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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment