This is like a lifer for me. I have one dodgy heard-only record from Rutland Water in 1999 but today’s bird by the South Hide, although still not seen, was unambiguous – a noise I can’t recall hearing before. It was more strident than I’d expected. A whopper of a grasshopper would be needed for that volume – bigger than we get in this country anyway.

True to form I was about to give up when the bird called. The morning had been good all the same with redstarts, one peregrine powering over and a brief glimpse of a barn owl, which alone would have made the day. One greylag goose was new for the reserve, as of course was the gropper. A singing garden warbler made it a hat-trick.

That took a few moments to identify but when it sank in, I realised that I’d heard one at Ham Wall on Friday. There’s a trick to separating it from blackcap that the field guides don’t tell you about. Yes, the song is quieter and more complex but I think the clincher is when you can’t decide whether you’re listening to a blackcap, song thrush or sedge warbler. The species manages to whistle through the repertoire of all these birds.

Swallows aplenty, a handful of sand martins and my year’s first house martin completed the roster for the visit.

Now the bad news. The monstrosity in the top picture is a new bridge that connects Port Marine to the Wharf. Behind it are a few of the extra houses that have sprung up in my time here. The bridge has been threatened a while and one had grown complacent that it wouldn’t happen. Now here it is. I’ve largely stopped going to the reserve because it’s already overrun with fucking dogs. Now the floodgates will truly open.

Just as bad will be the onslaught of people. The second picture shows the state of the middle hide when I got there – every single window and door open. The same was true for the tower hide. No log books in either; benches missing from the latter. We can expect worse.

And it’s certainly the end for the wildlife value of the site.

This is a bit of a crappy photograph taken on my iPhone, which is not a patch on the old Nokia (that I’m selling on eBay – hint, hint!) but it records my 115th species for the town. The list now overtakes my tally for Cupertino in California.

Greylags are surprisingly uncommon in North Somerset – so much that Chew Valley is my closest location for seeing them. Only slightly more common are merlins, one of which flew fast and low along a Portbury Wharf rhyne on the day of the swan-terrorising dog. Goosanders are rare too so today’s striking drake, also in the Marina, was a treat.

I’d struggled to identify one at Chew in the middle of last week as the light faded and then in even worse conditions at Heron’s Green picked out a scaup. “Nice one!” for Somerset species number 176 – just two behind Angus.

Not on my 2011 list at all, three purple sandpipers showed at Battery Point despite bloody anglers now being a permanent fixture there. Bloody anglers also managed to kill off the great northern diver at Cheddar Reservoir but not before I’d added it to my county list. Also new for Somerset was an obliging ring-billed gull at Chew Valley Lake, near Woodford Lodge. According to my OpenOffice spreadsheet that makes 175 for the county and Birdstack agrees. Phew!

Further afield, last week Upton Warren played host to flying snipe; an unsuccessful search along the Salwarpe for a reported lesser spotted woodpecker did turn up a kingfisher. On the way up Slimbridge provided the usual Bewick’s swans, white-fronted geese and golden plovers but the lesser scaup was elusive.

At the beginning of the month I did something that has never occurred to me in nearly ten years of scope ownership. I turned it on the heavens and a unique clear night revealed Jupiter’s four moons and equatorial bands right from the backyard at Pokerbird WHQ. Definitely one of the 1,001 sights to see before you die.

Not so. The website’s demise has forced all my records on to an Excel spreadsheet (OpenOffice actually) and from this I can calculate that the grebe is as high up as number 36. A walk way back in 1996 down the Itchen Way from Winchester to Eastleigh was responsible but I knew I’d also seen plenty during my residence within binocular distance of Upton Warren.

This new version of the list also adds pintail, ruddy duck, water rail, golden and little ringed plovers, jack snipe, black-tailed godwit, greenshank, green sandpiper, willow tit and brambling – 11 species for a revised total of 158. All but one were from Upton in the 1997/8 season. That was in the days when you could still see willow tit somewhere; it used to be regular on the feeders at the Moors Pool.

Nevertheless, great crested grebe is new for Portishead, which brings the town up to match Cupertino‘s 114 species. Mountain View is still way ahead for the conurbations with 135 and Edinburgh(!) is second on 120.

Today has been the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch and, unlike last year, 52 Phoenix Way has manifested an entire bird – to whit, one magpie scavenging under the roof tiles and gutters. That’s the kind of creature you get when you cover the land with tarmac, etc.

In fact I’ve come away with tons and my book pile now contravenes all Health and Safety regulations (not helped with Middlemarch teetering on the top but that’ll go back tomorrow). I also chatted to Wayne Simmons, author of Flu. Hmm, I’ll probably have to check that against my Let the Time Come. He has more zombies in his though.

Emma Newman was there too and she’s launching an intriguing looking website at Split Worlds. It appears to be for local people but see what you make of it. Big, big hat tip to Jo Hall and team for putting the show together.

I had to leave before the end because of a small matter of the Championship leaders (Southampton in case you didn’t know) playing at Reading. It was hard to find a pub not showing the Liverpool game but BSB at Harbourside obliged and I supped £3.60 pints while, frankly, the second best team nicked a point with only ten men on the field. That’s what champions do.

Champion footballers and champion writers. I’ve pencilled in BristolCon ’12 already.

New for all sorts of my lists, this bird has been reported several times recently before I connected with it this afternoon. The most surprising of these lists is this year’s on-foot, which has raced up to 98 in the month since I added redpoll. Also today, the nature reserve had a common gull; last week a kingfisher zipped along the rhyne behind Homebase; and before that was a
Portbury merlin.

