Sheringham Seawatch

A north sea northerly with gusts rising to 50mph all Friday night and all of Saturday. Frequent squalls, poor visibility. Seabirds galore, it was too good an opportunity to miss. Similar conditions in September 2009 had enticed/forced 800+ Manx Shearwaters past Sheringham, along with numerous Sooty Shearwater, Sabine's Gull, a Leach's Storm Petrel and tons of Skuas. Time has not dulled that day, and I wanted a repeat. I'm over ten years older though, so a hugely early start was off the cards, and in any event the theory was that the birds wouldn't move overnight and instead enjoy a bumpy sleep somewhere out in the open sea. The following morning they would yawn, stretch their wings and immediately be blown inshore where lots of people would be waiting.

It hadn't work out quite like that. By the time Nick and I arrived at the shelters to meet Bradders people who had been there since dawn were bemoaning the initial three hours. Waste of time, completely useless said one famous birder as he walked away, no doubt imploring us not to bother. Always a risk leaving a seawatch, even a poor one. The collected crowd of perhaps sixty had enjoyed a first hour of decent Skua passage but were now experiencing the mid-morning dry up. They left in their droves, and by 10.30am there was room in the shelter below and we settled in to dry off. A LT Skua was called down the line before I had even sat down, but if we were expecting more we were to be disappointed. But with the weather as it was there was no alternative but to continue the seawatch. 

One word. Slow. Ve-r-r-r-y slow indeed. People out for a walk laughed at us as they passed. Approaching 5pm we said we would leave at 5.15 - a solid but ultimately eight hour long damp squib. At about 5.05pm a rush of Arctic and Great Skuas in all directions threw a spanner in the works. In for a penny in for a pound; we were forced to stay. In those final two hours we probably saw more than in the preceding eight. It raised a poor seawatch into an average one. Not in any way comparable to the magic of 2009, but one that nonetheless has an air of quiet and bloody-minded satisfaction.

The following list does not exactly scream ten hours of hard graft at me, but it was sufficiently different from my normal birding that I'll take it. What would I have done at home other than see the same Whinchats that were here on Friday? I am still scratching my head as to why it simply didn't deliver. I am no seawatching expert, I think I will just have to put it down to experience. No doubt the shelters at Sheringham will be full again today, populated by weathered birders who know that a big blow always produces reorienting birds the following day despite blue skies and miles of visibility. There is always next time.

Birder's photo vs Bird photo? A Whinchat provides an example.

There has been a bit of debate recently about the preponderance of super-detailed rictal bristle bird photographs on the internet. It is to be expected, photographic gear gets ever better, with seemingly tiny cameras capable of taking simply wonderful shots. The fancy technology of just two or three years ago is now found in budget cameras and megapixels abound - a starter camera is now around 24mp and some of the amateur bodies are bumping up to 30mp+, approaching 7000 pixels horizontally. That is a lot of pixels, there is almost no excuse not to take outrageously detailed images.

But in the face of this detail that reduces birds to objects of photographic lust rather than as creatures as part of, or moving through a landscape, there is a quiet backlash. The birder's photo. Birders care not for rictal bristles. Rather they want to show the bird as they themselves experienced it. Where was it? What was it doing? Which bush was it in? This has some merit. 

Recently I have been birding Wanstead Flats a great deal. Short targeted visits rather than all day vigils, but often several times a day. Until this morning none of my forays included a camera. But that is OK as phones these days are pretty incredible. Mine is a Samsung and has a 16mp camera in it which I find almost unbelievable as up until two years my DSLR only had 16mp, and even the one I have today is only 18mp. Canon's latest offering, the EOS R5, has a staggering 45mp. It also costs an equally staggering £4200, so I think I'll pass. I'd only break it. Anwyay, it has been very refreshing to be out birding without a camera, particularly one as heavy and unwieldy as mine - a bridge camera it is not. In fact recently I would estimate that nine times out of ten I will just have had my bins. I must be getting old. So, as I say I have been out a lot and there have been birds everywhere. Tasty and inviting birds like Whinchats and Wheatears. Sometimes there have been several of each in the same bush - on Monday a Redstart, three Wheatear and a Whitethroat, or like yesterday, two Wheatear and two Whinchat. I nearly wished I had had my camera with me, but then I realised that actually it was fine as I could instead take a birder's shot with my phone. So here is the bush of dreams from yesterday.

