Annoyed of Wanstead

Thank you for bearing with me over California and Florida. I had not been planning to write them up at all, but with everything subsequent to them cancelled or rapidly heading that way I needed a bit of a lift, and I have to say that going through all of those waders brought a smile to my face. I am itching to go back and do it all again. However.....

This weekend I should have been in Northumberland celebrating my parents' golden wedding anniversary. My sister and I had rented a house large enough to accommodate all 12 of us, and the long weekend was going to be spent in the great outdoors and then sprawled around a comfortable and rather grand sitting room. On Monday evening I was coming back to London with my Mum and one of my nieces, and on Tuesday together with them and my youngest daughter, was flying to Pittsburgh and from there driving to Ohio. There we would have met up with my aunt, uncle, cousin and [later] sister for a few days, and together we were to visit my Grandmother, now aged 94, in her care home. At 94 I cannot help but wonder how many more chances we will have. Meanwhile my eldest daughter was accompanying my Dad back to Scotland to help look after him and my sister's other two children, and Mrs L would be in London supervising the final burst of GCSE revision for my eldest.

Well now.

No anniversary celebrations. No family get-together in America. No visiting of ancient relatives. No cousins spending time together. No GSCEs and no end-of-an-era school leavers jollity. We've seen no-one and been nowhere. Meanwhile I read of Government advisors quietly skipping off to see families and lovers, I see reports of fun days out birding here there and everywhere, of long-distance twitching, and of photos of crowded beaches and clogged roads all over the country. 

You can imagine how that makes me feel. No doubt there are solid reasons for some of this activity, and I am sure that many people have found ways of justifying it to themselves, but quite a lot of it makes me seethe. Imagine what nurses and doctors seeing this first hand must think. The selfishness of so many people is quite extraordinary. My 'favourite' was a news report of some people who had driven an hour and a half to go to a beach and were without any sense of irony annoyed that lots of other people had done the same thing. I've also read stories of people who never got to see their aged parents again because they died before they could visit, and I'll be honest here - I cannot reconcile those two things. People who are irritated that other people also felt like a nice day out, and people who won't get to see a family member again ever.

Right, deep breath.

Here in Wanstead it has been feeling quite like June for quite a while already. Other than the majesty of local Swifts birding has been scant, and unfortunately I have now turned to insects. On Thursday night we put out the moth trap for the first time this year. Immediate success with Buff-tip, Small Elephant Hawk Moth and Angle Shades - three mega-cool species to find in my back garden. Seek and ye shall find.

We've also had regular visits from a Broad-bodied Chaser that likes to rest up on a particular Yucca leaf, returning to it time and again much like a Flycatcher, and there have been a variety of other interesting insects that I have discovered whilst gardening and on whose identity I am currently clueless. Help is at hand in the form of various established pan-listers, including local birder gall-afficionado James, who was able to tell me that the really smart little bug I photographed was the catchily-named Rhabdomiris striatellus. Given I am not going to be going very far for the rest of the summer and quite possibly the autumn as well, developing an interest and gaining some knowledge in things other than birds may be one of the best ways to get through this.

Stay safe. And don't be selfish.

Om

I am calm. Om. I have exorcised the listing demons. Om. This does not mean that I have had a tick, I have not. I did not go to Derbyshire. Om. Too far, too boring. Om. Instead I missed two Green Sandpipers in Wanstead, and found two Common Sandpipers in Wanstead. Om. Bonelli's Warbler eat your heart out. I care not. I weighed it up I admit, but ultimately it was just too far. Four hundred miles, sixty quid, and seven hours in a car. Thanks but no thanks.

