Eastern visitor, record equalled, pixel peeping

It has been a mixed weekend but on the whole a positive one. The big news is that Rob discovered a Blythi-type Lesser Whitethroat in the brooms this morning. It was initially rather a skulker, but once it had stopped raining it showed rather better, staying faithful to just a small area all day allowing most patch-workers to connect. It's a bird a number of us are familiar with having seen them on Shetland and elsewhere, and several weeks later than our latest ever Lesser Whitethroat was always likely to be an eastern bird. The colouration, the way the nape merges with the head, lack of distinct mask and above all clean white outer tail feathers all point to Blythi, and even better we have managed to collect some poo which is currently (and to Mrs L's disurst) sitting in my fridge awaiting shipping to Aberdeen.

Also late was a Wheatear on Saturday, our latest ever by over a week, and whilst we were all expecting it to be a Greenland type actually it seemed bog standard. The two other pieces of news from Saturday were firstly the happy discovery of a Jack Snipe on Angel, which takes me to 118 for the year and as mentioned previously equals my best ever patch year. Can I get one more? Or more ideally two more for a nice round 120? There are still two months to go so it is all to play for. Secondly, and for me less happily, the first Corn Bunting for about 2000 years briefly graced the patch on the same morning, but was somewhat inattentively dismissed by all who saw it and the news of a potentially interesting bird did not really make it out. Decent photos later surfaced from a non-birder, which whilst initially confusing (to me and several others) did eventually land on juvvy Corn Bunting as the only possibility. I was on the spot and no doubt briefly saw the bird in question flick across the path (indeed I saw the photos being taken yet did not bother to look!), but I rather suspect I'll be waiting quite a long time - read forever - to get it back. C'est la vie, from time to time this is just what happens in birding. I've missed patch birds before and no doubt will miss them again, but to be in the thick of the action and yet be oblivious to it is a new one for me I confess. Oops!

In more positive news I took the new camera body out for a play both today and yesterday. In summary the image quality seems very good indeed, but in actual use I find it fiddly and far less intuitive than my older body. In particular precise focusing seems harder to achieve, especially in low light, and its larger focus points snap in much more slowly. It is also far less clear when I am locked on, and the viewfinder is pretty pokey as well making it even harder. The buffer seems to fill up very quickly meaning the camera stops working right when I want it to be going and going, and the lack of vertical grip makes portrait images cumbersome to say the least. I realise this is a bit of a whinge about what is in reality a great bit of kit, and indeed in many situations it is great. Something big, close and unobstructed for instance - just put it on all 45 focus points and fire away, the results will be pretty impressive. But for a messy situation like the Lesser Whitethoat I wished for the pro body more than once and wondered what I was doing without it. I will persevere though. I am enjoying the substantial weight saving especially when combined with the lightweight 400mm f5.6 lens, and it seems that if I try hard I can get a decent shot with that combo however I am already getting frustrated that it is not the equal of the 1DX in so many ways. Then again neither should it be when you think about it, and basically I am a fool for thinking I might be able to get away with it 100% of the time. 

The Mistle Thrush above was taken with the 400mm, and the reason it is so sharp is because the bird was one of those unflushable types. I had noticed a lady jog right past it without it batting an eyelid, so I figured I was probably 'in' and so it proved to be. Everything else below I took with the 500mm, some of it with the 1.4x converter attached. The 1DX is a full frame camera whereas the 80D has a 1.6x magnification factor - this is a night and day difference and birds are comparatively huge in the frame! That level of magnification also means it is a lot harder to get a sharp photo, and I am already thinking that the monopod will be needed during the winter months which of course completely eliminates all weight savings..... I know, moan moan moan. Of course the single biggest advantage this new body has is that I am carrying and using a camera rather than leaving it at home. Once again I'm enjoying the unique challenges of bird photography locally whereas only a short time ago I was basically finished with it. Look, I even took a photo of a Gull!

January Accumulation

In a break from tradition this post is going to be about birds. It is January, and this means local birding is exciting again. Kind of. Like many birders who have local patches, for me the start of the new year heralds the start of new year list - I can happily wander around seeing exactly the same birds that I see every year. The excitement is palpable, the competition has started again! 