A real sense of place I feel. Evocative, with Centre Road car park in the background and a couple of nice lamp posts. Mmmmmm-mmmmmmm. Yep, that is my kind of photo. It will help me remember the excursion, it will add an extra dimension to my birding in a way that other more vulgar types of photos cannot. To prove this I took my camera out this morning and pointed it at the first Whinchat I saw. Ugh. 

Luckily it is not great as the bird was quite distant and I was in a hurry, and following an unfortunate Windows 10 experience my most sophisticated image-processing software is currently MS Paint. But nonetheless there is still way too much feather detail and the fundamental problem is that you can still tell it is a Whinchat. There are also no cars in the background to provide any sense of scale or of place. And can you see any lamp posts? Exactly. Mind you it is nothing compared to this horror show which I took in Greece a few years ago. Jeeee-sus wept, remind me never go anywhere near Lake Kerkini again. No contest is there? Ebay it is then.

Bridges

We set off from Fife slightly before sunrise, London bound. As we reached Inverkeithing and the Queensferry crossings the sun was just rising. Even though we had not been on the road for very long it felt like the right thing to stop and make our way down to the shore at Port Edgar. I am glad we did, a lovely quarter of an hour with Sandwich Terns feeding between the bridges, and with renewed energy we continued southbound for our date with the Vulture. 

Another SEO

Back in April a memorable balcony watch picked up my second ever garden Short-eared Owl. I was alerted to something going on by Gulls going a bit nuts, and managed to pick it up distantly over Wanstead Flats. I cannot remember if I took a photo or not, and I don't think there was any fanfare on here either. Yesterday it happened again, but this time via a tweet from Rose, a local wildlife enthusiast who spends a lot of time on Wanstead Flats looking at insects and plants. As such the tweet just said "Large Owl", but that was enough to see me jump up from my desk and start scanning. Sure enough, a SEO was earnestly flapping above the brooms, but unconvincingly, as if it wanted to stay. I lost it behind trees and Rose's next message said it had landed again, and as it was early enough that my daily meetings had not yet started I raced downstairs with my camera and headed out into the inclement weather which was getting worse by the minute. 

I was hopeful of photographing a perched owl, but as I approached Long Wood I realised this wasn't going to happen - the Owl was up again, this time with an aggrieved Crow in pursuit. As luck would have it it still appeared to be convinced that Wanstead Flats was the best place for it, and spent a few minutes circling around the area we call the Brick Pits. Standing on the top of the bank there I was able to take a few photos of it in the swirling rain - quite hard work in the strong gusts. The Crow ultimately proved too persistent though, and the Owl gave up and flew off east, or at least I think so, I was trying to tell people where it was and in typing the texts did the classic taking my eyes off it thing. So instead I took and sent this which I think neatly sums up how good autumn birding can be. Interestingly the Owl was still knocking around this morning, the first time I can remember one sticking locally, but an actual meeting meant I didn't see it.

Back home, more than a little damp, I dried off the camera and quickly got to work on the files - unsurprisingly they were pretty crude and required a lot of lightening and sharpening to get something acceptable, but actually the nasty conditions enhanced my enjoyment of seeing the bird and so I'm prepared to accept the compromise. It was my ninth SEO for the patch, and my third for the garden. I am pretty fortunate to live so close - not only can I often get big stuff that other people find from my windows, but as with the Flycatchers on Monday I can be out on the patch incredibly quickly if the need arises. 

A clean sweep

Yesterday I managed to condense autumn into a single day. Over the course of three brief birding sessions I managed to see all the commoner expected migrants. First up an early morning balcony sky-watch, then a mid-morning whistle-stop tour around the brooms on Wanstead Flats, and finally a mid-afternoon dash to the SSSI - there and back in fifteen minutes. My personal totals are a thing of great beauty, and in years to come looking back on August 24th 2020 will always elicit a smile.

