The Standlake Birder

A male White-spotted Bluethroat has returned to Slimbridge for a rather astonishing third summer. Up to very recently it has been incredibly elusive with reports of birders making multiple visits and spending many hours dipping it. I have seen a few Bluethroats in the UK and have had excellent close views and good photos so I had zero motivation to go and see it. In the last week or so, however, it has had a remarkable change of character and has been showing well for extended periods and singing. I hence arrived at an almost empty Slimbridge car park just after 08:00 yesterday and made my way to the members only entrance which opens at 08:15. I went straight to the Shepard’s hut at the end of the summer walkway. After a short wait the Bluethroat appeared on a fence post some distance from the hut and started to sing. This set the tone for the whole day with it making regular appearances on two somewhat distant twig perches at the back end of the reed bed and on the fence post either s...

   I have a gaping hole in my UK bird list where the American Golden Plover should reside. I’ve had the great pleasure of dipping a few over the years, most notably at RSPB Titchwell a few years back when a Peregrine flushed one a few minutes before I arrived. So, being a glutton for punishment, I decided to try and see one at Cley by the Sea in Norfolk yesterday.    As I was due to be on dog walking duty I got up at silly o’clock, walked the dogs and was gone by 06:00. The drive across to the east coast normally takes around  three and a half hours plus any stops but the drive yesterday was truly horrendous. I soon hit the early Monday morning traffic on the M42 road works. While the  helpful overhead information signs indicated a 10 minute delay it was actually 45 minutes. Have you ever wondered how it can take 15 months to replace a section of safety barrier? Apparently it’s all done by a chap called Burt who only works every other Wednesday af...

Being of a rather analytical nature, i.e. a complete nerd, I have a large workbook which contains all my bird records cut in every way you can possibly imagine. For those familiar with the brilliant dark comedy, what we do in the shadows, you will know and love Colin Robinson, the emotion vampire. He basically sucks the life force out of his victims by boring them to death. I’m pretty sure, however, that    I could give Colin a good run for his money in explaining my birding workbook to any potential victims!   Anyway, back on topic, I have analysed my new UK life ticks by month over the past ten years or so. Perhaps surprisingly the top month is not October or May, its June with a rather amazing average of 2.8. Looking at the individual records this is driven by very lost late megas, Turkestan Shrike, River Warbler, Red-necked Stint and Asian Desert Warbler to name but a few. With high weather systems largely settled over the UK so far, June 2023 has been very quiet in t...

I have seen two Spotted Sandpipers before in the UK neither of which, it has to be said, gave particularly good views. So when one was found by local birder Gert Corfield at Upton Warren nature reserve this morning just 20 minutes from home and said to be showing well it would have been quite rude not to go! I had a couple of jobs to do at home before I left and so arrived on site at 10:30. I had expected the small car park at the Moors end of the reserve to be full but there were a couple of places left when I arrived and I was soon parked up and on my way to the large Lapwing hide.   The Spotted Sandpiper breeds near fresh water across most of North America where it essentially replaces our Common Sandpiper. It is the most widespread breeding Sandpiper in  North America. They migrate to the southern United States, the Caribbean and South America for the winter and are rare vagrants to western Europe.  The spottiness varies greatly from individua...

Humbug! With nothing to motivate me to get in the biscuit tin (aka the garage curtsey car) for a long drive, local birding has again been the name of the game since my last blog.   Some non-birding villagers told me that there used to be Nightingales in some of the small local woods in Pirton. Given that Worcestershire’s main breeding population is not too many miles away this certainly seemed plausible. So I’ve been making evening visits to some of the local small and very overgrown woodland. Although the habitat looks ideal and I’ve stayed to near dark, there was no sign of any Nightingales.  What there were, however, were  lots of biting midges! The info came from villagers who have lived in the village for a long time so it is quite likely that there used to be Nightingales there but sadly no more.   Today I spent a few very chilled out hours at Grimley and Upton Warren.   It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve been to Grimley when the first few Re...

      Black-winged Stilt Carrying on with last weeks theme, pseudo-local birding was the name of the game again this week. Doubly so as my normal bird-mobile is in the garage and the curtesy car is best described as a biscuit tin on wheels which I wouldn’t really fancy driving any distance. It does, however, have the advantage that it seems to use no fuel whatsoever.   Slimbridge was my chosen destination yesterday, a far cry from the peace and tranquillity of last weeks Wyre forest but, when the crowds of children start to annoy me, I remind myself that if we don’t educate this generation about  nature and our delicate planet much better than ours there really is no hope. Our relentless pursuit for higher and higher yields of chemically produced food and the resulting decimation of our insect population worries me immensely. We are probably already too late to reverse the decline in our ecosystem. I wonder how my grandchildren will look back on my generati...

     After my two recent mega twitches to see the rare Scoters in Scotland and the Grey-headed Lapwing in Northumberland some very laid back local birding was definitely what the doctor ordered this week. I am very fortunate to have the Wyre forest just 20 miles from home, a magical place where you can lose yourself completely in nature and forget the troubled outside world. It’s a place that you really can’t visit too often as a bird lover in the spring with the possibility of Dippers, Tree Pipits, Redstarts, Pied Flycatchers and Wood Warblers to delight you.   Wood Warblers normally arrive a little later than most other spring migrants and I was too early to see them on my last visit in April. So armed with coffee and biscuits I arrived at the Dry Mill Lane car park in the forest early on Thursday morning. The morning was bright and clear and my spirts were immediately lifted hearing Blackcaps and Blackbirds singing their spring serenade. Surely Blackbird song is u...