It is all pointless. Whether I have seen 50 birds, 60, or even 70 by the end of January is completely irrelevant. These are the birds that I will see no matter what, I would have to be blind to miss them. But somehow this does not stop me seeking out the more obscure bits of the Park to find a Siskin, or to spend inordinate amounts of time in Bush Wood in search of Treecreeper. I am a fool, but a happy one.

Last weekend I had no blogging urges to speak off, so this year's fine start has gone unrecorded in internetland. However towards the top of this page you will see a shiny new link to "Wanstead 2019" which details each and every magnificent completely expected and regular sighting so far. Last weekend Tony and I mopped up most of what was available on the Flats. There were of course notable exceptions - could we find a Skylark or Stonechat? No we could not. We also paid our annual visit to Bush Wood, where we found Nuthatch and Firecrest in short order, but of Treecreeper there was no sign. We then took a quick spin around the Park, adding Teal, Little Egret and Green Woodpecker. Adding to the birds I'd seen out of the window on the New Year's Day, I ended that first proper outing on 54 species which is decidedly average - sometimes I get more than that on the first day. 

I am not as keen as I once was, in fact some may describe me as more than a little jaded - by many things, not just birding. However a week at work tends to help build up the necessary level of enthusiasm to get out there, for fresh air if nothing else. So this morning I was up nice and early and found myself in Bush Wood for the second time this year. It will also be the last time, as happily I found the missing Treecreeper quite quickly near the dried up pond. In fact I found two, which bodes well for their continued presence in our area. Flush with early success I made my way over to Chalet Wood. This proved the perfect comedown, with zero sign of the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and ten trillion out of control dogs running amok whilst their owners emitted a variety of pathetic and useless cries which were roundly ignored. Also sighted on my tour were a Water Rail on Shoulder of Mutton, a pleasing 51 Teal on Heronry plus a fly-by Kingfisher, 8+ Siskin in the Dell, and a Great Crested Grebe on Perch. If you are interested in knowing where all these locations are, the map is here. If you are not that's fine too.

This places me on 61 for the year. I would describe this as 'getting there'. Significant misses so far include Pochard, Kestrel and Fieldfare, as well as the birds mentioned above. The thrill of seeking these out cannot be understat.....

Vista management in the Park. This used to be a nice tangle that birds could rest up in, safe and out of sight. Maybe one day the Corporation of London will plant something rather than just chopping it all down?

Collecting scrap metal

As a child I engaged in many scintillating and improving hobbies, one of which was birds, albeit not lists and the collecting of ticks. The collecting bug was however present and correct even in those early years. I never collected birds eggs, but somebody, a kind grandfather perhaps, encouraged stamp collecting, and I remember a phase of tongue-stuck-out-corner-of-mouth fiddling with trying to place various issues pleasingly onto the pages of albums. My favourites were those with birds on, and with many American relatives (and this being in the pre-electronic age) I was constantly furnished with interesting US stamps. I distinctly remember a series of State birds - I probably saw a Cardinal on a stamp long before I saw the real thing. 

This hobby died as so many did, and instead I started collecting coins, specifically those with George VI's head on. I had a book, serious-looking with a green cover if I recall, that listed all the possibilities and I feverishly devoted my attentions to trying to collect them all on a rather limited budget. Even when you had say, a 1937 silver half-crown, you still wanted a better one, a nicer one with fewer dents in it, less tarnishing or whatever else could be wrong with a coin. When you eventually found one and part-exchanged your now vastly inferior old one for it, the triumph of inserting it in its rightful slot was hard to beat. To see it there, gleaming, showing none of its 50 years, well that was what it was all about.....for a brief moment. For as soon as you had it you would completely forget about it, the pleasure being purely in the chase, and so move onto whatever one was next. And so of course gradually you forgot about all of them, which is exactly what happened, and go and do something else instead like count paperclips. But I still have them - even though I last looked at them in about 1989, somehow they made it with me into adulthood, surviving several house moves, recently resurfacing at the back of a cupboard whilst I was in one of oh my god I must get rid of everything moods.

