Scilly 2009. Getting bored of Parulas now.

Six of us arrived on St Mary's at about 2:30pm on Thursday, following the advance party of four who had flown on in the morning. By 3:30 we were getting some great views of a showy Wryneck. By 4:30 we had bagged the Black-and-White Warbler, and Parula fell shortly thereafter. Err, where was I? Oh yes, that's right, we had a meander around Peninnis looking for a Rosefinch, couldn't find it, and went to the pub.

This showed very well. My photos were still rubbish.

Scilly has many nice pubs. We tried a couple. This is actually true, we probably only went in two all week. Mainly this is because The Mermaid had Doom Bar on tap, which we all quite liked, so we kept going back to see if they had any more. There is also the small matter of Tea Rooms. Again, these were generally superb. Longstones Heritage Centre was generally the luncheon stop of choice. The cake here is awesome, and much as I liked the Lemon Drizzle, the Victoria Sponge won my stomach over. After one particularly hard slog in the rain for no cigars, I started with coffee and cake, and later had a Ploughmans. I had anticipated losing a few pounds running from mega to mega, but on my return there appears to have been a slight gain....

Despite this reversal, we actually walked miles. Just not very briskly I suppose. On our second day we walked through Holy Vale about 35 times, or at least it felt like it. This being my first time on the Islands, I attempted to carry far too much clobber to start with. Scope, tripod, bins, camera, absurd lense, extra lenses, coverters, spare batteries, water, Double Deckers etc. Gradually I whittled this down to the bare essentials, and then realised that I really wanted the camera after all, and piled it all back on again. I never found a happy medium. I think a slightly less ridiculous camera lense might be on the cards for any future visit, but then again, when the opportunity arises, the lumping is worth it, as my Wryneck shot so sweetly demonstrates. And anyway, despite the massive cake intake, you get fitter as the week progresses, so are able to carry more without it hurting as much.

Almost

We stayed on St Mary's for our second day as well, and charged around the Island exploring different areas. Highlight of the day was a brilliant Radde's Warbler that we nearly didn't go for. There were so few rare birds on the Islands that if something semi-rare-but-not-that-good-really turned up, it immediately drew a crowd of 150+. Whilst I didn't see any squabbles, I wasn't really up for the mass twitch. We had tried for the Radde's first thing at Carreg Dhu gardens, given it an hour and a half whilst most other birders were chowing down on sausage and bacon, and then given up when the masses arrived. Later on it turned up near Longstones, and as we were nearby, we had wandered along, only to find tons of people trying to peer through small gaps in a hedge into some allotments, only one of whom had actually seen it. We turned on our heels and went for lunch instead. We may have had some cake. Mid-afternoon it turned up again, this time near Holy Vale. We were at Upper Moors, shuffling into the packed hide one at a time to see a Jack Snipe. The hide was packed with two photographers, their two mates, and all their gear. I'm all right Jack, as they say. Thanks guys. We gave up on this as a bad job, and rather than kick stones, decided we would brave the madness. Naturally every birder on the Island seemed to be present, but as it happened we got excellent and prolonged views of this little stunner as it hopped around in the hedge. As we left, two photographers turned up, but we couldn't be bothered going back to Porthellick to stretch out in the vacated hide.

Dinner in The Bishop. Half a roast chicken and chips for £7.50. Somebody carried me back to the digs.

When contemplating plant photography, always remove any distracting elements

Scilly 2009. Dendroica overload.

+40 miles

I've just got back from the Scillies. Via Newcastle. I had never been to the Scillies before, and anticipation was running high. Day one: Blackpoll Warbler. Day two: American Redstart. Day three: Common Nighthawk. In the event it wasn't quite like that. In fact it wasn't like that at all, but it was nonetheless a brilliant and relaxing holiday, just the tonic. No nappies for one thing.

Let's meet the Team!

And you even get photographs, which may help contextualise some of the previous waffle on this blog. It is important to note the location of most of the photographs. Frankly it speaks volumes.

