At last

White Stork at Sawbridgeworth.

Not one of the dozens of White Storks I saw on Spanish lamp posts, roofs and pylons last weekend made me cast more than a cursory glance.  However, one seen on a lamp post in Sawbridgeworth by Mike Harris made me move a bit faster. A county ‘bogey bird’ for me was about to fall.  Most obligingly, it flew over the car as I arrived at Pishiobury, disappeared down over Harlow for 10 minutes or so, before re-appearing overhead again, heading north this time.

Apparently only 16 birds have previously managed to sneak past the county committee, mostly in the last decade. Ten of these have turned up between March and May, with the bulk in April, also the peak time for records nationally.  That's good enough for me and my county list increases to 266.  

Scilly 1979 – a blast from the past

As usual, we cruised across to the islands on the Scillonian, a reasonably smooth crossing for once, dumped the bags and then tried to find out the latest bird news by the usual methods – the blackboards and semaphore. We quickly joined a stream of birders heading towards Higher Moors where a Subalpine Warbler was on show. Around 250 birders funnelled down a narrow muddy track, jostling and pushing to see the bird, tempers flared, some chap ended up in the ditch on his backside.   A great start.  A Rustic Bunting provided the next stop towards the north of the island and the rest of the day was made up with standard Scilly ‘fillers’ of the time: 2 Short-toed Larks, Pink Stink and a Tawny Pipit.  The following day a quick trot saw us down on Lower Moors looking for a Sibe Stonechat.  Viewing was tricky with the old ‘brass and glass’ scope, I wish they would hurry up and invent the tripod.

Excitement! a putative Blyth’s Reed Warbler had been found on St Agnes.  Unfortunately it was in a small private field.   Queuing for the 300 birders boating over to Aggy was the order of the day, with ten birders in the field for 15 minutes, tough if you don’t see it.  All progressed relatively well and in good humour as the bird performed well.  However, gentle mumbling increased to severe doubt and eventually the Guru of the day, Pete Grant, declared it was just a Marsh Warbler.  Trouble was, nobody knew what a Blyth’s Reed looked like.  My book gave some guidance; Brownish. Difficult to distinguish. See Marsh Warbler.  I checked Marsh Warbler; Brownish. Difficult to distinguish. See Blyth’s Reed Warbler.  Hmmm, crystal.

Stress set in over the next couple of days as we were led a merry dance by a Rose-breasted Grosbeak that would appear in front of birders, then vanish, then appear again in another part of the island.  The grapevine was not quick enough for this sort of thing.  We moped around in obvious places waiting for news and while checking around the airfield, where a Cory’s Shearwater off Giant’s Castle was an unexpected bonus, my eye was attracted to a vibrant orange thing up on Porth Hellick down.  A quick look through bins revealed a birder with striking orange hair jumping up and down waving madly (a standard communication method of the day).  He had the Grosser!  We legged it up there and enjoyed our first tick of the week. Stress subsided, a good bird at last.   ‘Beacon bonce’, as the orange-haired one became known, was our hero. 

A routine check of Aggy again turned up trumps as a Radde’s Warbler was discovered in a garden off the main road as we were passing.  Another tight squeeze ensued as there were few available gaps in the hedge.  An amused local provided some step ladders for personal, if somewhat wobbly, additional viewing.  This was quickly followed back on Mary’s by a proper dash up towards the golf course for a Swainson’s Thrush, another tick!  A trip over to Tesco’s added the regular Black Duck, a Ring-necked Duck and the usual Bob-white Quail.

The week ended quietly with the usual fodder of a Lesser Golden Plover (or American GP as you call them now), Spotted Crake, Little Bunting, another Rustic Bunting, R-b Fly, Yellow-broweds, a couple of Dickie Pips  and the obligatory ‘small dark wheatear’ – yes, it rained one day.  But a 2-tick week was not to be scoffed at and we departed happily enough.

Pics.  Top:  Grosser!, Above: team member Tim Andrews finds a Yellow-browed (note all the 'brass and glass').  Below: Radde's on Aggy, my turn for the steps! (whats that new-fangled metal thing with 3 legs?, Bottom: the best dressed birders today have Swift Audobons and a handbag (Beacon bonce takes a nap).

Scilly enough?

