The Standlake Birder

  One thing you can definitely say about this hobby is expect the unexpected!    As lunchtime approached yesterday I was thinking about starting to pack for Shetland when some really startling news started to appear on social media. A mega rare American Common Nighthawk had been found roosting on someone’s garden fence in Wantage!   The initial chatter on twitter was that surely this was a Eurasian Nightjar, a nice bird in its own right but not particularly rare, but pictures soon appeared confirming its stellar identity.   The fence owner had spotted the bird at 07:00 and thought it was a Nightjar. He was concerned for its welfare as it was asleep and not moving. Nightjars are in fact , crepuscular which means they are most active at dawn and dusk and roost in the day. While they are normally well hidden during daylight hours they will occasionally roost out in the open, for example on fence posts.     Oxford bird recorder and brilliant bird artist Ian Lewington was called in to check

    The Dotterel is less than an annual bird for me. In fact that last Dotterel I saw was in the Spring of 2019 on a trip to the Outer Hebrides with Jeremy.  So when two particularly confiding individuals were found on Cleeve Common just 20 or so miles from home visiting them was a no-brainer.   The Dotterel breeds in the Arctic tundra from Norway to eastern Siberia. Small numbers also breed on the Scottish mountains and the first ones I ever saw a number of years ago were  on a trip to the Cairngorms with Jeremy. They are strongly migratory wintering  from Morocco eastwards to Iran. Small numbers are seen in England during their autumn migration, usually on grassy hill tops.   They are attractive brown and black streaked birds with a broad white eye-stripe and an orange-red chest band when in breeding plumage. The bird is tame and unsuspecting and the term "dotterel" has, apparently, been applied contemptuously to mean an old fool!! The English name is said to date from the

Red-Necked Phalarope On Wednesday this week I decided to do a birding day trip to Spurn where the target bird was an Artic Warbler, a bird still needed for my UK list. The Artic Warbler is by no means the rarest of vagrants but many tend to be one day wonders with a predominance of records in Shetland and the Western Isles. There were also a few other nice back-up birds in the Spurn area if I dipped the Artic.   Without a break Spurn is a 3.5 hour drive for home and I would normally get up at silly o’clock to avoid the traffic. However, with our Doberman still recovering from her recent operation, see here , I had to walk our other dog before I left. With it now not being light until 06:00 this delayed my departure to just before 07:00. Checking RBA during an on-route coffee stop told me that the Artic had been seen again early doors that morning, normally an encouraging sign as birds, if they relocate or continue their migration, tend to do so overnight.   The Artic has been reported