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.

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.

Apart from the great crested grebe, locally the highlight was finally catching up with one of the black redstarts that have been reported round Portishead Pier and the beach below the Royal Hotel. For me it was a brief glimpse of one of the males for my first sighting since about this time last year. The species is a bit of a town speciality: five of my seven UK records cram into the last two years.

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.

The very prosaic great crested grebe brought up my hundred for the local nature reserve. Prosaic yet pretty, especially in breeding plumage, the species is also new for my car-free list, according to the fading Birdstack.

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.

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. ⇐ ⇒

The February 25 demise of this bird sightings website will leave a gap in the market, as I wrote over a year ago. Indeed, Birdstack was then the answer to a prayer and now just eBird remains, although it has gone worldwide. At least it’s accepted my last few months’ sightings from the UK, provided I bulk upload them instead of exporting from Birdstack.

All is not lost but a few species will be. eBird follows Clements, which is not as generous as the IOC with splits. This won’t affect site or even county and country lists so much but my world tally will definitely suffer. As will Hampshire and Somerset because eBird is mega-strict and up-to-date with county definitions. If you supply latitude and longitude, they override whatever you specify for county, and presumably country. (Although Blagdon Lake doesn’t seem to be right: I’ve had to shift the marker for its North Somerset portion a considerable way west to put it in the correct district.)

Many links in this blog will break, especially those to the Birdstack widgets, so I’ll have to point them elsewhere as time goes on. I haven’t played so much with eBird to see what’s available but nothing has jumped out so I’m not hopeful. And as for more specialised lists, like car-free or trips… should I go back to Wildlife Recorder?

Gosh, it’s been almost a week since I drove south from Portishead to the Dorset coast, which proved hard to work. My indecision around Ilminster didn’t help. That’s not in Dorset, but Somerset stretches that far, and beyond through Chard. By then Bridport was my only sensible target.

That was fine. A little further on lay Abbotsbury, where a scaup had been reported. That wasn’t so fine, being closed. You can tell how this is going: nada all the way to my hotel in Bournemouth and a recovery pint at the rather excellent Goat & Tricycle. A pub with that name can’t be beat.

On the subject of scaup I finally logged the lesser scaup at Slimbridge the weekend before and that entered my English list. Also new for the Wetland Centre were redpoll and raven. Funny how common species keep adding to that tally, which now stands at 109. I can’t have been paying attention.

Anyway, carrying on from Bournemouth on the 22nd, I had a beautiful stroll round Hengistbury Head, where ravens again figured by boosting my Hampshire list. I’ve said this before: Bournemouth itself and everywhere east is for me still in Hampshire. So, Slavonian grebes in Christchurch Harbour also counted, and Brent geese there were new for the year.

Then, best for last, an entirely hopeful punt south of Shatterford in the New Forest for a reported great grey shrike. A couple of birders coming the other way late in the afternoon hadn’t seen it after a thorough search and I was left anticipating at best another decent stroll. Not a bit of it: a white blob at the top of a birch stood out in the gloaming for a splendid shrike and I was able to get close enough for cracking views.

That’s probably it for the year – 183 species – not as good as many years recently but then I haven’t been gadding off down under or living in Scotland.

Just when I thought Chew Valley couldn’t get any better, a snippet from Bristol Ornithological Club‘s newsletter alerted me that a little stint there has been re-identified as this North American peep. A little stint that was present from November 10 to 20. A quick check of my records and, yes, the stint that I found at the sharp-tailed sandpiper twitch was on the 19th. Not a stint then but semipalmated sandpiper.

Blimey! Add the two long-billed dowitchers and the long-staying spotted sandpiper (which I didn’t see that day) and… it was really rather splendid. And… yes, I am counting the semipalm. At the distance I had no chance of separating it from a stint anyway, even had I known to do so.

That’s 288 for my British list and of course another for Somerset and a short-eared owl at Steart six days ago made that 173. It was almost the only bird I saw there. The weather forecast for Portishead had been dry but further down the M5 a succession of black showers rolled in and curtailed the birding after half an hour. No matter: the owl was hunting as I stepped out of the car and continued to show well.

I hadn’t expected it, the rationale behind the trip being storm-blown seabirds. They had never been on: the tide at Bridgwater Bay goes out a looong way and it was low tide. Still, it was good to check out another top county birding site. It’s only taken me two years to get round to it…

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. ⇐ ⇒

OK, so I did return to Herriotts at Chew Valley and finally admitted the spotted sandpiper to my British list. I’d seen it enough that it couldn’t have been a common sandpiper every time. A few days later, just for good measure, the list went up again with the sharp-tailed sandpiper. I had to thank Redditch WWT not coming to the Somerset Levels for that one. Otherwise I’d have been with them.

Blagdon‘s Slavonian grebe went on to my Somerset list, but not Avon since that retained last year’s bird off Portishead. The latter did gain red-crested pochard and the red-breasted merganser that’s supposed to be pretty regular at Chew.

The middle of November was exciting and rounded off an excellent autumn for the Somerset reservoirs. I’m assuming, but not hoping, that the winter will be quieter.