Sandpiper Central

Whilst my mobile recording has not yet borne fruit, my nocmig recordings are beginning to do the business. Teething problems behind me, I have recorded two new species for the garden in three days, and that is with the microphone plonked in a bucket. Imagine when I mount it on the roof! The sky is quite literally the limit.

Waders. Specifically, Sandpipers. Two nights ago, perhaps two nights after the party fail, my little box of electronic tricks picked up this.

A Common Sandpiper swee-sweeing its way south. Or west. Actually I don't know, it is not easy to tell where exactly the sounds start and stop. The microphone was angled into the south-west sky, so my best guess it that the bird was travelling roughly north-east to south-west as the recording was quite long which means it stayed close to the "cone" for quite a while and got louder towards the middle. Pure conjecture. 

And then last night it picked up this, a single call, indeed the only call of note in six hours of scrolling through 24 second chunks.

A Green Sandpiper, the clear recording suggests it was perhaps quite close, but perhaps travelling in a different direction? Or it may have called only once and I just got lucky? Who can say. Initially I though it was another Common Sandpiper, but now that I am building a library of sounds I was able to go back and examine my earlier recording which showed that this bird had a lower fequency - whereas the Common Sandpiper topped out at 6.5 kHz or thereabouts, this one barely got above 5 kHz. Frequency seems to vary with distance but both recordings were of roughly the same clarity and volume. And then Hawky told me it was Green Sandpiper which helped enormously....

Needless to say both of these are garden ticks. That is to say the garden has ticked them and I have not. In the case of Green Sandpiper that would be quite a useful year tick, so I am planning to stay up for a few nights and see if I get lucky. Both birds went over at times that were still bordering on reasonable, especially with snacks and dare I say it a mid-week drink - midnight and half midnight respectively. Autumn has started.

Right, I'd better go order some more coffee and Bombay Mix.

Rolling back the years in Kent

The first twitch I can ever remember was in August 2007. Sharp-tailed Sandpiper was the target, and Oare Marshes in Kent was the location, just south of the Isle of Sheppey. It is a fabulous reserve but one that inexplicably I've only ever visited a handful of times. I went again yesterday for the first time in about eight years. Eight years! I mean I know Wanstead is good, but come on - Oare is not the kind of place that should be neglected for that long, it was simply superb and stuffed full of waders. I rarely see waders, in fact these days I probably hear more waders than I see, so to be presented with a panorama overflowing with them was quite the thing.

I was on a day out. I had thought about staying local and spending another weekend at home doing very little, but then I realised that 2020 could easily pass without me seeing many birds at all which would be rather sad. I needed a change and despite the distance I am glad that I went through with it - these days it takes very little for me to press the "sod it" button. So at 7.45am on Sunday I found myself at Dungeness, which according to my records I had not visited since 2016 (I am aghast but I can well believe it). I was alone. No dog-walkers, no joggers, no sirens, just me and various gravel pits that had been stocked with birds prior to my arrival. I started at the ARC, viewing from a bank that in normal circumstances you are not supposed to stand on, but with the screen and hide being closed the many footprints strongly suggested that this was the most viable alternative. Gosh what a lot of birds there were, and I picked through every one of them. Crossing the road back onto the reserve I wandered towards Hooker's Pit, briefly seeing three birders shock horror, and picking up a few Cattle Egret and Great White Egret, which at Dungeness are as common as muck. Hundreds of hirundines fed overhead, mostly Sand Martins, and the low scrub either side of the path was alive with Warblers. If it sounds as if I had a jaunt in my step, I most certainly did. From the ramp at Hooker's I spat at another Great White Egret, and one of the what I assumed were hawking Common Terns turned out to be a Little Gull, a bird I have not seen for four years this country. 

A quick scan back up the ARC pit from the main road picked up a regular Black-winged Stilt, but I never like birding along there as some cars absolutely cane it down this "final straight" and didn't linger any longer than I had to. Whereas I had barely seen a soul on the RSPB reserve the area around the Obs and new lighthouse was heaving - lots of families enjoying the morning sunshine, and the café was doing a roaring trade. I had a quick look at the sea but there was nothing doing at all, and even the outflow known as "The Patch" had practically nothing on it, so bidding farewell to Dungeness I headed cross-country to Oare. 

