Thray Emmets goe Seawaaatchin'

On the strength of a good-looking forecast, three intrepid birders from the south-east made their way south-west. Destination Porthgwarra and Pendeen for what would hopefully turn out to be some stonkingly amazing seawatching. A big low in the mid-Atlantic was heading with some speed towards the Cornish Coast, and I hoped that it might be pushing some displaced Cory's Shearwaters in front of it. Or Albatrosses, I'm not fussy. Nick C, Mark R, and yours truly decided to take the gamble. And a gamble it truly is, for forecasts can be wrong, and seawatches can be crap.



A floating vomit-bucket sails past the Runnelstone.


Saturday 3:30am, Porthgwarra Carpark. Rather than the carpark being full of excited birders that had travelled the length and breadth of the land to be at this once-in-a-generation pelagic spectacle, there was just us. Two hours of non-sleep later there was still only us. Hmmm. On the clifftop, a similar story. Us. Had we got it wrong? The winds seemed lighter than predicted but we set up nonetheless, scopes pointed at the Runnelstone buoy. It certainly seemed pretty rough out there, and a few birds were passing.  Not a lot happened for an hour or so, and then finally we were joined by a local birder, who had decided that the two minute journey was worth his while, and that he would have a quick look. It had taken us six hours, a serious committment.

At around this point things became mildly exciting. I picked up a large bird some way behind the Runnelstone. It seemed to be a Shearwater, but I hadn't really ruled out Gannet. It had long bowed wings though, and wasn't flying like a Gannet, so I was mildly hopeful. Not having seen Cory's before, anywhere, reading about flight jizz isn't really the same as experiencing flight jizz, so I gave directions, hoping that the local guy, Linton I think his name was, would deliver the verdict I was hoping for.

He did! One Cory's Shearwater, albeit disappointingly distantly. Not that I cared of course, as you know, I'll tick anything. We carried on scanning, but despite our best intentions, we never got another one. A single Sooty Shearwater was the next best thing, and a handful of Balearic Shearwater with a few hundred Manxies were the only other tubenoses seen. Four Chough - a family group with two youngsters - livened the spirits, but by about lunchtime we were beginning to realise that it wasn't going to pick up. By this point I was asleep in the long grass, and soaked. Exhausted I had picked a cosy spot out the wind and stretched out, and some heavy rain had utterly failed to wake me up. The boys woke me up with the news that the winds were shifting and that we were going to try Pendeen, just the other side of the Lands End peninsula. The theory is that if the winds are from the South-west, you watch from Porthgwarra, which is on the south of the pensinsula, and that if they're from the West, you watch from Pendeen. North-west and you go to St Ives's Island a bit further round.

Although the winds were more north-westerly, we chose Pendeen, as you can park for free whereas in St Ives you need to remortage your house to park the car. We wondered whether being miserly might have been a mistake, as Pendeen, wasn't much livelier, though I did manage to add Storm Petrel to the day list. By early evening, having been on the go for approximately forty hours without any significant sleep, we packed it in, sourced a fish supper from St Just, and headed for the B&B in Penzance. Too tired to even drink much beer, we hit the sack hoping for better fortunes in the morning. Would we justify our trip, or would we have made the long journey for nothing? I know we had seen a Cory's, my target bird, but 700 miles for a single, distant Cory's and not a lot else is not the stuff legends are made of. Pendeen needed to be good.




Very sadly, I was unable to drink much of this


We arrived more or less at dawn, having slept for what seemed like only five minutes. We were again surprised to see just one guy there. He was called Royston, and seemed to know what he was doing, moreso than us at any rate. I suspect his total hours spent at either Pendeen or Porthgwarra adds up a wife-pleasingly high amount. Anyway, the action was non-stop. At Pendeen you face north towards a group of rocks, and typically the birds fly east to west in distinct lines that take them inside or outside of these rocks. The close Manx line today was split into two, one taking the inside line, the other passing just outside, and it was sensational. Between about 9am and 1:30pm, the Manx line never stopped. Birds passed at between 50 and 120 a minute for over four hours. Outside of this period the passage was slower, an average of perhaps 25 birds a minute, but this is just the close line, there were several others further out. Being completely scientific about it, I reckon I saw somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 Manx Shearwaters, and thousands more would have gone uncounted. This doesn't happen on Wanstead Flats, and was completely captivating. We stayed for about twelve hours before reluctantly pointing the car east.

I don't generally like posting lists of birds on this blog, as it may excite my readers too much. If you are of a fragile disposition, or have a heart condition, look away now!