H, left, and David the Obsessed, right

Monkey

Show-home Shaun

Dave "gigabyte" Mo, left, and "Hawkeye" Hawkins, right.

Sam S

Sir Les of the Garrison

A Wanstead-based birder

Bradders Snr somehow avoided the camera, but just take Bradders Jnr and you're almost half-way there. Anyway, together this bunch of intrepid birders found almost no rare birds. Best efforts were heard-only Red-throated Pipit and several heard-only Yellow-browed Warblers. The disappointing truth was that there wasn't actually much to find, and not that we were that we mostly in the pub.

Having said that, where else can you see Wryneck, Radde's Warbler, Richard's Pipit, Red-breasted Flycatcher, Lapland Bunting, Rosefinch, Cattle Egret, Spoonbill, YB Warbler, and Red-throated Pipit, all basically within walking distance of each other? Not many places I would warrant, but we were there for the big one, the mega-yank, and it didn't happen. To be precise no yanks happened. It was still superb.

Synopsis

Weather: Sunny

Shirt-sleeves: Yes

Birds: Not many

Beverages: Doom Bar

Sustenance: Pasties and Cake. And Doom Bar.

Horrible. We had to spend a week here.

TBC...

Rule #162: Always go see Shrikes

Shikes are cool, that's the main reason. Little badass bandits that look disarmingly cute and fluffy. Supplementary reasons include the fact that there is significant species morphology. Today's Great Grey can be tomorrow's Lesser Grey, or perhaps even Steppe. Or yesterday's Red-backed could become today's Brown, although the reverse is also true. Confusion can reign for days over IDs, especially autumn juveniles, and sometimes the birds are gone before anyone works it out. I'm not claiming any taxonomic expertise whatsoever, as ultimately it doesn't matter - Shrikes are just cool. Which is why I got up at 4:45am and dashed over to St Aines to look at a Red-backe, er I mean Brown Shrike.

Badly misjudged the air temperature. Didn't wear a jumper and had really thin socks on. At one point I considered pouring my coffee into my shoes for the temporary relief it would bring. Frrreeeezing. Things didn't start so well for the seventy or so entirely normal and well-balanced individuals out on the moor at 6:30am, as low-lying mist prevented any birds being seen for a good hour and a half. But by 8, with the crowd having swelled to near enough a hundred, some people to my right claimed it had flown into a bush in front of us. We all rubbished this of course, they had only seen a Stonechat, desperation setting in already, losers. Entirely coincidentally I then picked the silhouette of the bird up in the top of what might have been the same bush....

Views continued to be dreadful for a little while and then all of a sudden the mist vanished and there it was, sat up where all could see it. A few people started talking about P this and P the other, sub-terminal markings and rounded lower-nostril coverts. Irrelevant - it was clearly a Shrike and that is all you need to know in order to gain enjoyment. Funnily enough though it was one I hadn't seen before, so I got a surprise tick. Bonus.

The great and the good were out in force, so I got lots of London Birder ticks as well. So did a lady filming the event for what will no doubt be a thoughtful and balanced documentary about bird watching and those who pursue this magnificent pastime. Vince and Steve B made up for their 2008 failure at Flamborough, and almost all the entire East London contingent managed to make it over during the course of the day. Fly little birdy, fly! Let's hope it stays one more night!

Car-crash TV. PS, employers may wish to click and enlarge to identify ill staff.

In a rare fit of proper birding, I came home and wrote up my notes before I went online to read all about the separation of juv Cristatus from Collurio. Wow. My conclusion?

Shrike.

The Elysian Field

I can officially announce I am done with year-listing. I broke the 300 barrier yesterday afternoon in the Field of Dreams. What a field! Bradders and I were continuing our year-listing quest in Holkam Pines, and had just seen a Red-breasted Flycatcher (may they never get boring) and a Yellow-browed Warbler (bastards), when the news came through of a Richard's Pipit at West Runton. We were headed there anyway so that DB could twitch, filthily, a Barred Warbler. Fine, all good, bit of bonus Anthus action for 299, let's go. Five minutes from the car and the Richard's Pipit went birding and found a Short-toed Lark in the same field. We strode on with renewed energy, could I really get to 300 in the space of one field?

