Red-winged Blackbird

On Saturday 29 April 2017 I was having a great day's birding on Portland – Little Terns at Ferrybridge, a decent seawatch, lots of common migrants around, and the icing on the cake a fine male Eastern Subalpine Warbler at Cheyne Weares. Mid-afternoon I was taking a break back at the Obs, when suddenly the boom came down – having been out of reception for a while I asked James Phillips if there was any news from elsewhere. At first he said no, then about a minute later said ‘Actually, you need to be on North Ron.’ News of the Red-winged Blackbird had just broken – a 1st for the Western Pal, never mind Britain!

By the time I got hold of Paul C it was touch and go whether I could get to his before he left to meet up with Adrian Kettle and Paul Holmes for a long drive to Caithness and the ferry. Even if I could make it, it would mean travelling for the next couple of days in what I was wearing – no time to go home for a shower and change, or packing an overnight bag. At that point they had no option sorted beyond Kirkwall, either. I hesitated and was lost. I pottered home that evening semi-resigned to not getting to North Ron the next day. To make it worse the Sunday was my birthday, and I would not enjoy it one bit.

Faced with that awful prospect, I roused myself and looked for options. A few phone calls later I had the best possible – a place on a plane to North Ron from Kirkwall with Adrian, the two Pauls, and Chris Heard the following afternoon. But I had to get to Orkney first, of course. A long solo night drive later I was at Edinburgh airport and checked in for a late morning scheduled flight to Kirkwall, knowing by now that the bird was still present. With a little bit of time to kill I hung around outside and heard a Dipper calling as it flew along the small stream by the terminal’s bus stops.

An uneventful flight later I met up with the rest of the crew at Kirkwall airport, and we kicked our heels again for a few hours. At 3 pm we were at last in the air heading for North Ron, and after a short flight we were met by some of the Obs staff, including the late and already much-missed Kevin Woodbridge, and also assistant warden George Gay, who I’ve known since he was a nipper in Burnham-on-Sea going around with his dad Paul, also a birder. A lift in the Obs Land Rover later we were in position at the croft called Garso up at the north end of the island.

Garso croft (Photo: © Paul Chapman)

The Obs staff had got it all very well planned and organised even at that early stage in the bird’s stay, showing us exactly where to stand, lined up along the side of a barn, and explaining clearly how it would work. The bird was usually invisible in its favoured iris bed, which was out of bounds to us, but when gently pushed by one of the assistant wardens it would fly over the road to the by now already famous gas canisters.


In the end, after all the hassle of getting there, seeing the bird itself was a bit of a doddle – it behaved pretty much exactly as the Obs staff said it would. Even better in fact, as it flew out of the iris bed, came over us, and landed on a telegraph pole right by the barn. Brilliant close views before it flew over to the croft outbuildings and then perched on the gas canisters for a few minutes. George told me it was the best set of views it had given so far – bonus!

Red-winged Blackbird (Photos: © Paul Chapman)

Snow Bunting (Photo: © Paul Chapman)

We had to wait a little while for another showing, as the Obs did not want to push the bird too regularly so would only do so when there were enough birders on site who hadn't seen it. The pressure was well and truly off us though, and we happily agreed with their sensible approach. Another couple of crews arrived and shortly afterwards we had a repeat performance, except this time it went straight to the canisters.

After the Blackbird flew back into cover that time, we left and birded around the north end of the island. A decent selection of birds included a Whooper Swan, a few Bonxies, several Wheatears up by the lighthouse, and a stonking male Snow Bunting at Bewan.

As the light started to fade, we headed back to the Obs, where we were staying the night. (Adrian had originally booked us accommodation up by the lighthouse, as we thought the Obs would be full up  – the rest of us left him to try to sort that out with the B&B owner.) Several other birders we knew were staying over too, and it was a great evening: good food, beer, banter and birding tales – a very enjoyable birthday indeed.

We spent the next morning walking round the island searching for migrants (Arctic Tern, Lesser Whitethroat, and a few late Fieldfares were the best I saw), and getting more views of the Blackbird, then flew off North Ron mid pm.

White-billed Diver (Photo: © Paul Chapman)

On the way from Kirkwall to the ferry terminal at St Margaret’s Hope there was a raft of 100+ fabulous Long-tailed Ducks on Echna Loch on Burray and we had absolutely stunning views of the summer-plumaged White-billed Diver off the South Ron end of the causeway (the same bird I had seen on the Cretzschmar’s twitch nine years previously). A nice selection, too, of seabirds off the ferry to Gills Bay, including several Tysties and a Bonxie.


The long drive back down through Scotland, now five up in Paul C's car, was uncomfortable, but included a roadside Osprey near Dornoch. The others dropped me off back at Edinburgh airport and continued south. I couldn't face driving straight back on my own, so I grabbed some kip in a layby in the Borders and dawned the Black Grouse lek at Langdon Beck in the Durham fells. A brilliant experience as always – c.30 birds seen in the area, and a few Red Grouse too, all to the achingly evocative accompaniment of the calls of various upland waders, especially the Curlews. The only other birding stop on the long drive home was at Upton Warren – partly just to break up the journey, but six Common Terns and an Arctic Tern there were a nice bonus too.

I finally got back home at 2.30 pm on the Tuesday afternoon, shattered but very happy indeed. It cost me an arm and a leg (my most expensive twitch ever, in fact), but it was so worth it. A Western Pal first on my birthday plus all the other great birds seen along the way made for a truly excellent trip.

Bang, bang, bang

It’s a classic birder’s phrase, one that describes the situation when news of rare bird after rare bird breaks during a period of days or even hours. It can be particularly acute in autumn after a ‘producer’ system crosses the Atlantic and North American vagrants turn up all over Britain and Ireland. In spring it’s usually not quite so hectic, but still there can be intense periods where keen listers need to be on their mettle.

On the evening of 28 April 2009, the daily update on the Portland Obs website included a photo of a cracking male Collared Flycatcher taken on the island that day, somewhat coyly described as being in ‘a garden at Southwell’. Nice try, but I was not alone in immediately thinking ‘Sea Mist’. Pete and Debby Saunders must have one of the best non-Obs garden lists in the country, with a wide array of migrants having turned up there, from the common to the excruciatingly rare. In this case they had legitimate concerns about the effects of a major twitch on their neighbours, but it’s a rare enough bird nationally to attract a crowd, and besides it was a first for Dorset, guaranteeing a significant local twitch.

I didn’t need it, having seen another male at Ethie Mains, near Arbroath, in 1997, but I keep my Dorset list seriously, so it was still a must-see bird if possible. Next day, the bird was still there and being twitched, so I wangled some time off work and got down to Portland. It was a bit of a squeeze looking down Pete and Debby’s drive (there was no access to the garden itself), and of course with such restricted viewing the bird was only on show occasionally, but everyone came away with good views. A few skuas, including a smart Pom, off the Obs were a nice bonus.

Then came the spanner in the works – Crested Lark at Dungeness! Luckily I had already booked the next day off work anyway – it was my birthday, and I had planned to spend it birding locally. Unblocking Crested Lark would fit the bill very nicely instead. It had been 34 years since the last truly twitchable mainland bird (also at Dunge) and the one at Landguard in 1996, only available for a few hours, had not whittled down the numbers much. So this was big!

Dan Pointon joined me and we were parked up at by the old lighthouse at Dunge waiting for the dawn, along with quite a lot of other birders.  You could feel the tension – we knew by then that the lark had been present for a couple of days before being pinned down and confirmed, so at least it was hanging around, but the record books are full of rare birds which put in a stay but only broke on what turned out to be their last day.

Thankfully, it wasn’t that long after dawn when there was a shout, and a lark with cinnamon underwings flew past. Great, it was still here, and I’d seen it, but it really wasn’t a good view – much better was needed. It was pretty flighty, and after a couple of hours I had still only had flight views, though better ones as the light improved. Then it got pinned down near the Obs and stayed in one place long enough for most of the crowd to get a scope on it. Crested Lark UTB – brilliant!

I was back in work the next day when, early afternoon, I got a pager message about a Bonelli’s Warbler sp. on Portland. Either would have been a Dorset tick for me, so it was a must-see bird, but there was heavyweight opinion that said this one was an Eastern, much the rarer of the two, and still needed by many a big lister at the time. Not me, thankfully, as the first Bonelli’s I ever went for, the Whitley Bay bird in September 1995, turned out to be Eastern, so I got lucky there. I had enough flexitime built up to leave work at 4 pm, and was about to do so when confirmation came through – Eastern Bonelli’s still at Avalanche Road Hump mid pm! Dan needed it full stop, so we met up at mine in Ilminster and I drove him down, using my local knowledge of back roads to avoid the inevitable rush hour traffic into Weymouth and save precious minutes.

Arriving at the Hump just after 6 pm, we heard the bird had gone missing for a while but may just have been seen again. And sure enough, it did not take more than another few minutes for it to pop up in the trees along the south side and give good views. Yesss! At that point it was pretty much us and a few Dorset birders, though more arrived from further afield over the next hour or so. At about 7.20pm the sky darkened as a squally shower moved over, and that was it – both the Eastern Bonelli’s and the little group of Chiffchaffs with which it had been loosely associating disappeared, presumably to go to roost early.

