I think it may have been said before, but...

...arse.

A phone call from Steve Lister this morning had me heading to Rutland Water (in my much improved car which no longer goes ‘clunge’ just before coming to a standstill, ‘rerrp, rerrp, rerrp’ when pulling away or ‘tikka-tikka-tikka-tikka-tikka’ when going round corners – thanks to Rob’s dad’s garage! *) hoping to see the county’s third ever Shore Lark. However, just like the previous two, this one had only shown itself to the finder before promptly buggering off. We searched all the shoreline around Whitwell where he’d seen it, and both sides of the Hambleton Peninsula before reluctantly accepting that it must have flown straight through.

Now, whilst obviously offering sincere congratulations to Steve on an excellent find, I do think this is just a little unfair after he gripped us all off with the Little Bittern the other week. Especially as I rang him about that and didn’t have to time to get there myself before it got dark! In fact I think I should be allowed to add one to my county list as well, as I would have seen the Little Bittern had it been identified as such when I first heard about it.

* – for anyone interested in the technical details, the clunge-ing, rerrp rerrp-ing and tikka-tikka-ing were apparently due to a broken tooth on the ABS reluctor ring on the front offside CV joint. I just nodded and tried to look like I knew what he was talking about.

Don't you just love the tabloids

Thanks to Matthew Berriman for alerting me to this gem:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/135870/Rare-warbler-has-twitchers-in-a-real-flap

'Cretin' is too kind a word for the journalist who wrote this and the picture editor who came up with that photo...

Christmas is coming...

...and I’m skint. Plus I need a new scope as my old one is terminally broken. So I make no apologies for advertising my professional services here, in particular my pet portraits, which make an ideal Christmas gift, as they say:

Prices start at a very reasonable £95 (unframed, including p&p) for an 8 x 8 inch head and shoulders portrait, but you can have any size you like (within reason – a 100 foot square picture would take me several years and cost you £144,000 at the same rate per square inch as an 8 x 8 inch one!).

Please see the pet portraits section of my website if you’re interested – www.ajm-wildlife-art.co.uk/pet_portraits.htm but bear in mind you’ll need to order as soon as possible for delivery in time for Christmas.

And if you haven’t got pets I also have lots of bird pictures for sale, including the cover painting and line drawings from the recently published Birds of Leicestershire and Rutland. Again, please see my website for details.

That’s it – thank you for your time. Normal service will be resumed shortly...

What?

"St Mary's: Black Redstart - one of the paradoxus morph at Old Town today."

What in the name of fuck is the 'paradoxus morph' of Black Redstart? A red one with a black tail? Or is it more likely yet another 'trying too hard to turn a common bird into something interesting because we've run out of things to tick/write ID articles about in Birding World' type of thing?

Just stop it please - I'm too old to learn anything new. I don't want to know about Daurian this and Caspian that and weird new made-up 'morphs' of birds. And I don't like the ducks being at the beginning either. Everyone knows divers come first, then grebes. Ducks are somewhere in the middle of the non-passerines, just before the raptors and just after the herons.

And talking of herons (I knew there was some point to this rambling nonsense), there was a rare heron in Leicestershire yesterday, and it wasn't there today. Arse. I think I'd better go to bed now.

You couldn't make it up

I was told this Scilly story today by Andy Brett. I can't remember which island he said it was on, but I think it was St Agnes.

There was a crowd of about 50 or 60 people (I won't dignify them by calling them birders or even birdwatchers) watching a bird which none of them could identify. On asking a few people what was going on, Andy was told that some of them thought it was an Arctic Warbler, some thought it was a Bobolink and some thought it was a Philadelphia Vireo! Remember, all these opinions referred to the same bird. Apart from those who were there or who have already heard the story, I bet no-one can guess what the bird actually was.

I will reveal all in a day or two...

Last day

With low cloud and drizzle shrouding Sumburgh yesterday we thought we weren’t going to get off for much of the day, but fortunately the fog lifted for long enough to get our plane in (taking off in fog is a lot easier than landing). Several incoming flights weren’t so lucky, and throughout the day we heard planes going over without landing.

