A quick tale of woe for you before I carry on with Thailand as I know the readership like these. So, having written in my end of year summary that I had zero interest in UK rarities naturally I jumped in the car at the very start of 2026 and went off to try and see one. And I dipped. I suspect this will do little to encourage me to do more of this. That's not to say it wasn't an enjoyable day, but you know...
There has been a Black-winged Kite in the Norfolk Broads for a while. Or had been, as it buggered off slightly before I got there. It might be back, I have no idea, I am not looking. Anyway, last Sunday morning it was still there, but being the big coward I am I waited on news rather than just chancing it. It came out of roost as normal so into the car I jumped and off I went. Everything went pretty smoothly until I got to about the A11 when the semi-expected "no sign since 8am" message popped up. I ploughed on regardless, it seemed a lovely day, and this was in any event the pattern. It wakes up and has a bit of a fly about, then it disappears, then it is seen again later. Easy.
Right.
In summary I spent the rest of the day walking up and down a snowy river bank getting progressively colder and hungrier whilst not seeing any rare raptors. Yes, snow. Essentially I screwed up, not realising - nor checking! - that there had been snow up in Norfolk. I first hit it just outside of Norwich and as I went further east there was just more and more of it. It is a well known fact that Black-winged Kites absolutely love snow. Adore it, can't get enough of it....
So yes, a big dip. I didn't dip a single bird last year, not one. An amazingly successful statistic. On the other hand I also did not twitch a single bird last year. These two things are highly (fully) correlated and go a long way to explaining why I don't bother twitching any more. What possessed me? Idiot. This is not what I do and this shows why.
In truth it was not a bad day out at all. It was really cold but it was also extremely beautiful, with clear blue skies and sunshine, and a really rather good supporting cast despite the lead protagonist not showing up. I saw Cranes, Bearded Tits, White-fronted Geese, Pink-footed Geese, Bewick's Swans, Whooper Swans, Marsh Harriers, Jack Snipe, Woodcock, Cattle Egrets, Great White Egret, Golden Plovers and a lot more besides. Fieldfares were common, I've not seen any in Wanstead for months, and more generally there were loads of nice birds everywhere. Dozens of Snipe for instance, Red Kites, Buzzards, Water Rails, Kingfishers, the list of decent birds goes on and on. Just no Black-winged Kites. The bird was allegedly seen again, once, late afternoon, and everyone expected that it would soon reappear as it went to roost in the regular spot but of course it didn't and was never seen again. Meanwhile my toes turned to ice as I stuck it out until the very end before heading back, tickless, to London. Such is life. Hopefully I don't do it again for a while. Honestly what was I thinking?
What struck me was that most people there seemed to not mind dipping at all. All part and parcel of twitching. Well yes, but.... Really? I think I need to reexamine how I feel about it as they were far more sanguine than I. Maybe they chase something week in week out and thus this is a regular occurence. They are simply used to and it works out as a fairly low percentage overall, whereas for me it was a 100% failure rate. Pleasingly my long-time absence from the twitching scene meant I barely recognised anyone - I think this used to upset me a bit, that I would see the same people all the time and was thus worried I was one of them! And I was! But equally I was embarrassed to be one of them, especially given some of the quite unseemly behaviour that would sometimes occur. Standing back watching grown adults jostle and shove, shout and moan, charge across cemeteries.....Anyway once a little part of my life but no longer. Of the few people I did recognise one was Phil S who I think took my spot on my once regular Shetland autumn weeks with Bradders and Co, so I had a nice chat with him for a while. About dipping, helpful snow, constant westerlies on Shetland, lots of positive things like that. In fact it might be him in the final photo.
Lots to like, one thing to be quite irritated by. But my main takeaway is that by sticking around my local patch here in London I am doing myself a disservice. I love it, it is balm for the soul, it is massively convenient, cheap, carbon-free, and there are undoubted highlights even if they don't come around very often. But the birding elsewhere seems far better with frankly minimal effort, and by sticking around Wanstead I have missed out on so much and will continue to miss out. So what if I didn't see the rare bird, look what I did see! Imagine seeing that lot in Wanstead! So I shall be going out on the patch this weekend and trying to convince my fellow patch-workers that we should abandon the Flats and go and see some birds somewhere else.
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