Goyt Valley

A beautiful day to be at the Goyt Valley in Derbyshire today, we got there nice and early and managed to avoid the crowds and catch a bit of early morning bird song. Without trying too hard we managed to see a singing male pied flycatcher with a female, plus other males in the nearby woodland. Also a few singing redstarts and tree pipits and a couple of cuckoos. Then we headed up onto the moors and climbed Shining Tor, via a pint in the Cattle and Fiddle. 13.5km in total, a special day.

Tuftie CH1 and a turnstone on the spit

Today was a day of the expected and unexpected at Pennington Flash. The expected was a smart turnstone in full breeding plumage. Over the past 39 years I have nine records of turnstone at Pennington Flash and all but one have been in the period 9th - 21st May. 

The unexpected came while I was watching the turnstone, I suddenly noticed a female tufted duck with a blue nasal saddle. I managed to read the code which was CH1. This bird has been seen at the flash over the past several years after originally being ringed in France. So perhaps not too unexpected you might think, yet this was my first ever sighting of the bird, and with most of the other tufties now departed for the summer and this bird originating from France, I was surprised to see it still here. I mean I know that some stay to breed, but perhaps you'd expect this bird to move on?

Turnstone.

Pectoral sandpiper, Carr Lane Pools

It's always good to get a spring pec sand and what a fabulous bird this was today at Carr Lane Pools, Hale near Widnes. This is the third pectoral sandpiper I've seen at these flooded fields.

Stejneger's scoter, Lower Largo

I was a bit gutted a couple of weeks ago when a Stejneger's scoter turned up in Fife and a grey-headed lapwing in Northumberland just two days after I returned from a week in Lothian. I mean how unlucky was that? I've been doing a lot of driving for work recently and just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to drive all the way back again having just returned home especially since I had another long drive scheduled for the following week. To be honest I wasn't too bothered about the grey-headed lapwing, but the Stejneger's scoter which was hanging around in the company of two white-winged scoter, a surf scoter and a few hundred each of common and velvet scoter was a different matter. That one really hurt because I have experience of just how good that part of Scotland is for sea ducks, yet still I just couldn't face adding another 500 miles to my busy schedule. So I'd given up hope of experiencing the scoter bonanza, at least for this spring. That was until yesterday evening when I received a message from a friend asking if I would be interested in joining him on a trip to Fife the following day. I immediately agreed, it was a scoter lifeline!

We arrived at Lower Largo at 9:45am to be told that the scoter had been showing well up to an hour ago but had then been flushed much further out by a kayaker and two canoes. Great! A quick scan of the sea immediately confirmed our worst fears, it was now going to be very difficult be to pick out anything at all. There were certainly a couple of thousand scoter on the sea but 90% of them were dots, hardly conducive to identifying birds which relied on us having a good look at their head shape and bill structure in order to identify them. It was almost impossible to distinguish velvets from common let alone white-winged from Stejneger's. 

Some birds were closer though, and after a short while we picked out a 2cy drake surf scoter in amongst the closer velvets. That at least gave us hope, yet we knew that in reality surf scoter was the easiest of all the scoter species to identify at distance. What chance a Stejneger's at that distance? To be honest, I'd given up hope almost from the moment we arrived and saw how far out the majority of the scoter where, but we were here now so I told myself to be positive and keep going. We continued on our way east and after about a mile we came across a group of birders looking intently out to sea.

Miraculously they had located the Stejneger's and it was one of the closest birds offshore. Still probably 800m away but it was easy to pick out with it's large head, "Roman nose" profile and I could even clearly see the bulbous "Rhinoceros" bill which is unique to this species. It seemed that we should be able to get closer so we followed a footpath into the dunes and got to within perhaps 500m of the birds and now it wasn't a bad view at all. We watched it for 15 minutes during which time I could see not only the shape of the bill but also the pinky-red colour towards the tip, while the white tick behind the eye was also prominent. 