3 Whinchat

3 Wheatear

2 Redstart

1 Pied Flycatcher

1 Spotted Flycatcher

1 Tree Pipit

2 Yellow Wagtail

8 Willow Warbler

1 Lesser Whitethroat

Other birders picked up a few more here and there - another Redstart, another Yellow Wag and two more Whinchat and Spotted Flycatchers, but when I look at my list I am once again reminded what an incomparable spot Wanstead Flats can be on a good day. Prof W, now a foreign correspondent, remarked that he too wished he lived by the coast, and he is not wrong. Remember for a minute that Wanstead Flats is not a remote headland or a shingle spit. Instead it straddles zones 2 & 3 of the London tube network, and it has no right to get so many passerine migrants and yet it does. It provokes feelings of jealousy in other London birders who can only marvel at why this should be. I always offer two alternative explanations.

1) The amazing skill, passion, dedication and diligence of all the local birders, by which I mean me.

or 

2) The fact that from the air at night Wanstead Flats must look like a fabulously inviting dark space in the middle of the blazing sea of light that is east London. If you were a bird looking for a spot to dive into as your night flight comes to end where would you head for? This place literally shines out. Or doesn't, if you see what I mean.

Number two strikes me as altogether more likely, although you cannot rule out the fact that the coverage here is excellent, particularly from certain individuals, by which I definitely don't mean me.

So that was my birding day and I am dead chuffed. The longest session was the early morning one, starting at 5.45am out on the balcony. This delivered the (calling) Pipit and the two Wagtails, all of which I also saw. The Chats were all in the brooms, and the Flycatchers and Warblers were all in the SSSI which saw somewhat of an emergency visit later on when I realised that a full house was on the cards. I didn't have a camera for any of it, no time, and the freedom of birding without being fully laden is something I find myself enjoying more and more. But of course all blog posts are enhanced by a photo, so this is the most recent burnt area two weeks after the fire that I wrote about here, and as you can see it is doing quite nicely - the deluge last week has accelerated the recovery to the extent it looks really quite green already. Lovely stuff. And even more lovely was that it contained two of the three Wheatears.

 

Calling all Wood Sandpipers

Dear Wood Sandpipers,

We have created a small yet fantastic scrape that we feel you will very much enjoy on Fairground Flats. Build it and they will come we were told, so please don't disappoint us. It is just to the west of Centre Road and even from my perspective as a non-wader is looking pretty tasty. Here's a photo, what do you think? Pretty nice eh? Probably loads of invertebrate grub, and as far as I can tell the only thing that has yet attempted to tuck in has been an Egyptian Goose and their beaks are extremely limited for this kind of thing. You will have a ball, guaranteed. I will be there from 5.30am tomorrow but don't mind me, just drop in anyway. But hurry as there is a real risk that it will dry up and we would not want you to miss out. See you soon!

Police Scrape (the initial depression was caused by the Olympic base in 2012)

Best wishes,

A friendly Birder

More incidental twitching

Lovely birding conditions

If I had driven from London to the Peak District to see a sodden Lammergeier perched miserably on a rock face I would have come away distinctly underwhelmed. Seven hours in a car with a break half way during which I would have got absolutely soaked for duff views of an magnificent yet untickable bird.

As it was I got absolutely soaked for duff views of a undoubtedly magnificent yet untickable bird, but actually I came away feeling pretty good about it. Why? Because it wasn't a full-on nerve-wracking race against the clock in the company of a huge crowd of desperate birders. Instead I was simply driving past on my way home from Scotland, it was a short detour, and I watched it half way up a beautiful valley in the company of just one other person - a bloke called Alan. 

Alan had planned ahead and had waterproof clothing. I, er, didn't. But I did have a scope which he did not, and so we were both able to get clinching views of the bird perched on the same cliff on which it had roosted the night before. In that respect the foul weather did me a favour as the overwhelming likelihood was that the bird wouldn't move all day. I was guaranteed to see it, and to see it quickly so that I could continue with the long journey south.

It is a great shame that I didn't get to see it fly, to fully appreciate its size and bulk, but of course had it been that kind of day I may not have seen it all and so on balance I suppose I'll take it. Up until now I have been highly sceptical, but I am now of course 100% supportive of its acceptance on to the British list, and implore the BOURC to do the right thing.... I certainly have far less convincing birds on my list that somehow made the grade, though who knows how. Anyway, whether or not this ends up as tickable it is still pretty amazing to have seen a Lammergeier of any kind in the UK, and it broke up the journey rather nicely just like the PGP on the way up. This kind of low pressure incidental twitching suits my current mood perfectly.