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.