The Standlake Birder -

  At 11am yesterday, another 400-mile round trip to twitch a rare bird seemed as unlikely as a holiday on Mars. Our visitors had just left, and I was settling down with Carolyn for a relaxing Saturday. Only my most coveted dream bird—a Northern Nutcracker—could have tempted me off the sofa and into the car. Four hours later, I was huddled under a tree with other birders, sheltering from cold rain on a damp, dreary residential street in Mundesley, Norfolk. A Nutcracker feeding on beech mast in a front garden had sparked a massive twitch. I suspect the Nutcracker would top a poll of birders’ most wanted species. This resident, non-migratory bird usually inhabits the vast northern taiga conifer forests, from Scandinavia through northern Europe and Siberia to Japan. Its sedentary nature makes it less prone to vagrancy than migratory species. But there is one big exception: very occasionally, a poor nut harvest combined with population growth triggers an irruption. To put its rarity int...

Back of the camera screen grab with many thanks to Adrian Webb.   Just over a week ago, I slipped while birdwatching on Malvern’s North Hill and badly twisted my ankle. I heard a sickening crunch and was left hobbling in pain, but luckily my sturdy walking boots prevented more serious damage. It took me three hours to hobble and crawl down the hill, and a week before I could put much weight on my ankle. Early this week, the seemingly endless westerly winds briefly shifted east, bringing a mouthwatering array of scarce migrating vagrants to the east coast. With my mobility limited, I was, to put it mildly, thoroughly disheartened. Wednesday morning brought the standout discovery: an intrepid birder found a Rufous-tailed Robin in a wooded gully near the South Landing car park at Flamborough, Yorkshire. It was not seen again until late that day. The four previous records were all elusive birds that stayed for just one day, two on remote Scottish islands, so a longer stay would trigger...

A brief spell of easterly winds this week brought a star-studded influx of migrants from the east. The standout was a stunning Siberian Robin, found by well-known local birder Hugh Harrop in his Shetland garden—an extraordinary addition to his garden list! In previous years, I would probably have been on Shetland at this time of year. However, Costa Rica showed me the delights of overseas birding, so instead I am going to The Gambia with Naturetrek in March. This will be my second visit to this African birding mecca; the first was with my then-girlfriend, just after I completed my PhD—a rather sobering 45 years ago! Among these eastern rarities, my choice was between a Sykes’s Warbler in Aberdeen and a probable Eastern Bonelli’s Warbler at Gibraltar Point. Both were found on Wednesday afternoon and remained until nightfall. The Sykes’s would have meant an 800-mile round trip and an overnight stay, so I foolishly opted for the Bonelli’s. Why foolishly? As readers of my previous blogs wi...

 Since my last blog  I have had two major dips at Lundy and Dungeness for what is rapidly becoming my new bogie bird, Western Bonelli’s Warbler. Being somewhat weary from this experience, last week I decided to spend a day laid back birding in Somerset  My first port of call was Chew Valley where two scarce/mildly rare American waders, Lesser Yellowlegs and Pectoral Sandpiper had been present for a few days. Chew Vally lake is a large manmade reservoir which was  created in the early 1950s and opened by Queen Elizabeth II  in 1956. It provides much of the drinking water  for Bristol and the surrounding area, taking its supply from the Mendip Hills.  Early autumn has been characterised by mainly westerly winds which have brought in good numbers of American Vagrants. The best, i.e. rarest of the bunch, were two birds on the Silly Isles, Solitary Sandpiper and Upland Sandpiper, both of which are absent from my UK list but I think I would on...

I did less birding than usual in August, mainly because it was often too hot to stay out for long. With a few scarce early migrants beginning to arrive, however, it was time to get out again. After all, what could possibly go wrong when sharing the roads with the bank holiday hordes? My first stop was relatively close—just a 50-minute drive. As Einstein might say, it’s all relative! My destination was Kingsbury Water Park, where a very confiding Red-necked Phalarope had been present for several days. Two comparatively scarce Phalaropes—the Red-necked and Grey—can usually be added to a UK year list with some effort. The third species on the UK list is the much rarer Wilson’s Phalarope, a North American vagrant that I have also seen in Britain. The phalarope was said to favour the shoreline near the sailing club, just a five-minute walk from the car park. When I arrived, four other birders were watching this whirling dervish spin frantically in the shallows, picking insects from the surf...

I went back to the beautiful Long Tailed Shrike yesterday morning and I’m so very glad I did. The first summer male has now pretty much finished its moult and is looking absolutely stunning in the lovely morning light. With its fresh set of feathers I’m guessing that it will be heading south very soon. A reminder that this is only the third UK record of this Asian vagrant, the second being the one I saw in Fife at the start of July. It’s been present for over a month now but is still attracting reasonable numbers of visitors with perhaps 20 people there. I’ve heard of one birder who has been to see it eighteen times! I won’t repeat the background information again on this beauty in this blog but will refer you to my previous two blogs here and here . In between showings we were treated to an entertaining Weasel running across the path several times, once with a vole that it had caught. It’s easy to forget how tiny these furious aggressive predators are. The countryside around the Shrik...

     I normally get my yearly fix of Hawfinches in the nearby Forest of Dean at Parkend. I usually make one or two visits early in the year to the well-known site at the cricket ground where they come down to feed under Cyprus trees. Its normally best to get there early using your car as a hide then it’s a game of patience, i.e. you normally get a couple of visits spaced over a couple of hours stay. This year I went once in January and didn’t see any at all, hopefully because I was just plain unlucky. I would say that we are at that time of year that birders call the summer doldrums, a calm period post spring and prior to migration getting going again in the autumn. Calling this summer as such would seem a total misjustice with the first Western Reef Heron and the second and third Long-tailed Shrikes already ticked off but in terms of other doable birding for me it’s been quite slow. The heat this year has made my normal summer distraction, gardening, very uncomfortable a...

   My last blog, see here , told the story and background of my twitch to Scotland to see Britain’s second Long-Tailed Shrike, a record 26 years in the making since the first and only previous record on the Outer Hebrides in the year 2000.   What this hobby is absolutely guaranteed to do is surprise you!    A couple of weeks ago rumours started to circulate of a supressed record of potentially another bird in farmland on the Gloucester/Oxfordshire border. I understand it was suppressed because the farmer was away on holiday and he wanted to sort out parking etc. when he got back which doesn't seem that unreasonable.  News only leaked out after it was thought to have gone. Not to be that easily deterred, Gloucester birder Mike King put in a sterling effort to refind it and his efforts were duly rewarded when it flew over his head on a Cotswold lane near the small village of Eastleach Turnville on Sunday.   Remarkably, based on near overlapping record da...

      A somewhat distant record shot of Britain's second Long-tailed Shrike So here is my plan to cope with our third heat wave of the year – drive 390 miles overnight to Fife where it’s a balmy 16 degrees. Don’t worry though, there’s no such thing as global warming, the self-proclaimed orange headed genius said so!   Seriously though, what would motivate me to drop everything and do a 780 mile round trip to deepest Scotland – well a bird obviously. And I’m not obsessed really! honestly!   OK so here is a familiar story for anyone who has read my twitching blogs before. Let’s go back to 13:30 on Saturday afternoon when a Shrike on a farm just outside of Crail in Fife was reported as probably a Lesser Shrike, a nice rare bird in its own right, but possibly a Long-tailed Shrike, a bird as rare as rocking horse poo in the UK.   I was home sitting over the weekend while Carolyn was at a wedding fare with her cake business. When she got home mid-afternoon after ...