Yellow-browed Warbler
(Phylloscopus inornatus)
(Hugh Venables) / CC BY-SA 2.0

Eight years since my last sighting, at Louth in Lincolnshire, and with only three other records before that (all around the same period), this little gem is rare indeed. Yesterday’s bird behind the Stratford Hide was perfect for spotting its striking supercilium, but even more its two wing bars and black-and-white pattern to the tertials. I was glad it had hung around through the cold snap because I’d delayed since New Years Day, when it was first reported and ringed.

Part of the reason has been not buying a permit for 2012: the office just hadn’t been open when I’d visited. But I fixed that, at a cost of £18 now. That’s a 12.5% rise on last year. So much for a 4.2% inflation rate.

To start getting my money’s worth, I spent a while in the hide, from which a female garganey floated with the usual teal flock. That made identification a little easier but it’s not hard really. Some say that the facial markings and hence its paleness are the most distinctive but I find the contrast between its flanks and back to be more obvious. There’s a definite demarcation line. The larger bill is another difference but tough to judge without a yardstick.

I have seen garganey (twice) at the Lake. Not the warbler though, which is also a Somerset bird for me. Also not on my Chew list, to my surprise, were nuthatch and siskin, which a wee stroll downriver from the dam provided. They took the total up to 122 – just two behind Upton Warren! I’d gone for yellowhammers that I’d heard about but they were not in evidence.

The Lyndhurst Hotel marked the start of the Strzelecki Track and the tarmac ended not far down it. A sign in the road-train area told of conditions for sections of the route – all open when I was there. So the way was clear to Mount Hopeless, the Moomba oil fields and southern Queens­land. Hundreds of kilometres of dirt roads plied by monster trucks bowling through the heart of Australia. Directly north the same traffic ran up the Oodnadatta and Birdsville Tracks to Marree, where they diverged for the Northern Territory and western Queensland respectively.

This was Bransbury‘s direction for chestnut-breasted whiteface. A great many grasswrens – streaky brown relatives of the fairywrens – also had restricted ranges up there, as did the gibberbird. The name alone made this honeyeater a prize for me and I was right at its limit. But not this trip. I missed most of the localised endemics, which is not a surprise: it takes Australians considerable time and effort to add them to their lists.

No, I had to turn back but did so pre-breakfast to see what birds were up and about early to scrape a living from the desolation. It’s not so desolate: enough precipitation falls to keep a low layer of scrub and the recent rains had left roadside pools and ditches full of water. One held my next lifer, a bird more accustomed to estuaries so it was a long way from home although Morcombe notes that the hoary-headed grebe is nomadic. This is in sharp contrast to most species in its Podicipediformes order, which are not known for even their short-distance flying prowess. They walk even less readily, being apt to fall over because their legs are set so far back. They’re designed for swimming and diving. So a roadside pool was just right.

World birds 925 and 926 soon followed as white-backed swallows skimmed the skies and a rufous songlark had me puzzling for ages over its scratchy-scratchy song and cryptic plumage. Then, gem of all gems, a distant blaze of gold shimmered through the heat haze – too far to make out any detail but the speck could only have been one bird. A mudflat specialist but also a honeyeater, the orange chat was my 15th for the trip and 927th species for my entire life.

A celebratory coffee followed at the Beltana Roadhouse, between Leigh Creek and Parachilna, where I stopped again. For another coffee, as it happens: the high mileage, and maybe the nights’ beers, were catching up on me and staying awake was becoming a challenge.

The Prairie Hotel gave me the day’s fifth lifer with a white-winged triller perched on nearby telegraph wires. This was another bird that I’d been half-identifying in its smart black and white plumage since Western Australia. Not dissimilar to a pied wagtail, the species is actually in the cuckooshrike family. They hunt from exposed branches, which makes them easy to catch out of the corner of one’s eye while driving. They don’t always hang around for one to stop, reverse and get one’s bins on ‘em though. The triller was a welcome finale to the Flinders. ⇐ ⇒

So it was that tuturiwhatu became my next lifer but not before tuturiwhatu had joined the trip list. You read that right. The Maoris had the same trouble with identifying species that we do and gave the same name to two plovers. Or dotterels as The Hand Guide to the Birds of New Zealand calls them. You should be confused by now. It is a minefield.