The next day there was sadly no sign of the Eastern Bonelli’s for the much larger Saturday crowd. The Collared Fly was still there, which was no doubt a welcome tick for a few (and a stunning bird regardless), but not the main prize for many. Meanwhile I was having the morning on Exmoor I’d planned for two days earlier, enjoying both watching Wood Warblers and Pied Flycatchers there and the afterglow of a birthday tick and two firsts for Dorset in a stunning three days.

Cliff Swallow on Scilly

The last week of September 2000 was looking good for transatlantic arrivals. James McGill and I had already bounced on to Scilly the previous week for Solitary Sandpiper – the comedy of errors that day is worthy of a tale in its own right, and in the end we only saw the bird in flight, but that, of course, was enough. So the following week we provisionally booked flights on to Scilly on spec for Thursday 28th and I booked the day off work. But nothing much had happened, there was nothing to chase, so we decided to def out, cancelled the flights, and I drove into work. As I arrived in the car park, ‘Cliff Swallow, St Mary’s, Scilly’. Oh crap!

Cliff Swallow, St Mary's, Scilly (Photo: © Dave Morgan)

We couldn’t now make it down to St Just in time for our original flights, and others from there were booked up. Dave Morgan, then of Birdnet, was on Scilly anyway, so we were getting regular updates and the Cliff Swallow was clearly showing well over Porthcressa. So we relied on our usual fallback for getting to Scilly on the day, the afternoon Newquay flight. James and I made it with ease, and Paul also did – just! But this time we were four – Phil Sydenham was at the Hayle when the swallow news broke, but couldn’t get booked on a flight from down that way, so had headed back up to Newquay.

As we approached the magic isles, the wind was getting up, and the pilot was evidently worried about crosswinds. We circled a few times before he decided they were too strong to land the Twin Otter in. Gut-wrenching! We headed back, but to St Just, where Skybus decamped the passengers into two Islanders– happily they also thought it better to put all the birders on the first one. Islanders can handle crosswinds better probably than any other small plane, but the landing was still pretty hairy, crabbing in low and then up into the wind at the last moment to make the runway. Phew, we were down, and safe!

Now we had to try to see the bird. Unfortunately it had got mobile and lost itself, probably somewhere in the Porth Hellick area, so we legged it down Salakee Lane and started looking. This was stressful – Paul and James were OK for staying over, but Phil and I both needed to get back off again that night if at all possible: I needed to be back in work, but in his case the reason was more personal – he’d just left his old mum and his dog sat at Newquay airport!

Cliff Swallow, St Mary's, Scilly (Photo: © Dave Morgan)

With no further sign of the bird, Phil and I therefore legged it back up Salakee in time for the last flight, gutted but knowing what we had to do. Then we found out that all remaining flights that day had been cancelled due to the winds – ours had been the last one that made it. Differing emotions at that moment, as I knew I could at least say I had done all I could to get off when I eventually got back to work, so was OK about it, but Phil had some frantic organising to do.

Then we heard that Paul and James had just relocated the swallow over the Loop Trail, and the views they’d had were, well, ‘You don’t want to know, mate.’

We hared back down Salakee as fast as we could, but the bird had disappeared again. Looking down Porth Hellick Pool, I noticed a single hirundine close in to the sallows, but couldn’t get a good look at it. Down to the hide, then – I opened the flaps and a hirundine whizzed past my nose just a few feet away. It was it! It was the Cliff Swallow! And it kept doing these close flypasts up and down for at least the next half an hour, during which time we were joined by Paul, James, and a few other birders. Even better, the Solitary Sand walked into view, so we had great views of that too!

It was a joyous evening, and Phil even managed to sort out his mum, though it meant his dad and a friend doing a 200-mile round trip down from Wellington and back to pick her and the dog up. We got off on an early flight the next morning and I was back in work in Taunton for midday. Then, just as I had managed to do a half-day, another Cliff Swallow broke, this time on Portland. Dorset tick! So I bunked off at 4 pm and got down to the Verne in time to see that one too. Happy days!

Savannah Sparrow, Fair Isle

Just the third-ever Savannah Sparrow in Britain was found on Fair Isle on 15 October 2003. As with quite a few megas over the years, I was on Portland when the news broke, so I was immediately treated to reminiscences of the famous 1982 bird there, the first British record. I headed up to Yorkshire that night, thinking (naively) that I had sorted myself a place on a private flight the next day. But no. So I had to hang around Yorkshire that day in the hope of being sorted for the next day instead – the likes of Great Grey Shrike and Pallas’s Warbler at Filey eased the frustration a little.

The next morning I got lucky – it turned out that one person (Rich Bonser, no less) had had to drop out, so I took his place, alongside Andy Holden, Vicki Turner, Ross Newnham, and Tony Shepherd. The sparrow was there, so we were on! After an enjoyable and uneventful flight, we landed on Fair Isle, and the Obs minibus arrived to pick us up. Assistant warden Alan Bull, at the wheel, calmly told us ‘I’ve just found a Siberian Rubythroat. Which would you like to see first?’

The news stunned us into silence, for a few seconds at least. Andy had been sitting in the airfield shelter hut and missed out on the original conversation with Alan, and looked utterly shocked when I told him. His reaction was to nervously pace rapidly up and down over only a couple of metres – classic displacement activity and absolutely comical to watch! We all piled quickly on the bus, and as I was the only one of the crew who didn’t need Rubythroat, I got heavily outvoted. I could see the tension and excitement in the others had just gone up several notches. I, on the other hand, was thinking how unlucky it was to jam in on a mega-Sibe on Fair Isle and not need it!

Siberian Rubythroat (Photo: Lee Gregory)

Thankfully it did not take long to see the Rubythroat once we arrived at the most southerly croft on the island, Outra. A first-winter female, so not the best example of the species, but still a stunningly rare bird, and showing well on and off by the road. It was appreciated hugely by not only our crew and all the birders staying on the isle, but also a boatload of birders who had left Wick many hours previously for the sparrow and got the news about the Rubythroat as they were approaching Fair Isle. Oh, to have seen their faces when they found out! They had to do a sweaty route march down the isle, but it was so worth it.

Savannah Sparrow (Photo: Lee Gregory)

Happily for me, it was a very short walk to The Haa from there, so I was soon watching my target, the Savannah Sparrow, crunching seed merrily under the croft’s feeders alongside the fattest Greenfinch I have ever seen, which apparently just ate all day and didn’t leave. I’m surprised it could fly.

Lots of people around me were having an unexpected two-tick day: buy one, get one free! I might actually have been the only one there who wasn't, but I wasn’t complaining.

It was the right way round to do it, too, it turned out, as the Rubythroat had got more mobile and difficult and was last seen while we were in the area moving rapidly between Taft and the Chapel.

With time to spare, our crew birded our way slowly up through the crofts, building up a very nice little back-up list including a Waxwing, a Bluethroat, and a couple of Northern Bullfinches that were giving the ‘toy-trumpet’ call betraying a Russian rather than Scandinavian origin. Then it was back to the airstrip for our flight south, all very happy.

Taiga Flycatcher, Flamborough

Taiga Flycatcher
(Photo: © Brett Richards)

I can’t remember now where I was birding on the morning of Saturday 26 April 2003, but plans for the day changed abruptly when I got a call from Paul C. An adult male Red-breasted Flycatcher had been found at Flamborough Head, and Paul had just had a call from Brett Richards to say it had been trapped and identified as albicilla, the eastern race, known colloquially then as Red-throated Flycatcher. The first British record of what we knew was an imminent split (which happened not long after, as did renaming the new species Taiga Flycatcher). No question what to do then - twitch on!

There’s not much to say about the journey – a fairly standard five hours’ drive from Somerset to the Yorkshire coast, finally arriving at the car park at South Landing. There was a line of birders along the edge of the car park nearest the ravine. I jumped out of the car, but they didn’t look enthusiastic, and I quickly found out the bird had not been seen for quite a long time. Oh well, in for the long haul then. I paid for the car park ticket, then nipped into the loos – after a long drive, and with a potentially long wait ahead, it seemed a wise move.

When I came back out, no birders! None. Bird must have shown and I don't know where. Ulp! A couple of non-birders wandering through the car park clocked the bins round my neck and my evident confusion, pointed, and said, ‘They all just ran down there, mate.’ I said thanks and legged it.

I didn’t have to go far round the corner and down the road into the ravine to find the birders lined up along the verge, looking over into the trees on the other side. The flycatcher had apparently been seen again, but only briefly, and no-one I spoke to knew for sure exactly where – false alarm? Thankfully, no. It was another anxious wait, but eventually someone picked it up in some tall, leggy gorse bushes on the opposite slope. Still tricky to get on and stay on, but good enough views – at one point it even sat still for long enough to get scopes on it. Phew!

Taiga Flycatcher
(Photo: © Adrian Webb)

It’s still a tricky species to separate conclusively from Red-breasted Flycatcher in most plumages, and there have only been two further accepted British records to date, both autumn birds on Shetland, so seeing the Flamborough bird pre-split has proved a very good move for the large number of birders who did so. Not only the best-looking one so far, but also by far the cheapest to get to - insurance well bought!

Hudsonian Godwit

Many of these twitching tales involve epic journeys to far-away places, but this one was much closer to home. It still wasn’t quite straightforward though…

On the evening of Monday 20 April 2015 I was standing looking over the wader scrape on Meare Heath, part of Shapwick Heath NNR, with fellow Somerset birder and long-time friend Tom Raven. As is so often the case there was a decent-sized flock of Black-tailed Godwits on there, and we joked about how wonderful it would be if one of them had black underwing coverts. The standard kind of pipe-dream that keeps so many birders going and checking the same places again and again, often for little reward, and certainly without any realistic expectation of the pipe-dream coming true ever, never mind within a few days.

