Away from Santa Clara County on April 22:

“Large straggly flocks flying north close to the water were Brent geese. There were also birds very high and in some kind of strung out formation. They may have been Brents but I have seen cormorants like this – although not in their hundreds as these flocks numbered.

“Other groups had about a dozen per flock, flew close to the water and looked like divers. I fancied red-throated from a slight drooping of the heads. Large straggly flocks of smaller birds completed the procession – scoters?

“None of these was really close enough to get any more than an impression of their general colour scheme. The sun was also coming round to behind them to make matters more difficult.

“Ideas, anyone? In any case it was certainly a sight worth seeing.”

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?

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. ⇐ ⇒

From Monday, July 19:

“This morning on my way into town past the university a small bird flew overhead. It was singing and I had heard that song before in the same place. Then I had identified it as an aberrant greenfinch but today I realised that it was a redpoll. Apart from the oddness of the urban location there are no conifers for miles around. This being the second sighting suggests that the bird may be
nesting in the area, so it is doubly strange.

“Yesterday I checked out the sand martins at their new home in Broughty Ferry. They must be doing well. Dozens of them zip past your head as you walk towards their nests. I think that the only other city where I have registered sand martins is San Francisco, where they nest in the cliffs below Fort Funston. Bar-tailed godwits were also foraging in the Tay Estuary at low tide – again not a common city bird.

“Four days ago the fire station at the back of Forest Park Road was host to a crow that was certainly more hooded crow than anything else. The pale underparts and back were interspersed with patches of dark feathers. I had seen this bird before too but thought that it was merely a juvenile. However, none of my field guides shows juveniles as being anything other than black. This time there was another crow with it, carrion but showing some paleness that could be attributes to hooded genes.”

Lists are all the rage these days, especially those to tick before you die, so here’s my contribution. But with a difference: not for me the plain old best but, as a rabid lister, the locations to deliver the most varied bag of species. The concomitant geographic spread should also make this Top 10 truly British.

Close to Pokerbird WHQ, Somerset’s
Chew Valley Lake holds many freshwater species as well as the prospect of birds, chiefly herons, that are colonising from the continent. It’s especially good for small numbers, but a wide variety, of autumn migrants.

Over the Severn Estuary pine plantations in the Forest of Dean provide the setting for the next stop. It is not so much a location as an area, round Parkend and New Fancy View, that holds the highlights of both hawfinches and displaying goshawks. Nearby RSPB Nagshead completes a trio of spots within a two-kilometre circle.

Further north and inland, where Wales excels, Lake Vrynwy, only 60 miles west of the Black Country, is a breeding ground for many of our passerines. Away from its encircling deciduous woodlands, roads also lead up to the moors and their specialist birds.

Actually in the Midlands and easy off junction 5 of the M5 is the little Worcestershire Wildlife Trust reserve of Upton Warren. Its species list belies its small size as a mixture of salt and fresh water pools attract waders and seabirds as far inland as you can see them.

Even London gets in on the act with its excellent Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) reserve at Barnes Elms. In terms of adding to the species, it really only supplies a couple of invaders – rose-ringed parakeet and Egyptian goose. But its proximity to such a mass of population alone makes it worthy of the Top 10.

The least controversial site is RSPB Titchwell on the North Norfolk coast, where just one day’s visit can yield more than 50 species. Its scrapes and lagoons hold a first-rate selection of waders year round to add to species offshore.

The RSPB reserve at Bempton on the Yorkshire cliffs, provides a maternity ward for Britain’s important seabirds. The spring and summer months really see the colonies come alive although a visit any time of the year is good for the surrounding farmland.

Another WWT reserve at Martin Mere fills the northwest England gap, apart from being a fine day out and not just for waterbirds. The site holds a small colony of tree sparrows and the neighbouring farmland has corn buntings.

Scotland offers unique Caledonian pinewoods, home to capercaillie, crested tit and Scottish crossbill. Few places are better to see them than Abernethy, which is primarily famous for its ospreys. Yet another RSPB site at Loch of Strathbeg, coupled with nearby Rattray Head, promises Scottish coastal watching. Here are Britain’s more northerly pelagic birds and waterfowl, especially in the winter.

10 sites and the possibility of 200 species by my calculations. That’s why I call them Top.

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. ⇐ ⇒

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.

This is the productive end of Severn Beach, between the two bridges. If high tide is low enough, and yesterday it was just over 10 metres, sufficient mud remains by Northwick Warth for waders and gulls to loaf.

Not that turnstones need this: the afternoon’s flock was more than happy on the seaweed of Red Ledge, right by the footpath. This allowed excellent views of their stunning summer plumage. Pale heads, black-masked and semi-collared with fine spotted caps; that’s just a start. Beneath, they sport black bibs, and broad black and tan stripes run the length of their backs. This is the season to see them.

I don’t think I’ve ever added them to the year list so late. Not so, sanderlings, which sometimes never make it. Two individuals foraged with a flock of dunlin, some of whom also displayed summer finery. They’re more understated with some rufous brown but a remarkable black belly patch.

In terms of my lists it was less surprising that turnstone and sanderling were also new for Gloucestershire. Both species are coastal and the county ain’t got much of that!