What a lovely reserve. Early morning and I can be there in about an hour, and for the life of me I don't know why I don't do it more often. I guess I just don't like driving I had timed my visit for the high tide to ensure maximum waderage and I was not disappointed. Back to school, were all the Dunlins Dunlins? Could I pick out a Curlew Sandpiper, not having seen one for six years..... as it turns out I could which pleased a number of other people who had been trying to do the same thing. Six years!! What the hell have I been doing??? I guess that time just goes rather quickly these days, and by the time a few weekends have gone by and you've said "oh well there's always next year" a few times this is the inevitable result.

A long-staying Bonaparte's Gull was still around although finding it was a nightmare - even though it is distinctly smaller than a Black-headed Gull, when all of them are sat down and asleep this difference is not readily apparent, particularly now that the moult has started. Luckily some of the other birders there picked out a candidate, which when it did finally wake up proved to be spot on.

I tried to look at gulls for as little time as possible obviously. Instead I bathed in waders for over two hours, drank them all in. Avocets, Goldies, Blackwits, Dunlin, two Curlew Sandpipers, Redshank, Common Sandpipers, Turnstone, Lapwing, Snipe..... In fact I was so absorbed I even missed lunch, and got a reminder at about 1pm saying that I had promised to be home by 1pm to cook lunch and why was I still in Kent (the family can track my whereabouts, it is for the best)? Oops. Anyway, lunch became dinner and I had a great day out birding, my first day anywhere in the southeast other than Wanstead since February. I should do it more, not constantly, but perhaps more often than once every few years - it clearly enhanced by enjoyment of birding. I can't not mention the downside which is at the forefront of many a conversation at the moment, which is that I drove about 170 miles when I could have walked around the patch carbon-free. I honestly don't know what to say here. In my defence I've not been to Derbyshire, and I didn't go to Holy Island, Portland or Wexford either. The trouble is when you live in a city you cannot readily replicate this type of birding but ultimately this was a selfish trip. Perhaps I should move to the coast? This whole remote-working thing shows that I don't need to live in London - I've performed my job for nearly six months without going to Canary Wharf even once. I wonder if I could convince the rest of the family?

Imagine living with this on your doorstep?

Nocmig tribulations

In summary it has been a trying time. Let me briefly outline the last week:

Night 1: External microphone not plugged in properly
Night 2: External microphone plugged in but not switched on
Night 3: Heavy rain
Night 4: External microphone operating, however wrong settings on recorder, too faint
Night 5: Everything switched on (I think!), settings perfect, however no birds at all
Night 6: Party!!
Night 7: Read on.....

You would be forgiven for thinking that I am hopeless so-and-so, but honestly..... I could not have predicted the local party could I? It went on until about 2am and I recorded all of it. Happy young voices. Shrieks and laughter, and clear evidence of karaoke - Abba and the Jackson Five were perhaps the most memorable. As far as nocmig goes a complete write off, I couldn't even hear the A12, but as long as they had fun eh? To be fair it is relatively rare that something like happens, it is only the second time in July...

I poked my head out of the window last night before I went to bed. Nothing. Complete silence. Well, let me qualify that. No shrill voices and no thumping bass. Helicopters, traffic, sirens, foxes and cats - all present and correct and doing their level best to ensure that any and all passing birds were drowned out. But they could not disguise the Little Owl that called at one minute past midnight.

I was actually awake, tossing and turning in the heat. It was one of those moments that I hope to repeat out on Wanstead Flats this coming autumn with a single uncertain call recorded and nailed for posterity. Oooh, was that an Owl? Then a motorbike with a lawnmower for an engine kicked off and that was that, but that did at least allow me to quickly find the right spot on the recording in the morning. I've recorded Little Owl before whilst sound asleep, so this inks it in so to speak.

As I type it is above 30 degrees at 7pm so I suspect that tonight may be another hard one. I still need Tawny Owl....