Shapwick Heath and Ham Wall are kind of Tom’s patch most years, and definitely so that year as he was competing in Patchwork Challenge. So he was visiting at least some part of them almost daily. Back at Meare Heath on the Friday evening, in poor weather, he saw an odd-looking godwit but couldn’t nail it. Rather than raise a panic that night over what might be nothing, he decided to go out there again early on the Saturday morning to confirm or refute his initial suspicions.

I had also made an early start, but in my case at Brean Down, out on the coast, where I was due to lead the annual Somerset Ornithological Society field meeting there, looking for spring migrants. The weather conditions overnight did not look conducive for a fall, but there’s usually something to see at least in late April, and some 20 or so birdwatchers were just gathering in the car park ready for me to show them around when the pager went off: ‘Mega. Somerset, Hudsonian Godwit, Meare Heath.’ Oh, s**t!

I’ve led that walk for several years now, and normally I really enjoy it. In fact I should be leading it again this very day, but, well, we all know why that ain’t happening. You always know there is a risk that a bird will break at this time of year, but a real mega, a huge need, in my own county – that I didn’t expect! It’s fair to say that the prospect of spending the next four hours or so trying to dig out a few common migrants in unpromising conditions had just lost what little appeal it had. Happily I had a co-leader that year, the redoubtable Brian Hill, who both does not care about lists much and had seen the ‘Hudwit’ at Countess Wear in Exeter back in 1981. Seeing the state of me over the news, he took pity and very kindly offered to lead the walk on his own. I grabbed his offer with both hands, profuse thanks, and promises of Doom Bars in payment, then left.

Hudsonian Godwit, Meare Heath (Photo: James Packer)

This all still took a little time to organise, and while it’s only about half an hour from Brean to Ashcott Corner and the reserve car parks, I was by no means first there. Paul C had beaten me to it from Clevedon, after some hasty directions to get him through Ashcott village, a confusing maze if you don’t know it. So had Cliff Smith from Frome, and of course plenty of other local birders who were on or near the Levels that morning anyway. But thankfully the bird was still present and showing well, and what a cracker it was! I spent several hours watching it, alternating between talking to local birders and greeting many other birders I knew arriving from further and further afield. Numbers built up rapidly, of course, so it was a bloody good thing the RSPB had not long opened their new large car park on Ham Wall side. No issues on site, though - the situation was ideal for a big twitch, with birders lined up along the main track overlooking the scrape.

Among all of this a Wood Warbler was found just off the (much smaller) Natural England car park on Shapwick side, down the Discovery Trail – an easy bird on breeding sites further west in the county, but rare on the Levels, so plenty of us locals gathered to see that too. Comedy moments ensued when arriving twitchers started heading towards us there, thinking it was the way to the godwit, and we had to explain and point them in the right direction.

I left mid-afternoon to bird elsewhere around the Levels, and so missed the moment, just after 4 pm when the godwit flock flew off west, taking the Hudsonian with them, to the anguish of those still on their way. I spent the next couple of hours scouring the area for godwits, as did a few others, but with no joy – telling desperate birders that we didn’t know where the flock went when not at Meare Heath was met with some incredulity, but it’s not something local birders had ever worried much about before, and there is a lot of suitable habitat out on the Levels. The later arrivals had to go home again empty-handed, devastated to have missed such a mega. (One I know had misread the original message as Hudsonian Whimbrel and not reacted – it wasn’t until his wife asked him about three hours later where he’d seen Hudsonian Godwit that he realised his mistake, and then missed it by under an hour.)

Hudsonian Godwit, Meare Heath (Photo: James Packer)

With no sign over the next few days, it looked like that was it, but happily not. The Hudwit returned to the scrape the following Wednesday and remained largely faithful to it for a week or so, even occasionally roosting there, allowing everyone a second chance to connect. For many who came to see the godwit it was their first visit to the Avalon Marshes, so it was great, too, to hear so many wonderful first impressions – it’s a very special area that’s far too easy for us locals to take for granted.

And Tom in Patchwork Challenge? With a find that good (and others that year, e.g. Dusky Warbler) he smashed it.

Cretzschmar’s Bunting, North Ron

In the evening of 18 September 2008 an American Redstart was reported from the last garden on Mizen Head in Cork. It had been 25 years at that point since the last twitchable one, so there were quite a few birders at Stansted next morning waiting for the early flight to Cork. (Little did we know then that flying to Ireland was to become a recurring theme that autumn.) But despite all our searching, the redstart was not seen again. Oh, well – back to Cork airport late afternoon to head for home. Then mega alert goes – Cretzschmar’s Bunting on North Ronaldsay! Everyone there needed it. ‘North Ron’, as it is affectionately known, is the most northerly and remote of the Orkney islands – next stop Fair Isle – we could hardly have been further away if we tried! (Not strictly true, though, as when the previous one broke, also in Orkney (on Stronsay) in May 1998, Paul and I, along with a few other keen listers, were on St Agnes on Scilly, dipping a Pallid Swift, so we were actually closer this time – just not by much.)

A range of hasty plans were hatched. A few, including Paul, decided to scrub their return flights in favour of fresh flights to get them all the way there. I couldn’t afford to do that, so flew back to Stansted and teamed up with Adam Wilson and Bob Watts from London for the long, long overnight drive to Wick. A little matter of 11 hours later we arrived at the small airport at Wick, knowing the bird was still present, and that’s when things started to get messy. We had a pilot lined up to do shuttle runs, taking a number of crews on to North Ron in pre-arranged order. One of the later crews had arrived early, jumped their place in the queue, and taken our slot. Then, after taking them, the pilot got an attack of the jitters (there were rumours of some potentially awkward questions being asked) and decided he would not fly any more that day. I spoke to him on the phone and tried talking him round, but he was having none of it. Not the news I wanted to have to relay to the waiting birders in the terminal but it had to be done – it left us with a major problem and not much time to decide what to do.

Thanks to spectacular driving by Adam we managed to make the ferry from Gills Bay to St Margaret’s Hope on South Ronaldsay – just! OK, that will get us to Kirkwall, but how do we get to North Ron? We phoned from the ferry and managed to book the single place left on the last scheduled flight of the day. But which of us gets to go? We flipped for it and Bob won. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to us, Dan Pointon’s crew had decided they couldn’t make the ferry and headed back to Wick airport, where they got to speak to the pilot in person – he caved and flew them on.

There were several other birders at Kirkwall airport, and as the last flight was being called, one of the airport staff announced that as there were two children on the flight, there was enough of the weight limit left to add one more passenger. Garry Bagnell was nearest and got his hand up first, so got the spot – good move, fair play. The rest of us had no options left, it seemed, to get there that day and more discussion ensued. I turned away from this to see Adam by the entrance door, quietly beckoning me over. He’d managed to find another pilot who was prepared to fly us over to North Ron! We were saved from feeling any guilt about not letting on to others about this when we found that the pilot had brought his wife along for the ride, so there were no spare seats anyway.

So we managed to get on, but it was so late in the day that we had no realistic chance of seeing the bird. We did get down to Songar croft for a quick look, but soon decided that it would be better for us and for others still on the way to leave it to the next morning and hope the bird stuck. Back at the Obs, where we were staying for the night, Franko did not help by teasing us that the bird was feeding well and wing-stretching as if it was planning to go. We really didn’t need that kind of extra stress – the evening went well, including an excellent meal, good chat, and a few beers, but all the while Adam and I were acutely aware that we were the only birders there who hadn’t seen the Cretzschmar’s. And plenty of others had been and gone, bird safely UTB.

Thankfully it did indeed stick one more day, and we had good views at Songar the next morning. A world tick for me, it was everything I could have hoped for, a cracking bird. While we were watching it, Johnny Allan (he of the trademark victory cigar after a tick) took a phone call, and promptly started swearing the air blue. What now? Another mega? Where did we need to be next? Turned out it was just that a Great White Egret had turned up at his beloved Beddington, a patch first no less. The rest of us could relax while Johnny continued to do his pieces.

Not that we could relax too much – we had our own worries. It was Sunday, each of us had to be back at work the next morning, a very long way from where we currently were, and there was only one ferry off Orkney we could catch that would allow that. If we missed it we were stuffed. We needed to get off North Ron on the first scheduled flight, but it was booked up – ulp! We got lucky: after we explained the situation, a couple of locals very kindly stepped off the plane to catch the next one and allow Adam and I to join Bob.

Once we were back at Kirkwall, the pressure was off a little – we could even afford to stop and see the stunning summer-plumaged White-billed Diver off the causeway between Burray and South Ron. What a bird! Once the ferry docked back at Gills Bay, the rest of the journey was simply time, taking turns to drive then sleep, drive then sleep. I think I even managed a few hours sleep at home before going into work, shattered but very happy.

Food

By its very nature, long-distance twitching means travelling at odd hours and disruption to normal mealtimes and eating patterns, not to mention mostly deeply unhealthy junk foods.

