via Yatton. I know this area well as I spent a number of years as MD of Oxford Instruments’ semiconductor division based in Yatton. The massive lake at Chew Valley is separated from a smaller area of water known as Herriott’s pool by a road bridge which had plenty of parking on either side. Herriott’s pool was the reported location of the Ring-billed Gull so I started to scope the gull flock from the bridge. There were three British Gull species present. Firstly, Black-headed Gulls which are fairly easy to do in all plumages. Secondly, Herring Gulls easily differentiated by their size. Lastly, and more challengingly, Common Gulls in all stages of moult and hence plumage. I was joined by a local birder who told me that the Ring-billed Gull was only occasionally seen on the lake and despite scoping the Gull flock several times neither of us could see it.
Rather than waste my entire day staring at Gulls, I decided to drive the 30 miles back to Slimbridge for a leisurely and chilled out bit of birding. The long staying Glossy Ibis was again reported in the wet fields just over the canal on the approach road to Slimbridge and as I slowed down to look for it the Ibis flew at little more than head hight over my car and dropped into the field. Five minutes earlier and I could have got some nice flight shots! I parked and took a few somewhat back lit pictures of the Ibis. It really is a very confiding bird compared to most I have seen, feeding obliviously just a few meters from its admirers.
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| Glossy Ibis |
I decided to have an early lunch and then do a tour of the bird hides. I ordered a bowl of butternut squash soup which was very disappointing. It tasted like the lovely soup that my wife makes from our home grown squash but watered down with a gallon on water such that it was very thin and lacked substance.
First stop was the hide overlooking the Rushy. In line with my previous comments it was much quieter than on my last visit in November. The Bewick Swans had all departed on their long migration to their artic breeding grounds and the common overwintering wildfowl flocks were much depleted. Balancing this movement out somewhat were the Avocets which breed at Slimbridge. They had started to accumulate with in excess of one hundred now on site. This schedule 1 species is the emblem of the RSPB and symbolises the bird protection movement in the UK more than any other species. Its return in the 1940s and subsequent increase in numbers represents one of the most successful conservation and protection projects. Chris Packham, of whom I’m a great admirer, calls them the Audrey Hepburn of birds, a very fitting description of this charismatic and unmistakable bird.
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| Audrey Hepburn |
Walking along the hides to the estuary tower a pair of Barnacle geese swam close by. They are said to be part of a feral flock, a description that confuses me and whose definition seems to be applied rather loosely. Feral birds are defined as ones that have escaped from domestication and have managed to establish breeding populations in the wild. The fact that they are escaped rather than introduced or reintroduced is a strange distinction to me. All Little Owls and most Red Kites we see in the UK are introduced but we are quite happy to tick them so when do self-sustaining populations of escaped birds become tickable, after 50 years, a thousand years or never?
Barnacle Goose
From the estuary tower I could see the flock of White-Fronted Geese still present and feeding on the pasture. These too will soon be heading north to their breeding grounds. I walked to the other side of the reserve and popped into the Kingfisher hide in front of which a male had been seen the previous day excavating a breeding burrow but there was no activity today. From the high vantage point of the Zeiss tower Cranes could be seen feeding on the distant riverbank. In the reeds in front of the hide very well camouflaged Snipe were snoozing in the sun.
Hidden Snipe
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| More out in the open at Pit 60 a few years ago |
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| Crane from a previous visit |
Come mid afternoon I checked RBA and the inevitable happened, the Ring-billed Gull was reported as being present at lunch time, so I did the only sensible thing any right minded person would do and went back!
Stupidly, I thought the Bristol traffic would have died down but it hadn’t and the direct 30 mile route through the centre took me almost 90 minutes. When I arrived back at Chew there were two other friendly local birders present. They had both seen the Gull on previous days and also confirmed that it was very irregular on the lake. It had been present for an hour or so at lunchtime before departing and despite the three of us scoping the lake until twilight of the Ring-billed Gull there was no sign. Just to cap it all, and totally contrary to the forecast, it then started raining.
Yes, I really do hate Gulls!
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