25,000-50,000 Manx Shearwater
2 Balearic Shearwater
7 Cory's Shearwater
40+ Sooty Shearwater
60+ Storm Petrel
5 Bonxie
1 Common Tern
3 Sandwich Tern
6+ Puffin

Wowzers! Note the number seven next to Cory's Shearwater. I found one of those, and saw six. One, the last I think, was rather special, for rather than hugging the Cork coastline like all the others, it was in the close Manx line. One of the experienced Cornish sea-watchers called it, and bar one very unfortunate guy in a green Tilley hat who managed to see nothing all day, we all got on it. Glorious, you could actually percieve plumage detail and see the bill colour. It motored along with the Manxies giving stunning views before disappearing around the corner. Mission well and truly accomplished.

As I type this from home on Monday, it appears that over forty Cory's have gone past Porthgwarra this morning. Perhaps they come in behind weather fronts, perhaps they were futher out in the open ocean that I had imagined they could get in the week after the large movement from the South, who knows? I could feel short-changed, but that last bird made the trip worthwhile. I don't really get on with boats, so I'm unlikely to ever see one better than that, and I am extremely pleased. An excellent weekend, totally knackering, but some proper birding. And the lack of Albatross means I need to go back.

Greenshank Twitch!

Just how good am I at birding? I've just driven 180 miles, jeopardising the school run, for a Greenshank. The best bit? I discovered it was a Greenshank on the 180th mile of my journey, just as I was getting out of the car at the school, congratulating myself on a superb bit of twitching, an immense rarity safely snaffled...

Brilliant. At 11am, having cleaned the fridge, thrown out all the 'best before 2009' jars of god knows what, and hung up yet another load of washing, I had a quick look at the web to check for birding goodies. Greater Yellowlegs in Northants! Could I get there and back before the school pick up? A quick look at the distances involved, and it looked pretty doable. Less than a hundred miles, which would give me an hour window, and waders generally stay out in the open and very visible on inland reservoirs. The twitch was on! Pudding, get your shoes on!!

Picked up Hawky en-route, and despite the best efforts of the M1, made good time up there. A short stroll from the carpark and there it was in all its glory. Tick and run! Made a couple of facetious comments about it looking remarkably similar to a Greenshank, and how the legs looked less intensely yellow than I was expecting, and continued to look at it uncritically for about half an hour, like you do. Time was up, had to leave. Tick and run, what a superb bird, a great addition to my list, hope it flies away now, etc.

Made good time on the way back, and was looking forward to updating Bubo and gripping all my mates off, who incidentally were all busy hatching plans to twitch it after work. Arrived at the school with ten minutes to spare, feeling pretty good. A successful twitch! Then my phone went off....

I stared at the message in disbelief. It can't be! Can it? No, it can't be, there were loads of people there and I didn't hear anyone mention anything. A standard twitch then. Turn up, see what you are expecting to see, and leave again. Genius. I am of course guilty as hell. I left fully satisfied, as you do. Apparently after we left it had a bit of a fly around, revealing a rather lovely white vee up the back. Who knew that Greenshanks can have funny legs? The whole of Birdforum apparently. A few distant fuzzy shots of the bird on the deck are now in circulation, and the internet birding community are falling over themselves to say how obvious a Greenshank it is etc etc. As everyone knows, the best birders are the ones who never actually leave their houses.

Anyway, a great way to spend the day, and an excellent use of £30 of diesel. I am of course having a bit of laugh at my own foolishness, it would be churlish not to. I could be pissed off, and I suppose partly I am, but it's actually pretty funny when you think about it, and I'm sure none of my mates will rib me at all. It does of course reinforce my belief that twitching is a mug's game. And that I am one of the finest mugs there is.

For ID purposes.....

Hard work

The patch is hard work at the moment. After having been bracketed by Green Sands, I've been out at five in the morning two days on the trot. The rewards have been scant to say the least. I picked up what is probably a record count of Greylags, when a flock of 16 landed on the playing fields, and thus added themselves to the family of nine on Alexandra Lake, but the mere fact I am mentioning Greylags is an indication of the slimness of the pickings.

There has been little time for much else. Towards the end of the school year about a million and one events take place, so I have been to two sports days, one parents evening, two ballet classes, one cricket session and a lot more besides. Happy news today from the latest sporting extravaganza is that Muffin is officially the fastest kiddo in Year 2, or at least he was today. Fastest boy I should add, he didn't race against any of girls, but some of them looked pretty speedy. It's all down to me of course. Not the DNA I hasten to add, that wouldn't help him, but we have watched Chariots of Fire seven times in the last two days, and I've been giving him Mr Mussabini pep talks, including one right before the race about not looking at the other kids during the race. Not all of this is true by the way. He did win though, attaboy!