After a long overnight drive and a dawn vigil, successful or otherwise, at some point hunger and thirst drives the knackered twitcher to the nearest source of sustenance, though sometimes the risk of being away from the site for the vital moment is too great, and birders will stand all day with rumbling tums, slowly dehydrating. A few (myself included) quell the hunger pangs by smoking, but that’s hardly a recommended solution! The whole thing is self-defeating, of course – if your blood sugar is that low, your faculties are impaired, your enthusiasm wanes, and each individual’s chances of actually relocating the bird diminish considerably. But there’s always the hope that the one brainiac who actually remembered to stuff a bottle of water and a packet of biscuits into a backpack will remain focused enough to pick the bird up when (if!) it finally appears, to the relief of the stumbling masses.

Sometimes there’s a handy café nearby, and on a big twitch, especially one that’s successful early, it will quickly fill up with hungry birders wolfing down cholesterol-laden full English breakfasts. I have personally witnessed one big twitcher (OK, Paul C) put away two Olympic breakfasts one after the other at a Little Chef somewhere in Yorkshire. But sometimes there’s just a little local shop, and the usually limited choice leads many to the breakfast that has become known over the years as the ‘full twitcher’s’ – a Mars bar and a can of Coke.

Then there was the time of the male Pallid Harrier on Orkney in June 1995. Not a big deal now – I’ve seen three in Somerset – but at the time this was a huge chance to unblock a near-mythical bird. RBA organised a special birders’ charter, including ferry ticket from John O’Groats and transport to the site, for just £25 a head. Unsurprisingly, there were many takers, and four full-size coaches left Burwick ferry terminal for the atmospherically named Burn o’ Hillside somewhere near Dounby on Orkney mainland. Over 200 ill-prepared birders, knackered from up to 12 hours overnight in the car to get to the ferry, ended up stood in the middle of nowhere in thick fog, each of us knowing that the bird had been present for weeks, paired with a female Hen Harrier, before news broke. That a few in the know had already sneaked up in the previous few days and seen it (hence the joke twisting the RBA slogan – ‘News you can trust from the team that’s been’) did not help, and things got even more fractious when the bird appeared briefly out of the fog for about half the crowd while the other half missed it. There were male Hen Harriers around too, of course, and those of us who had seen it were heavily questioned about why it wasn’t just one of them. Then the fog lifted and the bird gave great and prolonged views to all – the relief was palpable!

Another blessed relief was that a local café had got wind of what was going on and, with an eye to an unexpected opportunity, at some point in the proceedings a small van appeared, chock-full of sandwiches, snacks, tea, and soft drinks. The assembled birders descended on it like a pack of ravening wolves, and pretty much emptied it in minutes, then had another decent go when they returned a short while later having stocked up again. I hope they made a bucketload of extra cash that day – it was very welcome indeed.

Overland skuas

Overland skua passage in autumn is by now a well-known phenomenon – there are various routes, but Cambridgeshire-based birders have been recording birds heading inland from the Wash since the late 1950s, and records from Glamorgan as early as 1963 suggested the Bristol Channel was the outlet for these birds. A few regular Somerset seawatchers proved our end of the route beyond doubt in 2002, and I even had a note on it published in British Birds back in 2007 (Brit. Birds 100: 503–505). It’s a fascinating phenomenon, one we are still learning more about year by year, and having great fun in doing so. I have had some brilliant days watching overland passage skuas heading out to the open sea past Minehead – a flock of 4 Poms flying by close in while listening to Kevin Pietersen thrashing the Aussies round the Oval on the last day of the 2005 Ashes springs to mind, as does seeing 3 Long-taileds in an afternoon on 13 August 2006. But Saturday 17 September 2016 was the best day so far, by some way.

Conditions could not have been better for overland passage to happen: strong northwesterlies in the southern North Sea from Friday afternoon right through the night (and day), spring high tides in the Wash just before dusk on Friday and just after dawn on Saturday, clear skies with a bright moon, and just enough of a northwesterly at the Somerset end to hopefully push birds a little nearer.

Pomarine Skua (Photo: Brian Gibbs)

I settled down to watch from Minehead at 0640. The next two hours produced 4 Arctic Skuas, 2 or 3 Bonxies, and an adult Pom. Brian Gibbs saw some of the same birds off Hurlstone Point, but others seemed to veer further out beyond sight before reaching there. A good session but not spectacular –most of the birds were rather distant, and a few other skua-shaped specks that were just too far out to be sure of, never mind identify to species, suggested that more were passing through mid-Channel. These were all birds which had made the overland crossing during the night, and none were seen between 0840 and 0920, when I left to find breakfast.

Long-tailed Skua (Photo: Brian Gibbs)

The afternoon session was much better. Skuas which cross the coast in the first couple of hours after dawn tend to arrive off Minehead in early to mid-afternoon, and so it proved once more. Local birders Dave Dawe and Paul Jennings were on watch again from 1130 (I joined them at 1330), but no skuas appeared until just after 1345, bang on schedule: 18 Arctics and a sub-adult Long-tailed then passed over the next 30 minutes. As often happens, there was a little bit of a lull, for about 20 minutes, but then another rush of birds in less than 10 minutes (1439–1448) included 7 Arctics, 2 Poms, and another sub-adult Long-tailed. Another five skuas, all Arctics, were logged in the next three-quarters of an hour, including 3 gingery juveniles, the first of which was one of the best-looking birds of the day. There may have been more, but some settled on the sea for short periods so we were a bit wary of duplication – the last three pairings, each of dark phase adult and ginger juv Arctics, seemed likely to be the same birds drifting up-Channel with the tide then flying west again. The afternoon’s birds were generally much closer than those in the morning, some very close in, including (to our joy) the first Long-tailed, and both Poms. As an added bonus, both Long-taileds came along in small flocks of Arctics, allowing easy comparison of size, plumage, and flight action.

The action petered out shortly after 1530, and Dave, Paul, and I had all left by 1600, but another local birder (Jon Mattick), out in the Channel on his fishing boat, logged a further two Arctics and a Pom in the hour after that. In total an absolute minimum of 44 skuas passed Minehead during the day (not counting the distant unidentifiable dots). The numbers pale into insignificance compared to those passing more classic seawatching sites (e.g. the Uists, where Brian’s photos were taken), but in a local context it was pretty big, and I certainly saw the largest number of skuas I ever have off Somerset in a single day. Never mind early morning starts and trying to keep your scope steady in a wet, howling gale – watching groups of skuas beating by on a calm, sunny afternoon is an experience not to be missed!

Long-billed Murrelet

On the afternoon of Tuesday 7 November 2006 I noticed a pager message about a Little Auk off Dawlish Warren; not a bird I see every year, but I was too busy at work to take time off for year ticks, however nice, so I thought little more of it. I also didn’t check the Dawlish Warren website, nor did I know that there were some doubts about the bird’s identity. So I got as much of a shock as everyone else when the news broke on the Friday that it had been reidentified from Dave Stone’s photos as Britain’s first Long-billed Murrelet!

The rest of that afternoon was a blur of phone calls, trying to find out as much as possible. But the bottom line was that the bird had not been seen since Tuesday, and like birders all over the country I was left thinking what might have been.

Still, at least I was close enough to go and have a look on spec – it seemed hopeless, but I had to at least try. After a restless night, I was later up than planned on the Saturday morning; I called Mark Bailey to find out who was already looking where, so I could plug a gap. But when he answered the phone I had barely got past ‘Hi Mark’ when he said, in a faraway voice that betrayed his utter shock, ‘It’s there.’ ‘What?!’ ‘The murrelet’s there.’ He had literally just taken a call from Kev Rylands, who had just relocated the bird off Dawlish town and was watching it as they spoke. So Mark was still reeling from the news when I called, while himself being near the top end of Upper Tamar Lake seeing the Long-billed Dowitcher there – about as far away from his car as possible, and at the wrong end of Devon.

He got off the phone to start the hike back to his car, and I phoned Paul C immediately. Another fortuitously well-timed call – he was back in Essex for work reasons, about to have a (probably quite long) meeting with a client at their home, and when I phoned he was at the end of the guy’s road! The news was so fresh it had yet to hit the pager, so, aside from initial shock, he understandably needed convincing that it was gen before blowing out the meeting, but very soon started haring back down to the southwest. Then it was my turn to jump in the car – I admit I set my fastest time ever down to Dawlish, all the more remarkable given that I was physically shaking the whole way!

There were fewer than 20 birders present when I arrived, though still I was not the first from Somerset, as Dave Helliar and Alan Bundy had headed down on spec and were nearby when the news broke. Even better, the bird was on show almost immediately, feeding close inshore – the horrendous stress left me, swept away in a wave of relief and joy. After all of the emotions of the previous 24 hours I could scarcely believe that I was watching such a ludicrously rare bird at such close quarters, especially from the small stone pier at Boat Cove at the west end of the seafront.

Long-billed Murrelet, Dawlish, Devon (Photo: © Gary Thoburn)

After a while I could relax into watching the twitch unfold, which was fascinating in itself. The popular misconception is that hundreds of birders will turn up in no time for any rare bird, something which has caused some birds to be suppressed, but a really massive twitch is very rare these days. This one, though, was very likely a once-in-a-lifetime bird, with a home range that relatively few British birders had visited, and it broke early on a Saturday, with everyone already primed by the previous day’s events and on high alert. Over the next several hours huge numbers of birders appeared, and the photos of the twitch have become the stuff of legend – the whole seafront and the main slipway down into the sea lined with birders enjoying great views of this most extraordinary bird. What is less evident from those pics is the second line of observers behind – locals and a few bemused late-season tourists drawn to the spectacle of a mass twitch, and thoroughly enjoying watching the watchers.

