Passing me by

Earlier this year, in late March, I was on my way home from the patch when a Great White Egret flew past me at about roof height heading east. I estimate it passed within about 100m of my house, which had I been in it.... 

About two weeks ago I was out birding on the patch and had headed away from the usual gaggle at the VizMig point. Having a poke around Alexandra Lake I got the message from the gang that two Great White Egrets were heading west in a line which would take them over my house. James, who was at home and lives almost directly west of me, was able to look out of his window for a nice garden tick. Had I been at home....

Yesterday a Great White Egret flew west from Alex in a line that would take it over my house. Tim and Bob, who live quite near me, looked up and were able to add Great White Egret to their garden lists. James, who as we have just found out lives west of me, also looked out of the window and greedily added his third garden Great White Egret. And where was I? 

Can you guess where I am going with this? Well, you are wrong!

At home!!

And my garden list? OK maybe you weren't wrong. Great White Egretless. Yes I missed it again. Unfortunately, and despite the heads up from Nick and all the other subsequent whooping for joy messages, I was stuck on a work meeting that had run over by a few minutes. I did not check why my phone had beeped, and of course by the time I did the bird was out of sight and well on its way to Walthamstow. Oh what might have been...

So a sorry tale, and yet one that holds promise. Great White Egret is in the ascendency, there are now birds all over the place, and in a local context the last few sightings show that the NW-SE route from the Thames to the Lea Valley is one that is well-used. I am hopeful - indeed I would go so far as to say I am confident - that having now missed four in a matter of months that I will get one over my house soon enough. And when that day comes there will be a gleeful blog post to accompany it. And if I am quick enough it may contain something like this.

Red-billed Tropicbird at Pendeen

So what really happened at Pendeen on Sunday? Unlike most people commenting on the events, I was actually there. Don't read the predictable Birdforum thread and think you know the score. The histrionics on there are absurd, as you would expect, and so far roughly 20 posts out of 160-odd are from people who were actually there.

It was slow in the early morning. Sitting up at the watchpoint, with my back to the lighthouse wall, I decided that I'd rather be at the bottom of the slope with my camera photographing Gannets, just as two photographers I could see were doing. Quite frequently I could see Gannets and Fulmars passing very close inshore, so at 8.40ish I left Matt M, Mark P, Dan P and the guys I had travelled with and picked my way down the grass. Midway down the rocks I stopped to photograph a Wheatear, I mean how could I not? My exif on these three images says 8.46am. I noticed a guy with a lens sat up a bit higher than I was at this point, still on the grass. The lens looked quite short, he looked quite some distance from the sea, I felt I could get nearer. I think I recall him getting up from his position, but thought nothing of it. If he subsequently waved or shouted, I didn't notice a thing, and I gingerly picked my way down the slippery rocks to join the two aforementioned photographers. There I remained for a good half hour, indeed a bit longer, as my last image suggests 9.21am. During this time I was fully engaged on photography, with somewhat underwhelming results. Hey-ho, all good practice.

Lovely, but costly?

At some point William came down the slope and shouted. I didn't hear, but the other two did and alerted me. What's up? "A Red-billed Tropicbird has flown past and everybody has left!" William shouted. I stopped in my tracks. Did he really just say that? Surely that's not possible? Is it? I clambered back up the slope in a state of disbelief and shock, to find that at least 70% of those present had indeed left. People asked if I had seen it? Had I photographed it? Eh? No, of course I hadn't. Bits of the story came out. The photographer I had seen slightly higher than me - and not visible from the main seating area underneath the lighthouse - had been the one to see it. It had passed between the coast and the rocks, and had lingered, allowing some photographs. Per the internet, i.e. make your own mind up, it had been on view for over five minutes. The guy in question had come back up the slope some time after the sighting, perhaps as long as 25 minutes, shown a photo of the Tropicbird to a couple of people on the most northern wall of the lighthouse, and then all hell had broken loose. He had then left the site, and so when I returned up the slope with my camera, there was an assumption he was me.

I wish.

All of the following is also second hand. The select few to whom this guy had shown the photo had run around the corner, alerted others, who had in turn dashed around the corner. The photographer refused to show them the photos, and left the site. This, I surmise, resulted in another delay, as people were unsure whether to act. Eventually a lot of people decided it was gen and scattered, some to Sennen Cove, some to Cape Cornwall, some elsewhere. We did the same, stopping first at Sennen Cove where I learned that per the most recent information on the internet, I was actually the finder, and subsequently to Cape Cornwall, where we enjoyed a couple of pale morph Arctic Skuas and a huge pod of Common Dophins, but no Tropicbirds.