The birds started to drift further away and there was the beginnings of a heat haze forming which didn't help, but ultimately none of that mattered because presumably the same two canoes came back and went right through the near flock again sending them flying right out to sea where they joined the other dots. To make matters worse the light was now starting to work against us, and it seemed that we were unlikely to get better views than we had already had, so we decided it was time to move on. We hadn't seen the white-winged scoter, but I have seen that species on several previous occasions at Musselborough and given the difficulties of distance and disturbance today, we had to count ourselves fortunate to have seen the Stejneger's which was after all the main species we wanted to see. Just how lucky we were was confirmed the following day when there was negative news of the Stejneger's and to the best of my knowledge it's not been seen since.

 

Stejneger's scoter brings my UK life list to 441.

The strange case of the incubating ring-billed gull

After seeing the Stejneger's scoter in Fife this morning we decided to have a trip over to Loch Turret in Perthshire to have a look at a ring-billed gull which for at least the second consecutive year has been spending time around the common gull colony close to the dam wall. 

Ring-billed gulls are always worth a look, but this adult in summer plumage is a real stunner. When we arrived it was sitting on the dam wall and allowed walkers and joggers to go past quite close, it didn't seem to bothered at all.  Meanwhile down amongst the rocks and shingle on the other side of the wall there was a small common gull colony with one or two oystercatchers also on nests.

After a short while the ring-billed gull flew down and landed on a rock about 1m away from a common gull which was sitting. The common gull didn't seem to mind and didn't even flinch. It certainly didn't attempt to drive away the ring-billed gull. They remained like this for about 10 minutes and I started to wonder if they might be a hybrid pairing. Then a walker came along and peered over the wall right alongside the nest, causing both birds to fly off. As soon as the walker was gone the ring-billed gull was the first to return and landed on the nest. Immediately a pair of common gulls started to harass the ring-billed and tried to drive it off, but the American bird was having none of it. It was clear now that the nest actually belonged to the pair of common gulls and I started to wonder if the ring-billed was about to predate the nest. But no, the ring-billed gull then sat down and started to incubate the eggs! It stayed on the eggs for at least the next 30 minutes and was still there when we headed back to the car, but as we were packing our  stuff away it flew over the car park and landed on the grass nearby. 

I can only guess at what's happening here, possibly this single, lost bird is stimulated by the breeding common gulls and has become broody and is now the third unwelcome member of this unlikely partnership. Hopefully the chicks will eventually hatch, at which point it will be interesting to see if the ring-billed gull then starts to help out with feeding of the chicks. 

It would also be interesting to know if this is the Strathclyde bird that I have seen over the past several winters. 

While all of this was going on there was plenty of other things to watch, an osprey flew over carrying a fish, an adult white-tailed eagle put in an appearance and there were at least three red kites and several buzzards. Smaller birds included two cuckoos and a common sandpiper. All in all, a top spot and a fascinating experience, almost worth the trip today alone.

Stilts and cranes at St. Aidens

I'm not really sure how I managed to avoid the rain at St Aidens today, there were black clouds all around me but somehow I managed to stay in the sunshine. There are currently four black-winged stilts on the reserve and for the second time in seven days I managed to spot a group of three common cranes flying over, following last weeks sighting at Ham Wall RSPB in Somerset. I was also pleased to catch up at last with the little owl in the impressive piece of machinery at the reserve entrance.

Osprey, Pennington Flash

Another murky day with periods of heavy rain, I was at Green Lane for 7:15am and almost immediately heard the gulls crying and then spotted an osprey flying quite low over the middle of the flash. It flew down to the western end and I thought it was going but it turned and started to hover over the water, before flying back past the ruck where it attempted to land and then back to the centre of the flash where it again hovered just off the point. Finally it headed west again and I watched it until it was lost to sight. A fabulous sight and only my second osprey at the flash and the first for three years.