The accents of the birders arriving changed too, from southwest to Midlands and London area, and more and more northern as the day went on. Some enterprising birders jumped on a plane from Newcastle to Exeter, and Ron Johns, at a meeting in central London that morning, made the smart move of jumping on a train which deposited him neatly at Dawlish station, right by the seafront itself. Some got slightly confused and went to Dawlish Warren rather than Dawlish town, but were quickly set right and repositioned.

All the while I was giving Paul regular updates, though telling him that the bird had stopped feeding and started drifting out to sea wasn’t a call I really wanted to make. Happily it just went a few hundred yards out and stopped, resting on the sea, then came back in again to feed close inshore. And repeat, every now and again. Parking was by now, of course, becoming an issue, so once I knew Paul was getting close I left the seafront – as arranged, he pulled up by the station and piled out, and I found a place to park his car while he got the bird, then rejoined him to celebrate.

Eventually, I decided to leave, giving myself just enough time to head up to Upper Tamar Lake and see the dowitcher myself, as I needed it for Devon list. So it ended up being a two Long-billed day!

Baltimore Oriole, Cork

The first week of October 2001 was busy, but also deeply frustrating. First there was an abortive attempt to get to North Ron for a Siberian Blue Robin (the very few who successfully twitched that bird have their own interesting tale to tell, which I won’t spoil here). Then the Grey Catbird broke at South Stack: plenty of big listers who’d tried for the robin couldn’t get more time off work, and very few saw it on the Friday.  So then there was the awful debacle that was the Saturday of the catbird, an experience so dreadful that many birders simply wouldn’t talk about it for years afterwards (though now thankfully all behind us after the Land’s End bird).

Scarcely had I recovered from all of that when mega alert went off again. On the Sunday, 7 October, news broke of a Baltimore Oriole in Cork. In Baltimore, no less. The symmetry is not as perfect as I once thought – many Irish people set sail from Baltimore to the New World, fleeing the potato famine in the hope of a new life, but the city in Maryland was named after Lord Baltimore, an Irishman himself, whose country seat (Baltimore Manor) was in Longford, not Cork. Nonetheless, the bird got named after the city (and the baseball team after the bird), and then, fittingly, the first Baltimore Oriole for Ireland turned up in the town which shared its name.

A few British birders (including Jez Robson and Andy Clifton) who had stayed over in Anglesey to dip the Catbird again on the Sunday had been in good position to jump on the Holyhead ferry overnight, and they scored on the Monday morning, as did the keenest Irish birders. At one point one of the British contingent, trying to get on the bird, apparently asked, ‘Where in the hedge is it in relation to the orange thing?’, only to be told, ‘It is the orange thing!’ 

(As an aside, a Baltimore Oriole on Bryher in the 90s was found by a non-birder staying at the Hell Bay Hotel, who apparently gave one of the best descriptions I have ever heard – ‘like a Starling in a lifejacket’!)

James and I piled down to Plymouth for the Cork flight, which ironically went via Bristol – we might have saved some money (and stress) by going from there, though we still would have arrived on site at the same time. And by that time the bird had disappeared, and we dipped horribly. Bumping into Irish birder John Coveney and seeing his pics of the oriole taken that morning really didn’t help. We were not alone, though. About half a dozen of us, including Rich Bonser, wandered around for the afternoon trying and failing to locate the bird, then booked into the local hostel for the night.

Down to the pub then, and a bit of excitement when in walked the actor (Tony O’Callaghan) who played Sergeant Boyden in The Bill! A few of us watched the show regularly, and Rich couldn’t resist going over to talk to him. It turned out he was on holiday in the area, and we ended up with him sitting with us for a while – nice chap (think he might even have bought us drinks). It was a lively enough evening, then, but we couldn’t help but notice a pennant from Baltimore, Maryland proudly displayed behind the bar. And on it was a bird. As we chatted to the barman while getting another round in, he asked us, ‘So what bird was it you were looking for, lads?’ We pointed – ‘That one!’ 

Double dip day

October 1995 was the nearest I have ever come to ‘phasing’. It started off well enough, very well indeed in fact with Britain’s third-ever White-crowned Sparrow and a long weekend with James on Scilly that included ticking Red-eyed Vireo and jamming in on my first Alpine Swift. But it unravelled pretty quickly. A one-day Parula came and went while we were briefly off Scilly, then in our planned a week on there my only tick was Red-throated Pipit, while two Yellow Warblers appeared in Ireland and a Sociable Plover was twitchable (just) in Dorset.

On our final day on Scilly I suggested to James that we move our flights earlier and just get off and go home, but I’d been such a pain to be around that week that he wasn’t in the mood to listen, I think. We were on Bryher that afternoon watching a Bonelli’s Warbler sp. when a message came on Birdnet saying that a birder had found what he thought was a Chestnut-sided Warbler at Prawle Point in south Devon, and asking for help to confirm. On RBA this apparently translated into the distinctly lukewarm ‘unconfirmed report of a possible’. Shame we had dodgy mobile signal on Scilly, so couldn’t pass on the Birdnet message: I know Paul C wonders to this day whether he could have made it if he had left Bristol immediately – touch and go, I think, but with more positive gen he would have tried. He did, however, phone Alastair Stevenson about it: Al left the office I normally shared with him in Taunton at 4 pm and pegged it down to Prawle in time to see the bird, which was indeed Britain’s second Chestnut-sided. Meanwhile, James and I left Scilly on our planned 5 pm flight with no chance of making it there that day.

Having dropped James off in Taunton I headed down to Prawle anyway. In the Pig’s Nose pub that night I found three young Scottish birders drowning their sorrows – they had done Prawle that morning on the way down to Scilly, found nothing, and heard about the bird too late to make it back from Penzance in daylight. As we left the pub at about 11.30 pm the cloud was clearing away, leaving an ominously clear sky. Plenty of American birds had been found in the previous week or so, but all had made first landfall further north and nothing was sticking – even an Upland Sandpiper on Scilly (normally good for a few days’ stay) upped and left after only a couple of hours. So the chances of a warbler staying through a clear night were slim to none.

The next day dawned and the collected crowd marched down to the car park to begin the inevitable dip. A few Cirl Buntings were pretty much all anyone had to show for it. By lunchtime I had given up and headed up the A38, stopping briefly at the services on Haldon Hill. There were a few other birders there, including Adrian Wander, who told me that an American cuckoo had been seen on St Mary’s on Scilly. Why couldn’t that have been there yesterday?

During the charge back down to Penzance it was confirmed as a Yellow-billed, and it was showing well in the trees along the edge of the campsite at Rocky Hills. There’s footage of people watching it (and the infamous car-runs-over-birder’s-foot incident) in the strange twitching documentary that also had the late Keith ‘Dipper’ Lyon rowing across Blakeney Harbour. It was still showing as I jumped on the chopper with Sean Browne, a printer from Nottingham who I knew from yearlisting the year before. But when we arrived on site, it wasn’t. About 20 minutes earlier it had dropped out of the tree where it had been sat for several hours, never to be seen again. As dusk fell, and my spirits along with it, I tried for one last crumb of consolation and said to Sean, ‘It could have been worse, it could have been Black-billed.’ Sean, bless him, came up with an innocently devastating reply: ‘I don’t need Black-billed.’

Worse, however, was yet to come. Stuck on Scilly overnight, I found a B&B then headed out for an utterly joyless meal and beer in the Bishop and Wolf. There were plenty of birders there who had seen me on Scilly for the previous week and didn’t know that I had left, so assumed that I had seen the cuckoo and, again entirely innocently, came up to me with beaming smiles. If the ground could have swallowed me up, I would have welcomed it. Then I met Mark Bailey, friend and big Devon lister, himself shell-shocked at missing the Chestnut-sided in his home county. He took one look at my face and said, ‘You don’t want to be here, mate, do you?’ No I didn’t.

The Coot and Calandra

In mid-April 1996, Paul C left for Antigua and his brother’s wedding, and promptly two ticks broke for him on consecutive evenings: the birding gods just like to play with us sometimes. They were ticks for the rest of us too, as the first was Britain’s first American Coot!

I had a new boss at work (though I had known him as a colleague for years), and he had just given me his home phone number so I could ask for time off if something broke after office hours. I don’t think either of us was expecting that privilege to be used on two consecutive nights! He happily said yes the first time, and so I could dawn the coot the next morning, the 17th – I was joined by James and Alastair, and also by a young Jon Dunn, long before his Shetland days. Stodmarsh in Kent was the venue, and a great place it is too, though I’ve rarely been since – the Nightingales singing in the darkness were a lovely prelude to Jon relocating the coot just after dawn swimming towards us down a small channel off the Lampen Wall. It was a strange feeling watching a first for Britain with so few other birders around – presumably most had yet to be able to scrounge time off work. Great views, a good selection of other birds, and back in Somerset for early afternoon.

That evening, a Calandra Lark broke on Scilly. Another big need, and thankfully I didn’t have to make the choice as to which bird to go for. Another call to the boss, who sounded a little less happy this time, but was a star and let me go again.