Garden fireworks

Welcome to my gardening blog. Back in 2018 I went to Madeira for a short winter break. The purpose of my visit was largely to ogle plants - both in botanic gardens but also those growing wild on the levadas and hillsides, and I came away very satisfied. I also came away with slightly heavier luggage, as I brought back various things with me. Included were several Agapanthus rhizomes, some of which I bought in the covered market in Funchal, and some of which came from an enterprising villager along a levada in Ribeira Frio. When I got home I carefully planted them in pots, and it wasn't long before small amounts of green began to poke out. I chose two at random to plant outside later that summer, and when they sailed through the winter unscathed I planted five more out in 2019 and from then on left all the remaining pots outside. I'm hedging my bets. For those of you wondering what on earth Agapanthus are, you may know them as Lily of the Nile. Or even if you don't know either name you may recognise these.

They abound in Madeira, they are literally everywhere. As you can see they come in two flavours - white and a purpley blue. I had no idea what mine were. Fast forward to summer 2020. Of the ten plants that I have, three remain in pots and seven are in the ground. All of the plants in pots are now flowering, and by some bizarre coincidence they are all blue. Of the ones in the ground, six are flowering and they are all white bar one. This is not to do with soil acidity as with some species, it is just a stunning coincidence. Anyway I am very pleased - it has been a multi-year wait - Agapanthus without flowers are pretty pointless, but now that they are out they look superb.

They look like garden fireworks, bursting up through the foliage of other plants to explode in a huge ball of colour. My hope is that they will now flower every year - the bees here seem to like them and they lend a touch of the exotic to the flower beds. Now that I mostly know what I have I may move them around a bit so that I can have a mixed explosion of colour just like that Madeiran hillside in the first photo. 

Social distancing

If you have been being well behaved, for the last few months you will also have been being quite antisocial. Many jokes were made back in March about how anyone would tell the difference when it came to birders. For a fairly long time even trips outside were limited, and whilst I saw the odd local birder and had the occasional chat, for the most part I have been nowhere and seen no-one. Summer birding on Wanstead Flats sometimes centered on local pubs after a hard day of seeing nothing, but no such possibility existed in 2020. Last week I found myself home alone, and in a rare moment extroversion decided I was fed up of seeing nobody for days at a time and decided to host a small party. A socially-distanced party. 

Good grief social distancing is a pain. For starters we all had to be outside, that's rule number one. The advice is still to maintain a healthy distance even if outside, so I dutifully got out my tape measure and worked it all out. I set up a table with clean glasses that I handled only with gloves, but put all the drinks inside and only I did the pouring, also with gloves. There was no food sadly, that was too hard. The sink and toilet were thoroughly disinfected before people arrived, and there was a one way route to it guarded by Polar Bears. Really. Everyone got their own towel to dry their hands with which they had to take with them, and there was Dettol at each end if they felt the need.

Here's the garden all set up. Socially distanced chairs and wine crates repurposed as tables

So last Friday evening four of the Wanstead posse turned up and for a few hours things felt largely normal again - seeing real people with real drinks in their hands was extremely refreshing. Largely it all worked very smoothly even though it was a little awkward, and as far as I know we all still feel fine. Or at least I do anyway, and the WhatsApp chat group is not showing any coughing or ambulance emojis. It probably won't be long before this type of thing is banned again, so it was nice to get it in and see people before we're all locked down again. I'm a glass half empty kind of person.

Mobile sound recording

Have you ever been out birding in the autumn, perhaps in a group, and heard an interesting call? I am sure you have. Let me set the scene.

birdy chatter, chewing of fat, moaning about a lack of birds etc

"Zeep!"

"...and I was like.....Oooh, did you hear that?!"

the chatter stops, silence descends, the call however is not repeated

"Cor, what was that?"
"Sounded a bit like a Finch I thought, quite a distinct cheezp".
"No, maybe a Bunting, more like a zit"?
"I didn't really hear it, what was it like?"
"I dunno, can't quite place it. Could have been a funny Meadow Pipit I suppose?"
"Nah, wrong pitch, wasn't it too high and buzzy?"
"I thought it was lower."
"Well they can make odd sounds sometimes, remember that one last year?"
"What about, err..."
"Hmmmm"

By now all hope of any accurate identification is gone. Bells may ring later, but by then you will not be 100% sure of what it was that you heard. This is a scenario that no doubt plays out up and down the land. If only it had called again, you might have nailed it, but like so many flyovers it called only wance, and you were not listening very carefully. If only you had a recording of it that you could play back....

