Twenty months since my last lifer and six since my last British species, this one was a corker. Perched openly in a tree with its long black-bordered plumes, the heron put me in mind of Rod Stewart. (Did I ever tell you my Rod Stewart story?…)

So what’s a squacco heron doing in Somerset? And what does squacco mean? The bird is a Mediterranean migrant from Africa so this one has overshot. The Bay of Biscay looks to be the most northerly colony. The species is in the same Ardeola genus as Chinese pond heron, which I saw in Singapore. That puts it before the cattle egrets and true herons, and after North America’s green heron.

Squacco seems to come from the Italian name for the bird. Some chap called Francis Willughby coined it but, more important, got the serious taxonomy ball rolling in the process. Ball rolling is an apt metaphor because he also gave an early description of the game of football. And with no end to the trivia he was born at Middleton Hall, now an RSPB reserve.

Betcha you’re glad you learned that.

Chew Valley was quieter but Herriotts held a splendid drake garganey, a couple of shovelers and still a goldeneye. I completed the three reservoirs at Barrow Gurney, where I first heard sand martins then, with delight, found their nesting bank. I have a dim memory of hearing about this. It’s artificial of course but makes the yomp round both tanks worthwhile in the summer.

So a fine day out after recent incarceration to get new versions of Let the Time Come and The Honeyeaters’ Tree to the printers. Still working on ‘em though…

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 species is fast becoming a Somerset speciality. Indeed that’s the only British county where I’ve seen it – first at Chew Valley in 2009, then a pair last year at Blagdon and Chew (again). And the two birds down at the Somerset Levels last Tuesday were highly likely this latter pair. They’ve been on their travels though, to the South Coast and back.

So have I. Since Widewater, I returned from a long weekend with the brothers at Steyning via Selsey Bill, which was quiet apart from the year’s first red-breasted mergansers. I tried without success for the hawfinches at Eastleigh, close to Winchester, before a yomp through Denny Wood in the New Forest in the hope of woodlarks. No joy with them either.

That was all Monday, with an overnight stop in Bournemouth so that I could hit seabirds and migrants the next morning at Portland Bill. Plenty of gannets, guillemots, fulmars, wheatears, a shag and one swallow. It’s summer! Then it was a haul up to Shapwick, which also had a marsh harrier, five ruff, booming bitterns and squealing water rails.

112 species for the month – not bad.

Now Somerset is my top British county with my first ever English occurrence of this white gull. Five years have elapsed since my last sighting at Fraserburgh; only Forfar and Ullapool have also contributed records. In with a distant roost of herring and lesser black-backs and the light fading fast, the Cheddar bird was nevertheless easy to pick out in its paleness.

Earlier the same day another bout of three new species at Chew Valley took that site racing past Upton Warren. I caught up with the long-tailed duck and the flock of yellowhammers while a mistle thrush sang in the distance for a surprising addition to the list.

Another theme recently has been early birds and yesterday was no exception, apart from being exceptional. Two Sandwich terns off Widewater Lagoon at Shoreham beat my 2006 record by 25 days! True, most of my sightings have been in Scotland but this does continue a trend of migrants weeks ahead of time. The weather has certainly been crazy enough this year to encourage them. Am I alone in thinking the last few weeks have been unnatural?

Or Cat’s Back or, most prosaically of all, Black Hill. But in any case the easternmost spur of the Black Mountains, which puts it in Herefordshire and thus in England. Which is rather exciting because the bird I heard yesterday (and Allan and Heidi saw, lucky them!) was only my third English record for the species. It follows the Forest of Bowland in 2003 and somewhere in Northumberland in 2006. Both a long time ago and it’s even nearly three years since my last encounter in the Pentlands. That’s what you get for moving away from Scotland.

Lagopus lagopus, which makes red grouse the nominate species of the ptarmigans. Yup, it’s really a willow ptarmigan and not a grouse at all but not many in this country bother with that.

So, it was a good year bird and several of those have started appearing lately. Today was my earliest wheatear, on the Severn Estuary coast south of Dowlais but north of Blake’s Pools. A distant grey plover was also new for 2011. Three days back, Upton Warren had my earliest little ringed plover and not quite earliest avocets. My trip to the Midlands also brought one peep from a tawny owl at the aunt’s place in Kidderminster.

Last week at Chew Valley the spotted sandpiper was showing well, the wintering garganey was still around and the Somerset list went up by one somewhat junk bird. An Egyptian goose has been hanging out by the picnic site for a while. I didn’t go for it but it found me as I scanned the causeway end for the long-tailed duck. No duck, but the one goose.

On 178 species Somerset now ties it up with Angus, which is a county with plenty of red grouse.

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.

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.

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. ⇐ ⇒