James and I left Taunton at about 7.30 am for an 11.25 chopper from Penzance – I couldn’t face an earlier run as I was still shattered from losing two complete nights’ sleep out of the last four (the previous one was for the two Harlequin Ducks in Ayrshire, so it was turning out to be a busy and enjoyable week). This was risky with a diurnal migrant, of course, and to add to it we hit low water on a spring tide, so once we were on St Mary’s we had a sweaty hour waiting for the tide to come up far enough for a boat to be able to land on St Agnes.

At last we got on to Aggie, and headed round via the Parsonage, as advised by a few birders heading back, to ensure we didn’t flush the bird. Sweatily we arrived at the cricket pitch, to find no birders and no bird. After several minutes’ anxious scanning suddenly there was the Calandra in my scope! In light rain it showed well for the next hour and a half, during which time the crowd swelled to five (including, unexpectedly, another Somerset birder, and only occasional twitcher even back then, Chris Gladman). To this day I consider the cricket pitch on Aggie to be hallowed ground.

We retired to the Turk’s Head for a celebratory pint, then while waiting by the quay for the boat we were joined by Pete Hutchins and Trevor Ellery, who had also managed to get on that afternoon in time to see the bird. In all only 21 birders made it from the mainland, most still being occupied by the coot; a rather larger crowd gathered the next day but unfortunately dipped.

Thankfully for Paul, he only had to wait till the next year to see Calandra, on the Isle of Man, and the coot stuck around. On his return from Antigua he was a little disturbed to be asked to see a steward before leaving the plane, thinking perhaps it might be bad news. It must have been a relief to see it was just a brief message from me, one that nonplussed the airport staff member I had spoken to on the phone, until I explained – ‘American Coot still on Stodmarsh’. He saw it that afternoon.

The Booted Eagle weekend

17–18 April 1999

Early in 1999, the famous Booted Eagle shocked everybody by turning up in Ireland. Paul, James, and I had tried for it a couple of times already – first the mass dip at the Rogerstown Estuary near Dublin in March, then another dip on 10 April in Wexford. Brief sightings kept trickling in during the week, though, so we decided to give it another go that weekend. James was at university and had stuff he had to be back for, so we drove up separately to Paul’s and headed for Pembroke Dock and the overnight ferry as foot passengers.

A few others had decided to give it a go too – Ron and Simon King, Steve Webb, Neil Alford among them. We all tried to grab some sleep, but Webby did so flat on his back on the floor with arms crossed over his chest, like a body laid out in a coffin. So when he said early morning that ‘We must get to the cemetery!’, that’s when the jokes started. The entrance to the local cemetery is in fact one of the best vantage points over Lady’s Island Lake, where the bird had mostly been seen, but we decided that the evidence pointed to him making a pact with the Devil in order to outlive Ron Johns and pass him as top lister, and that he was in fact one of the undead.

At the cemetery, and with no sign of the eagle, Paul phoned Chris Batty at RBA to find out if there was any news from back on the British side of the water. The conversation went something like this (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea): ‘Let us know if anything breaks.’ ‘What, like a Crag Martin in Leicestershire?’ ‘Yeah, anything like that.’ ‘No, seriously, there’s a Crag Martin in Leicestershire.’ ‘Oh sh*t!’

I was the driver of the hire car, and was ‘convinced’ by the others that we ought to drive the short distance back to Rosslare to try to get on a ferry back to GB. I knew the return ferry had left and it was all a bit pointless, but Crag Martin was another massive mega and we just had to do something – classic displacement behaviour. After Webby had failed to convince the clerk on the desk that a ferry was leaving within the hour (the lack of large boats in the harbour was a bit of a hint, to be fair), we were just leaving the ferry terminal when both Chunky and Brett Richards (who was also now on site) rang to say the Booted Eagle was showing. Panic!

I got us back to Lady’s Island as quickly as I could (I’ll pass swiftly over the horrors of the narrow roads, a tractor, and three other stressed-out twitchers in my ear). Thankfully the eagle was still on view when we arrived, and remained so for several minutes. Relief! And elation – at this point the few of us present were the only British birders to have laid eyes on one in Britain or Ireland – massive grip value!

But the flipside was that we were also getting massively gripped off on the Crag Martin – found early on a Saturday morning in the Midlands, hanging around, and showing well – birders were piling in. So what do we do now? Of those that had come across from Pembroke, Chunky’s crew had brought their car over so waited for the afternoon ferry. Neil’s crew had gone over to Tacumshin to see the Long-billed Dowitcher there, so had missed the eagle as well. After spending a bit of time helping them try to relocate it (unsuccessfully, sadly), Paul, James, Webby, and I hatched a plan – drive up to Dublin, dump the car as a one-way hire, and fly back. Do it!

It was a hectic drive, but I as we briefly passed through Carlow – a county I had never visited – I couldn’t resist asking the guys to keep an eye out for birds for my Carlow list. The look on Webby’s face alone was worth it. We made check-in for the Dublin–Stansted flight with only a few minutes to spare, but narrowly missed the better Birmingham flight. The drive to Swithland Reservoir was interminable, but we made it before dusk, just. And dipped.

We could just have stayed over, but the fly in the ointment was that Paul’s car was still at Pembroke Dock. So we lost another night’s sleep as he drove the hire car over there, then back to Bristol airport, while I drove his. We dumped the hire car at the airport (another one-way hire), and then dropped James back at Paul’s, so he could head home to do what he had to do. So just the two of us headed back in Paul’s car to Swithland, arriving about an hour after dawn. No sign of the Crag Martin by late morning, so we cut our losses and started heading back towards Bristol, having a snooze at Corley services on the way. I had an even bigger snooze back as far as Michaelwood services north of Bristol, only to be shaken awake by Paul with an expletive-riddled request to check my pager. The Crag Martin had been relocated in Yorkshire! He had RBA (which had it on only as ‘reported’), but I had Birdnet, which had it as confirmed. (This was back in the days when a lot of news from Northern England came out on Birdnet first, and RBA tended to pour cold water on it, gen or not.)

The sighting was brief – a 15-minute showing at Anglers Country Park, then gone. But it was enough for us to take the punt. Now wide awake and refreshed, I took over the driving for another trip back up the M5, then across to the M1 and up into Yorkshire. We were just heading through Barnsley, having come off the motorway to avoid a massive traffic queue just ahead, sharply spotted by Paul as we approached a junction, when he very calmly told me ‘It’s at Pugneys’. Against all odds, the Crag Martin had indeed just been relocated, and we were less than 15 miles away! Those last few miles seemed to take forever, but at last we arrived at Pugneys Country Park, at about 6.30 pm, and the bird was showing well. For the second time on this extraordinary weekend, relief and elation! After about 50 minutes of good scope views, we decided to head for home, very happy indeed.

So there you go. One weekend, c. 1500 miles, 4 cars, a ferry, and a plane, 2 megas in the bag, and back in work normal time on Monday morning. Easy! (Yeah, right.)

Car trouble

An inevitable result of driving a ridiculous number of miles to chase after birds all over the country is that at some point your car is going to let you down. The annals of twitching are littered with tales of breakdowns and how they were dealt with – at least one tells of a very high-ranking twitcher thumbing a lift off fellow birders from the hard shoulder, abandoning his stricken car where it stood, to be sorted out as and when later.

I’ve had my share – probably more than my share, now I think about it. A wheel bearing going, a busted alternator, the exhaust falling in half a couple of times, a blowout, and a disturbing number of engine problems, all on twitches. The perils of doing a lot of miles in a succession of mostly quite old cars, I suppose, or maybe I need to do something about my driving style. But any long-distance twitcher will have at least some similar tales to tell, I am sure. Thankfully most of mine have been on the way back from birds, rather than on the way there.

Then there was that other time…

On the morning of 23 March 1997 I got a terse call from Paul C, just as he was about to jump in his car: ‘Little Crake, Bough Beech Reservoir’. Little Crake was a big need, 10 years since the last twitchable one, so as soon as James got to mine we were off in the old Escort I had at the time. Big trouble within a few miles though – oil light on, some odd noises from the engine, and the car clearly was not going to make it to Kent. Our only possible lifts had been waved off by phone with good luck messages some time before, so it was back to Ilminster and some desperate thinking as to how to get hold of another vehicle on a Sunday morning. Couldn’t borrow my Dad’s, he needed it that day. James was under strict instructions not to use his Mum’s car on a twitch, so that was out too. What to do? Where to go? I know, the pub!

The regulars at my old local, the sadly now long-defunct White Horse, used to play the landlord up something chronic (one of the milder pranks was the time he came back from a safari holiday in Kenya to find we’d turned the white horse on the sign into a zebra…), but he was always up for helping out a friend in need. And I knew he also had an old Escort, which he wasn’t using, tucked away in the car park. It turned out that the Escort wasn’t taxed or insured, so it wasn’t an option, but he offered to lend me the pub minibus instead! It was almost worth borrowing just to see the look on James’s face when I turned up back home in it. But once he’d stopped laughing the twitch was back on, and we were off to Kent.

It was a bit underpowered and slower than we would have liked, and a disturbing amount of white smoke blew out behind us for the first few miles on the A303 as the engine decoked itself, but it was at least a working vehicle. And fair play, it got us there. After a stressful wait, knowing our time on site was limited, we got decent views of the bird, and we made it back in time (just) for the landlord to use it to ferry the pub pool teams to their Sunday night league matches.

So if you were on that twitch and ever wondered why, in amongst all the cars parked along the reservoir causeway, there was a shrieking red Sherpa minibus emblazoned in big white letters with the name of a pub in Somerset, now you know.