Let the IOC taxonomy clarify, which is what it’s supposed to do. Double-banded plover (Charadrius bicinctus) was the more common and widespread species I already had from Haast in 2003; the rarer, endemic New Zealand plover (C. obscurus) was my 1,055th species. The latter prefers more coastal habitat so it was only once the beach came into view that I found these plainer shorebirds. They are also bigger than the double-banded but at distance the safest way to separate these non-breeding birds was by paler heads and the lack of chest bands.

If that lifer was a slight challenge, the next, also with it on the shore, spawned a complete mystery and caused me to wonder if senior moments hadn’t been kicking in for years. Six years to be precise, being the span back again to 2003 when I can still picture wrybills scuttling by a river south of Christchurch.

These look like cleaner cut, small plovers – maybe sanderlings too – but with good views the curve of their bill is unmistakable. The truly remarkable feature is that the bill doesn’t curve down, like curlews and whimbrels, or slightly up, like terek sandpipers. No, it always curves to the right.

Why the right? That’s a puzzle in itself but my puzzle when entering the sighting that evening was how wrybill was showing up as a lifer. I checked and double-checked 2003. Nothing. And I’m almost anal about my records. How could I reconcile such a clear memory with what my software was telling me? And I also suspected that I’d seen the bird more than once. How could it have slipped through multiple times?

I’m still aghast. ⇐ ⇒

Friday the Thirteenth continued my run of bad bird luck with just eastern spinebill and white-bellied sea eagle of note right at the death. I’d drifted east to the Freycinet Peninsula by then via Oatlands and Campbell Town, the latter showing some interesting art and both being sort of old. The B34 across to Freycinet climbed past Lake Leake, only accessible by dirt track, and down to Moulting Lagoon, which defines the peninsula.

I was on the eastern seaboard Tasman Highway, heading north to Bicheno for the road down the other side of the lagoon. My target was the national park, where mid-afternoon might have been OK to find camping, but it was a Friday and the place had been booked solid for weeks. Rather than paying the entrance fee to Freycinet just for that evening, I checked out Coles Bay right next door. On the other side of the village BIG4 Iluka did have a pitch for me, and a convivial tavern.

That filled in the evening schedule. From the verandah I watched the sun sink over Great Oyster Bay, of which Moulting Lagoon is the northern extension. This was named for the swans and shelducks that shelter during their flightless late summer.

The general public is ignorant of this aspect of most wildfowl’s life cycle. Post-breeding adult birds replace all their flight feathers at once and so need a safe haven while they’re vulnerable. This is why the drakes also moult through an eclipse plumage that renders them as camouflaged as the females. Mid-February may have been a touch early to catch this spectacle but bushland in and around the campsite brought me back to native passerine species after the European domination of the central farming belt.

On Saturday morning I explored more of this bayside eucalypt scrub that stretched away north from the settlement. Spotted pardalotes joined the other Pardalotus species that had been so memorable at Tinderbox, but it was a couple of currawongs that got the heart racing. As at Mount Wellington, I was hopeful of black currawong but this time my view was lengthy enough to pick out white wing patches, which gave me clinking currawong. A great name, but only a subspecies of the widespread grey, which is almost black on Tasmania.

I didn’t retry the national park because the better idea of Maria Island had climbed my pecking order. This was some 40 miles south but 70 by road to the ferry at Triabunna, and I had to start off north past Moulting Lagoon again to get off the peninsula. This brought me Caspian tern and brown falcon to make a reasonable haul for the day already.

But before any further improvement to that list was the small matter of my ever-pressing flight out of Auckland. A detour even further north to Bicheno would take me to a wireless hotspot, I hoped. I had good reason to expect: it was listed on an Internet voucher I’d bought in the Hobart café. My luck happened to be in. That was nice. ⇐ ⇒

At first it looked like a buzzard, scattering the wigeon, teal and pintail at this West Sussex reserve. Then it banked to show a creamy white head and its true nature. It must be said that a juvenile, and maybe a female, marsh harrier has similar colouring to a dark morph buzzard so one does need the head for a positive identification. That or a good sighting to get the harrier’s quartering behaviour.