Here, have a Grasshopper. I once saw a totally amazing photo of a Grasshopper in this pose. I can't remember where, but I remember being dead impressed and wanting to try and recreate it. This does not come close to the perfection of the particular photo I have in mind, but it's a start, and seeing as Wanstead Flats is Grasshopper Central at the moment, I should have many opportunities to have another go.

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.

Failed Twitcher

Friday evening and I find myself fervently hoping that a small Warbler currently enjoying itself in Derbyshire falls off its perch tonight. I've never seen a Bonelli's Warbler, of any variety, it would be a world lifer. Wow. I refused to go last Sunday, but it looks like I could be heading that way Sunday unless the bird does the decent thing between now and then and buggers off. Why does twitching have to be like this?

I have silly conversations with myself:

"It's only a bird, forget about it."

"Yes, but it's pretty rare."

"So what?"

"Bradders has seen it, he went straight away. Now he doesn't have to worry about it."

"Pffff. I stand by my previous "so what?""

It" would be a good tick. One closer to 400."

"Don't care. It's only a number."

"But it's the first one you've even been able to go for."

"Go away, you're annoying me."

"How am I supposed to go away exactly? Anyway, it's only 200 miles."

"Gah! 200 miles!"

"Motorway the whole way, you could be back for lunch. Look, you went for the Pied-billed Grebe in roughly the same place didn't you?"

"That was stupid too. Anyway, Pied-billed Grebe is much rarer."

"What else are you going to do instead?"

"Oh piss off"


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is precisely the reason that twitching, or at least the thought or mere possibility of twitching annoys me. Your tick-hungry side keeps niggling at you, and won't let up. That said, my change in stance on twitching is still quite recent. I'm a raw convert to "not caring", and will I hope gradually recover and be able to cope better when rare birds turn up. The pager is gone, that was hard, but really I've barely missed it. There was a moment of sheer filth with the Audouin's Gull when I basically dropped everything and legged it to Minsmere, but apart from that my aquisition of new birds in 2011 has been fairly restrained and carefully targeted. I'll let you know how I get on on Sunday.

Sad but True

The ultimate Birdforum thread seems to have petered out. This is entirely my fault, and I apologise. I had been attempting to stoke the fires with snide comments about quite how pitiful it all was, to no effect whatsoever, and so had even gone so far as to suggest that they were in with a chance of beating the Slender-billed Curlew thread, which rolled for months and months and topped 1000 posts. This appears to have been the last straw, and there hasn't been a new post since Sunday. Oops. Perhaps I should create an anonymous username, "shitstirrer2127" springs to mind, though it might already be taken, and write "Lee Evans/Steve Webb (delete as appropriate) you are a big girl's blouse!" or "Has anyone on this list seen a Southern Pochard?" and see if it miraculously springs back to life. Or perhaps not, and the fact that it is sinking into the depths of the web is in fact A GOOD THING.

And anyway, I feel that this blog has been sailing a little close to the birding wind of late, you know, talking about current affairs and stuff, not really what I'm aiming at. What am I aiming at? Er, other than total weboland domination, not much really. Write a bit of nonsense here, write a bit of rubbish there, get paid in Swarovski binoculars on a per-post basis, that kind of thing. With precious little to say, I'm feeling a weekly roundup coming on, what do you reckon? Scintillating? Almost.....

Saturday afternoon
School Summer Fete. Yours truly mans a "Name the Fluffy Owl" stand, whilst simultaeneoulsy running a "Find your own bug and have it identified!" stand. Total sales of name the owl tickets, £2,132,092.50. Total sales of bug-pots, £6. Or maybe £5. And three of those were my own son and two of his friends. Total bugs found, two 22-Spot Ladybirds, a beetle whose name I forgot, an aphid, and an unidentied tiny fly. Sorry no refunds. I spent most of my time admiring the real owls on the stall next door, as did everyone else. And I still don't know what the fluffy owl was called.

Saturday evening
Howard's BBQ for friends, Rainham volunteers and bird bloggers. An entirely sober affair, much jollity is had with an ex-RSPB collection Robin, and Howard definitely does not stick Christmas Tree lights up his nose. Devastating news of an ID faux-pas, and that my Lesser White-fronted Goose photo shows a Pink-footed Goose. I attempt to explain it away. Later on, we do a spot of mothing, and Muffin outclasses us all in the ID stakes. Top moth award goes to the six Swallowtail Moths. Sorry, five Swallowtail Moths, as I accidentally crushed one whilst losing my balance fairly late on.....

