There are precious few birds that I’ve both seen and photographed well that I will drive 2 hours to see but I will make an exception for my favourite UK bird, the enigmatic Wryneck. No autumn birding in the UK is complete for me unless I have seen at least one of these beauties. So Monday morning found me in the Volvo driving 2 hours to see an exceptionally showy individual located at Exminster Marshes RSPB in Devon.
As it had already been present for a couple of days, I waited for it to be reported before setting off and so it was near midday when I arrived at the small RSPB car park adjacent to the railway line. It was then a 30 minute or so walk down a pleasant leafy footpath to the welcoming looking Turf hotel. The hotel is next to Turf lock from where stunning views can be had over the river Exe estuary towards Exton. Those already present informed me that the bird had not been seen for several hours but that it had a habit of doing this before reappearing.
We passed sometime by birding the estuary where an Osprey was perched on a lump of wood in the water. It is easy to forget how impressive these fish eating hawks are when seen well. After several somewhat nervous hours our most wanted headline bird arrived and proceeded to entertain us with the most crazy stunning close views.
Just occasionally you can be lucky enough to come across a Wryneck as confiding as this which appears to have no concern whatsoever for the presence of humans. A few years back I saw a similar very confiding bird at Spurn in Yorkshire which would literately walk between your feet while feeding. I would speculate, with no hard evidence to confirm this, that these are juveniles hatched this spring which have had little or no previous contact with the destroyer of the planet. It certainly was very alert scanning the sky for threats so was very aware of where danger may come from. At one point a Swallow flew over it and it flushed, perhaps mistaking it for a Hobby.
Wrynecks are members of the woodpecker family and share the habit of our resident Green Woodpecker of feeding almost exclusively on ants. They are small almost Sparrow sized birds and unless you were in the know, you would never guess that they are Woodpeckers. I simply love the cryptic plumage of the Wryneck, not garishly in your face brightly coloured but a subtle and beautifully palette of browns, fawn and cream perfect for the necessary camouflage in its woodland continental breeding grounds. They are scarce passage migrants in the UK being mostly seen in September when they are migrating from their breeding grounds across continental Europe to winter in southern Asia and Africa. They get their English name from their ability to turn their heads almost 180 degrees in an owl like manner.
I’m afraid the British history of the Wryneck reflects an increasingly common and sad theme. This former breeder was once a common bird across much of central and southern England, favouring commons, heathland, orchards, parkland, and larger gardens. The population began to decline dramatically in the 19th century and by the end of the 20th century, they were no longer breeding in England or Wales. Around this time, a small number were found breeding in Scotland, but records gradually became rarer. Now they no longer nest regularly anywhere in Britain, though the occasional attempt is recorded in Scotland.
The Turf bird spent a lot of its time prising what I assume were ants out of gaps in the concrete around the lock utilising its remarkably long tongue. It would feed in this manner for 10 or 15 minutes, fly up into a nearby tree to rest a while and then drop down to continue feeding. It kept me mesmerised in this manner for some two hours during which I nearly filled 2x64gb memory cards with RAW images. I eventually pulled myself away and left our little friend and retired to the hotel for a refreshing latte before commencing my journey home thoroughly uplifted by yet another wonderful Wryneck experience.
I’m often asked how I spend my retirement when I’m not out birding. The answer is gardening and working on our small holding under the Malvern hills. I’m 100% an outdoor person who hates being inside for any length of time. Ask my long suffering wife how truly unbearable I am on the rare occasion I’m confined to bed with a bug!
This has been a very typical early autumn week around the small holding. Tuesday was spent working with my wonderful son-in-law loading some 70 tonnes of rotted horse manure into 6 large trailers which our local farmer took away to spread on his fields. I now have to move some 3 tonnes of wood chippings, generated by the sad demise of a very old oak tree that had fell over, into my quad bike trailer for mulching the flower and fruit gardens. Next up my job list includes but is not limited to fixing the guttering on our stables, isolating the old muck heap area around the pond and sowing grass on it, fixing a lot of other broken fencing ….., the list is almost endless! Just to keep me in gainful employment, my ever suffering wife is promising me a long list of jobs to do before I disappear to bird Costa Rica for 3 weeks at the end of October. Never a dull moment!
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| Oh what fun we had moving 70 tonnes of steaming horse s*it! |
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