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.)
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