Proof of Life

In times past this blog has gone very quiet for a very long time, and once vanished, so this post is merely a quick proof of life. We are currently accommodating the aged P, so computer time has been judiciously curtailed to prevent me being done to death by a crazed spouse, driven to lunacy by too much solitary exposure to an in-law...

When I haven't been spending a week on a narrowboat I have managed a few year ticks since the last post. Most jammy was a pair of Red Kites over our house last Tuesday, and most obliging was this delightful Sanderling on the beach the following morning...

Sanderling - never quite guaranteed on a Seaton year list

Oh, incidentally, if you've never stayed on a narrowboat but always fancied the idea, UNfancy it straight away if you're correctly proportioned and/or consider comfort a holiday prerequisite. Like most normal people, I am a reasonably slender 6'3½", and therefore spent a whole week bent in half. The so-called double bed was clearly built by Mothercare. And I cannot begin to describe the indignities necessitated by the shower/lavatory arrangements...

I am so gullible. 'The most relaxing holiday you'll ever have' was one of the lines I swallowed.

Complete tosh.

Sure, the pace is slow. Very slow. Less than walking. But when your inexpert hand is on the tiller and 18 tons of steel is heading inexorably for someone else's boat at a steady 2½ mph you get an ama-a-a-a-zingly long time to stress about it. And that is not relaxing.

Anyway, what I really wanted to mention was my excitement at what is obviously going to be a fantastic seawatching day tomorrow. So far the sea has been pretty dire, but a big, wet, onshore blow is imminent. I predict a great deal of work-dodging and many, many year ticks, involving the finest quality skuas and terns, etc.

Which means, of course, I've just killed it...

Lose Some, Win Some...

Little time, so just a few words and pictures. My very bestest (only?) patch blocker fell yesterday. Seen by just Stevie Jampants and Tim White, a female Montagu's Harrier made a subliminal appearance in patch airspace. Read all about it here and here. At the tumbling of my blocker I am of course sad, but it would be churlish of me to be other than pleased for Steve and Tim...especially as I can clearly recall the joyous elation at my own gripping Monty's encounter almost five years ago!

Actually, yesterday's episode was a salutory lesson in the value of a digital camera. Without Tim's photos the record would have been no better than a 'probable'.

This morning I was up and out before dawn, and had covered Black Hole Marsh, the Tower Hide and Colyford Common for little reward before the morning's goody presented itself via a text from Ian M. A stunning drake Velvet Scoter off Seaton seafront. Not only had it defied local tradition by being much closer than the usual two miles range of all our decent offshore ducks, but it was complemented by glorious sunshine and a calm sea...

That's all for a while. I'm off now to go floating in a narrowboat...

Tricky Warblers

Patch-wise, three spring to mind: Grasshopper Warbler, Lesser Whitethroat and Garden Warbler. All annual, but not quite guaranteed, particularly on the Patchwork patch I've adopted for the year.

Just as a reminder, this is the patch...

In fact, within this boundary I have only ever seen 1 Garden Warbler, 3 Groppers and 5 Lesser Whitethroats. Gropper has a very small window of availibility - all the reeling birds I've had locally have been between 14th and 25th April. I've not had one yet this year, and tomorrow is 26th. Great. So that's one tricky warbler almost down the pan. Therefore when Steve texted that he had a singing Lesser Whitethroat at Black Hole Marsh this morning I twitched, and twitched rapido. Fine views were had.

Just prior to a late lunch I went for a walk along my secret weapon bit of patch near Coronation Corner. A female Redstart was a nice surprise, plus there were a couple of Blackcaps and Whitethroats, and a few Willow Warblers and Chiffs. Suddenly there was also a Garden Warbler! Steve's turn to twitch! Two tricky warblers in one day. Excellent!

I have no photos worth the name, so instead I will share a couple from earlier this week. On Monday I went to Cornwall and spent some fun time in the company of @birdingprof. Mostly I learned what an enormous pain is birding with specs in drizzle, but at least one superb diversion from such misery was this fantastic Siberian Chiffchaff at Kenidjack...

