England Omen?

The World Cup continues to dominate, with England getting past Colombia on penalties earlier in the week, taking us to a quarter final against Sweden later this afternoon. Optimism is in the air this morning, amd so news of a Great Egret on Neumann’s encouraged an early morning patch twitch. I’ve only seem one on patch before, despite their near constant presence at Sandbach and being more or less annual on patch with brief stayers. This morning’s bird, found by Dave Hughston, was the second of the year after a brief spring bird on Ashton’s, so a welcome patch year tick for me as I joined a small band of locals in Pod’s hide in the glorious sunshine. The water levels continue to drop as the incredible summer continues. There are some puzzling arrivals on the flashes, with 3 Pochard and half a dozen Wigeon unseasonal. Waders, too, are already moving with 30 Black-tailed Godwits and 3 Little Ringed Plovers with the usual post breeding gathering of Lapwings.

 

 

Autumn Already 3rd July 2018

The long hot summer continues. It's been hot and dry for a couple of months now and the land is parched. Many birds seem to be having a good breeding season. The chilled evenings in the sunshine have been great, not to mention a thoroughly entertaining world cup (England are still in as I write this, but that may change against Colombia this evening). There's nothing quote like a fine British summer.

 

Birding has - predictably - been on the back burner, but the fierce sun is rapidly drying out Neumann's and Ashton's and so both look great for some early wader passage and that has proven to be the case with reports of multiple Green Sandpipers, Greenshank and so in the last few days.

 

With that in mind, a quick visit at lunchtime today was in order and duly rewarded - two breeding male Ruffs, 2 Black-tailed Godwits, a Green Sandpiper, two Redshanks and around 30 Lapwing graced Neumann's, as did a single Common Tern. Reed warblers still chugged away in the reeds, but the various ducks were now well into moult.

 

It's beginning to feel a lot like autumn....

How Not to Twitch, aka a right Royal Balls Up. 20th June 2018

I'll keep this short. On the evening of Wednesday 19th June news came through that the very long staying Channel Islands American Royal Tern had finally crossed into England and was roosting on the tern island in Pagham Harbour, Sussex, and present until dusk.

 

A simple plan was hatched an so I drove overnight with Mark Sutton, Al Orton and Malc Curtin to be there before dawn. Everyone knows terns head out to feed early so a pre-dawn arrival was paramount.

 

Sadly we cocked it up, setting the satnav with the postcode, this took us to the wrong side of the harbour and necessitated a 15 mile / 20 minute retrace of our steps. In those valuable minutes it got light enough to see, the bird was showing initially but as predicted rapidly pissed-off out to sea minutes before our arrival. We hung around until lunchtime but predictably it didn't return, in fact that evening it was seen 75 miles further west  in Dorset.

 

The Little Terns, Med gulls and so on did nothing to help lighten the mood. At least for me this was only an upgrade, having seen the Gwynedd Royal Tern in 2009. As such the twitch was a pre-empt of a potential future split where American and African Royal Terns will be classified as distinct. The 2009 bird was widely considered to be African, but in all likelihood will probably never be fully assigned.

 

As this year's bird has been around Guernsey since February 2017, so there's perhaps chance it will reappear yet.

 

Only ourselves to blame. Amateurs.