Hotting Up or Cooling Off?

August has arrived after an exceptionally dull July. As far as Wanstead is concerned, it is still mostly June, however the first returning Wheatear was seen earlier in the week, which you would think would spur me into action?

So far it has not though. What is wrong? This probably happens every year and I have just forgotten about it, but my desire to bird the patch is at what appears to be an all-time low. I just cannot be bothered, or that's how it feels. I know that as soon as I get out there for several mornings on the trot, all the love will come flooding back and it will be all systems go again, but that first step is exceptionally difficult. I tried last week, managed an hour or so, and since then have sunk back into a stupor. A Wheatear would undoubtedly help, but in order to find one I need to be out there, and I just cannot overcome my front door.

I have not, to be clear, fallen out of love with birding. Absolutely not. But I have fallen out of love with getting up at 5am and seeing only dogs. On my foray last week, I was at Alexandra Lake for about quarter to six in the morning. Waiting for me were a man and a dog around the south side, another man staring at the west side, and a jogger. Somehow I managed to kick up a Snipe, but that's not the point. I want to be out there alone, just me and the habitat, and hopefully, the birds.



Raaaaaaaarghhhh!!!!!

 So quit whining and get up earlier, I hear you say. Well yes, but it is difficult. Too difficult. How many of you regularly get up at 4am? If I get up at 4am, that's me done for the day. It is the summer holidays, and lots of coffee notwithstanding, I can't look after the kids properly on that little sleep. I will be shattered, grumpy, and will not give them the care and attention they deserve. Stack that up against the possibility of a Wheatear, and it's a pretty thin argument for birding the patch at the crack of dawn day after day.

Nationally though, it's hotting-up, and when it reaches boiling point, no doubt I will drag myself back onto the patch, and hopefully score heavily. There are good waders everywhere, and last week an evening jaunt to Canvey Island netted a couple of Cattle Egrets, one a full summer adult, and the other, intriguingly, a juvenile. So there are good birds around, and it's just going to get better and better. Incentive enough you might think? Well yes, and if that were not enough for some reason, I am quite close to going back to work (although someone will need to offer me a job first), at which point my local birding options decrease markedly.

Before I go, I have a photographic offering. On the trip to the East Coast last weekend, whilst nursing Bradders' semi-stricken car home with mineral water in lieu of engine coolant, he expressed surprise that a photograph demonstrating the exceptional versatility of said car had not yet been published. I had, I confess, forgotten all about it, but given that car nearly became about as useful (for birding) as a tea-tray, the time is perhaps right. Subaru, taking care of all your beverage needs.

Weekend, part deux.

Somewhat tired, we didn't get up the next morning until about 7am, and then hit Flamborough Head for a spot of sea-watching. This was not entirely successful, in part because it was a clear sunny day with visibility of around 20 miles, but also because we could not find Brett anywhere. Turns out he was there, somewhere, but he too could not conjure anything decent up. A few Terns went past, including one I felt was a Little, but too far out, and we added Guillemot and Razorbill to the trip list.

As nine o'clock approached, breakfast beckoned. Our landlady, in common with most people in Bridlington, enjoys a good Saturday night out, and told us in no uncertain terms that the earliest breakfast she would do would be at nine. For a lady of sixty-five if she was a day, she had clearly enjoyed herself a great deal, and confessed to being rather frail when we saw her a short while later. This did not stop her producing tea and coffee on demand though, followed by the world's largest breakfast. I ate the lot. To be fair I did not then eat again until about eight that evening, but I did spent a great deal of the morning groaning slightly, and clutching my enormous stomach. I may even have dropped off in the car....

Although it was tempting to return to Bempton, the car had a large puddle of coolant/Evian underneath it, so we decided it might be best to head South. Via Nottinghamshire for a well known Honey Buzzard site. Although the birds only showed between ten and twelve, they also showed almost constantly all the way through to about half-past one when we left, and more than likely continued showing. So much for local gen. As I know you are interested, this was indeed a filthy year-tick, which when I counted them up back at home, turned out to be #198. In context, at the same point last year, whilst not year-listing, I was on 245, so I am doing even better at not year-listing this year. Or I was just in denial last year perhaps? And in 2009, when I was year-listing, I had reached 269. Very pleasing indeed.

From Welbeck, we realised that it was only a detour of roughly forty miles to take in Frampton Marshes RSPB, which held a host of ticks for Nick. We decided to go for it and topped up the reserves of Evian. Another superb reserve awaited us, perfect water levels, heaps of waders. Slightly too much vegetation out in the middle, but what can you do? Finding whole and complete waders was the stuff of nightmares, but eventually we pieced together Ruff, Redshank, Wood Sandpiper, and best of all, Pectoral Sandpiper (199). The Red-necked Phalarope from the previous day had departed, and the Spotted Crake was hiding, so that was our lot, and with the thirsty car demanding more mineral water, we called it a day and nursed the car home at eighty.

