Persistence or shear stupidity (part 2) – A Black-winged Kite at the third attempt

  

Black-winged Kite

 

For part 1 see here.

 

Well its certainly been an up and down week!

 

On Monday I learned that I had won the much coveted BirdGuides picture of the week award with my inflight shot of a Greenshank at Slimbridge, see here. I haven’t posted a photo on the BirdGuides site for over a year but I was technically very please with this pic so I thought I would enter it. Judged purely technically, I personally feel it’s one of the best I’ve taken so it was nice to have this confirmed by BirdGuides.

Greenshank

Come Monday evening I was watching the TV with Carolyn when a report of a Mega rare Black-winged Kite hit Rare Bird Alert at Hickling Broad in Norfolk. First thing on Tuesday there were negative reports and I guessed it had gone. I hence followed my normal morning routine of an early morning dog walk then helping Carolyn with the horses. We were sitting down to have a coffee when the kite was reported again from the same site and was said to be showing well. I mentioned this to Carolyn and she said “do you want to go then”, well is the pope catholic! Fifteen minutes later I had set sail on the 3.5 hour drive to Norfolk. After some 45 minutes I pulled into a service station and checked RBA – oh no, the dreaded “flew off and lost to view”! I decided to stay where I was, have a coffee and monitor reports. Forty five minutes later it was reported as flying over the Bee-eater site at Trimingham so I carried on  towards Norfolk. What followed were more and more negative reports, it must have continued flying north or perhaps had recrossed the channel. I decided to cut my losses and return home with tail truly between my legs.

 

Fast forward to Wednesday morning. Having followed our normal early morning routine again I was enjoying my freshly ground coffee when at 10:00 it was reported at Hornsey - so I did the only sensible thing any sane and right minded person would do and drove to Norfolk. Arriving at a very damp and overcast Horsey at 13:30  I joined a group of birders forlornly looking for the kite close to where it had last been seen. The weather was horrid, English summer at its very worst, and we all spent chunks of the afternoon sheltering from the torrential rain in our cars, consoling each other on our bad luck and exchanging birding stories. The day dragged on and on in this manner with the closest we got to seeing the Kite being a white and grey lamp on a distant post that temporarily got everyone excited.  It seemed as though the sensible thing to do would be to find some local digs for the night and try again at first light in the hope that it would come back to roost. So I booked into a local Travelodge and at 20:00 decided to leave it for the night as it  was already almost  dark and raining heavy - surely there was no chance of seeing the bird now?  WRONG! Having checked into the very drab looking Travelodge in the very unappealing centre of Norwich I checked my phone and could not believe my eyes – the Kite had returned shortly after I had left!! After a serious hissy fit and narrowly avoiding throwing my phone out of the window, I drove back to Horsey. When I arrived it was almost dark and birders returning from the reported site informed me that they had seen it briefly but it had flown off again!!! I was really starting to think this was simply not meant to be. What did the gods of birding want from me – a human sacrifice perhaps?

 

To say I was down in the dumps would be a major understatement! I had prepaid for an evening meal at the hotel, note to self don’t do this again, but the restaurant, and I use the description here very lightly, was now closed so I had to make do with a MacDonalds and a beer before carrying my sorry soul off to bed.

 

Predictably, sleep evaded me and my mind dwelled on black negative thoughts, “why on earth do I do this?” “ surely this is not the way I want to spend my hard earned retirement?”

I eventually decided there was no chance of sleep so got up, grabbed a coffee at a garage on route and was back on site just after dawn.  Just to cheer me up even more it was very foggy! The car park was already almost full and as I made my way to the watch point some 20 minutes away along the river I met a returning birder who said that he had managed a brief view but it had just flown off again -could this possibly get any worse! Arriving at the watch point I joined 30 or 40 other birders and was informed that the bird was perched distantly near the top of a tree. Views were very limited by vegetation and bushes along the riverbank and everyone was cheek by jowl trying to glimpse the bird. As is so often the case, another birder said he had it in his scope and let me have a look. Through the mist I could just about make out the bird sitting in the tree – to say I was relieved does no kind of justice at all to the emotions I felt.

 

Now I know I’m biased but the Black-winged Kite is a truly stunning bird! About the size of a Kestrel it has long wings, white, grey, and black plumage, and owl-like forward-facing eyes with stunning red irises. It is a species of open land and semi-deserts in sub-Saharan Africa and tropical Asia with a small  foothold within Europe  in Spain and Portugal. It is non-migratory across its range. In recent years the range has been expanding northwards, probably driven by a combination of  climate change and land use changes.  It has been long predicted to be a possible vagrant to the UK and the first record earlier this year came from a bird seen and photographed by just two observers in Wales. This second record was hence the first twitchable one.

 

As the fog lifted and the light improved scope views of the bird became clearer, it stared back at us with those piercing red eyes – it really was absolutely mesmerising! I managed to stick the camera up and get a few record shots with the 500mm prime and x 2 extender giving me a massive 1000mm focal range. With everyone so crowded together, I handheld the camera and quickly went back to watching it through my scope. Apart from the occasional flutter to another part of the same tree, it stayed here for over an hour, preening and getting ready to go and look for its breakfast. Then it flew revealing its jet black shoulders contrasting with the grey of the rest of its body . It was still quite distant and the autofocus with such a large focal length and very limited depth of view did not lock on. It flew away from us over the tree line and the assembled masses slowly dispersed all content and relieved in equal measure to see what was proving to be an elusive and hard to twitch bird. 

 

As we made our way back to the car park a report of the bird came in perched on a telegraph pole on the road. It had caught its breakfast and was hungrily tucking into it. We rushed back but, not unreasonably, cars had stopped near it flushing it off the pole.

 

I hung around for another hour or two fortified by a latte and toastie from the NT café but the bird never returned and so close to mid-day I made my way home, very contented at last to see this stunning raptor.

 

Subsequently the bird has been reported in Suffolk and today from Essex. It seems to be making its way back south and will presumably cross the channel back to the continent soon.

 

 

  Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!