There follow another couple of photos, or should I say, one photo and one image. Because the latter demonstrates the amazing power of digital editing. I don't have Photoshop myself - or anything like it - and this remarkable pic was kindly created for me by Tim White. The Sibechiff perched up obligingly close to us on some sewage works ironmongery, but unfortunately a whacking great metal bar was in the way...

But, a hefty dose of digi-twiddling from Tim, and 'Hey Presto'...gone!

Siberian Chiffchaff used to be a tricky warbler. In fact it was so tricky that the Devon Bird Report used to publish such birds under the catch-all 'Scandinavian/Siberian Chiffchaff'. This is called 'sitting on the fence' and is the position adopted when a warbler is just too tricky to safely identify. So, in the case of Sibechiff, we're talking impossibly tricky. Then the BBRC took an interest and published a checklist of salient features/noises which any putative Sibechiff had to show/make in order to actually be one. Tick all the boxes and you've got your Siberian Chiffchaff. So, still quite tricky. You had to remember what features/noises to look/listen for, and note them all [it was about this time that I gave up completely on Chiffchaffs, my head already being stuffed full of Gull with no room to spare]...

However, the current situation is much, much easier. Apparently lots of Chiffs that don't look like Siberian Chiffs actually are Siberian Chiffs, and we no longer have to worry about so-called 'Scandinavian' Chiffs because they don't come here, and even if they accidentally did they'd be too boring to get noticed. So you can basically call any Chiffchaff a Siberian Chiffchaff if you want to (though you might get some stick if it's going 'chiff-chaff-chiff-chaff', or sitting on a nest) and nobody can prove you wrong unless they brought their DNA analysis kit into the field with them.

So there you go. Siberian Chiffchaff. 'Really really tricky' to 'piece of winkle' in a few short years. The miracle of modern ID skillage. Or something like that...

Where Did the Week Go?

At a time when yearticks should be falling left and right I've had a birding-free weekend...until this evening that is, when I managed to slip away for a peaceful stroll around Black Hole Marsh in the rain. There was little to be seen, but I didn't care...

 En route to the Tower Hide I came across this first for BHM - a dead Shopping List

Where did the week go? I don't know, but it went there very quickly! Since the last post a few brief birding sorties have added Whitethroat, Manx Shearwater and Sedge Warbler to the patch year list, plus this beauty at Seaton Marshes on Tuesday thanks to Steve...

Only the second male Pied Flycatcher I've seen here. Lovely!

Trivial technical point re the above: The FZ38's autofocus kept giving me nicely sharp twigs with a fuzzy black and white blob in the background. So I tried the manual focus function. A bit fiddly, but it works!

So, what else to tell? A foolish contribution on the latest BirdForum Great Bustard thread might be worth mentioning I suppose, as a cautionary tale at least. If, like me, you have irrationally negative views on the Great Bustard reintroduction project it's probably best to keep them to yourself unless you want some online stick. Sigh...

In yesterday's late afternoon sunshine I could easily have got some birding in, but plumped instead for a bike ride. I did 18+ miles, with 1200+ feet of climbing, averaging 15.3mph without busting a gut. I seem to quite easily manage this kind of pace on such rides, which has got me to wondering how quickly I could cover a flattish 10-mile time-trial course. As previously mentioned on here, I last subjected myself to this evil in 1989, on the very same bike I recently refurbished. I did 29 minutes and something back then, which is an average of fractionally more than 20mph. By most standards this is pitifully slow, but then my body is actually designed for sofa lounging and chocolate consumption rather than vigorous physical exertion, so what do you expect?

A Tiny Bit of Birding Solitude

Thursday was mostly dry, so I felt compelled to do quite a lot of work. A quick look at gulls on the river was nonetheless wangled, and resulted in this nice intermedius type Lesser Black-backed Gull. Shame the light was bit harsh...

Yesterday afternoon I had another walk up the river from Coronation Corner. At least 10 Chiffs, 2 Goldcrests and a Willow Warbler, but the highlight was a spanking male Redstart - one of spring's finest gems, for sure. I also heard a Whimbrel call a few times, so added it to the yearlist, along with a flyover Stock Dove.

