Unusual Double - Wilson's Phalarope and Squacco Heron, 21st September 2021

Sometimes you just need an excuse to get away from the desk. It was glorious outside, at least it looked to be from the office, and definitely not a day to be stuck in. 

Thankfully an excellent local bird provided the excuse. WILSON'S PHALAROPE's are American waders that turn up most years in the UK, albeit they seem scarcer these days. They're also really lovely birds and hard to resist  (as are all 3 types of phalarope). I've seen several in the UK, but none for a long time and probably not since the early 90s. So when one was found at Burton Mere Wetlands RSPB reserve mid-morning I was easily tempted and left the office around 2pm.

On arrival I headed to the Bunker Hide where the bird was on show immediately, albeit at about 200m range and slightly in to the sun. Still, the views were good enough. It fed along an island edge, weaving between Black-tailed Godwits and various eclipse-plumaged wildfowl.

I'd forgotten how charismatic these birds are, with completely different feeding action to the other phalaropes. They feed more like typical waders and so mostly remain on the shoreline, stretching with an odd clock-work like slow motion movement to grab food. Ace.

Given I was here, it seemed sensible to wander round to the opposite side of the reserve to the old Inner Marsh Farm scrape. I'll admit to mainly being interested in seeing a possible Category D tick, but there was a good selection of birds there. I settled in at the shiny new Border Hide, thankfully with only a couple of other people in there. 

Whilst scanning the birds, I picked-up the phalarope as it dropped in to a ditch behind the scrape and swan round for a few minutes before flying again, eventually dropping on to one of the closest islands. Excellent! 

Bottom two by Mike Barth

Paul Coombes’ photo

Also on show here were a fine selection of waders, including around 20 Ruff, 3 Golden Plover and the usual godwits, Lapwings and Snipe.

Of more listing relevance was the single Ruddy Shelduck. Records of this SE European and North African species have historically always been labelled as escapees, but there is now pretty clear evidence that many UK records originate from a thriving feral population in the Low Countries. Every summer there are more birds seen in the UK, including multiple small flocks, The timing of our records fits neatly with peak moult gatherings in Holland too, so the link is obvious. The BOU are apparently reviewing the status in the UK, but an upgrade to Category C5 on the UK list is presumably imminent (C5 is defined by the BOU as "Vagrant naturalized species – species from established naturalized populations abroad, e.g. possibly some Ruddy Shelducks Tadorna ferruginea occurring in Britain. There are currently no species in category C5"). A listing upgrade seems inevitable. Of course I've seen Ruddy Shelducks before, but the only ones that I feel had any credentials were part of a large influx way back in 1993. Nice to see another, although the credentials of any individual birds are always unknown and the accompanying Greylag Geese and 7 Egyptian Geese (the largest number I've seen in Cheshire) didn't help with the wild-vibe. But that's wildfowl for you.

2 Cattle Egrets followed a tractor in the adjacent field, and a couple of Little Egrets fished in front of the hide. A cracking couple of hours.

Given my luck appeared to be in, I thought I'd chance it further and head 45 minutes down the road in to Gronant in Flintshire, where a SQUACCO HERON has been present for the last ten days or so, albeit elusively. I parked at the St. Marys Touring Park caravan site it was clear that this would not be an easy bird to see if it was not on the adjacent fishing pit ('Little Pool Wood). There were numerous densely vegetated ditches which are impossible to view, and then the other pond at 'Big Pool Wood' around 400m to the north across fields. There was no-one else there so I set-off to search. No sign on the fishing pit, so I walked the ditches along field boundaries and up to Big Pool Wood. Nothing. I did another circuit of the ditches and the fishing pit, nope. I was about to give up but decided to jump a gate and walk a different ditch. 50m in to the field the ditch opened up to a cattle drinking area which I thought looked perfect, and at that moment it flushed up and headed back towards the fishing pit showing it's gleaming white wings. I quickly found it back on the pit and enjoyed excellent views as it hunted in the evening sunshine. Another species I've not seen n the UK since the 90s. Splendid.

To the Lairds Manor

A work visit to Edinburgh on Monday 13th September provided an opportunity to head further north to the new pad of the clan Carroll. Andy and Caroline have decided to join to landed lairds and take residence in their new country estate. And very lovely it is too.

