Burrator Reservoir, Dartmoor, Devon

My route to the Tamar valley skirted Dartmoor National Park – sorry, Dartmoor Rural Exploitation Zone. That seems to be the purpose of the designation. Screw as many dollars as possible out of a scenic landscape, even if it means destroying its looks with quarries, reservoirs, car parks and all the paraphernalia of industrial civilisation.

Still, Burrator Reservoir at least could be a magnet for waterbirds. Not at this time of year although the surrounding woodland was alive with passerines. The sweet song of willow warblers filled the air and a blackcap belted forth near where I parked the motor. The actual moors brooded over the scene and rain threatened. The weather forecast had advised clearer conditions in the north of the county and I wended thence.

My wending led me deeper into uninspiring farmscape. The odd belt of bright green trees was a welcome relief but nowhere seemed to promise birds. Through Tavistock and Launceston up to Holsworthy (Port – how was that ever a port?), the entire border with Cornwall was devoid of interest. It will have to remain a gap in the British Birding Year. Bodmin Moor, further west, will probably provide more joy.

And of course the coasts to north and south. Humanity is trying its best to fuck those up and their only hope is that the oil or finance runs out before it succeeds. The politicians and business moguls will have their way otherwise.

Prawle Point, Devon

I last went in search of these in November 1999. I stayed at a B&B overlooking Slapton Ley, which gave me Dartford warbler and Slavonian grebe, but I drew a blank on the buntings later that day.

Not so this year. So completely not so that, on getting out of the car, an unfamiliar trilling call greeted me. It could only be one thing and the task was then down to locating the bird. This too was easy: a wind-blown male was delivering from the top of a bush and made my 294th British species. They’re coming thick and fast now and deliberately so this weekend.

The original plan was to fill a gap in the British Birding Year somewhere up the Devon/Cornwall border. The lure of cirl bunting sort of on the way was too irresistible so I overnighted in Torquay and made Prawle Point by ten o’clock the following morning. This was certainly early enough to catch my singing bird.

The whole area delivered. A couple of Manx shearwaters offshore were a first for the year among fulmars and other seabirds. The gorse and scrub held linnets, whitethroats and stonechats. The sun even threatened to come out.

Then it was off to Bolt Head, just south of Salcombe, for a reported Richards pipit. No sign of that but the year’s first spotted flycatcher was worth getting. It was distant and field marks were impossible but its behaviour was unmistakable. A wheatear was also notable. More than all that, the coast there is especially beautiful with gorse, outcrops, bays, inlets, limestone and defiles. Defiles. I like a good defile.

So, now the question is: what is up the Devon/Cornwall border?

Floating Harbour, Bristol

A headline more startling than most I’ve written. It beats additions to the life list, which are still relatively frequent. The reason? What the hell is a seabird doing in the centre of a major conurbation?

Yes, there’s water – just like any inland river or lake. Terns do show at larger bodies of those. Chew, Blagdon and even Arrow Valley in Redditch spring to mind. But they have nesting and roosting possibilities and nothing like the hazards that Bristol presents.

The bird must have been on its, late, way through. Migration has been somewhat delayed this year, thanks to March’s persistent easterlies. This week’s gales may also have displaced the tern (isn’t wind becoming ever-present?) Even so, quite how it found the thin strip of the Floating Harbour from the surrounding urban desert is… startling.

I hadn’t been drinking – honest. Just a pint of Gem at the excellent Lion Tavern in Cliftonwood before dropping down to Hotwell Road. Maybe the change of altitude was causing hallucinations. I certainly had to double-take as the tern fluttered to within 20 feet of me. Logic kept dictating that it had to be a black-headed gull. But no, at that distance it was unmistakable and even distinguishable from arctic tern.

That’s this weekend’s headline. Last weekend saw my yearly Quantocks visit. A loop up Hodder’s Combe and back down Frog Combe eventually yielded two pied flycatchers. However, actually seeing a cuckoo fly to the crown of a tree and call for several minutes topped them. I haven’t seen a cuckoo for three years and my only Somerset sighting goes back to 1999 at Chew.

Displaying stonechats, a handsome redstart and sparring ravens were also noteworthy. As was a £6.50 cream tea at the Combe House Hotel. Oh well, you’re only young once.

I have done the obligatory hour or so at Lakenheath Fen RSPB Reserve as part of the Weeting Heath circuit, but I can’t think I’ve ever twitched a golden oriole. Funnily, I had high hopes as I drove down the lane from Lymington. Over a few days I’d dipped on a little bunting, and the subalpine warbler at Gibraltar Point, so “third time lucky” kept playing through my head.

I had no idea where, in a large complex that includes Keyhaven and Oxey Marshes, the bird actually was but synchronicity put me in the right place. I could tell: the car park was overflowing and it didn’t take long to find a gaggle of scopes aimed at a patch of scrub. There I waited until the bird showed.