If only I'd got up that little bit earlier. I was awake and drinking tea when Stuart found the first Green Sandpiper on Jubilee, blissfully unaware. When I heard the news I was straight out, but it had gone. As I was walking towards Jubilee to dip it, the guys texted me about another Green Sandpiper that had just flown over Alexandra Lake. Fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more, as someone once said. I hastened there, but was too late once again. A Common Sandpiper tried to cheer me up, and didn't do a bad job actually, spiralling so high above the lake that it went above the Swifts, themselves high up, and disappeared into outer space to rendezvous with the Shuttle. Later in the Park, drinking a reflective cup of coffee from the Tea Hut of Happiness, I spied another two at the end of Heronry, so somewhat of a landmark day. There is clearly some wader passage occuring. If I can drag my sorry ass out of bed early enough, hopefully I can cash in. Mind you, I tried that on Thursday, up and out at 4:45am and saw diddly squat.

The day, predictably, turned to insects. Butterflies were out in force. Small Skipper, Essex Skipper, Peacock, Red Admiral, Gatekeeper, Small Copper, Meadow Brown, Speckled Wood, Large White, Small White, Green-veined White, and best of all, Marbled White. There you go, a list of butterflies that I saw. Blogging is great.

Not just butterflies though, insects galore. Cinnabar caterpillars on almost every clumps of Ragwort, as well as about twelve billion Soldier Beetles, possibly more. I had more fun than I thought possible with a macro lens, there were subjects everywhere. For the technophobes amongst you, my latest toy is Canon's 100mm macro lens with image stabilisation, and I have to say it works a treat. No tripod, no mucking about, just wash and go. Or something. Makes a great portrait lens too, which is a bit of a problem actually as I find myself using it more than my actual portrait lens as it's already on the camera most of time. Tack sharp, light, and fun. Doesn't take the extenders unfortunately, so I still break out the 180mm macro quite a lot for the extra magnification and working distance it allows, but this newer lens is definitely easier to use. I should be a salesman. Or a sleep consultant.

Solider Beetle. Clearly German.

Time for a Change?

My life is currently a heady mixture of bug photography and domestic servitude. It was a surprise then to get a text containing Wanstead bird news whilst lounging around in bed drinking tea this morning. The exciting and unexpected missive was that a Common Tern was possibly heading my way. I managed to drag myself out of bed and peer out the window, but it was all still a bit blurry. I am of the age now where perfect vision does not simultaeneously occur with the opening of one's eyes, and by the time I could actually see straight the Tern was probably fishing in Walthamstow. I got back into bed and finished drinking tea.

Muffin meanwhile was busy doing the moth trap. A short while later he scampered upstairs with an Isle of Wight Wave. Probably extinct said Waring and Townsend, but this fact didn't bother him - it was one. My brain was not sufficiently engaged to argue with him, except to say that we weren't on the Isle of Wight, but by the time breakfast came around it was a Dwarf Cream Wave instead so all you moth-ers can rest easy.

The school run complete, and various more disgusting elements of the kitchen cleaned, I was free to start bug-hunting again. Flash on, and away I went. Sadly it was hard work to even find a bug in the neatly trimmed garden of Chateau L. A few flies, a spider (probably the catchily-named Tibellus oblongus), and a ladybird were all I could come up with. The spider had an egg-sack though, which was pretty cool. Or it could have been dinner, not sure.

All these bugs have made me decide that I'm going to go out birding again soon. I've been pretty slack of late, and most of all, I think I'm missing it. Wader season is about to start, and there seem to be Crossbills whizzing around all over the place. A few early starts could see me cash in. Or see nothing.

And finally, it would be amiss of me not to say a big thank you to my 100 Acolytes. The momentous three-figure day was yesterday, approximately two and a half years after kicking off. That I still have anything to say is remarkable. Even more remarkable is why any of you return here day after day, but it is extremely gratifying. So please don't leave, it would be very sad, not to say somewhat humiliating, especially after writing this. To show you how much I love you, here is a photo of a fly.

What, you would have preferred a Ladybird? Oh go on then. I am feeling indulgent.

The Rise of the Insect Paparazzi

The insect-life of Wanstead is being terrorised. Hordes of photographers (well, me) wait for them outside flowers. They chase them from leaf to leaf, sticking lenses in their faces. Flashes are fired at close range. No insect is safe, it could all come to blows. I would expect to win though, as insects are really small and I'm gigantic.