I took the train from Edinburgh to Dyce (nw of Aberdeen), where Mr C collected me. Carolyn was away so we settled in for an evening of beer and oven-warmed ready meals. It's been way too long and it was excellent to catch up.

The next day we were out at the crack of ten for some birding around Andy's superb local area. Before that breakfast in the garden in the company of Crossbills was lovely.

We visited Strathbeg RSPB, Rattray Head and the coast at Inverallochy. Whilst not exactly a bird-fest (we weren't trying very hard) the highlights were way better than an average day in Cheshire: Marsh Harrier, 2 Greenshank and 2 Ruff and 5 Pink-footed Geese (autumn is here) at the RSPB reserve and a pair of the locally breeding Common Cranes on the roadside were the highlights, along with a Merlin that dashed across the road.

The potential up here is superb. An under watched part of the country where rarities must be regular. Great to see Andy enthused by his local birding and something to aspire too.

Common Cranes are gradually recolonising Scotland (and parts of England). There are apparently 5 pairs in this area now. Wonderful birds.

Green Day, 10th September

Following yesterday's dip and lack of sleep, I half-woke around 8am then groggily looked at the phone. Green Warbler, still present. Oh FFS. Karen encouraged me to go and I now thank her for that. I was tempted to stick my head in the sand. I drove to Malcs for 9.15 and he kindly took the wheel given my fatigued state. I wasn't relishing more of the same as yesterday's grim experience. 

We arrived just before noon and walked the clifftop. LGRE passed us coming the other way and cheerfully stated 'it's no better than yesterday'. Not that I expected anything remotely positive from Lee.

It had showed infrequently in the bushes viewed from the south of the Dell, but hadn't been seen for a couple of hours. We joined a modest crowd and set-up scopes on the tiny crab apple it had appeared in  a few times before.

Fifteen minutes later it appeared and showed well for maybe 30 seconds. We then had another two similarly lengthed views before moving to view along the ringing ride where it showed much closer for about 15 seconds or so. Job done GREEN WARBLER OML (559). 

Time to head home for Callum's football match. 

At last. The rather lovely Green Warbler (Paul Coombes image).

The Dell. It's in the dark bit in the middle. Honest.

Idiots....

Is Green the new White? 09th September 2021

Another normal day at the office. Aside from being stressed about deadlines and facing a long day already. Once again the rarities pay no heed to my personal tribulations.

                        11.30: MEGA. GREEN WARBLER. BUCKTON, NORTH YORKSHIRE

Shit. Shit. Shit. Here we go again. I can't go. Too much to do. Etc etc (sometimes I bore myself with this pantomime of denial). Maybe I could work overnight? I called the client and agreed a slight delay on their vital report - delivering it by tomorrow first thing would be fine (thank you!). We were off then. I slink out of the office with barely a word. 

In fact here we go back to Bempton, where the fantastic albatross continues to linger. The route to Yorkshire has been well-trodden this year...

Malc and Al came to the office. Malc kindly drove as I attempted (and failed) to work from the back seat. This one should be straightforward. On site by 4pm. Hopefully home before 9pm. But it's usually the straightforward ones that bite you on the ass, we joked in the car. 

And so it proved to be. The bird was incredibly elusive in the small ringing plantation created by Mark Thomas. It was occasionally glimpsed, just as often strung (Willow Warbler), but steadfastly refused to play. Time ticked. Stress levels rose. The sky dulled as the weather slowly started to deteriorate. Recordings were played, to the approval of all.

Then it showed briefly along a ringing ride. Everyone piled-in for a position peering down the run. I grabbed a prime spot lay on the ground near the front and waited. I was immediately surrounded. Covid is not on anyone's minds. We waited. Nothing. It had flicked left, and I thought it was likely to end up in adjacent sycamore tops where it had been seen before our arrival, so I vacated my spot in an attempt to get ahead of the bird. Seconds later it showed back in the ride. Those sat where I had just been scored, albeit very briefly. Al scored. Malc and I despaired. 

More waiting. A sense of inevitability took hold. Dip pending. It became too gloomy to see properly, and similarly-minded we trudged back to the car.

It was a long drive home and I still had that report to write. Summing the enthusiasm to start at 11pm whilst in the throws of post-dip misery was no fun at all. Remind me why do we do this again? I made it to bed at 2.30am, then couldn't sleep anyway, too much adrenalin for all the wrong reasons. Tomorrow was another day with plenty to do. I hoped the warbler would depart. Too much to do. Too tired. A little birding self-pity.