Except I didn’t get on to it straight off. Something else tried to sell me a dummy by flitting in the same area but it weren’t no oriole. A minute or two of this and everyone else relaxed as my target bird disappeared again. I had visions of the triple dip.

The oriole took pity and came up again moments later and this time permitted clear views of its striking yellow-and-blackness. Unmistakable. Distant, but obvious.

This sighting also heralded a fine haul round the rest of the marshes, with snipe, spotted redshank and ruff new for Pennington. Moreover, the spotshank was my first for Hampshire. Year birds included greenshank, common tern, little tern, whimbrel and grey plover. A two-and-a-quarter hour walk, in the wind again, sufficed to cram all that lot in.

The reserve is truly one of the south coast’s gems.

Wykeham Forest Raptor Watchpoint, North Yorkshire

The B1257 over the National Park should have compensated for dipping on a little bunting. It should also have compensated for the dismal setting of Elba Park – some country park monstrosity being built south of Newcastle. At least it’s what will count as countryside for the residents of yet more bland boxes going up under the guise of a housing development. Rare birds will, however, turn up in these blasted places.

And then not show in the hour that I had at my disposal. So I was looking forward to what my road map marked as a scenic route over the hills. As it was, one word sums up the experience – roadkill.

If you want to see dead birds, rabbits and, worst of all, hares, the western moors are perfect. You’d imagine a healthy population of buzzards to feed on this slaughter but all I saw was one kestrel.

A couple of timber production units (Forestry Commission) on the way through were no draw either and I was soon at overpriced Helmsley. Towns like that will get a nasty shock when the price of post-peak oil does the next of its launches into the stratosphere. It will also likely ground fighter jets, one of which nearly gave me a heart attack by roaring past at zero feet. I guess this must also be a characteristic of the B1257.

In future I’ll stick to the raptor-friendly eastern section of the North Yorkshire Moors.

Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland

I’m calling it that but really it has covered the whole country for weeks, from bitter easterlies in Somerset before I left for Scotland, through Highland gales, to Nairn and Largo Bay. All the time battling the wind. Just standing up was exercise enough, let alone trying to walk against the more ferocious gusts.

The battering continued down the A1 out of Edinburgh, shoving the car around the road. I made Lindisfarne in one piece but just in time for the tide to creep over the causeway. It would retreat four hours later but my schedule didn’t allow that so I dropped a little further down the top of Northumberland to Bamburgh.

There, dunes just south of the castle afforded some protection, but at the cost of the occasional mouthful of sand. I fashioned a seat in the side of one dune to anchor the bins on my knees for a spot of seawatching (a scope was out of the question). Thus my Northumberland list registered its first long-tailed duck and common scoters. The latter were strung out in a flock of about fifty.

These are birds that should depart for the tundra soon to breed but those incoming for the same purpose have been scarce, probably due to the weather. A few swallows, chiffchaffs and the odd willow warbler through Scotland, and very early (for me) arctic terns at Nairn had been it. The outrageous news about the deaths of puffins seemed also to be true: a brief stop at the reliable spot of Auchmithie revealed none.

Further down Northumberland, Seahouses added more swallows and my first house martin of the year. I then ambled further along the coast to… Amble. By then I’d had enough buffeting and booked into the Harbour Guest House.

We may have to get used to this wind business. If the atmosphere is heating up, it stands to reason that the weather will get a tad wild. Wet and windy Britain always was; drenched and stormy looks set to be the new norm – the new, shifted, baseline for those who deny climate change.

Kings House Hotel under Criese, Rannoch Moor

“Back to normal,” said the checkout lady at Fort William Morrisons.

And it was too as the wind drove sheets of rain in off Loch Linnhe. While England had been shivering in unaccustomed March cold, the west of Scotland had been dry enough for wildfires. Admittedly wildfires largely caused by “landowners”. They burn heather, some of them for grouse to breed enough victims for “sportsmen”. Isn’t the English language great for covering up atrocities and abuse of power?

Hmm, gone a bit off-topic here. The downpours had started overnight at the excellent Kings House Hotel on Rannoch Moor. I’d been in the bar so I didn’t mind, sneaking glances at German lesbians, so I minded even less. But that too is off-topic.

The hotel is at the gateway to Glencoe. And, boy, was that alive with silvery filaments streaming down every hillside and a ferocious wind funnelling through gaps and cuttings. This battering continued north of Fort William, up the Great Glen, until the sun came out an hour later at Drumnadrochit. I was being tempted into Glen Affric and I duly went.

Of course the rain was solid by the end of a half-hour drive along the glen. The journey in was surreal: drenched autumnal vegetation comprised brown bracken and leafless birches. A consequence of the dry spell, I suppose.

I sat in the downpour’s pattering for a packet of Twiglets and a Mars Bar before admitting defeat. Mind you, beautiful though Glen Affric is, it’s never delivered much in the way of birds. Three previous visits over fifteen years have yielded spotted flycatcher and tree pipit (unlikely mid-April), osprey and dipper. Those visits have also been free. There’s now a £2 charge to park. A sign in the flexible English language explained why.

