Ring ouzel on the ruck, Pennington Flash

The most unexpected bird of the year, a 1st winter ring ouzel was on the ruck at Pennington Flash today. Unexpected for a few reasons, firstly it's a summer visitor to the UK and this bird is over a month later than my latest ever from anywhere in the country. We've just had our first cold snap of the winter, there's snow on the ground and ice on the water, hardly the sort of conditions you would imagine would produce a summer migrant.

 
Secondly it wasn't just flying over, it was landed. Ring ouzels are very rare migrants at the flash, I can only remember hearing about a handful of birds ever, and almost all that do occur fly straight over never to be seen again.

And finally, it was my first ever at the flash. I've never even seen one fly over before.

Late autumn birds in the UK are generally considered to be migrants from fenno-scandinavia, and I assume that the northerly winds we are currently experiencing have brought this bird to the UK. If it was at Spurn or Flamborough or Norfolk or any of the coastal migration hotspots around the country it would be less surprising, but to turn up here at Pennington Flash is unexpected to say the least.

Egret numbers continue to build at the flash

A generally quiet few days with most of the excitement surrounding the ever increasing egret numbers at the flash. Just how many can the flash hold? Why have they suddenly exploded like this? 

All week there have been at least six great white and now we have at least 20 little egrets. Before this year I'd never seen more than one great white and six was my record count of little. Little egrets already breed at the flash, how long before great white joins them?

The egret bonanza continues at the flash

The egret bonanza continues at the flash with an incredible seven great white egrets & 14 little egrets today! To put that into context, prior to this year I had just five records ever of great white egret at the flash and four of those were last year. So far this year I've got 39 records of the species, often involving multiple birds, though seven is a new site record. Fourteen little egrets is also a new high for me and I think equals the site record.

Greenland white-fronted geese, Little Woolden Moss

Ten adult Greenland white-fronted geese turned up in a stubble field just north of Little Woolden Moss on Sunday having previously been seen to fly over Woolston Eyes the day before. I couldn't get there until today, but fortunately they waited for me and were still present this morning. 

According to Birds of the Western Palearctic, there was a world population of 20,000 Greenland white-fronted geese in the 1980s which rose to 35,600 in the late 1990s thanks to hunting restrictions (British Birds 99 May 2006 242–261). Since then numbers have declined markedly and Wexford Wildfowl Reserve in Ireland gives the world population size as 18,027 in 2022, a 10.7% drop on the previous year.

These days up to 6,000 winter at Wexford Slobs, down from about 10,000 a few years ago. In November 2015 I visited the slobs specifically to see these birds. The Inner Hebridean island of Islay also has a wintering population of around the same size as Wexford which I also visited in 1997.

Scaup, Longton Brickcroft NR

This cracking juvenile female scaup has been at Longton Brickcroft Nature Reserve for about a week now. A really nice looking bird.

Yellow-legged gull, Pennington Flash

A smart looking adult yellow-legged gull was in the roost this week. This is a species which seems to have become less common at the flash in recent years, but so far this autumn there have been at least three different adults so perhaps things are picking up a bit.

It's the best time of year to see whooper swans at the flash and these two dropped in briefly this morning before heading off east.

Also this week, two each of great white and little egrets have reappeared after going missing during the period of high water levels following heavy rain last Wednesday.

Autumn rooks

Autumn brings with it many new sounds, especially the evocative calls of wildfowl as they arrive in numbers on our estuaries and marshes. Perhaps overlooked and under appreciated though is the call of rooks at a rookery at this time of year. On a beautiful sunny day such as this it brings great joy to my heart, and this is when they look at their best with their gorgeous glossy black plumage. In many respects rooks are the true sound of autumn, just as skylarks are the sound of spring!

Pennington Flash this weekend

Water levels are now very high following the torrential rain that brought the Slavonian grebes on Wednesday. Combined with the total lack of habitat management at the flash and high disturbance levels at weekends this results in virtually no shoreline available for ducks or waders. Yesterday, five pochard were new including four drakes, also two wigeon off what remains of the spit. The remnants of Ramsdales scrape held 20 teal and a female mandarin. Early on there was an Egyptian goose at the sailing club.

This morning I at last I caught up with the juvenile garganey which has been present but elusive since the week before I went to Barra. It wasn't particularly showy today, I occasionally got a glimpse as it moved through the vegetation on the flooded spit but most of the time it was out of view. 

