The Standlake Birder -

         First winter male Black Redstart February is normally a quiet time for birdwatching. Our winter visitors are preparing to leave and we are still a month away from the arrival of our first early spring migrants, Chiffchaff, Sand Martin, and Wheatear etc. Normally I would be busy preparing the vegetable plot for spring but the seemingly continuous heavy rain we have had this winter has rendered the ground totally unworkable.   So on Friday, with a bit of sun in the forecast, I decided to visit the National Trust reserve at Brean Down just north of Burnham-on-sea. This is normally a very reliable spot for over-wintering Black Redstart and recently a rather dapper first winter male has been reported from there.   Its only about an hour’s drive to Burnham straight down the M5 followed by a few miles northwards along a small coastal road. The drive from Burnham to Brean consists of seemly endless holiday parks chocker block with cold grey wooden hol...

   The Sociable Lapwing curtsey of my friend Ian Bollen, its the one at the front with more white on the under-wing On Thursday last  week a mega rare Sociable Lapwing was found on the river Fal estuary in Cornwall. Social media rumour has it that this first winter bird, i.e. hatched last spring, had actually been present in Cornwall on the Camel estuary since last November but its presence had been supressed by the finder!   Normally,  a bird such as this that I need for my UK list would have me jumping in my car immediately but on this occasion I was in the middle of a major DIY project at home and consequentially the house was in a state of chaos. Even though my ever suffering wife said I should go, I felt it unfair to abandon her in the chaos I created. I hence hatched a plan to drive down to Cornwall on Tuesday night this week, stay in a local  Premier Inn and spend Wednesday birding in Cornwall.   Negative reports on the birds pres...

     Since we moved to the darkest depths of Worcestershire three and a half years ago my local patch has been the area surrounding Pirton midway between Worcester and Malvern. Being a landlocked midlands county, expectation of anything rare of even scarce is low although there was a Pine Bunting in an adjacent village some 15 years ago.   I have a relaxed 3 mile walk around the village for which I normally just take my bins. I find it liberating not to be loaded down with scope and camera and my expectation of finding anything interesting is sufficiently low that this is not normally a problem. Ravens are quite common locally and nest nearby, I had one displaying over our paddocks earlier this week. Peregrines and Wheatears are occasional visitors and Tawny Owls roost in the small copse adjacent to our house. My Pirton list highlight is the 3 Garganey found (not by me I should say) on Pirton Pool a couple of years back. Within walking distance we are also most fortu...

          Most Januarys I make the 40 mile trip from home to the Forest of Dean to see one of my favourite birds, the charismatic Hawfinch. So, with at least sunny intervals forecast after the recent storms, this was my birding destination yesterday. The spot I go to is in Parkend under a group of yew trees. Here the proven technique of using your car as a hide normally works well. It can be quite popular with birders so I normally plan to arrive early to get a good spot. And so it was that I arrived 30 minutes before dawn yesterday and was able to get myself set up in a plumb spot with no one else present.   The story of Hawfinches in the UK is, to my mind at least, a fascinating one. It is what is known as an eruptive species meaning that it occasionally erupts from its traditional breeding grounds to invade on mass countries much further away. This is thought to be driven by a combination of breeding success and local crop failure resulting in not e...

     Water Rail With this week’s northern cold snap forecast to bring in sunny weather I decided a visit to Slimbridge was the order of the day. I like to make use of the members early entry benefit which normally produces a quiet and tranquil first hour in the hides. Early access is restricted to the Rushy side hides which also tend to have the best light. The normal winter suspects were on parade in front of the Rushy hide, the returning Bewick Swan flock, good numbers of winter wildfowl in terms of Widgeon, Teal and Pintail and a couple of Redshank. I took a few pics but with the sun hardly above the horizon and the hide and most of the Rushy in shade, the results weren’t great and did not take up storage space for long. A cold penetrating wind was blowing through the hide windows so I moved on to keep warm.   I wandered along to the Knott hide, usually  a good spot to see and photograph the normally very shy and sulky Water Rail.  The ones at ...

