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...