We arrived at the field. Most people were staring at the Elder bushes around the disused pig farm, swearing at the hidden Barred Warbler. Didn't need it, whatever, so headed for the stubble, where we met one of the locals. Whilst casually chatting to him, the Richard's Pipit flew past calling, which was good of it. 299. We learnt from Mr Furze that there was also a Lapland Bunting in the field somewhere. Could DB, now on 297, also get to 300 in just one field? We wandered around the field for a bit, which was overflowing with Skylarks, Linnets and Meadow Pipits, before plonking ourselves in an advantageous corner for both the light and the gradient. About five minutes later a smallish very clean-bellied lark flew around our heads and disappeared again. Hmmm, probably, but need better than that. Luckily DB picked it up again a few minutes later, as had others in the field, and confirmed the ID. Gradually we pinned it down and got good flight views, though never on the deck. And that was it, 300, easy. I can still scarcely believe it. With DB on 298 at this point, I felt it was time to go home, but for some reason he insisted we stay. Oh, ok then, yawn. We wandered over to the farm buildings and almost immediately he jammed in on the Barred Warbler, being the only person to see it for several hours. It showed only to him, and promptly disappeared again for several hours whilst the exasperated waiters had to continue waiting. 299. A short stroll back across the field to where some people had found the Lapland Bunting feeding and he made it to 300 as well, probably within an hour of me doing so. Remarkably this happened on 200 as well - we were in Essex and I beat him to the mark by about 15 minutes with a Whimbrel (which he found), and he added Spoonbill shortly afterwards (which I found). So, all done, and we can both relax on Scilly, although I may not go as I don't need anything any more.

We had a celebratory sandwich back in Sheringham, and whilst contemplating our next move we found the funniest thing ever to be written on an Ice Cream van. It has meaning on so many different levels, we wished Paul had been with us.

A sea-watch was abandoned after about ten minutes, and in a shocking move we decided we would go home and earn BPs with our respective wives. Luckily the pager kicked in and saved us from this ignominy, and instead we drove to Chosely drying barns for a juvenile Rose-coloured Starling. We got there, clapped eyes on it, and then it flew away. Result! Whilst we were looking at this we discovered that another Rosy had flown over a certain field in West Runton. Whilst we were pondering this incredible fact, a Buff-breasted Sandpiper was then found in the same field. Unbelievable! Luckily I took a photograph.

If you bird it, they will come

We didn't go back to West Runton for the Little Bustard that would inevitably be found feeding in the far corner that nobody had checked yet, and opted to go to Titchwell so that I could see a Jack Snipe. It was feeding out in the open about twenty feet in front of the hide, and once Bradders had dealt with the incredibly annoying photographer and the squeaky carrot toy he was using to irritate the Snipe, we got superbly intimate views of this normally skulking bird as it bobbed up and down in the margins. The use of squeaky chew-toys to distract a bird from doing whatever it is doing is a wildlife photography technique I had not previously been aware of. It also seemed to be fairly ineffective, but it would be quite effective for getting yourself thrown out of a hide with more militant patrons than those at Titchwell. And he had a stupid ratty moustache as well. If you're reading this, so sue me, you tit.

The purple sheen on the back is not photographic artifact, it did actually look like this.

After this we went home to face the music. Mrs B sounded quite cross. Mrs L had been well-managed, so a crisis was averted. Naturally she was thrilled I had finally got to 300, and celebrated by doing some sewing in a different room.

The nights are drawing in

Yup, nothing doing today, or indeed the last few days. It rained Monday through Wednesday so I stayed at home, I dipped a Wryneck on Thursday but jammed in on a London Red Kite on the M25 on the way back, and today was spent cleaning sinks and toilets. A pretty dull week all in all, so very much looking forward to a weekend of amazingness. Could I at least get a year tick somewhere?