A Weekend on the East Coast

If you can somehow ignore the mileage, somehow get over the obscene cost of petrol, then there is nothing like birding to show you different parts of the country, to give you a real appreciation for our diverse and beautiful landscape. If like me you live in a city, and you leave in the dark, then as day breaks you can be somewhere completely fabulous, a million miles away from the concrete and the mass of humanity. A couple of weeks ago I was on a Cornish headland at breakfast time on Saturday. Feeling, admittedly, like absolute shit, having driven through the night, but nonetheless thrilled at the scenery, the colour of the sea, the wet smell in the air, and the promise of what was to come, the journey behind me.

This Saturday at around the same time of day, I found myself in an entirely different landscape. Steep hills, wooded valleys, rolling moorland - the Peak District. Green everywhere, dotted with sheep, calm. But also forboding, hints of menace - snow fencing to protect the road, and signs that told you which routes were open. In winter I suspect it could be fairly unfriendly. Not today though, shirt sleeves weather, blue skies as we approached Arnfield Reservoir in the village of Tintwistle. I know what you're going to say. I said that I wouldn't, that it was too far. Well it is a long way, of that there is no argument, and for a day trip, simply there and back, I would not have gone. But as part of a weekend away, with hours of birding planned at gems of sites on the east coast, then it becomes a mere detour, and a pleasant one at that.

There were plenty of people stood about "looking", as you would expect. We left them standing on the path and carried on over a bridge and around the north side of the reservoir. Not too much going on, a few Phylloscs to check out, and with cover the south-east Asian rainforests would be proud of, it was very hard work. Fortunately the bird, a Western Bonelli's Warbler in case I had not mentioned it, gave a brief burst of song relatively close to our position which Bradders picked up on straight away, which is why Nick C and I had brought him (and his car). Frustratingly though we could not find it, and during the next three hours it didn't sing again, and one very fleeting view aside, during which I saw parts of the bird in the dense canopy that more or less added up to the whole, we never saw it. I gather it sang again in the afternoon, and showed briefly, but it is a tricky little sod, and on reflection we were pretty lucky to get anything. Another entry for the "bvd" column, extremely irritating as I had been doing very well at erasing them. I could of course just not have ticked it, but after three hours in the car and two hundred miles, that was never really an option was it?

So after three hours of Willow Warblers and Chiffs we gave up, after all there was a master plan to follow. The Bonelli's Warbler was merely the appetiser, the real point of the weekend lay east. So next stop Blacktoft Sands RSPB in East Yorkshire, where the long-staying Marsh Sandpiper showed very well and was a tick for Nick, and only my second. The reserve is fantastic, brilliant water levels, a magnet for waders. A summer-plumaged Blackwit was stunning, and several Greater Yellowlegs Greenshank allowed close scrutiny and a good opportunity for some retrospective self-flagellation. The Spotted Redshank were unfortunately well past their best, but a great supporting cast of Dunlin, Green Sandpipers,Water Rail, Redshank, Lapwing, Yellow Wagtail and Bearded Tit. We came away marvelling at the quality of the habitat management and the potential for birds.

By now mid-afternoon, we pointed the car at Bridlington, our watering hole for the evening. Before we could leave though, it started bonging at us. It was unhappy, it said, about its levels of engine coolant. This did not bode well. We flipped the bonnet, and it was quite right, the coolant reservoir was extremely low, well below the minimum mark. The car instructions were most unhelpful. "Do not drive the car! Take it straight to an approved Subaru dealership! Take it now, I don't care what else you are doing! You will damage the car beyond repair if you touch it! Only add G12abcXYZ mk4 coolant, the mk3 is no good! PS, if you can't get to a dealership, and are not carrying fresh supplies of mk4 G12abcAYZ coolant, top it up with Evian and pretend nothing is wrong". So we did. It stopped bonging and we drove to Bridlington.

 Ah sweet Bridlington, scene of £1.50 a pint lager and a lady with no teeth and an interesting tattoo on our expedition for the Black-throated Thrush last year. That excitement was for later though, for first we were off to Bempton Cliffs RSPB to photograph seabirds in the fantastic evening light. It became clear quite quickly that my tripod and gimbal were going to be mostly useless, and my arms are still aching as I type this, but for an awesome two hours I hand-held my 500mm lens and rattled-off close to a thousand frames as Gannets and Kittiwakes swirled around the cliffs below us. I could have stayed for four hours, perhaps six, but we lost the light and it became quite cold. On a high we packed up and headed for Bridlington, pausing only briefly to hear a lady tell us of the Long-Eared Owls she was hoping to see emerge from their burrows at dusk. I don't think she heard me suggest Rabbit as a confusion species.....