This morning I got out early for a seawatch. After 4 Common Scoter and a handful of Gannets I got itchy feet and repaired to Black Hole Marsh, where I was greeted by a superb Barn Owl, 2 Common Sands, 3 Pintails, 1 Little Ringed Plover and an invisible flyover Yellow Wagtail. The latter was my first for 2013 - and not too common in spring here - so I thanked it accordingly. By the time I was free again in the afternoon it was chucking down. Birds were few and fed up. The only thing I wrote in the notebook was 'Whimbrel - 6'.

Three of them, looking well cheesed off...

Whimbrel, Stock Dove and Yellow Wag put me on 128 species and 157 Patchwork points.

When I moved here 10 years ago I think it's fair to say that almost all the local birding was carried out on the estuary and marshes. Colyford Common and Seaton Marshes hadn't long been designated LNR's, and had a viewing platform and hide respectively. I rarely saw birders anywhere but there or along the river. I remember the first time I visited Beer Head (a winter walk in early 2003 with Sandra) and thinking how it looked to have migrant potential. Unfortunately I never got around to doing anything about that hunch until November 2004, when I saw my first local Firecrest and Ring Ouzel there. The rest is history, and Beer Head is now an established site on the local circuit, with an enviable list of goodies. Since then Axe Cliff and Beer Cemetery Fields have likewise been successfully pioneered (the latter particularly by Bun) and both have rewarded the efforts put in. All good.

My intention here is not to publish an exhaustive gazetteer of all the lesser-known local sites (because there are several others!) but simply to show that there was much unrealised potential here 10 years ago. In the subsequent decade the Axe birding population has grown somewhat, and there are now several keen locals and an ever-increasing horde of visitors, the latter mainly due to development of the Axe Estuary Wetlands. The upshot of this is that birding solitude is increasingly elusive! And that's something I value highly. So, as I wander peacefully up the estuary from Coronation Corner I experience a rare pleasure. Glancing left across the river I can see the Tower Hide stuffed with punters jostling to see through a slot, but glancing right I can see Phylloscs flitting in the hedgerow, and they're mine, all mine! And was that a Redstart? Yes! Superb!!

It was Phil who first put me onto this spot years ago, but I've never given it a fair crack before. So far (and from only a handful of efforts) in addition to yesterday's Redstart it's given me lots of Chiffs, a few Willow Warblers and Wheatears, a Black Redstart and Caspian Gull. Okay, including the Casp is a bit tenuous I suppose, but I did find it as I was returning from one of these walks, so I'm counting it!

It's quite a short length of hedge really, and doesn't take long to do, but runs N to S, gets the afternoon sun, and must be an obvious pathway to moving birds. Plus you get a great view over the reed bed and some of the estuary, a big sky, and gulls are never far away. Oh, and it's a dead end, so apart from having to greet the occasional dog walker it's perfect for the unsociable type. What's not to like?

Watch this space...

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No birding this morning, just an afternoon visit to the river in the rain...

I'd just arrived at the Coronation Corner viewing platform when I got a text from Steve: 'Great candidate for a 3cy YLG north of cori corner. Too distant for me to be 100%'. I wondered where Steve was viewing from, and rang him to find out. He was actually back home, but gave me the gist of what he'd seen and told me where to look. I followed Steve's instructions, and the bird was still there. This is the first time I have ever been put onto a bird by someone giving directions down the phone while they lounge on the sofa at home half a mile away, with a cup of tea and enormous muffin...

It did indeed look very good, but I waited until I saw the wing and tail pattern before celebrating yet another gull year tick. Sure enough, no pale inner primary window, and a lovely crisp black band tipping a clean white tail. Excellent. It was rather distant, so the accompanying photos are bog-awful, as my Aunt Lil would put it.

2nd-winter (3cy) Yellow-legged Gull - nicely attenuated rear end in the top photo

After posting yesterday's Caspian Gull pics it struck me that some readers may well appreciate a few notes on what actually made the bird a Caspian Gull. I haven't waxed presumptuous on this topic for some time now, so I hope other readers will forgive the following.