There was one birding moment today whilst on the school run. At the traffic lights near the Green Man roundabout a Long-tailed Tit flew out of a large tree and over the road. A couple of seconds later another followed it, and then three more. I had just started to tell the kids about Tit flocks and how they hang around together in winter, when about 30 birds, mixed LTT and Blue Tit, all flew out and over together and into a tree on the other side. The children were visibly moved. Then we got hooted at and missed the lights.

So, a sign of winter approaching. Another sign is that I am now feeling cold in the mornings. The urge to stay in my nice, warm and cosy bed is growing by the day. As is the urge to fire up the central heating, which so far I have resisted. I suppose I could, Mrs L would never know. And anyway, she sometimes used to turn it on when she was working from home, and I have small children who chill easily, and there is a desperate shortage of wooly jumpers in this house as I am sure I have alluded to in the past....

I'm sitting here listening to A Prairie Home Companion. Easily one of the best radio programmes out there, and has been going for over 35 years. We discovered it a few years ago, and it is now essential listening. The latest from the Ketchup Advisory Board even had a vague bird theme.

"These are the good times, for the summer birds.
Heading south for winter, in their great bird herds.
Life is flowing, like ketchup on cheese curds."

"Ketchup, for the good times" "Ketchup, Ketchuuuup"

I think you probably have to listen to the show a few time before it becomes meaningful.

Attempt at the keyhole technique in Fife earlier this year. This post is what is known in the trade as a "filler".

Outsmarted by a duck

It's official, I have the mind of a five year old child. As we were driving home from school today, Muffin was as usual waffling on about the Antarctic - we having been watching "Life in the Freezer" recently. There have been many questions. This time he was asking, if there was a Pigeon in the Antarctic, would I go and see it? "No" I replied (for I don't keep an Antarctic list), and slowed down for the lights. Just at that moment I had a bizarre and surreal thought: from a certain perspective of the Globe, the cars in front of me were actually driving vertically downwards, and wasn't it amazing that they didn't all fall off? As I thought this thought, Muffin piped up from the back, "How come you don't feel all upside-down when you go to the Antarctic?" Errrr.

So it is no surprise that I was outsmarted by a duck at the weekend. In search of yet another year-tick, Draycote Water was the scene of this humiliation. A Lesser Scaup had been reported, presumably a returning bird for I saw one here last winter, and this was the target. I left my coffee in the car, in anticipation of a quick and easy tick, and we (DB, naturellement) proceeded to the water's edge to look in the bay where it usually spent its time. Nada. OK, well, there are tufties all the way round, off we go then. And so off we went, grilling all the ducks. When we got to about half-way around, a mere two and a half miles, there was still no sign of it. Hmmmm. OK, so do we retrace our steps, or just carry on round? Some Pied Wags told us to carry on round, and suggested we might get some food at the sailing club. Still no duck when we got round that far. A poor bakewell tart later, and we were on the last leg that would bring us back to the car.

"You've walked two and half miles, seen nothing, and have another two and a half miles to go. Food is THAT way."

As we passed opposite the favoured bay, about half a mile away from a complete circuit, I had a quick scan. Ah. "I may have a candidate...." I mentioned to DB. Though we needed to get closer to be certain, it was indeed the Lesser Scaup, serenely bobbing about in the exactly same place where it had been reported from the last few days, where it had undoubtedly been all morning, and where we had almost certainly walked straight past it some two and a bit hours previously. We eventually got brilliant views of it round the other side, having completed our loop and then some. It even woke up for us, had a preen, sniggered, and then started displaying - and all about five minutes from the car. It is nice to have to work for a bird, as opposed to just bowl up and tick it, but there are limits, and a five mile walk to look through 500 Tufted Ducks and then find the bird basically back where you started surpasses those limits.

On the plus side, we then didn't really have enough time to go looking for Willow Tit, which DB needs for his yearlist and I don't. Instead we spent a couple of hours looking for the recent Aquatic Warbler, couldn't find it, and headed back to London for the Staines Red-necked Grebe. We may have driven down the M40.