The reason for this campaign of insect attrition? Well June, obviously, but also the purchase of a new Macro lens a couple of weeks ago, and a determination to bloody well learn how to use a flash. I've been photographing things for about 14 years now. During that time I have owned precisely two flashes, and not known how to use either of them. In need of a challenge, this week I decided I would sort that out. And sod me if it isn't really really difficult. You might think that you stick the flash on top of the camera and fire away, job done. You would be wrong; from my studies this afternoon, it appears that nothing could be further from the truth, and that Canon's flash system, whilst no doubt ingenious in its own way, is a pig to get to grips with.

Practice practice practice, it's just like birding. You can't learn it by reading books or articles, though these are no doubt helpful. You have to get out there and use it, hence the terror. What I will say is this - it has the power to totally transform macro photography. I now understand, or at least am beginning to understand, why some of the ludicrously good macro stuff on the web is as good as it is. I will not bore you with techy details. They are boring, and, well, techy, no getting away from it. And anyway, it is voyage of discovery that I think all budding photographers should take on their own, the better to really learn it. I may crack later and put my thoughts down, but for now what I will say is this though - Get a flash (and USE IT, unlike me) and you will not look back. I can't wait until tomorrow when I can get out there again and start papping. Oh, and buy rechargable batteries.

To a greater or lesser extent, I used flash for all four of the following photos. All were handheld, and of the four subjects, the only one I can name with confidence is the snail (third down). God knows what the final one is, but I think it is part Goldfish. About 3.5mm long, so perhaps a baby Goldfish?

The Buzzing of Summer Terraces

We have a Hibiscus right next to the steps on our terrace. Our evil terrace. In fact is kind of in front of the steps, which it predates by many years. The plan was to dig it up, but five years on we have not got round to it. I think about it perhaps once a year, generally around now when it starts to flower profusely and I notice it again. It flowers for perhaps two months, continuously, and being so close to the terrace, a.k.a. the Wanstead Bird Observatory, the insects it attracts in turn attract me. This year I 'ave mostly been observing Hoverflies.

In which I start twitching insects....

Sorry, more insects. I have a weekend without wife or children, and in a cruel twist of fate, it is also without birds. My plan was to go on some kind of photography expedition, or perhaps a mega-twitch, but I never formulated a concrete plan for the former, and the biggie failed to materialise. Hmmm, what to do? The patch, naturally.

So, up at 5am and out. The first bird seen was the White-cheeked Turaco, which I think makes it four days out of the last five, Thursday being the only no-show. As usual it was chuckling to itself, and jumping about the same tree recently vacated by the cat. I've said it before and I'll say it again, great bird! The cat is fine by the way. Once we got it down, I took it with my neighbour to the vets, where both were given a relatively clean bill of health, apart from the neighbour had worms so the vet had to give him a pill. I think I have that the right way round. Here she is by the way, in case you have lost a cat. A lady up the street is currently looking after it, but will only give it back if you can confidently answer a lot of questions about it.



Anyway, bar the Turaco, not a lot doing in Wanstead. Kingfisher on Alexandra Lake early doors, and a Common Tern fishing on the Basin were the only birds of note, so another brilliant use of sleep-time. I had to spend the rest of the morning going to Farnham and back to pick up a new camera bag, but once back I still had no bright ideas. Paul had called last night and said he might be twitching a Dragonfly today, would I like to come? Twitch a Dragonfly, you must be out of your mind?! What a crazy notion, no chance, have fun though.

I joined the others at Rainham, where we all got into Bradders' Subaru and headed off to the secret site. It isn't much of a secret any more... The target was a Southern Migrant Hawker, of which just six had been recorded in the UK before. In the world of Dragonflies, I am led to believe that this about as mega as it gets. The twitch was an outstanding success, and we added numbers seven through about fourteen to the British list, thus over doubling it. In the world of birding, this is the equivalent of finding a small flock of White-tailed Plovers in a field, including some fledged chicks. Now I'm not much into Dragonflies, so it did feel a bit odd to be seeing a species that almost all of those who are into them had never seen, but they'll get their chance. They're probably making plans for tomorrow even as I type.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so you don't get to see what one looks like.