My bird landed straightaway and disappeared behind low scrub so
I didn’t get that luxury. I wondered if it had found a meal when it didn’t reappear.

This interlude followed stunning views of a female peregrine falcon, to the extent that this crappy digishot was possible (where does the yellow fringing come from?) I had to use my iPhone because my camera now discharges batteries within minutes and is effectively dead. I’ll have to work the poker tables some to manifest funds for a new one.

Both these birds of prey were new for my Pulborough list as were a couple of snipe and a calling crossbill. I may also have seen a female at the very tip of a tree but at the distance she was hard to separate from a greenfinch.

All that was on Tuesday and to continue the raptor theme, yesterday’s trip back from Steyning brought me two red kites. Not up the A34 or along the M4 as one might suppose but through the heart of Hampshire, near Old Winchester Hill. That’s my third record in that area so they are drifting south.

And they made a raptorlicious couple of days.

A chill set in as a breeze picked up off the sea at Eaglehawk Neck, enough that I started shivering. I hoped the main attraction wouldn’t be long.

In the gathering gloom only the nearer waves were worth scanning for the visitors’ swimming shapes. So it was a surprise to catch movement in the surf – an upright profile, looking round, alert for danger. The gulls were further off, maybe deterred by the onlookers. We were actually a benefit to the
one, two, three, four creatures now all lurking, surveying the stretch from sea to scrub, evaluating the safety of the final dash to their chicks.

One started the perilous waddled journey, then another. Little penguins, fairy penguins, blue penguins – call them what you will – they approached within yards of us. Just the four, but the more precious for it.

Flash! We stopped being a benefit. Some idiot was firing off a camera despite notices asking not to blind the birds, or disturb them in any way. Which should have been a given except to the doziest fuckwit.

And the planet is full, and getting fuller, of dozy fuckwits.

The four birds scrambled to safety.

My teeth joined the shivering act and within minutes, and no further penguins, I too padded into the scrub and back to the car. It was marvellous timing: one bird crossed my path on its devious route to its burrow. What a privilege. It was almost as though it knew who to trust.

The evening wildlife show wasn’t over. Thus far I’d stuck to the advice of not driving at dusk (dawn was easy!) for fear of hitting animals on the road. There was no choice that night but I just pootled along and had my second reward in a real live Tasmanian devil. It was in no hurry to get out of the way of the car and I could see how the dogs became easy prey for motorised devils.

Once ensconced back at the Lufra, the whole day called for a celebration pint of Boag’s, the island’s northern beer to complete the set. It had been a great start for what had been Plan B – way beyond expectations. The rest of the week would plummet from this height in so sharp a drop that I would be glad of the end of it. Though that too carried a sting. ⇐ ⇒

Third time lucky at Chew for this American wader, which I’ve only seen once in the USA and now five times over here. It’s new for the Somerset list, as was a little ringed plover, both visible from the Stratford Hide. Also on the same patch of mud were the three little stints and a dunlin for comparison.

The pec was easy to spot with its
attenuated build, clear supercilium and stint-like stripes converging down its back. A tad larger than the dunlin, the bird did eventually straighten to full height to reveal the diagnostic V-tip to its streaked breast. Buff-fringed primaries marked it as a juvenile, the views were that good.

I had three goes at the spotted sandpiper on Herriotts but couldn’t say whether the second, and naturally more distant, bird there was or was not. It looked like the nearer common sandpiper but at that range all bets were off. Dip number two to add that species to the British list: Sunday’s bird at Lydney wasn’t showing when I passed on my way down from Kidderminster.

Still, Herriotts did have water rail, grey wagtail and common gull. Not so common gull because last Thursday (on my way up!) it was new for my Slimbridge list. That must be an omission by oversight. Anyhow, it was consolation for that day’s dip on the buff-breasted sandpiper. So many American waders on our shores!

From Friday, July 9:

“Well, technically not Angus. Dighty Water in Dundee, to be precise. But in the birding world the two are lumped together.