Black-winged stilt, Little Woolden Moss

This evening I had a quick dash to Little Woolden Moss in order to see a female black-winged stilt. Little Woolden is part of Chat Moss and if you look at it on the map it's only 5.5km as the stilt flies from home so it should be easy enough. It's not that simple though, it sits in the middle of mosslands and farmers fields with access and parking virtually impossible and the road to it.... normally I would walk in from the west at the Culcheth end, but for some reason I decided to follow the instructions and approach from Astley Road in the east. Never again!

I came in from the Irlam direction and it was the most undulating road I've ever been on. It was making me seasick it was so bad, but seriously at times I was very concerned that the car would ground or even tip over! Then there were the potholes, which in places were so frequent as to be almost impossible to avoid. In places the road seemed to be sliding into the mosslands, there was a great gorge, almost a fault line running down the middle, and either side of it the road sloped away on an angle. It reminded me of the tectonic plate boundary in Iceland, with the ground moving away in either direction! What a place, nowhere to park, nowhere to go if a vehicle came the other way, no way to turn around.

Eventually I found my way to a small parking area and started to walk. I walked and walked, nearly 3km in total and eventually got to the viewing area, only to find that there were several birders cars parked here. Slightly frustrating to say the least. I wish I'd also ignored the "Private Road" signs. 

Anyway, the bird showed very well in good light. Also this evening an excellent array of other birds such as marsh harrier, four greenshanks, barn owl, ringed plover, little ringed plover and two common terns. There's been an influx of stilts into the UK over the past couple of weeks, mirroring the recent influx of night herons and before that alpine swifts. Not sure what's going on, but this isn't normal and quite worrying.

However for now, my main concern was getting home. Another 3km trek back to the car was followed by a tough decision. Do I go back the way I came or shall I try heading north towards the East Lancs which in theory should be the shortest route? I chose the latter. The tarmac ended, the road became a potholed gravel track, but I kept going and it was actually better than the Irlam way. I did have to negotiate two closed gates at a level crossing, but eventually I reached the relative civilisation of Astley and from there the East Lancs. It did make me wonder if it would have been quicker to get my push bike out. If only I'd fixed that puncture.......

Avalon Marshes - Ham Wall and Shapwick Heath

For a birder from North West England, Avalon Marshes in Somerset is like a different world. How can I relate this to Pennington Flash? Despite the old English name which seems to hark back to the days of Arthurian legend, it's about as far removed from anywhere else in England as it possibly could be whilst still being in the same country, and in fact it's got a very eastern European feel. Actually, perhaps Avalon marshes is the perfect name and this is what these marshes were like in the Dark Ages, before modern people trashed the countryside.

Today I visited Ham Wall RSPB and nearby Shapwick Heath, and quite apart from a Great Reed Warbler at Ham Wall there were just an amazing array of other species.

I was told that there are around 38 booming bitterns in the marshes and at the last survey there were 22 nests of great white egret. Several cuckoos were calling along with a mass of warblers and over Shapwick Heath at least 24 hobbies were in the air at the same time, and three common cranes flew over. On the marsh, a wood sandpiper, 20 ruff and 30 black-tailed godwits. Just an amazing place.

A few warblers at the flash

Things are pretty quiet at Pennington Flash at the moment but a few warblers have arrived, best of the bunch for me a singing garden warbler on the ruck.

Others include singing reed, sedge, blackcap, whitethroat, chiffchaff, willow, Cetti's and grasshopper,  though the latter had so far eluded me.

Arctic tern, Pennington Flash

All terns are nice birds but Arctics are just a cut above the rest. There's been one or two so far this year at the flash, but this one was the first that I have had chance to photograph. Distant of course as they usually are, but you can at least make out all of the saliant features, blood red short bill, long tail streamers, very pale upper wing, translucent primaries and the dark line n the trailing edge of the primaries ends sharply and in a point where it meets the secondaries, unlike on common tern where the line ends squarely.