Not really.









Pretty smart huh? As insects go, fairly impressive, but still just a Dragonfly though, so I'm not getting too excited. My feet remain firmly on the ground. Although I don't keep a list of Dragonflies I've seen, it was a tick for me, as it was for Paul. My list, if I kept one, would be 17, whereas his is 45. That's if he kept one of course, but he hates lists so it's unlikely.

At the same time as the Southern Migrant Hawkers, I also saw Small Red-eyed Damselfly, and Scarce Emerald Damselfly, both of which were new for me. Roy was with us too, and pointed all these out, as I didn't have a clue. I did not realise that he is a Dragonfly fanatic, but I can now testify that he really is. Here, have a photo of the Emerald. And a yellow one, a female Ruddy Darter I think. Might be a Common Darter of course, no doubt people will put me right.




So, I can now say I have twitched an insect. Well, I suppose I twitched Shaun's Lime Hawk Moth, so I have now twitched two insects. I also saw a Blair's Mocha Moth at Longstone's Cafe on Scilly, but I was there to twitch the cake. It showed well. Briefly.

A Bug's Life

I am burning the candle at both ends. Brightly. The trouble is that there are not enough hours in the day. Ideally I would stay up until 2am mothing every night, have a tranquil eight hours sleep, and then awaken at 4:30am to close the moth trap and then go out birding on Wanstead Flats until 7am. You see the problem? Precisely. How can I fit eight hours into two; when exactly am I supposed to sleep?

Well yes, I could sleep during the day, being a bum and all that, but what about the children? I've tried, and it doesn't work. And anyway, my life of leisure domestic slavery may soon be at an end. I am thinking about getting a job. Not sure what yet, but I have started browsing various vacancy sites and have even gone as far as looking at some application forms. I have not put pen to paper of course, that would be a step too far, but I am thinking about it which is half the battle. I have to say that I am disappointed at how pitifully paid most jobs are. Much as I loathed banking, the money was fantastic. I have been looking at jobs in the environmental sector, of which I have zero experience, but even if somebody ignored that glaring omission and actually hired me, the pay is beyond dire. I am perhaps willing to sacrifice cash for quality of life, but if I do go back to work full time, whatever I earn will need to cover various forms of childcare, for few jobs fit into the school day. Apart from teaching, obviously. Childcare is not cheap, and I have lots of children. Much to think about....



Whilst generally avoiding thinking about it, I have been observing bug life on Wanstead Flats. Mrs L threw me out the other evening so that she could do music practice, and so I had a wander around the SSSI part. It is teeming with life at the micro level. Small and Essex Skippers patrol the grasslands, scattering as you brush past. The caterpillars of the Cinnabar Moth (of which I have caught only one thus far) are feeding on just about any Common Ragwort you can find, and there has been an explosion of Common Red Soldier Beetles. I could become seriously interested in small things. If I had my time again, I reckon I might have done something along those lines. I am finding however that a degree in French, even a very good one, has no place on ecological application forms. Bummer, as they say.

Heath Fritillaries. Done.

Everyone else has a blog post about Heath Fritillaries, and always a trend-setter, I thought I would too. First of all I started thinking that no, people would be bored by yet more butterflies, but then I thought that the blog had been a bit bird-heavy in the last few days, what with the excitement of Marmora's Warbler and so on, and that it was high time for a bit of a come down. It is June afterall. Butterflies it is then.

I've been meaning to go to Hockley Woods in Essex for a long time. Birds kept getting in the way, for which I apologise. I know you don't come here for that. Pudding and I went for a little walk with a picnic. Sausage sandwiches to be precise. We had a barbeque yesterday and don't feel that we have yet consumed enough protein. She sat and stuffed her face with this nutritious meal, and I got down to business with the Fritillaries. Win win.

