One of those Remember When Moments...

(vid from the girlfriend, check out the birds at beginning and end with the dark bodies and white cheeks)

Birders nationwide will be aware of the big thing that hit us in Derbyshire at the weekend, 11 Whiskered Terns at Willington Gravel Pits (DWT) somewhere by the Trent just south of Derby. Eleven, that's a flock almost three times larger than the previous record and the first of the species for the county since, oh, only 1883! Their usual range dots pockets of south and east Europe, with the BBRC recording an average of something like 2-5 in most years since the 50's of this small elegant smoky coloured marsh tern with the attractive white cheek.

Terns on migration tend not to stick around so we zoomed straight from work down the A38 the day after their arrival when 8 were still knocking around, swooping and nipping insects in the distinctive bouyant flight these birds have. Being a county tick for all Derbys birders and a lifer for many of us in the midlands there was plenty of interest, all of us ever so polite to make sure everybody had time at the front of the small viewing platform and to discuss the unprecedented wow factor of the event. Imagine finding them, reporting them, swearing you've not been on the gin.
They've mostly dispersed now, sightings as far and wide as Cleveland, Rutland and Cambridgeshire are probably our terns.

My confession is that I hadn't done Willington before which makes me a bad birdwatcher because it's quickly becoming the best site in Derbyshire. Equally I let the side down by putting work before these kinda birds, bad birding indeed.

Anyway, cracking site, amazing spectacle. Also had Little Egret, Lesser Whitethroat, first Swifts of the year and reeling Grasshopper Warbler for the evening.

Memorable stuff indeed. That Shrike has a challenger for best personal twitch status.

Back down to Earth there's a very industrious Coal Tit in my garden right now. Cool Tit more like it.

Steppe To It

Location, location, location.

Broke my 50-mile local twitch limit yesterday, but surely worth it for one of the rarest and showiest birds to hit Britain all year. Over the last few years I've had maybe half a dozen Great Grey Shrike sightings, almost always at a range of 100 yards or so, try to comprehend therefore how it felt to have a Steppe Grey Shrike land on my head - I'm still trying myself.
To briefly explain Steppe Grey Shrike is either a different species or different race (in taxonomy terms these birds are rather in the wild west*) to the very similar the Great Greys, just a touch paler in one of two places . We see perhaps 50-100 GGS during the winter in the UK, however the Steppes breed much further east than Greys - from N Iran across to Uzbekistan and should spend their winters in the tropics well east of us. Now human habitation is sparse in these areas so the Steppe Grey Shrike is a bird that should seldom come across mankind and therefore the birds seem to have developed no fear of us. Hence pictures of this one on people's scopes, cameras, cars, heads, etc.
It's only the second or third record of Steppe Grey Shrike in the last ten years, and a real treat still drawing in good crowds into its third week of residence in the Lincs flatlands south of Grimsby. Likelihood is this is probably the most photographed bird.... ever.

In some birding circles concerns raised have been raised over birders and photographers chasing this bird which too high a vigour, but truly it is more a case of the bird following us - maybe it believes we'll stir up worms or beetles. The temptation therefore is to feed it, not something I'd personally want to do - I reason it's been there 3 weeks now and been seen to find its own food which is probably healthier all round than anything people could give it.

Hogging the eyepiece

Also picked up a Grey Pharalope at Covenham Reservoir on that long drive home, another highly confiding thoughie.

Rates as the best birding day the girlfriend and I have ever had. Peregrine, Merlin, tonnes of winter thrushes and Curlews, Brent Geese all fly-overs while we tried not to step on the Steppe, plus a Barn Owl near miss (phew!) on the way back. Videos to post soon.

*technically, the species we're dealing with here appears to be a Southern Grey Shrike

Our Good Night Heron

What makes a twitcher? An hour's drive up the A1 to see one (or two) birds? Not quite, I hope.

The destination was Fairburn Ings RSPB Reserve, near Castleford in West Yorkshire. We had always meant to visit the place, but never before made it out there - until now. For over a week a pair of Night Heron had been showing really well at the site. Being the summer of exotic European herons this was our chance to bag one, and if the photographs at Birdguides.com were anything to go by, they posed a straight forward tick - sitting right out, over open water and in the daylight!

It's in the name; Night Heron. Their activities are normally restricted to the nocturnal hours, whilst in the daytime they roost in trees or reedbeds, and so are not always easily viewed. The natural range of these birds usually stretches no further than the Low Countries and their stronghold remains down in the Mediterranean. Yet, here we have two, an adult in beautiful three tone plumage, and a 1st-summer partner that are slightly muddier, making them one very attractive prospect. The reason they wandered into the UK is that they are migratory herons. Unlike our resident hardy Grey Heron, they retreat from the European winter down to tropical Africa, often as early as July. With that sort of large movement, they do turn up in England - perhaps half a dozen or more per year.

We arrived on site around 1pm, joining the ranks of 15 or so other birders, and we all saw nothing for over three hours. We stood and stared at a patch of reedbed and the trees behind, and nothing. Then an inspired find, through the wind-blown gaps of the reeds somebody had found a small feathery patch. Now you needed to find the perfect angle, almost like looking through the eye of a needle, and you could see small areas of the 1st-year bird. A shoulder here, the behind of the head, if lucky the eye or the beak, all of it 30 yards behind reeds already 50 yards away, where the bird was sitting very low in a willow. As a tick, I didn't mind calling it a disappointment. What I was impressed by was the ability of some of the other birders to pick it out, even knowing exactly where it was, locating a scope was far from easy. Oh yes, these guys are good!

After an hour of peeking at those feathery patches, the girlfriend and I decided to investigate the nearby areas of the reserve. Fairburn Ings is a relatively large area of lake and marshland, that looks a perfectly rich habitat for our breeding waders and wintering ducks. Indeed Lapwing, Oystercatcher and Redshank were in decent number, as was a notably large population of Gadwall. My only gripe was the hide, an uncomfortable metal hut that felt not unlike a prison unit. It had large pillars between the locked-open windows and no room to jam a tripod between the seat and the ledge for anybody without a hide clamp. Just a really poor design in comparison to the traditional wooden bird hide.

Back by the roadside, where unbelievably yobs in cars would yell and beep horns at us as they passed by, we were told the immature heron had flown a short distance. That seemed enough for most twitchers who packed up and left. Only a few more determined if less proficient birders remained, hopeful as we were of seeing something better, and we did. The bird was relocated in a creek, showing very well (with a Kingfisher too), to anybody who stood in eye-line through another break in the willows. That meant one viewer at a time, plus somebody tall enough to look over them, i.e. me.
Happily we managed to make sure everybody got a view, and best of all we had a casual birder who brought his smaller daughter to see the heron. She went 'Wow!'. That probably made the coolest moment of the day for me.

By now it was 8:30pm, over seven hours of waiting for this bird, and the elusive adult did not show at all. I read this morning on the sightings websites of 'not present' reports for the herons today recorded at 10:30am. Now come on boys, have a little patience!