Now mostly 70 or so years old, they still look for the most part brand new, and I am still amazed at my diligence and filing system. Some are even some degree of actual silver and remain somewhat shiny. Do they arouse any feelings, any collecters urge? No. I have zero interest in coins at all - well apart from ones that I can spend - so whilst they're very pretty they're also completely unnecessary and are just taking up space. But somebody must want them right? Wrong. My naive younger self may have thought they were investing for the future, collecting something of real value. No, I have instead somehow amassed a collection of small round discs of scrap metal. It might as well have been bottle tops.

Noting that some of the rarer ones were actually worth upwards of 20 quid each, a few weeks ago I dutifully went through them all and wrote down various lists of what they were, which coins from which year and so on, and then started soliciting coin dealers, thoughts of new-found extreme wealth to the fore. Time to think again. Of the half dozen specialists I have contacted, just one has bothered to reply. "Not for us, we have loads of these already". So whilst they're happy to sell them, and indeed I could now easily complete the gaps that were beyond my adolescent means, once you have them it seems you're stuck with them. This is highly disappointing, but then again who is really interested? When a coin had a circulation of millions, that's going to require a lot of very dull people before there is any kind of demand. Whilst the UK is undoubtedly full of very dull people (I know many of them from birding) there are not currently enough of them. In other words they saw me coming.

A 1942 Florin. Only 39,895,243 of these highly sought after coins were ever minted. Please get in touch if you would like to buy it.

A big disappointment all things considered, but such is life I suppose. I won on the whisky, and people did at least want the fishing gear (albeit for a pittance), but on these I fear there is no hope. Next time I go birding anywhere I'm just going to bury them all, and one day some lucky person will dig them up and get all excited at the treasure trove they have discovered. And then become hugely deflated when realise they're still worth nothing.

In with the old

2015 is nearly over, and you know what that means? Yup, tomorrow many birders, including me, will get excited when we see a Blue Tit, a bird we’ve ignored for almost a year now. There’s also the excitement of “first bird” to come. Birders all over the country are no doubt in a similar state of excitement over what theirs will be. I would suggest that for most the choices are very limited. In my case it will be Robin, as it has been for the last 167 years in a row, unless I can somehow stifle the resident bird this evening. But then it just wouldn’t be New Year’s Day would it? Some traditions are best left well alone, so I’ve already inked it in.

Naturally I will be out all day tomorrow, and staying local. Along with my somewhat surprising second place in our local competition (although it isn’t really a competition at all), I would also appear to have clinched the famous Golden Mallard, which is worth at least fifty quid on Ebay. These two events have naturally fired me up for another crack at Wanstead, and so at dawn tomorrow you will find me crawling around the Flats with a large hangover.

I do however have a hankering to get a little further, see a little more. The coast is calling. Waders and exciting stuff. Perhaps that Red-rumper up in Norfolk? Trouble is I can’t be bothered to drive anywhere, and I would need a substantial kick up the backside. Oh hang on, what’s that you say Dear? The in-laws are coming round on Sunday?

Anyway, this is my last post of the year, and so all that remains is for me to wish you all a very happy evening, a bird-filled 2016, and good luck with those new lists. I’ll be back tomorrow to let you know about that bloody Robin….