Bridlington did not disappoint. If you have a peculiar fascination with very fat and inappropriately-dressed people, it is THE place to be on a Saturday night. The pub we had visited last time had seen an inflation-busting price-rise to an obscene £1.85 a pint, so we forsook our tatooed friend and instead went to the Wetherspoons, where we were accosted by a young lady as good-looking as she was charming. Thankfully she left, and we were able to enjoy an evening drinking nice beer in peace, and watch Herring Gulls strut down the street looking for drunk people to attack. We ended the day on 90-something species, and made plans to be at Flamborough Head in the morning.





Yes I would

Dear Canon,

Yes, this image was taken hand-held with a shutter speed of only 1/80th of a second. And yes, I was using the amazing Canon 100mm f2.8L IS Macro lens, with my trained Grasshopper balancing on one of the fingers of my left hand, and the camera clutched in my right hand. In this most wobby of shaky situations, I felt this would be a proper test of your new hybrid image stabliser, and I am pleased to report that it has done rather well. And yes, if there are any samples of the new Canon 600mm f4.0L IS II lens that need checking out, I would be happy to give it a proper run through its paces for you, on the understanding, naturally, that I get to keep the lens afterwards.

Kind Regards,

Jonathan

Birding Blogs are for Saddos

As is my wont, I was perusing various birdy blogs the other day. I came across one that had no lists, yet the author had just been writing about his new garden list. I'm sorry, but in order to for a blog to be classified as a saddo dweeby birding blog it has to have visible lists of birds. Garden lists, house lists, patch lists, that kind of thing. You will note that my blog has these lists very prominently displayed right at the top, and that I update them assiduously. I would not want my blog to be known as non-nerdy, thank you very much. I pointed out this glaring ommission to the author, and happily he remedied the appaling situation very quickly, and now has a couple of sad bird lists for all to see. With totals - this is important - as nobody cares what you have seen, only how many. So good on him, we would not want anyone thinking that birding can in some way be a normal pastime undertaken by normal people. We must continue to present ourselves as a bunch of pathetic weirdos so that the general public can laugh at us on regional news programs as we queue up to see a bird, all dressed identically. Similarly with blogs, should an unsuspecting member of the non-birding fraternity stumble upon one, he or she must immediately be directed to a list with a number at the bottom of it. They will quickly realise that they would be better off elsewhere, and go and click on a website that shows which crackpot drug-addled musicians died age 27 (and there are lots apparently).

Back to this particular blog I was reading, exciting times are ahead. The author has moved to Grays, and whilst I do not envy him living in Grays, mainly due to the legions of utter morons he will encounter walking their illegal breeds of dog along the seawall, he faces the Thames, and as such has already had such gems as Black Tern from a position of extreme comfort, rather than from a position of extreme wind and rain. Were I him, I doubt I would ever leave the flat, and not just for fear of getting mugged or treading in mountains of dogshit, perhaps simultaeneously. I expect many gripping posts about gratuitous river-watches.

But why, you wonder, would I want to read about what birds some bloke sees out of his window and writes down on a list? It is a good question - well done for posing it - and one I have attempted to answer many times. I'm talking about bird blogs in general now, rather than this one particular blog. This question, even if unanswered, leads to another question, which is why do I write this blog? And why, of course, do people read it (other than to appreciate the magic of blinding prose)? I have an answer, for this would be a pointless post if I didn't.

The answer is that I am performing a vital service to the birding community. By writing, drearily, about exactly the same things that they think about day in, day out, even if they don't write about it, I am normalising their sad hobby. As they read this blog, or indeed the one now being written from Grays, they realise that there are people out there just as pathetic and uncool as they are, and this makes them feel better. For a brief moment, I allow them to experience feeling normal. The effect may even last after turning the computer off, and they can pass an evening thinking happy thoughts, adding numbers up, that sort of thing. As soon as they leave their houses the next day they will of course be shunned, and rightly so for they are a bunch of maladjusted weirdos, but for that short period they can feel happy. Bird-bloggers are basically the Mother Theresas of the birding world. Selfless, thoughtful, in many ways... Saintly.

Sorry, I appear to have wandered off topic. I was intending to write a post about what a fulfilling and complex hobby birding is, how lists are actually cool, how birding blogs are incredibly interesting, and how birders are (by and large) in fact just everyday people. I seem to have strayed slightly, but I'm sure you get the point.

PS If you don't have beard, please consider growing one. I might when I grow up.

More Patch Tales

Like buses, patch yearticks come in twos. Having not seen a new species since May, my cup now truly overfloweth. Common Tern has been frustrating me for a while now. Never particularly straightforward to see, they breed over on the Walthamstow Reservoirs in small numbers, as well as on the Thames at Barking. I don't know where our ones come from, but they never linger for more than about five minutes. You wonder really if it is worth their effort to fly all the way here, catch the tiniest fish ever, and then fly all the way back again.