Yet again, very obliging, really sat and posed rather nicely. You might think that one photo of a Heath Fritillary would be enough, and you might well be right. On the other hand, you don't know the password and I do. So, four photos then.

Not wishing to bore you to death with Butterflies, I thoughtfully pondered what else you might like. Birds? Nah, boring. Tales of domestic bliss? Interesting, but so last year. Then I found this beetle. Job's a good'un.

Cardinal Beetle

Not Birds

Orchid sp.

Butterfly sp.

Nose sp.

Nearly June....

I got up at 5:15 this morning and drove to Rainham. I spent about three minutes on site, and then drove home. Thick fog. Cold fog. Wet fog. I had been hoping for soft morning light, excellent visibility, and a gently warming sun. What an utter waste of time.

So, it's nearly June, and I havn't had a tick all month. I'm talking about a life tick, obviously I have had a blinder on the patch, but for most of May to go by without seeing a new bird is pretty unusual. And it's not like next month is going to be any better. You can see where this is leading, right? Yup, June.

June. That universally acknowledged rubbish month where all birders despair, and start getting interested in lepidoptery. I'm not even waiting for June to start. Unless this weekend turns out to be phenomenal, which on the form of the last two hours is looking unlikely, June starts now.

Scilly 2009. Enough Empidonax already!

We stayed on St Mary's again, the lure of Longstones was too strong. We actually worked the island pretty hard. I cannot remember where we went, but we had a good poke around in any number of promising looking areas. And we found......? Moving swiftly on, it may have been today when another Moth hit my pager, this time a Blair's Mocha Moth. Conveniently this was located at Longstones. Apparently there have been fewer than 30 records of this rare immigrant. I just took this from a random website, so it may be utter rubbish. Can't say I was blown away, it was small and browny like most moths, but it showed very well in a plastic tube. The extremely nice proprietor also showed us a Kent Dark Arches, notable only because it was October, but best of all, he had a Death's Head Hawkmoth in a margarine tub. The fact it had been dead for several years did not detract in any way from its impressiveness. Now that is a moth - unless my eyes deceived me, it was ever so slightly larger than the plane we flew over in, although not quite as scary.

The cake showed well once again, and once we had recovered, we continued our bird-finding quest. We had our fair share of Black Redstarts, a pleasingly common bird on the islands, as well as several more Firecrests, but that was all we could muster. Dragging our aching bodies back to Hugh Town later in the afternoon, we shamefully twitched a Rosefinch, along with 25,000 other people. It was beginning to get silly. Nobody could find any scarce birds, let alone the mega yank passerine.

We also twitched a Stick Insect in the Old Town Churchyard. Earlier in the day this insect had been booted from twig to twig by an immense crowd, with photographers approaching to within mere inches, but with darkness fast approaching and a showy Rosefinch just up the road, we had it to ourselves. In the absence of birds, it was pretty cool. It was a green one, distinguishing it from the other sort, which are known as brown ones. We never found a brown one, one for next time perhaps.

Aaaaaahhhhh!!

Macro is so much fun!

Not many birds today, no.

Wader season is over

Not Wanstead

As suddenly as it started, Wader Season is over. Total count of wader species over the season, zero. Today Heronry Pond water levels were back to normal, in the space of two days. I am not sure I understand the management plan. Anyhow, it sure was exciting while it lasted, seat of your pants stuff. I hope I managed to convey the enormous sense of thrill and discovery adequately.

So where is the next patch year-tick if it is not a Tringa? Well, tomorrow morning the plan is to find a Pied or Spotted Flycatcher. There seem to be have quite a few coming through lately, and I have found them before, so I reckon a few choice areas are worth a look early doors. The most likely outcome is that I will get home at 8am with diddly squat to show for my dawn start, but that would be defeatist in the extreme. Thus I will be finding a flycatcher tomorrow morning, probably in the scrub just east of Alexandra Lake. Birding Gods, take note.