Great Blue Heron on Scilly

Back in the day, Great Blue Heron was one of the few ‘firsts’ I thought I had a chance of finding on the Somerset Levels, but it was not to be. I had a bit of a scare, to say the least, when I arrived back from Arizona in early December 2007 and the first pager message I saw was ‘Scilly: No sign of the Great Blue Heron’, but everyone else had missed it too. Roll on, then, to April 2015…

News broke in the evening of Tuesday the 14th of Ashley Fisher’s find at Lower Moors. Two British records of GBH and he’s found both of them, in exactly the same place! What are the odds on that? I headed down overnight with Paul C, Bill Urwin, and Dave Gibbs. Skybus flights were fogbound, so everyone piled on to the Scillonian. News that the bird was still present in Old Town Bay came through early, but we would have to hope that the bird stuck until we got there early afternoon.

It didn’t. Nor was anyone sure which way it had headed into the fog. Lower Moors was an obvious focal point, but a few Grey Herons were collecting along the shore towards Carn Morval, so that area got heavily checked too. In all the to-ing and fro-ing, I got detached from the rest of my crew – usually a bad move, but ironically it worked out this time. When the bird was relocated at Holy Vale, Paul, Bill, and Dave were by Old Town Café, and I was still out on Lower Moors somewhere. They were quickly in a taxi with Franko, while I legged it back to the cafe with Jumbo and we managed somehow to blag a lift. The very quickest got to see the heron on the deck (Dan Pointon and Chris Batty among them), but it soon disappeared again. Franko diverted the taxi with the rest of my crew in it somewhere else in the hope of getting in the way of it. Meanwhile Jumbo and I got dumped at the top of Holy Vale. Discussing our next move with Kev Rylands, we heard a shout from down the hill – the bird was flying our way! It certainly looked good just on size as it flew past us low and quite close heading northwest, and I was assured it was the GBH, but it was still very foggy, and I was disturbed by the amount of white in the carpal patches. I wasn’t the only one, and much discussion ensued among the 20 or so that had seen it.

The bird wasn’t seen again that day, despite much searching, and I was the only one of our crew to have seen it at all (and that with some lingering doubts attached), so we stayed over. The next day was spent searching St Mary’s in vain, though I was with Dave when he found a Wryneck in Old Town churchyard, so that was a small bonus. Opinions varied about stopping over again, but I knew I had to leave. It was my Mum’s birthday the next day, and I had promised to be in Northumberland for a family meal out. In the end we all got on the Scillonian, only for the news to break as we were arriving back in Penzance that the heron had been relocated late afternoon on Bryher. Cue much swearing!

Great Blue Heron, Big Pool, Bryher
(Photo: Mark Dowie)

Paul drove back up to Somerset and dropped the rest of us off home, before heading back down to Penzance and scoring the next day. Bill and Dave went back on the Saturday and also scored. Meanwhile I drove up to Northumberland, and I am so glad I did, as it turned out to be Mum’s last birthday. As more photos appeared, I was also much happier that it was indeed the GBH that I had seen on the 15th, so I relaxed and enjoyed the weekend with the family, but I did want to see it better if possible.

In amongst all this, I had had to put off the MoT on my car to the Tuesday, and booked a return trip to Scilly for the Wednesday. Then late afternoon on Tuesday it became clear my car would not be ready – cue a manic dash to sort out a hire car. Phew, sorted!

The Scillonian was busy with birders the next morning. I chatted to Viv Stratton for a while on deck, then went below to discuss tactics with Chris Batty (likewise going back for hopefully better seconds) and his crew, and promptly missed a Hoopoe that flew alongside the boat! In recent days the heron had been mostly been on the Big Pool on Bryher, but had been on Tresco the day before, and then this morning we got news that it had been seen once more at Lower Moors on Mary’s but had flown off north again. Chris and co. decided on Tresco as the best percentage shot; I agreed and tagged along. No joy on either Great or Abbey Pools, but then news that it was back on Bryher! It was spring tides and at low water it was almost possible to walk across to Bryher from New Grimsby. Almost. When Stu Piner was chest-deep and still not halfway, we knew that wasn’t going to work (especially for Chris). We needed a boat, and pronto!

Great Blue Heron, Big Pool, Bryher (Photo: Mark Dowie)

I had the phone number for the jetboat Falcon – the tide was too low for that to pick us up, but the mailboat could ferry us over in about 10 minutes for £2 a head – would that do? Just a bit! The run from Annekie to the Big Pool was thankfully short, as was the wait for the bird to walk into view. At that point it was only us, Higgo, and a couple of others there, and the Great Blue Heron treated us to excellent scope views.

Meanwhile, things had got a bit messy on Mary’s – there wasn’t a lot of time for the birders there to get over to Bryher, see the bird, and get back in time for the Scillonian. Quite a lot tried, and the tales of beach landings on the outside of Bryher are entertaining in themselves. (I've done it before - it's fun!) Thankfully they scored, though some had very little time on the bird. Some decided against, however, and had to bear going back to Penzance empty-handed, while others celebrated. I hope they managed to get back another day and see it, though in some cases I’m pretty sure not – a mainland one would go down very well. I still regularly check the Grey Herons I see on the Somerset Levels, just in case.

The albatross weekend

In 1994, twitching islands was only just becoming part of my repertoire, and Shetland was still a step too far. But James McGill and I made a pact that year that if the Black-browed Albatross came back to Hermaness the next year, we would go for it.

And so it came to pass. ‘Albert Ross’ returned in 1995 (for what turned out to be the last of his many years), and we made arrangements to go up on the Easter weekend (14–17 April) and join in on a trip organised by Hugh Harrop. Not sure whether it was naivety or confidence that we would fill them on my part, but I booked four spaces on the tour and four return plane tickets Aberdeen to Sumburgh. Now we needed a couple of extra bodies. I advertised on the pager and got a couple of takers – birders I didn’t know at the time but who quickly became (and remain) firm friends, Pete Hutchins and Steve Preddy.

So, on the evening of Thursday 13th, we met up and set off in my old Escort. Passing through the Lake District, I was just starting to flag and had asked Pete to take over the driving when the lights packed up on the car. We still had sidelights and flash, but no dipped or full beams. This was potentially disastrous, as we had to be in Aberdeen next morning for our 0915 flight, so we could not afford to stop and wait for daylight – we just wouldn’t make it! Pete, not for the last time, was immense. He managed to keep going just on sidelights, holding the flash in every now and again where necessary, and thankfully nothing else went wrong. We made the flight and put worrying about the return journey to the backs of our minds until later.

On arrival at Sumburgh we found that enough birders had booked on the tour that the minibus was already full, but also that Hugh had roped in none other than Iain Robertson to take on the extra. So we were to be ferried around in his car by one of the doyens of Shetland birding – bonus! Over the next few days he was the perfect host and great company. And man, the stories! We were in awe, and even didn’t mind when he pointed out the garden at Frakkafield where he had seen Britain’s only twitchable Hawk Owl.

The news from Hugh wasn’t encouraging. Apparently ‘Albert’ had been seen heading out to sea the previous afternoon and was usually then away for a couple of days or more. Our timing could hardly be worse. It was an apprehensive journey north, then, though as it was also my first visit to Shetland I kept my mind occupied taking in the wonderful scenery and, of course, the birds on the way, the best of which were a couple of Little Auks off the Yell–Unst ferry. At last we arrived at Hermaness. It’s a bit of a hike up to the Gannet colony from the car park, but on the way we saw several Redwings, apparently of the Icelandic coburni race. Then we arrived at the famous Saito outcrop. Hugh edged out on to the narrow promontory that was the nearest, though slightly precarious, viewing point – the albatross was there!

Some of us queued up to edge out ourselves, steadied by Hugh (top marks to him for risking life and limb to do this), to look down the dizzying drop and get our first view of this fantastic bird. Others walked a bit further up the cliff where there was a safer viewpoint, though rather more distant. In the end we all settled down there to enjoy more views in relative comfort. For most there it was a long-awaited dream come true, and plenty of photos were taken, mostly of cold, damp but very happy birders. I even got someone to take a couple of our group, but Steve was still just in his geek phase (rather than the urbane hipster look he has favoured since) and has forbidden me to reproduce those anywhere, threatening blood-curdling consequences if I do!

After a night at the North Isles Motel on Yell, our target the next day was the Snowy Owl that had spent nearly six months on Fetlar. But it was not to be – no sign at all, despite much searching. (It was refound a couple of weeks later, on Yell.) Still some great birding though - back on Mainland a lovely drake King Eider and a fantastic raft of mostly summer-plumaged Slavonian Grebes at Sandsound Voe near Tresta were particular highlights.

The day ended bizarrely: heading back towards Lerwick, Hugh realised too late that the minibus was short of petrol, with no petrol station anywhere within range, so went to a nearby farm and (presumably in desperation) tried to top up just enough to get home with diesel. The results were predictable – we could hear the minibus misfiring and backfiring before it reappeared over a ridge only to grind to a halt. Iain was then pressed into service ferrying the minibus passengers back to Lerwick, while we were left standing by the side of the road, to be picked up later, near dusk.