Sunday morning
Arise with immense headache; blame beer. The morning passes slowly to say the least.

Sunday afternoon
Still feeling like shit, I assess how many beers I drank, conclude not enough, and decide that I am ill. We watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Birdforum en famille, and then with a temperature of 2,345 farenheit I go to bed at 6pm.

Monday
My headache has gone, and the fever has reduced fractionally to 98.6 farenheit. However I have god-awful stomach cramps and lower back pain like I am 39 weeks pregnant. It is all I can do to take the children to school, then I come home and collapse. But only for a moment, as I then have to spruce the house up as we have a visitor. The list of Brownie point-earning tasks is long and varied, and I even clean up the desk that Mrs L has been promising to clear up for approximately fifty-thousand years. It takes me fifteen minutes, but blogging about it loses me all my Brownie Points.

Tuesday morning
As the sharper amongst you will have noticed, that's today. I'm feeling a lot better, and have done some shopping, repotted Pie's sunflowers, done a couple loads of washing, and photographed some Hoverflies. I'm guessing you're sick of insects, so instead.....

From the Armchair

The other day I was moaning to Mrs L that I hadn't any ticks for, like, ages and ages. What a terrible terrible shame she agreed [note that this is not necessarily a true depiction of events - Ed.]. Two hours later I was sat in my armchair when Nigel Hudson alerted the world to the availability latest BBRC Work-in-Progress file. Hurrah!

For those that don't know, the BBRC is the committee of birding bods/gods that adjudicate on whether rare birds in this country were real or not. First of all they have to decide whether the bird in question was the bird in question; was the ID correct, and was the bird a figment of the observer's imagination (heaven forbid) or not? In the case of the bird that roused me from my armchair, was the bird actually a Lesser White-fronted Goose, and not some dodgy bread-guzzling hybrid? Yes it was a Lesser White-fronted Goose, and yes it really existed as loads of people saw it. That hurdle passed, they move on to the difficult stuff. Where was it? When did it turn up? What birds did it arrive with? What birds did it leave with? When did it leave? What did it do while it was here? What did it eat? Did it say anything? All crucial questions, the sum of which are used to come to an informed decision about the wild provenance of the bird. Assuming the majority of the committee then call the toss correctly, the bird is accepted as a record onto the almighty British List.

Or one of the British Lists. There are several, maintained by different people, and you can follow whichever one you want. I can't remember the real name of the one I use, but it now has the Goose on it, whereas the one I don't use doesn't have the Goose on it. Although you will find this hard to believe, the various list-keepers can come to entirely different conclusions when presented with the same facts. You could argue about this all day long, and it's just possible that some of that does go on. Thankfully though it happens behind closed doors where the public can't see what a bunch of socially inept losers birders really are.

Moving swiftly on before this post takes a large downhill turn, every quarter the BBRC tells the world how they're getting on with rare bird records they have been tasked with judging. Rabid twitchers everywhere open the file and eagerly scan down the list of birds, which is presented taxonomically.

"Ooooh, Black Scoter, did I see that?!"
"What about that Blue-winged Teal with a ring on it from Cambs somewhere?"
"Oh, I wonder if they've accepted that Goose?

TICK!

The specific entry you are looking for is "OK". OK means it has passed all the tests and is adjudged to be a real non-fictitious bird. There are other entries as well. "IC" is a popular one, and means in "In Circulation", ie they're still looking at it. They can sometimes look at it for a very long time. For example, they're still looking at a Great Reed Warbler from Dorset in May 1961. I'm all for being careful, however fifty years on, with the observer almost certainly (and unfortunately) in Green Italics, it's time to make your mind up. I suggest that a quick "NP" here would be ideal, as there is likely nobody left to chunter about it. NP stands for "Not Proven", which is a nice way of saying you were wrong, and you didn't see a real bird. Personally I'd prefer to see "Bollocks" next to an improbable record, as that is what most sceptic birders would say when they first got the news, but I'm not on the committee. And possibly never will be.

Anyhow, Goosy-Lucy is no longer in circulation, she is "OK". Back in January, when I saw this wild, wary, pure and unringed bird consorting with a classic carrier species in a historically plausible location, I was extremely restrained. Usually I speed home, there to open Bubo and bung the bird on immediately. In this instance I waited, just in case the powers that be decided in their wisdom that the bird was plastic. Happily it has been given the benefit of the doubt, and so, feeling virtuous from the comfort of my armchair, I have been able to tick it off my little bird-spotting list, and need never look at one again. Phew.

Here is the first Lesser White-front I ever saw. It didn't cut the mustard for some reason.