The accent is on montane

Whenever I hear a really good bird is on Blakeney Point my heart sinks.

The Point is a four mile walk there and a four mile walk back … on shingle.

My tour today had cancelled due to illness, so I almost felt obligated to make the journey to see the reported Alpine Accentor that was lounging away in the dunes on the point. I hummed and harred about the walk but reconciled myself with the fact I wasn’t going to see the bird if I didn’t leave the car park!

It was a rather more pleasant walk than I envisaged as the retreating sea had left a hard strip of sand. Much more palatable than the three steps forward, two back, shingle.

The last time I saw an Alpine Accentor was almost eleven years ago at Christmas 2011 as I meandered among alpine chalets in Austria. They were like Sparrows feeding at bird tables and in gardens. Prior to that I had seen a bird at Rimac in Lincolnshire in November 1994. That was my first in the UK. 28 years ago.

The bird was being watched by a small band of bird watchers in the dunes and when I arrived it was busy feeding away. I watched and photographed it for around an hour before it became restless. Maybe the clearing skies told it it was time to move. Move it did. Taking to the air it went towards the lifeboat station where it alighted briefly and then it went upwards and East until I couldn’t see it anymore. Apparently, it alighted at the Watch House 2 miles away before maybe continuing East. I wonder if it will be seen again?

Update: Well would you believe it turned up in exactly the same location at 3:30pm on 2nd November … where on earth has it been in the meantime?

Deepest darkest Tresco

Deep within the heart of woodland on the island of Tresco in the Scillonian archipelago there are golden birds of legends.

Paled into significance

I was beginning to form an opinion that identifying Pallid Swifts from Common Swifts in the UK was beyond the capability of normal mortals. That is until I saw the four birds that roosted this evening on the cliffs at Cromer. They showed remarkably well in excellent light and at close range. All the identification features on these avian knives of the air stood out like a silver shilling up a sweeps a**e.

Are four birds together a UK record does anyone know?

déjà vu

Upon reading a passage in ‘Weather and Bird Behaviour’ by Norman Elkins I was reminded of this Autumns arrival of Nearctic birds into the UK after that hot Indian summer we all endured. The passage referred to the summer of 1976 and the Nearctic vagrants that occurred in the following Autumn.

“One of the most notable autumns for (Nearctic) vagrancy was that of 1976, when 25 individuals were recorded. Over 60% of these were Northern species displaced while on normal Southward migration over the sea – Grey cheeked Thrush, Yellow-rumped Warbler and Blackpoll Warbler. This large, unprecedented fall (there were 14 of the last-mentioned species, of which most appeared in multiple arrivals in the first nine days of October) was attributable to the abnormal atmospheric circulation. A proximate cause of the long British drought which ended in September of that year was the extreme northern position of the polar front jet stream. The jet suddenly shifted south from this position in September, and, in combination with other factors resulting from the long hot summer, this produced unusually vigorous cyclonic activity which was ideally suited in transatlantic vagrancy in October.” P159

A touch of ‘déjà vu’ perhaps?

One American bird we encountered this year on Scilly, earlier this month, was an American Buff bellied Pipit. Always elusive in long grass and bad light it was just one of the cast of transatlantic vagrancy that has defined this Autumn.

Willy Lot

I recently tutored a weekend course for the Field Studies Council at Flatford Mill in Suffolk. I had the pleasure of staying in ‘Willy Lotts’ cottage. The house famously painted by John Constable in the ‘Hay Wain’. Amazing place.

‘The Magic of Migration’ course went down well with visits to key migration hotspots around the Suffolk coast. Although South Westerly headwinds predominated, we still managed to see some Visible Migration of migrants moving south and coming in off the sea. Nature finds a way.

Not so cloudy

It’s not just about birds on Scilly. A walk around the South of St Mary’s gave us several sightings of Clouded Yellows that had presumably migrated in from the Continent.

A Lark Would

At Wild Ken Hill between tours the other week I was casually eating my lunch when I heard something different … but strangely familiar. The song was coming from the roof of the grain barn. I put down my sandwich and picked up my bins. There it was. A Woodlark. Giving an oddly ‘clipped’ version of its song.

It stayed just long enough for me to fix the scope on it and take a few pics.

Rodent

I was working on the laptop when the mobile rang. I knew it was Tania immediately because I could hear her talking outside through the open window. She beckoned me outside to see a ‘mouse’.

She had actually found a very young Short tailed Field Vole; it was happily feeding on crumbled muesli bar casually being sprinkled around it by my entranced wife. I could tell by the expression on its furry little face that it thought all its Christmases had come at once. Anyways we relocated it off the tarmac road onto the grass border to give it a little cover from the ever-present Herring Gulls.

Swainson’s Thrush

Small passerine waifs from North America and Canada can make their way over to the UK in very small numbers each Autumn. Weather patterns play an important role in bringing them over to Europe. This year has been good for American vagrants on this side of the Atlantic.

Swainsons’s Thrushes are Nearctic birds that breed in the Northern States of the USA and Canada and winter in the foothills of the Andes in South America.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a Swainson’s Thrush so well as the one I saw this week on the Island of Tresco in the Scillies.

Wryneck

A lot of people have started going to the Northern Isles in preference to the Isles of Scilly over the last few Autumns. With good reason; Shetland and the like turn up a good number of birds. For me however Scillies is the place to be and square mile for square mile gives an exceptional return on time and effort expended in finding and seeing birds. Birds are concentrated within a small area.

This week we strolled 300m from seeing a Swainson’s Thrush from across the Atlantic to see a Wryneck from Northern Europe.

Wrynecks are either a pain to see or are all over you like a rash. This individual was firmly in the ‘showing well’ camp.