  I mentioned in a previous blog that a Waxwing winter is underway whereby large numbers of Waxwings are found in the UK. For more information on what this means, lots of background info on the birds and lots of photos click here.   As the winter progresses the Waxwings tend to move south and west in search of their main winter food, berries. Rowans are a particular favourite but they are also quite partial to mistletoe berries if they can find them. Fortunately, mistletoe berries is something that we have in great abundance locally so I’ve been watching reports hoping for a local flock.   My wish was granted last week when a flock of at least 36 began to feed on copious mistletoe berries a short distance from home. I was waiting for good light to coincide with a free day to make a visit and so with this Tuesday forecast to be a bright sunny winter day off I went. The Waxwings were feeding on an avenue of trees  laden with mistletoe next to a main road just outs...

    I said it before, and I will certainly say it again, its an age thing you know, one of the things I really like about this hobby is the surprises it can throw at you out of nowhere. If you asked me what my first UK tick of the year would be Northern Waterthrush would have come in marginally above the Moa. Fast forward to Wednesday afternoon when a local Essex birder spotted a Moa in his garden …….   Well actually it was a Northern Waterthrush! There was one further tantalisingly  brief report of it as it was getting dark. I mentioned it to my ever suffering wife who asked me if I wanted to go. It’s always a bit of a toss-up in such circumstances as to whether to wait for it to be reported again or go very early the next morning. I’ve previously won and lost on both options. Rightly or wrongly I decided to wait on this occasion and was out walking my dogs when the Waterthrush was reported again in a small creek next to the housing estate where it had been fou...

  I’ve seen a couple of Baikal Teals in the UK, most recently 2 years ago at RSPB Greylake on the Somerset levels. It sits in that well populated category on my UK list that I’ve mentioned many times in blogs before, i.e. seen but badly!   Now a little surprisingly given its two year absence, what is presumably the returning  adult drake was re-found at Greylake yesterday.  So, with at least some sun forecast to break the seemingly endlessly monotonous  dull December days today, off I went on the 90 minute journey down the M5 to see if I could get some better views.    While checking previous Baikal Teal records I discovered that the Greylake bird from two years ago was the only UK bird I have seen that has been accepted as wild by the great powers to be providing further incentive to visit. A short walk from an almost full car park took me to the same hide overlooking a large expanse of water that I last visited two years ago. The small...

With tongue in cheek, I normally call my annual birding reviews “Top of the Flops” but this seems a really disingenuous title for a truly exceptional year during which I added a staggering 27 birds to my UK life list.   The birding event of the year, perhaps even of the decade, was the star spangled influx of ultra-rare American passerines in September driven by an unprecedented combination of events. Lee, a truly  monstrous storm sprawling across some 15,000 square miles of the Atlantic with winds up to 165mph coincided with the mass migration of passerines along the west coast of north America. The resulting sheer number of rare passerines blown to our shores was quite overwhelming ,for example 46 rare vagrant Red-eyed Vireos were found within the space of a few days. The epicentre of the fall of rare birds, and hence the September destination for many UK based birders,  was the Pembrokeshire islands and mainland coast, see my bird of the year below. Every sil...

  Waxwing Every winter a small number of Waxwings can be found in the UK, mainly in the north and northeast. Just occasionally, a mass eruption occurs with many thousands of birds that would usually overwinter in Scandinavia relocating to the UK. We call this very welcome phenomena a “Waxwing Winter”.  Such an eruption has occurred this year with remarkable flocks exceeding a thousand birds relocating to Scotland in the late autumn and early winter to feed on the abundant  berry crop. Rowan berries are a particular favourite. I always thought that these mass eruptions only occur when the berry crop has failed in Scandinavia but a number of people have told me that the berry crop there has been very good this year. So I’m not sure what has driven this year’s mass eruption.   As the berry crop further north becomes exhausted the birds move south in search of food and so I’ve been waiting for a photo opportunity from some local birds. With not much else around...