I headed on to Inverness but was bushed enough by Beauly to seek refuge there. Within an hour the sun was out and a brief stroll by the river (not recommended for the quantity of dog shit) brought red kite and probable in-flight pink-footed geese. They weren’t a bad end to a frustrating day. Nor too a superb naga curry at the Shimla.

Oystercatcher Inn, Otter Ferry, Loch Fyne

In both this country and the States I’m so used to seeing the smaller grebes in winter that a bird in breeding plumage quite throws me. I still look at the structure of the bill to distinguish Slavonian from black-necked grebe although the former has far more of a yellow helmet at this time of year. I had to look that up.

It was luck that put me on the bird in the first place. A coffee stop at the Oystercatcher Inn led to a quick scan of the mouth of Loch Fyne. Normally Scottish lochs are barren; not even herons bother with them and God knows they live on scant enough victuals. This time was different.

One bird in the distance looked just like a great crested grebe but something about it gave me pause and had me scrabbling for the scope. A colourful Slavonian grebe it was, a nice year tick, and new for Argyll.

Since the scope was out, I picked along the rest of the shore and landed another year bird with a couple of ringed plovers. Suitably encouraged, I drove slowly up the lochside B8000. It was short of stopping places but quiet enough that pulling over also gave me goosanders, red-breasted mergansers and common gulls.

Keeping an eye out on ridges the other side of the road couldn’t produce any more than the predictable buzzards – tourist eagles. Despite knowing of golden eagles’ widespread persecution, I’m still a little surprised that all my Scottish years only yielded two sightings – on North Uist and up Glen Lethnot in Angus. My English percentage is way better, having caught one of the pair in the Lake District ten years ago.

Contrast that record with the States, which gave me 16 sightings in three years. But they’re civilised enough not to have gamekeepers.

Ironbridge, Shropshire

Is this a sign of things to come? After the coldest March on record, the rains returned to mark my first holiday from work for years. Those rains came on top of one of the wettest periods in England‘s history: as evidence, the flooded fields I was seeing up through Shropshire and Cheshire.

Matters would surely return to normal if I took a break in the Forest of Bowland and continued north the next day?

Not a bit of it. I was happily entering the day’s bird sightings at the Hark to Bounty pub (also my night’s lodgings) in Slaidburn when the power died. Not once, not twice, but thrice, and the third time terminally. Silence descended. There’s something the last couple of generations can’t have experienced. I bet it drives them bonkers.
Anyway, the weather and the power cut must be unrelated, mustn’t they? I don’t know. It’s all beginning to seem a tad weird.

Especially as I was musing earlier in the day at the birth place of the Industrial Revolution (Ironbridge) on how that had coincided with nature’s plummet from abundance to scarcity. Moreover, the engulfing blot of Telford is the most recent expression of industrial civilisation. Worth it? Discuss.

Red Grouse

The day’s sightings had included, on an exploration of Slaidburn, Lancashire’s first red-legged partridge and lesser redpoll. That’s modern day Lancashire. According to maps in the pub, West Yorkshire used to claim the area all the way down to Clitheroe. I suppose some battle or other saw a transfer of power.

Taking the moorland road past Stocks Reservoir the next morning had me and up into the evidence of heavy snow and over to Yorkshire. There, an obliging red grouse posed just too far away from my camera. If I get enough Web time, this post may show the result. Where in Yorkshire was I? No idea really. I’ll call it Lonsdale and hope that’s general enough to nail it.

Waxwings, Weston-super-Mare

Annoyed that I didn’t register this flock on the way back from last weekend’s pied-billed grebe (I’d refuelled the car at Morrisons), I skedaddled back down the M5 to Weston-super-Mare. At the very least I would cash in a voucher at Tesco and mooch round likely areas to live.

You can tell I wasn’t in much of a frame of mind when I pulled into Morrisons car park again. I expected to drive round and round, maybe break with a Costa coffee, walk around again – all to add a species that’s been quite common this winter. So what was in the first tree I encountered?

The obvious profiles of some dozen or so waxwings. Easy. I parked quickly and strolled over to what turned out to be a flock of thirty. When I say tree, sapling would be a better description so the birds were close. Better still, they were feeding on low bushes and I got a few decent level shots of them, without straying too near. I didn’t want to disrupt them from the life-and-death business of stocking up for survival. A few other cameras – far more serious jobbies than my little point’n'shoot – were also in attendance. Good to see that even long-staying birds continue to attract attention.

So, the Somerset list rises to 189 (not the Avon list though; check the waxwings at Avonmouth for that). The year list must also be moving along, but not in too spectacular fashion as I’ve already bemoaned. I’m hoping to get up to Scotland next month, which should help. If work doesn’t get in the way. It still seems odd to be saying that. I have to pinch myself from time to time.