The bloke who used to run the disco on the quay with an Aladdin Sane style painted face was looking past his best. He probably thought the same of me. "You still do the disco on the quay" I enquired. "Blimey, you've been coming here a long while" he replied. But let's hope he now has more than 5 records in his collection, I like Siouxsie and the Banshees but not every 15 minutes.  After visiting the Isles of Scilly every year from 1975 until 1995, we had not been back for 17 years. This was the 'old gits return' tour, one last hurrah. First impressions were that not much had changed other than there were virtually no birders, a few more posh houses had appeared and everything was a lot more expensive. We set out to find birds.

The Aquatic Warbler was typically ground hugging and elusive as it grovelled amongst the iris by Porthloo Pond. A couple of flight views was the best on offer. By contrast, the Ortolan was best mate with the sparrows on Porthcressa beach and behaved in a similarly approachable fashion. A couple of Yellow-browed 'sweeeet'ed and showed briefly in Lower Moors and a Lapland Bunting rattled and rolled over the golf course. Just as I remembered it. Peninnis never seemed that far in the past but it felt like a long slog this time. A scattering of pipits including the Buff-bellied lurked around the lighthouse but the old lookout pole seemed to have gone. I was looking forward to climbing that again.

The fact was, everywhere seemed further than it was before. Did we really walk twice around St Mary's everyday? Anyway, no problem, now they have introduced electric carts for the old gits.  However, there are significant changes; the birders are not only far fewer in number but on average much older and probably only a handful with much experience. Fewer birders out there, fewer birds being found. On one day, we were the only birders on the boat over to Tesco's. Scilly has become like an extended episode of Dad's Army; all the old dodderers holding forth whilst the young guns are away at new frontlines.

Captain Mainwaring is everywhere, pompously standing guard with his radio/CB and spouting. "Don't stand there you stupid boy, I've been coming to Scilly for 6 years now".  Privates Fraser and Godfrey were dipping down at the shy Aquatic. "We are doomed" said Fraser, "there are more birds on Shetland". Godfrey shuffled up, "I had to be excused, but my sister Dolly says there are two Buff-breasts on the airfield now". "No you old duffer" says the Verger "one's a Dotterel". Meanwhile, Private Walker was down the Scillonian Club selling dodgy videos of the glory days.
Corporal Jones came charging up "Don't panic, don't panic. I've looked at the Snipe at Porth Hellick. They're all Wilson's". And so it went on.

We eventually added Pink Stink, R-b Fly, Barred and Bonelli's, with Yellow-broweds everywhere. No modern day mega's, but still a lovely place, and once upon a time that might have seemed like a reasonable haul.

Below: Ortolan, Buff-breast, Dotterel, R-b Fly and old gits twitch-cart.
 

An Eastern Crowned Warbler once flew halfway across this ride

....and into a whole net of controversy. And who’s fault was it that we didn’t see this eastern gem – well it was everyone’s apparently, although no-one seemed to blame the warbler for flying off. It was apparently released into a willow tree, with barely a good-bye, but at that time it was just a Yellow-browed Warbler, low-life amongst asian vagrants, barely worth the time of thinking ‘not a bad inland record’ let alone travelling to try to see it. Then its true colours were revealed (good job they didn’t have to send the prints off to Kodak) and the greyness of its crown matched the blood-drained faces of the local birders who suddenly realised Hertfordshire’s one-in-20-year-good-bird was at Hilfield Park Reservoir, otherwise known as 'Fortresss Hilfield'.

There was some talk that some didn’t want the news to be released. Now if ringers or birders don’t want to release news of a bird, that’s their decision as far as I’m concerned. One might argue it’s a little anti-social as there can hardly be any birder who hasn’t at some time gone to see a bird found by someone else...but it is their decision and should be respected. I’ve nothing against ringers either, quite the contrary. Did you know that, statistically speaking, 50% of the UK’s recorded Eastern Crowned Warblers have been picked out of a net. However, this was Hilfield Park Reservoir – a designated Local Nature Reserve (LNR), and according to Natural England “LNR’s are for both people and wildlife”.