Green Warbler was becoming my new White's Thrush. This had been sort of my fourth attempt (of sorts): an aborted charter to Unst in June 2016 (with the bird seen again after we had cancelled), a miserable dip on Lundy in October 2018 (particularly fun boat crossing) and then taunted this summer whilst on Shetland by a bird on Fair Isle, which we could see but not get to despite our efforts. Still, the species has become annual since 2016. Either people know what they are now looking for, aided by the modern phenomenon of quality photos and sound recordings, or the species has gone through a spectacular change in vagrancy patterns in the last few years. The first was way back in October 1983 (on Scilly) and it retained it's monster Blocker status until 2014 with a bird on Foula that was identified using DNA retrospectively. The next was in 2016 and there have now been 6 accepted records (up until the end of 2019), with another 4 since. An amazing upturn and there really will be another, but one so easily accessible is another matter altogether.

 

Chasing Fea's, 1st September 2021

Living in Cheshire means that rare seabirds are pretty much a thing of fantasy. To even have a hope of seeing anything you've traditionally needed to spend long periods of the summer seawatching off western Cornwall, or bobbing around in a boat with a bucket of chum.   That means a long speculative drive and days away in the middle of the school holidays, which is not something I've felt able to justify in recent years. I can count the time's I've seawatched off Cornwall on one hand still, and they were in the eighties and nineties. I'd always assumed that I would do more once the kids have moved on and time is less pressured. 

Way back in 1989, when I was year listing, I'd declined a lift to Porthgwarra in favour of meeting a young lady  (a rarer opportunity than a vagrant seabird back then). My friends travelled down and I was later despondent to hear that they'd been amongst a crowd that witnessed Britain's first 'Soft-plumaged Petrel'. At the time I'd never even heard of it, and it was something I'd surely never get to see. Once in a lifetime bird maybe? How times change.

In the subsequent years there were more and more reports of these 'gadfly' petrels, mostly off Cornwall. Gadfly is the collective ('superspecies') name and I use it now because since that first record, with the advances in taxonomy, Soft-plumaged Petrel has been split in to multiple species. Soft-plumaged petrel became a bird of southern Oceans and therefore was thought unlikely to occur in British waters (at least until one was photographed in Norway in 2009). Northern breeding gadfly petrels are now known to be unrelated to Soft-plumaged Petrel, and breed only on the Cape Verde islands and Madeira in the East Atlantic. It's these northern birds that are assumed to be the origins of the UK records. They were for a time considered one species (Fea's Petrel), but now there have been further splits and so Fea's became three (Fea's, Desertas and Zino's Petrels). The three are notoriously difficult to separate in the field, particularly the first two, and really you need very high quality photos to confirm to species-level. All three species have probably all occurred in UK waters; Fea's has been confirmed in UK waters several times and probably makes up the bulk of records (given it's relative abundance), Zino's is also confirmed (once, in 2020 from a Scilly pelagic) and there have been a few probable Deserta's Petrels photographed but none has yet met the 'beyond reasonable doubt' criteria. Most records go down as 'Fea's-type' petrels, but as someone who always supported ticking species-groups I'd be more than happy to see a bird that wasn't identifiable to species, especially such so for a superb looking bird.  Remarkably a 'Fea's-type' in June this year that tracked up the NE coast was photographed and proved to be Britain's first Soft-plumaged Petrel (see here), further adding to the field-identification conundrum but not detracting from the excitement of seeing one of these charismatic birds. Plenty managed to see it by getting ahead and waiting.

In the last few years records of Fea's-type petrels in the North Sea have increased, with a few tracked moving northwards along the coast allowing birders to get ahead of them and connect. A 'real time' bird news phenomena that was unthinkable until recently.  Typically birds are seen off the seawatching mecca of Flamborough Head first, headed north. Often they disappear out to sea and are never seen again, but every so often one follows the coastline and opens up a twitching option - if you can move fast enough. 

I'd missed a few opportunities over the recent years, but earlier this year had openly talked about making an attempt if such an event occurred. It did in June for the Soft-plumaged, but that day I'd been in meetings in Oxford. How gutting that turned out to be!