Easter Sunday was a tour of birding sites on South Mainland – plenty of birds and it was fun, and also very useful and interesting to get the lie of the land and see the places that featured so heavily in the likes of Rare Birds Day by Day. Then we flew back off on Easter Monday morning, and after swiftly nipping up to the Ythan for our second drake King Eider of the trip, we readied ourselves for the long drive back south, hopefully taking in a bird or two on the way. An Alpine Swift at Flamborough was a tick for some of us, but too much of a detour, so we decided against. Also in our minds was getting as much of the journey done in daylight as possible, as the car lights were still knackered.

So instead we set our sights on a Bonaparte’s Gull in Cardiff, on the Taff–Ely estuary. Well, three of us did – Steve surely set some kind of record by being solidly asleep pretty much all the way from Aberdeen, and barely roused himself even when we arrived. This is long before the Cardiff Bay Barrage and the gentrification of the area – it was a dilapidated docks area back then and the gull’s favoured area was by the Red House Inn, an old dockside pub. It was low tide, so down the steps we went, hunkering under the wall out of the wind, to be occasionally showered by clinker blown off the tarmac above – James was not impressed, and the phrase ‘shards of frozen piss’ was heard more than once. But we did get good views of the bird, which was a tick and a great end to an excellent trip.

Classic Fair Isle

Of all the birding locations across Britain and Ireland, Fair Isle is perhaps the most iconic.

A lonely rock sticking out of the sea, about 3.5 miles long by a mile wide, and covered with but a thin green and brown blanket of vegetation, it is a haven for lost migrants, with a ridiculous track record for major rarities.

Nige Milbourne, Steve Preddy, and I decided to stay there in 1998 – the last few days of September and the first couple of October – followed by a weekend on mainland Shetland. We had planned to go the week before (which was good in itself), but the Obs was booked up, so more by luck than judgement we stumbled on a week of classic conditions.

Our plan was to fly on to Shetland from Aberdeen on Friday evening, overnight in Lerwick, then on to Fair Isle late morning Saturday. But there was a technical fault with the plane. Delayed became further delayed and then finally cancelled. With fog forecast for the Saturday, I feared the trip might be seriously damaged before it even started, and I am afraid I lost it, big time. Steve has since described it as a meltdown, and frankly he is right. I calmed down a bit after dinner in the airport hotel we were booked into by the airline, but went to bed still worried about the morning. 

26 September

In the end we got away fine, transferred from Sumburgh to Tingwall, and landed on Fair Isle before midday. We knew that both a Pechora Pipit and an Isabelline Wheatear were still present, but on landing we were told that a Lanceolated Warbler had just been found at Kennaby! A tick for all of us, we were soon down there watching it – a very pale individual, it worked its way round a small peat hag in one of the croft fields, and even flew between me and the birder next to me. Absolutely brilliant views. The ‘Pech’ was next, perching on a fence briefly at Quoy, showing well. Then over to Malcolm’s Head to pick the ‘Izzy’ out from the Northern Wheatears also present. Migrants were everywhere, and that afternoon we saw 60 species, including 3 Rustic Buntings at the Auld Haa, about 200 (!) Snow Buntings by the windpump, and a variety of waders, warblers, and finches. And still plenty of time for a leisurely stroll back to the Obs for dinner. What a start! 

27 September

We awoke to southeasterlies and drizzle – perfect Fair Isle conditions. The morning produced Lapland Bunting, Yellow-browed Warbler, 2 Richard’s Pipits, Wood Sandpiper, and several Jack Snipe as we soggily roamed the crofting area at the south of the island. Brief views of a Locustella near Burkle were inconclusive, but it was refound later and confirmed as a second Lancey, so we dashed back down from the Obs to see it again.

Paul Baker, the warden that year, wanted an assistant to trap it against the wall it was working along – I volunteered instantly. Crouching motionless, holding one end of the net against the wall while Paul closed in with the other end, I watched the bird scuttle to within a few feet of me before it made a dash for it and was safely secured. Stunning views, and a moment I will never forget!

28 September

A walk up to the North Lighthouse after breakfast produced a good variety of migrants, but nothing startling. We arrived back at the Obs to be asked by Alan Bull, one of the assistant wardens, ‘Do you know about the Great Snipe at Burkle?’ 

Great Snipe (Pic of print: original photo Stuart Rivers)

Another trip in the Obs van later we were watching it sat in the lee of a wall. The warden and I did the same trick as yesterday, and very soon the bird was trapped, giving me absolutely stupendous views in the process – the views in the hand weren’t bad either. Confirmed as the bird from the previous week that been seen to fly into a barbed wire fence, with a small wound on its back, it was released into the Sukka Mire, which was placed out of bounds to allow it to rest up and recover. After that we ‘warmed down’ with good views of 2 Yellow-browed Warblers, various common migrants, and finally a Little Bunting in the Sheep Cru in the evening.

29 September

The wind had switched briefly round to the northeast, so this was our quietest day, though it still had its moments. Nige and I found a Velvet Scoter in the South Haven early am, and, assuming they were common enough round the isle, only casually mentioned it over breakfast. Alan Bull dashed out the door, leaving his cereal half-eaten – it was only the 8th record for Fair Isle!

Compared to that, the third Lancey of the week was positively common. We were close by Pund when it was found there, but missed it. It took some 20 birders over an hour to relocate it, mere yards from where it had first been seen, in grass only a couple of inches tall. No wonder so few are found away from the Northern Isles.   

We had left by then, wondering what else was out there to be found: our wanderings produced a female Bluethroat and a few Jack Snipe, but not much else. There was always added interest to be had, though, seeing common migrants in the hand in the ringing room – a male Redstart and a Brambling were particularly special.

30 September

Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler
(Pic of print: original photo Stuart Rivers)

Another good day started with a Little Bunting near the Obs before breakfast, then another Rustic Bunting and a male Bluethroat around the crofts. All excellent birds, but this week they were just the supporting cast. Then a large Locustella was found – we hurried to the scene.

It was hiding in a dry stone wall on the edge of Lower Leogh and showing only briefly. Opinion on it was divided, but eventually it showed well and called. It was indeed a Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler! After excellent views in the field for over an hour, it was trapped and taken back to the Obs for processing – on the journey it was my job to steady the ringing bag with it in hanging from the rear view mirror of the van. Another special moment for me, and brilliant in-the-hand views for all. One of the major targets of any autumn trip to Fair Isle, it was a new bird for nearly all present – the Obs’s beer supply took a serious hammering that night!

1 October

Dawn rose blearily. The Little Bunting was still near the Obs, but had few pre-breakfast admirers today. The wind had gone back round to southeasterly and freshened – hangovers disappeared rapidly when it was clear there had been a major overnight arrival of new birds. The middle of the island was carpeted with thrushes (mostly Redwings, Song Thrushes, and Blackbirds, but with a few Ring Ouzels thrown in) and Robins were two-a-penny. There were plenty of good birds on show and everyone had a hectic and mightily enjoyable time mixing searching for their own birds with chasing up and down the isle after each new find. 

In the space of a few minutes late morning we saw a Bluethroat hopping down the road near North Shirva and a Red-backed Shrike on the washing line at Midway, then a Short-toed Lark flew over, and birders chasing that flushed a Short-eared Owl. It really was that kind of a day! Then we heard Liz Riddiford at Schoolton blowing the rarity whistle – what next? It turned out to be a Treecreeper (very rare on the isle), seen briefly up by the North Light before flipping over the cliff face, never to be seen again.

We ignored that in favour of further searching round the crofts, but were quickly heading up the isle anyway, to the Havens by the Obs, for the jewel in the crown of a fantastic day – our second PG Tips. Prolonged field views again of what was this time a textbook individual, even showing the pale tips to the tail feathers as it rootled head down in the nettle clumps. Then back down the isle again to the crofts, where we saw a Red-throated Pipit but missed a new Pechora Pipit also present. At dusk we returned to the Obs, tired, hungry, but ecstatic. What a day!

2 October

Our last day on Fair Isle dawned. We relocated the Pechora Pipit down by the Meadow Burn; helpfully it called (‘spek’) to draw attention to itself. A probable Citrine Wagtail showed only to its finders, but we saw the Short-toed Lark again, and a good selection of other stuff. Nige and I had been having a friendly listing competition all week and ended up tied on 109 species (out of 120+ seen that week), with a few minor differences (I saw Buzzard but he got Grey Wagtail, that kind of stuff). We had to drag ourselves away early afternoon for our flight back to Tingwall. 

3–5 October

We had said goodbye to Fair Isle, but the holiday was far from over. Highlight of the Saturday was a Bobolink at Durigarth, then on Sunday we chased over to Bressay in the hope of Siberian Stonechat, dipped, but found a Bluethroat and a Red-breasted Flycatcher instead. Then the local birders recruited us to help look for a reported Great Bustard on south Mainland(!) Only after dark did we find out that it was a Little Bustard and had been refound and watched until dusk. Thanks for telling us, guys!

A small band of visiting birders collected at dawn on the Monday at Ringasta, staring at a field in hope. Two Richard’s Pipits flew over low, calling, to liven things up a bit, and we got to enjoy the sight of Franko haranguing the houseowner, who was still in dressing gown and slippers. While he was doing that, Nige called me over quietly and suggested I should look through his Questar – gulp, female Little Bustard! Everyone got good views, then we had to dash to Sumburgh airport for our flight. What a way to round things off, though!

Fair Isle has a bleak beauty all its own, and I loved it. I’ve twitched it a few times since, but not stayed on again. I keep promising myself I must go back: only problem is, if I do, what are the chances of having such a brilliant week again?