I remember that some years ago a small device to allow exactly this was marketed called a RemBird. Glossy adverts in birding mags showed a small grey thing fastening underneath the barrels of your bins where it constantly recorded on a short loop. All you had to do upon hearing a mysterious call was to quickly press a button and the last five seconds of recording would be preserved. I have no idea whether RemBird still exists or if it was a short-lived fad, but many modern portable MP3 recorders also have exactly this function and are presumably rather higher quality. And of course many birders, or at least more birders than before, now own such devices. Including me, and also including Gavin H down in Dorset, from whom I have shamelessly copied this idea, or at least knocked up a variant of the same thing. The same recorder that you stick out of your window for nocmig can also come out with you the following morning. You could also just poke it out of a pocket, but without the perfect sized pocket then it might fall out, or alternatively fall in. Far better I would suggest is just dangle it off part of yourself or your bag if you carry one. You just need a few bits and pieces. 

Hunting around my desk I found some of what I needed, and the internet provided the rest at a relatively minimal cost - a lanyard and a 1/4 inch D-ring. Whatever you go for you will also need a windshield, as buckets (of any colour) are simply not practical in the field. 

Here's my new set-up. I am either going to hang it from my belt, or if this swings about too much and just records itself thumping against my leg, from some part of my coat using a carabiner instead. The lanyard is a backup safety mechanism in case the absurdly cheap D-ring falls to pieces - the MP3 player does belong to Mrs L after all...

My/her MP3 recorder, a Zoom H2n, has a number of recording modes, but the one that pre-records only gives you two seconds to capture it. My brain does not send signals that quickly, so I think I am going to have to switch it on when I arrive on the patch and have it constantly record. This requires an element of being alert to when things happen, as as Gavin notes this isn't going to be like nocmig where you have long periods of silence punctuated by the occasional call. It is going to be one long symphony of rustles, whumps and thumps, so I'll need to note what time any interesting sounds occurred to be able to quickly find them once back home. There is another mode that starts recording when a certain input level is reached, but that's really designed for silent environments followed by an orchestra starting to play and I doubt that it will be of any use on Wanstead Flats.

I forsee this being most useful during vizmig sessions this coming autumn. It is possible though that the built-in microphone may not have enough oomph to overcome the birder-generated ground-level noises (that it largely does not have to cope with during nocmig), so it could be that I also need to take out my new shotgun microphone which is far more directional and somehow point it permanently upwards. I already have the skeleton of a plan to allow this, although I will look like a complete berk. Well, more of a berk than I do normally. I will just need to remember to turn it on. 

The dummy's guide to using an external microphone with the Zoom H2n....

Almost unbelievably I have just recorded another night of me sleeping. This is the third attempt in a row that I have failed miserably to make use of my swish new microphone. My first thought of course was whether my new microphone was perhaps not as swish as I had hoped. But of course there was another reason.

Ineptitude.

Whether the microphone it was plugged in or not, switched on or not, the MP3 recorder (although saying it recognised it) was simply not using it. A poor workman, of which I am definitely one, always blames his tools. Was the microphone perhaps broken? I plugged it into the computer for a quick test and it was working just fine, although curiously worked without needing to be switched on. Clutching at straws but was the MP3 player itself broken? There is no setting within the menu to use the external microphone rather than the internal ones, but a quick read of the venerable Zoom H2n's instructions (duh...) has revealed the inevitable answer; I am a dolt.

Possibly I should have availed myself of the instructions earlier in this painful process, but that would have been too sensible. Anyhow the recorder has various recording modes and I have been exclusively using the two channel 360 degree mode for my balcony nocmig. This setting apparently disables any external microphone. Who knew? Once I turned the dial to the XY mode with the external mic plugged in, this instead disabled the internal ones and I was good to go. A quick test speaking directly into the machine followed by speaking directly into the top of the microphone proves this out, and the "telescopic" setting on the microphone really does up the level. So all my earlier "tests" were not as such tests in any useful sense of the word, and the reason the hiss had all but disappeared was merely because I was inside. As was the lack of wind noise...

So another 8 hours of snoring has been deleted and this time, finally, I am ready.

Fourth time lucky as the old saying goes.