The 1st September is my mum's birthday, so we had evening plans to visit. Birding, or twitching at least, never respects personal plans of course.

This was the opportunity I'd been waiting for. But those family plans. Conundrum. Faff. Decide not to go. Change mind again. Decide to man up and move.

The timings of previous birds heading north along that coast have been well recorded, so it was possible to roughly calculate an ETA further north if it continued to follow the coast. It was just possible that I could get there and back in time. Maybe? Don't be an idiot. Actually why not, I could maybe be a bit late at my mum's if needed. She'd understand. Yes? No? Maybe? Fuck it, I have to go, so send a quick Whatsapp message to the locals group. As ever Malc is up for it and he arrives at the office 15 minutes later.  Game on.

11.45 we're in the car. Whitburn is the logical place and 2.5 hours drive away if traffic is favourable. It was going to be tight. We needed the M62 to be kind.

If the bird passed Filey, just to the north of Flamborough, we knew it was still following the coast. If it didn't pass there then there would be no point in continuing and we would turn around.

Filey: 11:52

It was following the plan. We had barely reached the M6. Go go go!! No turning back now.

Old Nab: 13:40

We made good time. But would it be enough? 

We arrived at Whitburn around 14:15, then walked a few minutes to the south-facing seawatching hide to join a handful of locals. I'd actually miscalculated the timings and we had more time to spare than we'd thought. It was likely to be another hour or more. A few others arrived. The anticipation built. Would it really happen?

Offshore there were a few nice close Sooty Shearwaters passing, with a couple of Bonxies, an Arctic Skua and what looked like a distant Long-tailed Skua. But watching these was more a case of getting our eyes accustomed to seawatching again, and killing time whilst we waited.

Hartlepool: 14.33

Ryhope Durham: 15.11

It was almost with us. Those last minutes were excruciating. Hopefully it would continue and come in as close as the shearwaters.

"I have the petrel" 

Were the welcome words at 15:38. One of the locals had picked it up as it headed towards us. It was very distant, and it took Malc and I what felt like an eternity to get on to it. At that distance there was little to see aside from an unusual flight. It continued north, heading towards us, but frustratingly never coming anywhere near as close as we'd hoped. Still it improved enough to tell it was a Fea's-type. Sleek winged and attenuated, with a startling black underwing contrasting strongly with a gleaming white belly. It's flight was fast, regularly towering almost vertically then angling back to sea level. It was very distinctive, even at this range.

Whitburn: 15.38 - 15.49

We had done it. FEA'S-TYPE PETREL OML (558). Honestly though it was an underwhelming experience given the distance the bird passed at. Previous ones have apparently been much closer. If only. It was tracked further north in to Northumberland, but never came any closer to land.

The sort of views I'd have liked, but beggars and choosers and all that. This one was photographed off a pelagic in August 2015 (Paul French).

Nevertheless we had proved it was straightforward to intercept a passing seabird if the stars aligned. If only I'd been at the office for that Soft-plumaged Petrel! But I will repeat this experience in the hope of better views or a Soft-plumaged repeat. It was also a lot of fun. Roll on next year...

I'd like to have stayed and carried-on seawatching, it's something I do so rarely and there were plenty of birds passing. But I had to get back for those family commitments.

By my rough calculations we had to leave by 4pm to give me any change of collecting Callum from his football training and making it to my mum's as planned. The Petrel had come through in the nick of time. Setting off the Satnav suggested that might be possible, but the M62 at rush hour is fickle. Even last week's return from Bempton had been torturously slow. This time the Gods smiled. I arrived at Callum's school with one minute to spare, then on to my mum's for a birthday get-together. No-one would have even known.

Twitching seabirds seemed fanciful until recently. Yet last year we left Derbyshire to head to Dorset for Yelkouan Shearwater. Also last year others successfully connected with a lingering Scopoli's Shearwater in the Firth of Forth (I had commitments that day sadly). Others made it to the Soft-plumaged (thinking it was a Fea's-type) and to other northeast  Fea's-type birds. Moreover, it seems that the same bird will repeat a loop over a period of days, with multiple sightings on different days (this has happened in Ireland, Cornwall, on Orkney as well as the northeast), so there may even be multiple bites at the same cherry. The previously impossible is now very much achievable. Perhaps one day there will be a monstrously rare seabird to chase. I do hope so.