To summarise, the greatest prize in UK seawatching had just flown, unobserved, past between 40 and 76 observers, and had been seen by just one person.

The web is alive with opinion. Fair play to the guy involved, a stunning find. Right place, right time. Everyone else had been scanning too far out. Their bad, me included, and we will in time have a place in the Pantheon of the damned. We might already be there. But what do I think? I came so close, yet remain so far. Being down on the rocks at that point, I have a dubious claim to fame as being one of the closest dippers of a UK Tropicbird. Shit happens.

I can completely understand sour grapes, but put yourselves in the shoes of those there. Forget the usual crap about suppression and people who only twitch birds and give nothing back. 40 people (76 if you're feeling generous) were there. Many had travelled far, many had committed a lot in the hope of a decent sea-watch, in the hope, dare I say it, of a dream bird like a Fea's. They were there, they were working it. How would you feel if somebody came up the slope once all hope of seeing the bird had gone and told them about it. I wasn't there up at the lighthouse, but per what I have heard, it was a relatively casual "I assume you all saw the Tropicbird?" Don't get me wrong, that's not a bad assumption. 40 people scanning out to sea, some of them seasoned observers. You would expect that one of them would see a bird that was on view for a prolonged period of time. Except in this instance you would be wrong. I'm going to stick my neck out here, and say that no matter what an observer expects, when it concerns a Red-billed Tropicbird that is lingering close inshore to a manned sea-watch point, all bets are off. All bets are off, and what you expect becomes irrelevant. First and foremost you document the record, after all you know what the British birding scene is like. And when you have quickly done that, you jump up, and you run as fast as your little legs can carry you to the nearest people you can see (that would be me, as it happens), and you shout your head off, you wave your arms, you scream, you go completely and utterly mental. You exhaust yourself, you peg it up the slope, down the slope, you do not rest until you are sure that other people are on the bird, because sea-watching is the most collegiate of all birding activities. And then you soak up the adulation and the glory and the praise. That's what I would have done. That's what most people I know would have done.

Call me jaded, call it sour grapes, but to wait perhaps 20-25 minutes before coming up to the main crowd, when all hope of picking up the bird from the watchpoint has passed, that is unforgivable. Unforgivable. Clearly I am biased, but that is ridiculous. There are claims that he shouted, perhaps even towards me and the two photographers I was with. Maybe he did? But if this elicited no reaction, then what? Shrug the shoulders and sit back down? That appears to be what happened. No other person there, of which there were many, was any the wiser for what is in sea-watching terms an age. And that is the source of the sour grapes and dejection. Forget about whether the observer wants some kind of magazine scoop and associated piss-ant payment (even though that is scarcely believable). If the timings are correct every single person at Pendeen on Sunday ought to have been able to get on that bird. And not one did.

You can talk all you like about finding your own birds, about nobody having a right to see a rare bird, about dickhead twitchers. Maybe I am being naive, but surely birding is bigger than this. The finder by all accounts knew exactly what it is was he was watching. But he seems does not know much about birding etiquette, or at least not what I understand birding to be about. Am I being unkind? Maybe, maybe not. Again, anyone who wasn't there feel free to have a go in the time-honoured fashion, call me an idiot, a tosser, say what you want. Say I should have picked it up, say look properly next time, say I'm just bitter etc. Maybe I should have and yes I am, but get real. A monster, a complete once-in-a-lifetime bird was on show for an age in sea-watching terms and based on what I know the finder could have done so much more. So much more. Assumptions out the window, it's a Tropicbird, and so you go fucking nuts, end of. You don't shout a bit, and then sit back down. You just don't. That's not right, it's not to my mind what sea-watching is about. You're in it together. Again, I sound like a pre-pubescent teenager probably, an idealist, someone wet behind the ears who hasn't the faintest clue about real life. I like to think I'm normal. What kind of person doesn't do their utmost to alert other observers they know to be present? People on the net are talking about giving the finder credit where credit is due. I agree with that, but only to a point. I know that my greatest pleasure would be to get other people onto the bird, as I know how much it means. I can hardly claim to be a huge rarity finder, but when a number of other people got onto my Stone-curlew on Wanstead Flats earlier this year, I was utterly delighted. And I was gutted that some did not. I was on the phone ten seconds after seeing that bird for the first time, I had phoned two people I knew to be close within a minute or two, and was getting the news out as fast as I could even before I had confirmed the record. I ran. Once I knew what I had I sacrificed getting better views in order to give other people a chance of connecting, and that was just a good bird in a local context. A Red-billed Tropicbird is in a completely different league altogether.