I remember that day: a loose hide shutter smashed me on the head. Not much damage to the bonce but my teeth still feel weird.

My Wharf list also stands at 98. I wonder what will be the next two species. I haven’t had Mediterranean gull yet and maybe one of the local ringed plovers could drop in. That’s my guess.

Not much else has been happening. My last trip was a double dip on the Black Down pallid harrier and Chew Valley spotted sandpiper. Yesterday evening Amy King gave the Bristol Ornithological Club an excellent talk on Somerset’s crane reintroduction. That would be a good day out. In fact I’m off to Steyning next week and I like to drop down to the Dorset coast and drive along; the birds favoured spot of Aller Moor, between Bridgwater and Langport, would be on my way.

The recent winds have pushed a stream of seabirds past Severn Beach. Knowing that my presence there would dry them up immediately, I went instead for the long shot of seawatching from Battery Point, Portishead. Hey, it’s the environmental option too: I walked. That meant I didn’t take the scope but I knew it wouldn’t be needed anyway.

Some chap sheltering by the pier on the way over said he’d seen two gannets earlier so my hopes rose 1%. 1% of nothing is still nothing and the Severn Estuary was full of rough seas and not much else. I scanned and scanned and a curlew flew past. That was enough.

I left via the rocky bit of Woodhill Bay below the Point, where small birds struggled against the wind. One was an easy rock pipit and another was… looked like a wheatear. I couldn’t even keep the bins steady. It was a gale. Yes, it finally was a wheatear – new for that patch.

Then a couple of waders flew up from right beneath me. All I could say was that they were about pipit-sized with a white wing bar. That and the general feel of them (jizz?) pretty much clinched it for ringed plovers. Not just a patch tick and a Portishead tick but a car-free lifer. Yes, I’m still keeping that list going and it’s hit 144. 90 for this year as well, so not too shabby.

I’ll have to wait for my cruise to Lundy on the 18th to add seabirds to the Somerset list. Although as I have noted, anything offshore between here and Clevedon is actually in Bristol. Hmm, that reminds me to double check sightings on the mud off Portbury Wharf: that’s in Bristol too.

Going back over old emails, this one came up from a trip at the end of November, beginning of December – presumably to avoid the crowds (very wise as May three years later demonstrated). I’m not too sure about some of the sightings but…

“The highlights started on a trip to the north of the Lagoon. I didn’t have to go far. As the boat was pulling away from the main island to Lido, a couple of falcons flew over it. I only caught a glimpse of them and naturally assumed that they were peregrines but lanner may be a possibility. I guess the habitat would favour peregrine more.

“I then got a great sparrowhawk (female presumably from its size) flying over the huge hotel on the Lido beach. A couple of firecrests at Punta Sabbioni, dozens of black-necked grebes and a common sandpiper (in breeding plumage!?) completed that day’s sightings.

“Frustratingly there was a transport strike the next day, so I had to wait until the 2nd to travel down to Chioggia. It was while waiting at Pellestrina for the final boat that I became aware of Italian sparrows. I later saw them everywhere in Venice. But the most intriguing birds at Pellestrina were some pipits. They didn’t look right for meadow pipits but I couldn’t turn them into anything else. The journey to Chioggia finally provided plenty of Mediterranean gulls.

“The highlight of the week though had to be the most tantalising. I caught the train up to Treviso and at the end of the causeway at Mestre I saw a buzzard perched in a tree. As we passed, the front of the bird came into view with a really black belly and paler feathers above. I realise that this is right at the southern end of the range for rough-legged buzzard in the winter but I don’t really see that it could have been even a dark-morph common buzzard.

“So, not a great many species but some good raptors.”

Indeed. Venice is a very homo sapiens area. And canis lupus familiaris to judge by the amount of dog shit I recall.

Gropecuntsorry, Nelson Street in Bristol is the city’s newest art gallery. Graffiti now adorns the dingiest thoroughfare and I amused myself yesterday by snapping all the birds I could find. So this is a picture post. See how many species you can identify (or make up a name for!)

Afterwards it was a little disappointing to find that the Raj’s early bird menu has gone up in price. And their rather fine Madras is no longer on it. Then I repaired to the Shakespeare Tavern for a few pints with the Bristol Fantasy & SF Society in memory of Colin Harvey, who died suddenly last week. Here’s to you, Colin. You will be missed.

The rhyne flows from Den Dungen Bridge on Harbour Road, Portishead to Schweich Bridge on Newfoundland Phoenix Way (Google Maps has this wrong). This is my usual route but further on, to the pill by the Marina lock gates, continues the good birding. It’s the last bit of semi-natural habitat for the local passerines so tits, finches, thrushes and warblers congregate away from the bricks, tiles and stones of the human breeding units. It’s a place to start the patch month list.

Unremarkable and scruffy otherwise, this wildlife corridor must be in danger of being “tidied up”; I’m sure it poses all sorts of threats to health and safety so it’s only a matter of time. And we can’t have that sort of eyesore running through a pristine modern development. (Although we can allow crisp packets, discarded McDonald’s, dog shit, plastic bottles and bags, and Coke cans.)

The scruffiness contributed meadowsweet and fat-hen to my growing roster of weeds. That’s a confident 35 species locally. A true botanist would probably find twice that many. So the rhyne is not just good for birds.