October? What, already?

That went fast didn't it? Wow! I know it has been said that every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time, and so on, but the first three-quarters of this one have gone like lightning. It only seems like a few years ago that we were all celebrating the new Millenium, but in fact it is almost ten years ago. You can mostly chart the years by the bad things that happen, somehow these events remain the ones that are easist to recall; The London Tube bombings were four years ago - I was on the tube that morning, and remember it very well. Ian Huntley killed those two little girls in Soham seven years ago, and the attack on the Twin Towers was eight years ago. As a kid I remember being in the middle of decorating a Christmas Tree when the TV was interrupted by a news-flash of the Lockerbie bombing. That was almost twenty-one years ago. On the way to Somerset last weekend we passed signs for Hungerford. That was twenty-two years ago. Moving away from the nasty stuff, last night I realised that Muffin was almost six. Six?! Where do the years go?! Time seems constantly to accelerate.

As a birder, you remember the significant birds. I remember a quick dash after work to see a Squacco Heron south of the river. As I was looking at the bird, a wild-eyed and sweaty birder ran up to the viewing screen in a suit. He was a bundle of nerves, barely managing to hold it together. "Is it still here???!!! Waaaaaahh!!!" That was two years ago now, and I've not seen one since, so maybe his anxiety was justified. On another evening I remember desperately trying to find Harrow Lodge Park, finally getting there on the cusp of darkness to see a Ferruginous Duck in the gloom. That was two and a half years ago. For some reason I'm acutely aware of vanishing autumns - only another five until I'm 40 for instance. Fifteen until I'm 50... so I have to make each and every one of them count. Which brings me to this September. Where did it go exactly? Sitting here on the 1st of October, following two straight weeks of innocuous weather on the birding front, it feels like September was a dud, and that nothing happened. But that is because I am looking ahead already. In truth the last two days of August and the first week of September were stupendous - Fea's Petrel, Citrine Wagtail, Blue-winged Teal, Arctic Warbler, Ortolan Bunting, Alpine Swift and Pallid Harrier in the space of nine days, followed by Fan-tailed Warbler on the tenth. But since then it has been somewhat slow. And here is the problem - Autumn goes so quickly that if two weeks pass without suitable weather, many birders, myself included, view this as a nothing short of total disaster. Forget the rest of the year and how good it has been, it is always about the next few days. In short, it seems that without a constant stream of scarcities and rarities, birders are never satisfied. They are always looking to the future, to the next tick. Never their minds on where they are, what they are doing. Tick. Heh! List. Heh! A birder craves not these things...

I should be looking back and savouring the incredible moments and birds I have already witnessed this year. I should be reliving in my mind that stunning morning on the Flats which produced all those Whinchats, marvelling at the sheer magic of all those migrant birds somehow being deposited, all together, in Wanstead whilst in the middle of a 4,000 mile journey to sub-saharan Africa. Or if we pretend for a moment that I am not a patch-birder, but instead some kind of lunatic twitcher, that awesome ten-day period at the end of August and beginning of September.

Birds and birding moments, seem, for me at least, to have an incredibly powerful ability to transport me back to particular places and particular times. I can remember very clearly being sat in a hide at Vane Farm in Perthshire many years ago, wondering with Mrs L what that funny bird brown bird with a black and white head was, sat in the reeds in front on of us. We kept going through the field guide and not finding it. It took an age to finally realise there were some buntings at the back of the book. And the first Sedge Warbler I can remember seeing was at Loch Gruinart on Islay in 2003, sat on a fence-post. I took slide after slide of it, even though it was a dot. Recalling this one seemingly innocuous bird helps piece together the entire week we spent on the island, what we did, where we went, and which distilleries we visited. Actually that last one is easy - we went to all of them.

What I need to do is to forget about the next tick (which would be #296), the next rare bird (perhaps #331 for the life list). Savour each day as it comes (cleaned the cooker this afternoon), and enjoy the birds for what they are (saw nothing today).