Kicking off my year list

I went year-listing in Norfolk at the weekend. I think I may have left it a little late, as I was only on 195. After a successful day I am now on 203, but this is approximately the total I would hit in April if I were taking it seriously. Clearly I am not taking it seriously, and whilst at various stages I have both decried and embraced listing, 2014 will be my lowest ever total by a wide margin. I think I need to do better. I am not saying that I am going to go all out and smash it in 2015, but if you do at least pay a little bit of attention to listing, which patently I have not this year, then you will spur yourself on to see a few more birds. That’s the answer really – call it what you will, add a listing element if you want, but just go birding. If you do, you’ll see more birds than I have this year. For instance, my 200^th bird was a returning Pink-footed Goose in a skein high above Warham Greens. How is this even possible, how did I manage not to see a Pink-footed Goose last winter? We were searching for a Red-breasted Flycatcher that the ever-productive John Furze had just found, and the sounds came floating down. I recognized it immediately of course – I’d seen hundreds of birds in Iceland relatively recently – but that’s not the point. It means that throughout the whole of the last winter period, I had not birded the coast. Not been to north Norfolk, not been to the Yare Valley. But it gets worse - Black-necked Grebe was a year tick too! In other words I have seemingly not been birding anywhere. That’s not quite true of course. I had been to Morocco – twice – and also to Cyprus during the winter period. It’s true that there weren’t many Black-necked Grebes and Pink-footed Geese, but there were outstanding numbers of Moussier’s Redstarts and Cyprus Pied Wheatears, neither of which we could find yesterday on the coast despite giving it a really good bash. Time is the killer, but still. 

Go. Birding.

Nick, Bradders and I had a relatively leisurely start, and didn’t arrive at Blakeney until about 9am. It was cold! I’d been told to expect a nice warm day, wandering around in shirt sleeves not seeing very much, but it was murky with a stiff breeze blowing and newly-arrived Wheatears clinging to the sea wall. We quickly located the juvenile Red-backed Shrike sheltering in a bush, and then went off to bird Friary Hills for a bit. Nothing much doing here, so we pootled off to Warham Greens, always a favourite place to go birding on an autumn easterly. We started at the Stiffkey end and gradually worked our way west, picking up a couple of Redstarts and a Pied Flycatcher. As we arrived at the most-westerly track, Garden Drove, we could see a group of birders moving cautiously down towards us. We stayed put as they pushed down, and saw a couple of Spotted Flycatchers in with various Tits, but the real prize was a Red-breasted Flycatcher that eventually showed very well indeed. Such smart little birds, I’ve now seen eight – simply by virtue of going birding, incredible! Remarkably I’d seen one down this exact track almost two years ago. I think it’s what they call a site having a track record. So almost impeccable timing on our part. Arriving half an hour earlier and finding it ourselves would of course have been perfect timing!

We birded our way slowly back to the car via various Buntings, Wheatears and Finches, and following a spot of lunch in Wells, parked up next to the track that led down to Burnham Overy and Gun Hill. The hope was that with the freshening breeze, more and more migrants would start arriving. Although we bumped into Nick, Clare and Tony who confirmed that this did appear to be the case, beyond a few more Whinchat, Wheatear and a Redstart, we couldn’t conjure anything better up. A few Yellow-browed Warblers further east raised our hopes a bit, but I think it’s probably all going to be about this week and next, it’s east all the way and Shetland could be immense. Seeing as it wasn’t heaving, we decided to devote a small amount of time to the Barred Warbler that had been there a couple days. Barred Warblers being what they are, there was nothing happening, and so after seeing a Garden Warbler, cynicism and boredom got the better of Bradders and he wandered off. He had however failed to appreciate the significance of eating a Double Decker. Nick and I both had one, and whilst I promptly fell asleep, Nick stayed awake and the subtle magic started to work. Thus almost imperceptibly I became aware of a very shouty man in the dunes…… “It’s there!” “In the Elder!!”

Eh? What’s an Elder? I think I need to work on my bush identification skills. By now fully awake due to shouty man, I managed to work out which bush it was, namely as it was the only one with a bloody huge Warbler in it. Ah, so that’s what an Elder looks like. The Warbler actually moved with surprising grace for a large lump – much like me – and was in complete contrast to the Garden Warbler, which basically performed a series of large belly flops in a bramble. I took a series of piss-poor shots with which to grip off Bradders, and we proceeded back towards the car as it was now approaching 6pm – no wonder I was tired….. On the way back we finally saw the elusive Black-necked Grebe (a likely Norfolk tick for me, except it wasn’t as I had seen one in exactly the same place six years and day ago), and then performed our good deed for the day by pushing a Merc off a bank following a parking fail by another birder that had left one of the rear wheels spinning in mid-air and the body of the car grounded on the grass.