For the last few days a bird has been seen feeding on the Heronry Pond at 9:10am sharp. At this time I am always on the way back from the school run. I've attempted to connect, but by the time I am at Heronry, the bird has inevitably flown north. Yesterday I decided on a new approach - rather than drive south to Heronry as the bird flies north to the Basin, I just waited at the Basin. Genius, no? And it only went and worked didn't it!! I parked up at the Basin and hopped out of the car. I sauntered confidently over the road and started looking over the fence (it's part of the Golf Course you see, and you must never ever trespass on the Golf Course, that would be totally wrong...). And there it was! One Common Tern, probably the same one that is being seen daily. It hovered, dived, flew round the islands, and then lifted off....south (the little tyke!)....and was joined by a second bird that I hadn't spotted. Cool! Patch yeartick #101. My phone then bonged. It was Tim, stood by the Shoulder of Mutton Pond, and he was looking at one of the Terns, now feeding there. So despite my clever use of tactics and reasoning, I probably could have seen a Common Tern from just about anywhere yesterday, but I am not complaining. Common Tern is definitely getting scarcer. I remember it being regular, and even getting it as a garden tick a few years ago. Then they dried up, and I didn't see one for over two years until 2010. I could list all my sightings if you like...

Patch Tales

Today I did not get up and do the patch. Ever since I the guys got a couple of Green Sandpipers a couple of weeks ago, I have been getting up before 5am and going out to find my own. Guess how much success I've had? Exactly. But I have persevered, day after day, and found nothing better than, er. You know what? I don't recall having found a single interesting bird, it has been quite depressing. In other words, regular patch birding. You go out, you see nothing, you come back, you weep. Well not nothing I suppose, you see the regular denizens, but no surprises, and patch birders like surprises. That's not to say that I have not been pleased with a few things, but whether they constitute exciting is highly debatable. I'll mention two, and let you decide.

The first was when I discovered that unbeknownst to all of us who work the patch, a Tufted Duck had managed to hatch eight ducklings on the Jubilee Pond. At its widest, the Jubilee Pond measures about 25cm, and it plunges to depths of at least 10cm, so Mrs Tuftie is either very very clever, or we're all really really stupid. I've always said the ducks round here are pretty smart. These are either the first or second brood of Tufties we've had, I honestly can't recall, so this is very pleasing, as as recently as yesterday all eight were still present and correct, and had grown substantially.

Secondly, and it doesn't come much more exciting than this, I was wandering across the Flats having checked both Jubilee and Alex for non-existent Green Sandpipers, when I espied a Greylag Goose in a group of Geese on the playing fields. Are you sitting down? I casually raised my bins, and they were all Greylags, sixteen of them! Wow! Added to the family of nine I had just seen on Alex, unless my maths is very shaky, that makes 25 Greylag, easily a new patch record. This is what patch-working is all about.

Yesterday, tramping round the Flats, I saw nothing unusual. I had the place to myself from about 5am. No joggers, no dogs, no dog-walkers, and no doggers. It was very pleasant. Six Greylag flew east at about 5:30am. I had dismissed them as Cormorants moments earlier, as this is exactly what Cormorants do at this time of day. Then one of them honked, exactly like Cormorants don't. Moving on to the Park, I sat on a bench near the Tea Hut, and observed no birds on the Heronry Pond. On the way back home, the Reed Warbler was singing again on the Shoulder of Mutton Pond, raising hopes of a second brood. Later on in the day, back at the Tea Hut, three Sand Martins and two Swift fed above the lake. Everything very much tickety-boo.

This morning I stayed in bed. I deserved it, and was knackered, perhaps still feeling the after-effects of my Cornish extravaganza. I was woken by a tweet at 5:40am, someone thanking me for recently following them. Good. You can guess what is coming. I went back to sleep until 6:15am when another "bong" from my phone woke me up. "Green Sandpiper being flushed by dogs on Alex!" or words to that effect. But of course. I moved very quickly, quickly enough to be at Alex in under five minutes and to just catch not one, but two Green Sandpipers disappearing into the far distance as a large brown dog looked happily on. Luckily one called as it went, the Green Sand equivalent of "Sod this for a game of soldiers, I'm off", and they were never seen again. I checked the Bandstand Pond just in case they had dropped in, but when I got there a small brown and white dog was gambolling in the shallows....

Still, a patch ever tick, and my 100th this year, so I can relax now, and thereby miss more of them. The general rule for seeing waders in Wanstead is to ask yourself if I am in bed or not. If I am, get out there quick is my advice.