The trouble is, I’m not sure how many ‘people’ are thought should benefit from an LNR, but it surely must be more than the present number, and it would certainly include the hastily formed Hertfordshire branch of the Eastern Crowned Warbler Appreciation Society (ECWAS). Okay, so the birds of the site are well recorded and documented in an excellent report (where you can see that the site doesn’t actually have many ‘crowning’ moments). There is a view that withholding bird news is in the best interest of the conservation of the site. But ultimately is it really beneficial for the future of the site?

Back in the early 1990s, the Wildlife Trust stoutly defended this site against a planning application to locate the nearby sailing club on the reservoir. Had it lost, the site would not support its current importance for wildlife. One of the main arguments used at the time was that the site was not fulfilling its LNR objective – ‘for both wildlife and people’, as few people were allowed in. Now this is a water company operational site and understandably there are rules to be followed. Anyone can access this site if they are a Wildlife Trust member and arrange to pick up a key (as it has always been). But opening the site for special events requires a bit more organisation and supervision. And by the time the ECWAS arrived, it was apparent that the warbler’s discoverers had scarpered as quick as the bird itself. Perhaps if the spirit in which the site was designated is to be fully realised, a ‘friends of...’ group, with a specific remit to both record wildlife and ‘encourage use of the site’, might be a better bet for the future.

Mecca?

A dull East Bank, a great scrape; the Ruff and the smooth.

A weekend up in north Norfolk, the first for a while, brought on a bit of reminiscing as I walked around Cley, a place that, for a while, I seemed to visit nearly every weekend. I remember getting my newly published copy of ‘Where to watch birds’ back in the late 60’s and reading the following description of Cley:

“There can hardly be a serious bird-watcher in the country who has not made the pilgrimage to Cley. It has been the Mecca of ornithologists for the last 140 years...” wrote John Gooders, continuing ...”the East Bank at Cley is the best place in England to see passage waders – and to meet well known bird-watchers”.

I visited Cley soon after, on a YOC trip, meeting both Richard Richardson and Billy Bishop, but it was the couple of hours in the company of RAR on the East Bank that was truly inspiring as he seemed to magic birds out of thin air for us. My first solo trip to Cley was in 1970, and by chance, RAR was in a car that stopped for me as I hitch-hiked the final leg along the coast. The trip to Cley was to become a regular birding weekend over the following years and the walk around the Cley 'square' to became a favourite.  Many good birds were seen, with Caspian Tern, Red-throated Pipit and Black-headed Bunting amongst the better of my 'self-founds'.

Forty years on, Cley still delivers. Last weekend I saw plenty of passage waders (but there was a scarcity of well known birders, well, any birders in fact). Three Wood Sands, 2 Little Stints, Ruffs, Knot, Spotshanks, Greenshanks, numerous Dunlin, Whimbrels and godwits, and 9 Spoonbills were amongst the many birds on show. The scrapes looked in great condition, the hides blend nicely into the landscape and there’s a nice modern eco-centre containing a good range of books. I renewed my lapsed NWT membership, after all it’s only half the price of a tank of petrol.

But the walk around the ‘square’ is not what it used to be. East Bank is, well, dull, although Arnold's still produced as good a range of birds as any other pool. A bench has replaced the old flattened grass – and more than accommodates the number of birders there. A good walk should have points of interest along the way; variations in habitat, pools, openings, viewpoints etc, but those that previously existed, and the hides off the bank, have long since been removed or allowed to grow over.   Most disappointing of all, there is little sense of the history of this place. A few named hides or pools, and just a faded plaque for RAR on an obscure back wall. What could this place be like with a bit of imagination in both site layout and interpretation? This could be a birders Mecca, but currently it's just a well managed reserve with barely a nod to its past.

Returning home, I flicked through the pages of ‘Cley Marsh and its Birds’ by Billy Bishop and arrived at the page where he recalls a letter received from Lord Buxton in the 60’s. It seemed worth sharing. Lord Buxton writes:

“Within an hour I was sitting in the boat house watching a bittern boom – the very thing I had yearned to see for decades. But it was quite a shock. All the famous descriptions by experts were proved phoney. Quite honestly I was a bit embarrassed at first, because the bittern looked as if it was blowing off through its backside. This seemed rather a tawdry climax to the greatest discovery on earth and I wondered in what language I was going to announce it to the world!”

That Bitterns fart, rather than boom, is still a closely guarded secret.