Also today, three of yesterdays five pochard were still present and at least one immature wigeon on the spit, but best of all, my first returning goldeneye of the autumn/winter.

Slavonian grebes and four great white egrets, Pennington Flash

I arrived at Green Lane at 12:45 in heavy rain hoping that the weather might have dropped something in.  I scanned the western end through binoculars and almost immediately saw two small grebes directly out from the sailing club but close in to the ruck. On looking through the scope my immediate reaction was that they had Slavonian grebe jizz and were not black-necked. Unfortunately, the light was poor and rain was pouring so I was unable to confirm the identification from Green Lane, but I was so convinced that they were Slavonian that I decided to have a walk to the ruck in this awful weather in order to get a better look. 

My worst fears were confirmed on the ruck, it was a real mud bath, puddles and mud everywhere and the rain kept pouring. By now I was soaked with rain running down my back and my optics and glasses covered in rain drops and steaming up. Finally I relocated the grebes only to discover that they had moved to the opposite side! It was very dull and misty and I was really struggling to get anything on them. I tried a bit of video on my phone but it was difficult to even get it to respond because the screen was covered in water and the video was inconclusive.

After about 10 minutes the birds started to swim towards me and eventually stopped quite close to the ruck at a distance of about 15m, I couldn't believe my luck. It was still pouring with rain but I risked getting my camera out and quickly took a few photos.

The birds were about two thirds the size of a great crested grebe. They were dark grey and white. The heads of both birds peaked at the rear and the black crown was neat and didn’t smudge behind the eye. The bills were short and straight lacking the uptilt of black-necked, and they had a longish body which lacked the little grebe like rear end....and still the rain poured. It was time to go home and salvage what I could of my optics and get myself dry with a cup of tea!

So they were Slavonian grebes and it seems very likely that these were the same two that were at Acre Nook Quarry in Cheshire yesterday.

Phenomenal shearwater passage in the Sea of the Hebrides

To be honest I did have an inkling of what today might bring when I wrote yesterdays blog post! A birder on yesterdays crossing from Castlebay to Oban had reported 25 great shearwaters from the ferry between Tiree and Rum, so I was hopeful that we might also get to see a few of these wonderful ocean wanderers this morning. Perhaps we'd get lucky, even one bird would suffice, but as it transpired, today was one of the greatest experiences in my birding life. Nothing could have prepared me for this spectacle!

It was still dark when MV Isle of Lewis left Castlebay one hour early at 7am. For the first 30 minutes we sat in the viewing lounge and could see nothing through the windows except blackness, but then at about 7:40 in the half light we spotted a couple of auks and at least one shearwater. This immediately piqued our interest because as I joked to Ray, we'd already seen more than we had seen on the entire journey out two weeks ago! A slight exaggeration perhaps, but the fact is, this was the sixth time we had taken this route at this time of year and virtually all of the previous journeys had been disappointing with very few sea birds, so these few scraps so early into the voyage prompted us to go up on deck immediately.

As soon as we arrived on deck we spotted another couple of shearwaters. The first was definitely sooty but the other seemed to have a white belly but didn't look like Manx. A few minutes later another bird with a white belly, this time closer to the boat, and with the light now better we were able to tentatively identify it as a great shearwater. Then there was another even closer and this time we could see it's pale collar and dark cap, no doubt about this one, a definite great shearwater!

Ten minutes later and we'd lost count of great shearwaters! We watched in wonder as a flock of over 50 approached the rear of the boat and then overtook us, every one of them a great. And still they came, next a flock of 20 with a few sooties, and it was still only 8am, just three minutes after sunrise. Over the next 45 minutes we watched as hundreds of great shearwaters went past the boat plus many sooties, but only a handful of Manx. We also spotted at least three large shearwaters lacking the dark cap of greater, clearly Cory's shearwaters, although the pedantic may comment that they could have been the much rarer Scopoli's. 

The photo above is slightly cropped, in the original there are at least 121 great shearwaters.

The last day

It's been a tough two weeks on Barra, the least productive of the three years we have been coming here, and though yes we have seen some good birds, it's generally been slow gowing and very samey. Still there's always next year. 

Highlights today were white-tailed eagle, hen harrier and 200 barnacle geese passing through the Sound of Barra, but nothing new for the trip. Tomorrow the ferry leaves Castlebay before dawn so there'll be nothing new for the island, just whatever seabirds we might see on the crossing.....