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!