This is of course my reaction, and people are different. I don't know the person in question, what drives him, what makes him tick. I react based on my reaction. The guy was not obliged to alert people, each to his own. I'm just saying I would have reacted differently, and so would many other people. So to be on the receiving end of what I perceive to be a striking lack of generosity, well that is very galling indeed. But that's birding for you, and I'll live. And as you saw yesterday (if you were alert!) I can laugh about it too, and that's also birding. And if you didn't think sea-watching was exciting, think again!

No Ticks Today

An early start on a very cold morning had me wondering, yet again, what on earth I was thinking of. Not out on the patch, where my co-workers had a pretty good day, but up to Norfolk for some Harrier education. Not a tick on any list that I keep, but I went anyway, just to see what all the fuss was about. And in the hope that one day it will turn into a tick from the comfort of my warm armchair, hopefully on an extremely cold and wet winter day.

Arrived at Thornham Harbour at about half seven, down to zero remaining toes by about 8am, snowed on by about 10am, but we saw the presumed North American Hen Harrier, aka Northern Harrier, aka Marsh Hawk.  Who knows what to call it, but very clearly not like any juv Hen Harrier I have ever seen. So it must be one, as I have seen, er, loads. Kind of. Actually that is a lie. My spreadsheet of happiness tells me that I have seen fifteen Hen Harriers. Ever. I'm actually a bit surprised, I had thought that it would be more than that, but then again the spreadsheet never lies. For example, it tells me I've seen a Blue-cheeked Bee-eater, which of course I have, and tells me I haven't see a European Bee-eater, which I haven't. This is just an example you understand, picked out of thin air, I was grasping at suitably illustrative straws to demonstrate the unerring accuracy of the spreadsheet. There were others I could have picked, no need to go through them, you know what they are...

I've actually never seen one in America either, so technically it is a new world bird for me, but somehow all the lists I keep on Bubolisting have the entire Hen Harrier complex down as one super-species, so very sadly no editing required. I will however keep this bird squirrelled away, ready to roll it out whenever the great and the good decide that the time is ripe, which could of course be never, and I will have lost all my toes for no good reason. A bit too distant for any kind of decent image so I didn't bother. Here, have a Black-tailed Godwit from the same location as a slightly less educational substitute.


By about ten-ish Bradders and I decided we'd had as good views as we were going to get, and headed off. The steadily-falling snow and lure of hot food at Titchwell had nothing to do with it. Immense bacon sarnie at the cafe followed by a quick trip down the footpath, culminating in impressive numbers of Common Scoter on the sea, with a few Velvets thrown in. By far the highlight though was a man wearing a Tilley Hat confidently identifying a Little Crested Grebe - a new bird for me actually - followed by saying something I very sadly I missed the first part of, but which ended in "....all jolly confusing!" Whoever said that stereotypes don't exist is of course quite correct, there is clearly no such thing.

A quick stop at Burham Norton a little later turned out to be a big mistake, as the worst possible event in birding occurred. As we were trying (and generally failing) to photograph a Barn Owl, Bradders saw a Phyllosc briefly in some reeds. We expected it to be a Chiffy, but it flew up a short while later and sat on a branch briefly, revealing itself to be a Yellow-browed Warbler. Cool, we thought, and then realised that it was fairly dull. Ah. Just as my poor old brain was processing this fact, and coming to the realisation that it was extremely important that I scrutinised the bill (it will perhaps surprise regular readers that I actually knew at least one thing to look for without reference to literature), it flew off, never to be seen again. I believe the word is "bugger". Never called. Bradders, after chatting with the good folk at the pager company, put it out as a possible Hume's, which we figured would entice people to come and help us look. This it did, and is of why this is the worst possible event in birding. You find something, probably something quite good, but you don't get good enough views. Circumstantially, it feels pretty good - good date, one trapped just up the road only a few days ago - but there is no way you're ever going to know. It does a runner, a permanent runner, and then people start to turn up. This being Norfolk, lots of people, some quite eminent in the world of birding, or indeed in the Birding World... And still there is no bird, and this continues up to and beyond the point where people start to leave, disillusioned, possibly muttering unfair comments. To be fair, no-one audibly said the word "string", but it's a tricky old situation, and you can't help feeling slightly self-conscious. Happily I was able to tell everyone that Bradders found it, that it was nothing to do with me, and that no I'd never seen him before in my life and couldn't vouch for his reliability. Had it been refound, and proved to be a Hume's, then I may have told a different story, but that of course would have been a different story...

One that got away, but that's birding for you. And I am of course joking about people muttering. But I'll be checking Bird Forum very carefully in the coming days....