  

Totals for the day were a Red-backed Shrike, a Red-breasted Flycatcher as well as Pied and two Spotties, double figures of Wheatear, about five Whinchat, a Barred Warbler, several migrant Goldcrest and a whole host of other things. Without bothering to look at Waders and Wildfowl we ended up at 89 species – eight of which were somehow new for the year. Thus demonstrating that if you go out birding, you end up seeing birds. I must do it more often.

And in third place....

I think I am due a Bronze Medal. My London year-list total is now 209, which I am reliably informed is the third highest total ever. Top of the leaderboard is a guy called Steve, who managed 216 in 2003. In second place is Dom, who has also been having a go this year - he is on 213, and is still holding out for a few more. Then comes me, and then comes Steve again, with 205 in a previous year. Then it's a guy called Rupert, who was the first to ever get to 200 (exactly 200) in London back in 1985, and behind him.... Steve again! There are a few others in the 190s I believe, and last year before the thought of having a go had ocurred to me, I managed 185.



The fact that the leaderboard only has a handful of people on it, most of them Steve, is in my opinion neither here nor there. When I started I felt that 200 was just about possible, and essentially I whooped it. What is perhaps a shame is that I missed out on the top spot. The long and short of it is that had I been very slightly more dedicated, said "sod it" slightly fewer times, and not utterly slacked off immediately after getting to 200, I would currently be sat on about 218. In most cases these are birds I couldn't be bothered to go for, a couple are ones that I dipped but that had I stayed on site longer I would have got.

That said, I never expressed an interest in being the record-holder. I always maintained I wanted to get to 200 and that anything after that was a bonus. I just didn't realise the potential I suppose. No matter. The number of people who care about London listing probably peaks at about 30, and London year-listing at about five, or possibly just three! There is no cash prize, and neither should there be - the skill is limited to be being available at short notice, and being able to drive. If I were to look at a self-found London list, and being very strict about it, this year my total would have been 168. In other words I twitched one out of about every five birds. My semi-decent self-finds have been limited to Brent Goose, Garganey, Scaup, Sanderling, Merlin, Glaucous Gull, Caspian Gull, Turtle Dove, Lesserspot, Woodlark, Redstart, Ring Ouzel and Waxwing. All of the other good birds this year were twitched. Someone else found them, I drove there and ticked them off.

Of course this isn't too important, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't stand a chance of 200 unless you did twitch stuff, but it shows how silly most lists are. A self-found list would be much more meaningful. But enough of doing myself down - to get over 200 is good going, no matter how you get there, and I challenge anyone else to have a go, as if you do you'll realise quite how difficult it is - especially those of you that don't live in London. It has been mostly a lot of fun, and my London life list has moved forward rapidly with a pile of birds I thought I would never get - I've seen seven Eider for pity's sake! Seven! Just seeing one would have been incredible, you could almost say stellar, but that would just be a cheap gag. To drool at my full list, click here. Less fun moments included being in Scotland when a Black-winged Stilt appeared at Rainham, and then getting calls from EVERYONE about it, and then a couple of days later getting news of a Hoopoe in the same place whilst I was still in Scotland. But I was on holiday, and you can't let a year list get in the way of real life. The biggest challenge remains apathy. That and losing the will to live. At various points during the year, news of a needed bird brought not happiness and joy, but instead extreme irritation bordering on chronic depression. Which is why I won't be doing it again. Birding should be fun, and not a cause of anxiety. Next year, Wanstead, and only Wanstead, though no doubt there will be anxious moments there too.

PS Whilst Dom is Dom, and I am me, Steve is not Steve. I don't know Steve the record-holder, and needed a substitute Steve. I thought about Steve Waugh and Steve Bucknor, but thought they perhaps didn't have the crowd appeal that was necessary to identify a Steve. Instead I asked Mrs L, barometer to the masses, what Steve came immediately to mind if I said "name a famous Steve". She thought for a minute and said, "Wasn't there that snooker player?" "Yes", I said, "there was". "Have you heard of Steve Waugh or Steve Bucknor", I asked? "No", she replied. So Steve Davis it is.