“I have been living here for over a year and have visited Old Montrose Pier many times without ever catching up with the birds there, so it was getting frustrating. Indeed the day before this sighting I had pretty much frozen to death in the same spot looking for a non-existent ruddy shelduck and of course there was also no sign of the kingfishers. Incidentally isn’t it supposed to be warm in the middle of July? Maybe not with an Arctic wind blowing off Montrose Basin.

“Anyway I had just about given up at Dighty Water when I caught a flash of that metallic blue fly up to a branch, registered the rusty breast and then clearly spooked the bird into departing as quickly as it had come. I loitered for a while hoping that the bird would return but only managed to register a female blackcap in the process.

“The location also provided a singing sedge warbler to give me a Dundee list of 75 – not bad for about six months. There is quite a way to go to beat my best city list of 134 for Mountain View but that’s in California and it has the advantage of being on San Francisco Bay. It also took me three years.

“And it was considerably warmer.”

From the Stratford Hide this dainty bird was barely distinguishable from a tern but later at Moreton it danced close enough to show its striking wing patterns. Even at a great distance though the creature’s tail band was enough to mark it as a gull so I was already happy with my first sighting of the species since 2007.

The gull rather overshadowed three little stints and it’s not often you can say they. Never in my case, having only ever seen singles. A semipalmated sandpiper had been reported among this trio but not while I was watching. Nor the long staying pectoral sandpiper, which had eluded me a week ago because of the injured black-headed gull.

So, on Monday morning I was packing the bins for my visit to Chew when I spied a linnet on a roof opposite the Phoenix Way gaff. A linnet alone? I got on it and, my God, it was streaky. Had it been on a Scottish saltmarsh, it would have been all twite – no question. With its back to me, the bird occasionally turned and I swear I was also looking at a small yellow bill. Twite again. This could not be. The species doesn’t occur in Somerset – nowhere near in fact. I couldn’t discern a pink rump but that’s not always obvious.

The bird flew and left me with an enigma. Twite or no twite? On a modern housing estate rooftop? It just didn’t add up. The bird certainly wasn’t a linnet and I may have to compromise and call it a redpoll. At least that’s possible although it had no black facial markings nor red crown, the latter not always showing well.

Eeeh, I don’t know.

And that was the night of Christmas Eve in Warren. For one of only a handful of adult years I woke the morning after with a clear head and raring to go. I didn’t have to go far.

The trip list gained a gregarious party of grey-crowned babblers right by my campervan. I was well into their range and drawing closer to my already beaten territory of the Warrumbungles, where I had last seen them.

On my walk out for a more thorough check of the marshes, I passed my drinking buddy from the evening before. He and his cronies were already drowning their hangovers. Or carrying on the night’s beers? What state would he be in, come the festive lunch? That would be interesting.

Not half as interesting as scrub between the campsite and the marsh’s ponds. I kept hearing a song, thought it familiar but could not track down the source. Half an hour passed before nailing a rufous songlark. It had caught me out again. Some calls were like that: a long time coming. Others would click right away. Perhaps a musician wouldn’t have that problem, but a musician I was not.

I was hitting paydirt in that scrub. Yellow thornbills and double-barred finches pushed my life list up to 938. The marsh held nothing new but pink-eared ducks, black-fronted dotterel and a white-necked heron were notable.

My 939th world bird was a stunner though. Apart from galah the only cockatoo to enjoy countrywide distribution, this species also has a worldwide presence. I deliberately don’t repeat “enjoy” there because the odious pet trade has ensured that most of these birds are in prison. And when you see a flock in the wild, you realise that the perpetrators of that trade should be behind bars for environmental crime. One day our ancestors, if we survive that long, will look at us the way we look at slavers.

The cockatiel has long been considered a parrot but really the crest must have always made it all cockatoo? Having a gallbladder also distinguishes it as a member of the Cacatuidae family. Betcha didn’t know that.

A good haul that morning but my target of the year-end thousand then required over ten species a day. An overnight lifer of southern boobook did become world bird 940. I figured it was about time I added the species because the two-tone call I heard at the tail end of December 25 and had heard a few times previously, could only be that owl. ⇐ ⇒