The annotations in this photo are not exhaustive, but I hope they are helpful. The bird was preening when I first saw it, with its head buried in its mantle feathers, and I later realised that I must have a few 'Caspian Alarm' features tucked away in my head that automatically prevent my arm from moving the scope to the next bird. I think this is what some of them are...

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I am very conscious of the numerous birdy blogs which feature stunning photography on an almost daily basis. I have no desire (nor gear, nor talent) to compete, so instead I offer this blog as an antidote. Once in a while on NQS I hope you will come across a photo which will make your eyebrows go up in admiration (and surprise) but mostly you can chuckle smugly that all your efforts are 10x better than anything on here. Like today. Though I'm going to start with quite a good one from last Saturday, when a Snipe sunning itself on Colyford Common allowed quite close approach...

It suddenly struck me that I might be able to sneak up on it to see what those mad eyes look like from the back. As you can see, there is actually no way to sneak up on a Snipe. Bizarre!

On Sunday morning I got out for an hour first thing and jammed a very nice year tick - Firecrest. A few weeks ago a visiting birder had one down by the rivermouth, so I've tried there once or twice since. Apart from a Robin it was the only bird in the bushes. Just to put that in perspective, it's the first Firecrest I've ever seen within my Patchwork patch boundary! Also that morning, the Grey Plover population had increased to three.

This morning I made an effort to get up early and seawatch. Dismal weather, a light NE with rain and murk. Amazingly c.100 Common Scoter went E during the hour from 06:40 to 07:40, as well as a pair of Gadwall, a pair of Mallard, 2 Sandwich Terns and 7 Gannets. Best was a year tick Common Tern, which came 'in off' as the saying goes. Two Wheatears on the beach were a hint of things to come...

At lunchtime I went for a walk up the estuary N of Coronation Corner. Along with the rivermouth bushes I have decided that this area is going to be where I find my 2013 biggy. No other birders do it really. Also it has no hides, so is quite similar to Paradise. There were plenty of Phylloscs, with maybe 15+ Chiffs and at least 3 Willow Warblers, plus a Goldcrest and 4 Lesser Redpolls. The latter were an unexpected bonus, and spent most of their time grovelling around on the deck...

...though if I got too close they could fly and perch in bushes like a normal bird

On the way back to the van I stopped to look at gulls. There were always about 15-20 or so Lesser Black-backed Gulls on the estuary today. Virtually every time I checked, there would be 15-20, yet I know they were coming and going all the time. The majority were also quite seriously black, like this one...

A nearby Great Black-backed was certainly no darker than this

However, intermedius LBBG is the sort of gull you talk up when nothing better is available, so when my panning scope paused momentarily on this next creature I was somewhat diverted...

This was pretty much what it did for 99% of the time I watched it, but within just a few seconds I had mentally ticked off enough features to get me on the phone to Steve telling him I had a good candidate for Caspian Gull, and before the call was over it poked its head out long enough for me to say "Yes, it definitely is one!" Unfortunately this tale doesn't have a happy ending (except for me!) because it stopped preening just long enough to pose for a handful of portraits and compose its thoughts before taking to the air and heading purposefully north. When Steve arrived it was only just bigger than a dot, and not really very tickable.

A couple of 'head out' shots follow. It was not close, but close enough thank you... :o)

What a stunner! Quite diminutive, so presumably female.

It seems daft that a gull can do this, but I spent the rest of the day on Cloud Nine.

Later this afternoon I hurried to Colyford Common to twitch a Redstart. Never quite guaranteed in the valley (though easy enough on Beer Head) therefore worth making the effort. And I'm glad I did, because my appearance coincided with that of 2 Water Pipits on the Colyford Marsh scrape. At last! I don't know how many times I've tried and failed to see Water Pipit this year, but now I've even got a classy portrait...

Yep, this is definitely the place to come for images of excessive ropiness

Also on the scrape were at least 11 White Wagtails - certainly the most I've ever seen on the patch. 

And finally...

It may be distant, it may be ropey, but a male Redstart somehow transcends all direness

The Patchwork list now stands at 124 species and 151 points.