Yesterday morning’s birding was restricted to kicking around south Mainland for a few hours. We didn’t see much until we got to Sumburgh Head, when the following 'incident' occurred...

At about 12:20 Rob found a thrush skulking under the rose bushes, and after some manoeuvring Mark and I managed to get onto it as well. The views were terrible – the bird was sitting hunched up with its back to the wall, under the roses, and behind some chicken wire, but from what we could see we were certain it was a 1st-winter male Black-throated Thrush. Result! And bang in the middle of my ‘window of opportunity’ theory (otherwise known as ‘WOO’) that good birds turn up at the lighthouse around midday.

But then things went very wrong. While we were trying to get better views of it, a thrush came up out of the rose bushes and flew off towards the lighthouse. Assuming that this was the bird, we ran after it, but after about 15 minutes searching in the fog all we could find was a rather drab 1st-winter Ring Ouzel! Could this have been what we’d seen? Surely not, especially as it had a completely dark bill, and Rob and I are both sure that we saw a largely yellow bill on the original bird under the roses. But doubts had set in, and we were now beginning to wonder whether we had somehow fucked up big time. Confused, we fled the scene to try and collect our thoughts, using our flight off Shetland as an excuse for not hanging around longer. After some discussion we decided that, rather than try to push such a brief sighting, we could only honestly say that we now weren’t sure about the bird. Mark and I got on our plane and left Rob alone to face any ‘music’ that might be forthcoming (‘stringing in the rain’ probably).

However, on our arrival at Edinburgh airport the story was given a further twist when Rob texted to say that Steve Minton had briefly seen a Black-throated Thrush perched on the wall by the roses after we left! This gave rise to a variation on the ‘two bird theory’: presumably we had initially seen a Black-throated Thrush, then wrongly assumed that the Ring Ouzel which flew out was the bird we’d been watching and that therefore we'd made a mistake. But in yet another twist there’s strangely no mention of it on his blog, so I’m wondering whether he now isn’t sure what he saw either. Unless it reappears somewhere, it’s probably best forgotten about really, whilst remembering in future that the bird that flies out of the bush isn’t necessarily the bird you were watching in the bush!

Anyway, thrush stringing aside, the holiday list finished on an untidy 98, two more than last year, although the quality this year was in an altogether different league. Total haul for the 12 days was 7 BB rarities of 6 species: Taiga Flycatcher, Lanceolated Warbler, Red-flanked Bluetail, Western Bonelli's Warbler, Spotted Sandpiper and 2 Arctic Redpolls. Scarce migrants consisted of: Short-toed Lark, 2 Little Buntings, 2 Bluethroats, 2 Common Rosefinches, Ring-necked Duck and about 15 Yellow-browed Warblers. Of course, the latter aren't really scarce any more, but I'm old enough to remember when they were, so they still feel like something good when you see one.

Had I been so inclined, I could have had another two ticks: Veery and Blyth's Reed Warbler, of which there were at least three twitchable individuals. And without even going to any other islands we could also have seen at least 3 Pechora Pipits, 3 Olive-backed Pipits and 3 Arctic Warblers.

In terms of numbers of good birds, this was my best Shetland trip ever, the only disappointment being that we found absolutely nothing ourselves. Although there have been over 50 BB rarities in Shetland since the beginning of October, for some strange reason hardly any were in south Mainland where we were based. And it wasn't just us – the area has been pretty well covered, but no-one else has found much either, the honourable exception being Steve Minton with the Lancy at Scatness.

I have no idea why south Mainland hasn't produced the goods this autumn – the weather has looked perfect several times, but each time there has been nothing here and rarities a-plenty further north. It just goes to show that you never can tell with rare birds. In 2007 everything was down here and there was very little further north. Maybe next time it will be the other way round again. And we’ll probably be going to central Mainland every day...