Siberian chiffchaff, Martin Mere

My encounter with a probable Siberian chiffchaff at Pennington Flash on Wednesday was just one of a few apparent arrivals this week, which included a bird at the sewage works at Martin Mere on Monday. So today I decided to call in for a look and hopefully a listen.

As soon as I arrived I saw three chiffchaffs in a bush next to the perimeter fence, at least one of which looked good for tristis. Over the next hour or so I watched them flitting around in the bush, or flying into nearby trees, occasionally going missing for five minutes before one or more returned. It took a while, but eventually one of them called, just once, but it was enough. A short, clear piping call, reminiscent of bullfinch.

This is a bird which in previous years I have watched a lot here, but usually in January or early February. I've never seen one this early in the winter before.

Why couldn't the Pennington Flash bird have shown this well?

Siberian chiffchaff in Ramsdales

A presumed Siberian chiffchaff tristis was with a flock of long-tailed tits on the ruck near to the 5-bar metal gate just west of the leaning posts, adjacent to Ramsdales reedbed. Initially I had a very brief view of a chiffchaff with a distinct pale supercilium in a birch tree. I tried a bit of playback and the bird responded immediately, flying right over my head and landing in a tree 3m behind me on the ruck, calling twice as soon as it landed.

Unfortunately I was looking right into the bright sun, so I could get no colouration on the bird, it was just a tail-pumping silhouette. The bullfinch like call was quite unlike a common chiffchaff collybita. Then it was gone, it flew over the pond and into the trees. I didn't see it again. 

I'm calling it presumed rather than definite just because I didn't see it as well as I would like and the call doesn't completely rule out other races of chiffchaff, though how likely they are to be seen in the UK I couldn't say. Perhaps rarer than tristis!

 
Over the past four or five winters I've spent a lot of time at the sewage works at Martin Mere watching and listening to the several tristis that over winter there. I have no doubt that what I heard was this race.

Also today a great white egret was in Ramsdales. This is the first I have seen here for a few days, since the water levels went up.

Return of the ring-necked duck

The wonderful drake ring-necked duck returned to Taylor Park lake last week for it's second winter at the start of what will hopefully be a prolonged stay until next spring. Last winter it actually spent more time on nearby Eccleston Mere which is completely inaccessible to birders these days. 

It arrived at Taylor Park last week with an influx of tufted ducks, with 43 present today. Also today a little egret and seven goosanders flew over, and a kingfisher flew across the lake.

Ring ouzel on the ruck, Pennington Flash

This morning I'd reached the eastern side of the ruck and was about to drop down to view Ramsdales reedbed when I heard an interesting call, a woody "tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck". A quick scan around revealed what looked like a blackbird sitting in the top of a tree but even against the light I could see that it had a pale wing panel and was clearly a ring ouzel.

I tried to manoeuvre myself into a better position for the light but only succeeded in flushing the bird into trees about 200m away on the other side of the canal, about 150m west of the Common lane footbridge. It seemed pretty settled so I walked up to the canal footpath and watched it for a while from there.

Suddenly the bird flew towards me and landed back in the same place where I had initially seen it. In flight I could see a silvery underwing contrasting with the dark body, quite unlike blackbird which has a dark underwing. 

When landed I could see that it was dark grey with a scaley looking breast due to pale feather fringes. It only had a weak crescent. 

This was a new species at the flash for me and over a month later than my latest ever in the UK. For these reasons and others, it was probably the most unexpected bird of the year. It's the end of November and overnight we experienced the first cold snap of the winter with snow on the ground and ice on the flash, seemingly not ideal conditions for a summer visitor and passage migrant such as ring ouzel. Furthermore, it was landed. Ring ouzels are very rare at the flash with only a handful of records, and almost all are flyovers during vismig on the ruck. 

 

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 a great find but 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.