The Standlake Birder

   Hoopoe, Lapal Well local is a relative concept you know, after all the nearest stars are in our local universe! I’ve been out and about quite a lot in the past few weeks and the absence of any new twitchable megas has meant mainly local building. I’ve been back to the Wyre Forest and Grimley twice, been to Upton Warren once, seen a Hoopoe in Lapal and visited Middleton Lakes RSPB. I’ve also been out on my local patch recording the arrival of common migrants.    The highlight on my local Pirton patch was my first every Lesser Whitethroat, the scarcer cousin of our Common Whitethroat. I used to see them every year at Otmoor RSPB when I lived in Oxfordshire but have struggled to connect with them locally. I found it in a patch of scrub and identified it on song. I then spent an hour or so trying to see it properly with some success as per the picture below.   Like most warblers, it is insectivorous  and is hence strongly migratory spending the winter months...

  Northern Wheatear Thursday was the kind of day that I’ve been dreaming of all winter, bright and sunny without a hint of wind with summer migrants flooding in. So  anything other than a full day out birding was simply not an option! I like to go out and see Ring Ouzels, the Blackbird of the mountain, at this time of year. They are quite faithful to hilly stopping off points on their migration to their more northern breeding grounds. Locally Bredon Hill, the Malverns and Cleeve Hill are reliable spots for them. I do like going to places I have never been before so I decided to try Clee Hill just 30 miles away in Shropshire where there had been regular reports of up to 7 birds. They tend to move on overnight but are hopefully replaced by new birds spending a day breaking their journey.   The Ring Ouzels were located at a place called Tittertone Clee Hill just outside of Clee village. A long windy road took me up to the summit car park where I met a lady birder you to...

      Lesser Scaup The first Swallow of the year was flying over our small holding on Wednesday, the earliest since we have been living here by some margin. They will soon be repairing and reoccupying their nests in our stables.   Blackcaps and Chiff Chaffs are singing almost continuously around the paddocks and in a couple of weeks a scratchy song from the bushes will announce that the Common Whitethroats are back.   Being a total spreadsheet nerd, I have a workbook which analyses my bird records in everyway you can possibly imagine and a few that you can’t! Over the past ten years I have analysed the additions to my Uk list by month. Not surprisingly October ( average of 3.3 additions/year) and May (2.9) are the most exciting months for rare birds. More surprisingly is that April (0.7) ranks 11 th  out of 12 beating only February (0.6). so, without wishing my life away, I’m looking forwards to May!   With another sunny day forecast on Thursday I thou...

        I had been meaning to visit a well know spot in Wales to see a Black Grouse Lek which I’ve never seen. My good birding buddy, Nick ,  has visited recently and posted some great photos. I hence thought it was time that I got my finger out and went to see this rather unique avian experience.   Armed with the usually excellent info from Nick  , I booked myself into a local Travellodge on Tuesday night and drove up onto the moor in the dark to recky the location. I had chosen a day forecast to be sunny with an overnight frost which, hopefully, would provide excellent conditions for photography. The only danger was whether there would be an early morning mist over the moor. The lek starts before dawn and continues for an hour or so after so an early start is essential.   There is one very extremely important piece of information to know if you plan to visit a Black Grouse lek, it’s absolutely forbidden to get out of the car and disturb the lek....

    Wood Lark Some two weeks ago I attempted to twitch an American Black Scoter in Cheshire, the only UK listed Scoter which I have not seen. It was associating with a large flock of Common Scoters off the coast at Holylake. The beach here is very flat meaning that it was a good 40 minute walk out across the soft sand at low tide to the water. The tide also comes in quickly so an awareness of the tide times for personal safety is essential. To cut a long story short, the massive Scoter flock was very distant with perhaps only 5% of them close enough to be able to differentiate the Common Scoter from the similar Black Scoter with my scope. After a very frustrating morning with no one present managing to definitively get on the rare bird, I left to get some lunch and do some birding elsewhere.    About 40 minutes after I left the Black Scoter was reported on RBA – Bl**dy hell!!!   So I made my way back to Holylake and once again trudged across the sand. With the t...

   Jay On Wednesday I made the short trip to try and see a Richard’s Pipit at Awre in Gloucester. I’ve seen a couple of Richard’s Pipits over the years but was tempted to have a go for this one as it was only 20 or so miles from home. Awre is also very close to the Forest of Dean so I planned a morning at Awre followed by an afternoon in the forest.   If truth be told, Richard’s Pipit is not the most colourful or exciting bird in the world being very much the archetypal “little brown Jobby”, a description which also covers most other Pipits. It is a scarce rather than rare vagrant to the UK with a small number recorded in a typical year. It breeds in open grasslands in the East Palearctic  and  is a long-distance migrant  moving to winter in the open lowlands of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.    It was a long muddy slog down from Awre to the fortified riverbank of the Severn where the bird had been regularly reported in...