Well, that is quite enough about the patch for one posting. I was recently accused of having changed, of no longer being a patch-birder, but of being a filthy twitcher. Now until very very recently it is true that I had largely abandoned the patch, as noted in a number of posts. I realise the error of my ways and will be making much more of an effort from now on. I blame June, and an acute lack of will-power. My accusers were the usual suspects: "Show-home" Harvey, "Iceland Gull" Hawkins, and "Patch-birding is my middle name" Blowmonkey. Notwithstanding that the among their number were a bunch of Great-spotted Cuckoo Twitchers, and, let it be noted, Blue-cheeked Bee-eater Dippers, I am guilty as charged, but the most recent escapade was one of planning, daring, and considerable effort, and thus almost doesn't count as twitching.

The location was Canvey Island, cultural capital of the South-east, where a juv Kentish Plover had been found in the high-tide roost off the point. The point is cut off at the height of the tide, and given that had been at about 1pm, pitching up at 7:20pm was perhaps somewhat optimistic. Low-lister Patch-birder that I am, this was a lifer for me. It is important to note here that KP is not a tick for Shaunboy or Monkey, who had twitched one, filthily, at Tilbury several years ago whilst I was presumably methodically working the patch, hoping beyond hope for any wader, let alone a scarcity. Anyhow, Bradders and I (who would have thought it?) duly pitched up and were confronted with about 20,000 square miles of tidal mudflats. If we had been lacking in confidence on the A13, we were now truly without hope, but we gave it a go anyway. The mudflats are genuinely huge, and there were no large congregations of birds. We therefore had to scan (filthily) several thousand birds scattered over miles of mudflats in the hope of picking up a small pale wader. In the course of doing this we had stacks of other stuff as well - Barwit, Grey Plover, Golden Plover, Curlew, Whimbrel, Turnstone, Redshank, Greenshank, Oystercatcher, Dunlin, Green Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper, Ringed Plover, Little Egret, various Terns and Gulls. In fact the whole place was phenomenal, a great location at that time in the evening - perfect light as well. I had spent time in the afternoon reading up on the species so knew roughly what we were looking for, but we were both on the point of acknowledging what we had suspected all along and giving up when I finally found a likely and very distant candidate. We watched it feed for a while - frenetic galloping, Sanderling-like, and then a brief tippy feeding action - at this range behaviour played as much a part as physical appearance - and DB confirmed the ID, having seen the species before. Against the odds we had succeeded and it felt like proper birding - almost, although obviously it was a twitch. A filthy one.

I didn't stand a chance of getting any photos of the bird, so here instead are some butterflies taken with my excellent and versatile 300mm macro lense. Always come equipped with the right tools for the job, that's what I say.

This is a Silver-spotted Skipper. It is a butterfly, not a bird.

This is a Painted Lady. There are apparently 999,999,998 more of them around the place

And this is a Peacock. Any of these names would have caused uncontrollable giggling last night.

Last night was Monkey's BBQ. A raucous affair it must be said, and where the aforementioned accusations occured. Excellent night, really good, and H brought his moth trap, or what was left of his moth trap, namely a lighthouse bulb bolted to a plank. Nothing fancy about this, you just plonk it down on a white sheet and away you go. The results were stunning. I catch about 2 piddly little brown micros a night and cannot ID them. Howard catches light aircraft and can ID every one of them. We had Cessna, several Learjets, and at one stage, a Gulfstream V. It was great fun as these things bounced off us, and we tried to grab them or stick collection pots on top of them to allow closer study. Tonight I am abandoning my Bonneau du Martray contraption, and just using the bulb and a sheet. We shall see.

The party continued into the small hours and several people called Paul and Monkey became very very drunk. Several litres of red wine were distributed into the grass, and there was a lot of uncontrollable giggling. I am told that this is a taster for Scilly later this autumn and that I should stay well away from them if at all possible! I for one would not be able to go out birding with the kind of hangovers they are likely to have had today. From the sound of it, it may end up being a two-dayer. Luckily I was driving, so am feeling fresh for the patch tomorrow morning. Bring on the Ficedulas.