Tuesday was a birding day of great extremes, a Pied Wheatear that was so confiding that I could have picked it up and put it in my pocket and a Scoter flock so distant that I could hardly make individuals out.
This is how my strange brain works. Even though I had the best October ever with an astonishing five life ticks in Shetland followed by another in Suffolk, I start to get twitchy feet if much more than a week goes by without any decent birding. This state of affairs leads me to consider dafter and dafter trips. When a showy Pied Wheatear was found on the coast just north of Newcastle a week or so ago I resolved not to go as I did not need it for my UK list and it was a punishing four hour drive. However, after eleven days with no birding to speak of and cracking photos posted on social media my twitchy feet had me in the car at 05:30 heading north! My plan was to see the Wheatear first and then either drive a further 60 miles up the coast to try and see a Black Scoter, which would have been a life tick, or drive back south to Scarborough to photograph some Waxwings.
The four hour mainly motorway drive passed slowly but easily broken only by a coffee stop. The only notable event was when I passed six spanking brand new silver Rolls Royce’s all with 1 *** number plates. Ahead of them was an empty silver Rolls Royce hearse with a similar number plate. I would guess that the cost of the number plates alone would be pushing on to seven figures and a rough calculation said that I had just passed some three million pounds of automobiles, there is clearly a lot of money to be made as an undertaker!
The adult male Pied Wheatear is a spectacular looking black and white bird but almost all UK vagrants are first winter birds, presumably indicating that inexperienced migrators are much more likely to get lost. It has a wide breeding range from Southeast Europe through to Western Asia. In the spring and summer it is found eastwards from Romania and Bulgaria right across to Afghanistan. In the autumn in migrates to Northeast Africa for the winter. It favours rough, rocky countryside and is often seen perching on a bush or rock, alert and looking around while bobbing its tail up and down.
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| Are you looking at me! |
I arrived at Whitley Bay just north of Newcastle just after ten and immediately spied some 20 people clearly looking at the Wheatear. It was immediately obvious why such good pictures were appearing online, the Wheatear had absolutely no fear whatsoever of people and was quite comfortable perching up within inches of those present. I guess the location, a rather bare concrete skate park, bore some resemblance to its normal rocky habitat. This was a first winter male and I would guess by its behaviour that it had never encountered a human being before. It seemed genuinely curious about all the attention it was getting, flying down to land a couple of feet away from a prone photographer and then staring at him in seeming bewilderment. It would occasionally take to the wing to pluck an insect out of the air before landing to continue its mesmerised watch of those present. I quickly rattled off a full memory card of pictures and then went back to my car for lunch and to consider my next move.
Given how easy the Wheatear had been, I was well ahead of my expected schedule and so opted for the 60 mile or 90 minute drive north up the coast just south of Berwick on Tweed where the Common Scoter flock containing the Black Scoter was located. Through the casual twitchers WhatsApp group I had some good information on where the Scoter flock normally hanged out and started looking at a place called Cocklawburn Sands. I was optimistic that the Scoter flock would be fairly close in shore as it was high tide but an hour of scoping the sea only produced a flock of Eider and a few divers. I then drove a little further south to Cheswick Sands and starting scoping the sea again. The sea was fairly choppy which is not great for looking at settled birds as they often disappear below the waves. After about 30 minutes I finally found a very distant Scoter flock of perhaps some one hundred birds. With my scope on maximum x 60 magnification I could make out the paler females from the dark males and also see the yellow beaks on the mature males. Seen well, the key characteristic of the Black Scotter is a large yellow knob on the base of the bill, but after a fruitless hour of scanning the flock I had to conclude that, while I had a few views of a possible candidate, I seemly did not have the resolution at this distance to be sure enough to tick it. So I resorted to take loads of photos with the camera set up at 1000mm focal length in the hope that I could categorically say that I’d seen the Black Scoter and hence tick it.
Come 16:00 I departed on my long and uneventful 5 hour drive home. In total I drove a crazy 600 miles in the day!
The next day I went through my photos but even with every bit of enhancement software I could throw at them I could still not categorically pull out the Black Scoter. Others reported that they had seen it that morning so I can only think that the flock was much closer to shore then.
Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!
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