King Eider, Ynyslan, Ceregidion

I've seen several king eider over the years, but all miles away in Northern Scotland, so the opportunity to see one relatively close to home in mid Wales, albeit a female, was too tempting to resist. However somehow resist it we did for three months, before finally yesterday we succumbed and headed to Ynyslas, on the opposite side of the river Dyfi to Aberdyfi. The bird hadn't been reported since the end of September and was thought to have gone, but on Thursday it was surprisingly reported again giving us an unexpected reprieve.

On the way there I suddenly realised that I wasn't sure if the bird was tidal and worse still I had no idea what time the high tide was. However fortunately when we arrived at 10:30 we found an incoming tide due to reach its peak at 13:30.

It certainly appeared to be tidal, there were plenty of birds around, several species of wader, shelduck, 50 or so wigeon and a red kite over, whilst on the sea there were red-throated divers and common scoter, but no sign of the star bird. However right on cue, at about 12:30 we spotted a single eider slowly making its way into the mouth of the river Leri. This surely had to be the bird, since we hadn't seen another Eider up to that point!

Sure enough it was the female king eider. It swam along the edge of a rapidly disappearing sand bank, occasionally hauling itself out and once even attempting a kip, which never seemed feasible to me given the speed of the advancing tide, before finally swimming onto our side of the river and starting to feed.

It always amazes me when I watch these types of ducks feeding. I once watched an inland velvet scoter at close range devour mussel after mussel, swallowing them whole before immediately diving again for more, and it just makes me wonder how they fit them all in. I realise of course that they crush the molluscs in their gizzard, but still they must have a stomach full of shell. This king eider not only ate mussels, we also watched it eat quite a large looking crab!

The bird was first found at Aberaeron, some 25 miles to the south of Ynyslas, where it was initially misidentified as a common eider. Although females are clearly not a patch on the spectacular males, this is still a king eider and perhaps surprisingly, only the second ever in  Wales, so well worth a look. The fact that it is a female makes it more of an id challenge which is also a good reason to check it out. It's been in the area for nearly five months, perhaps it will stick around for the rest of the winter.

Year 2017: 254 (King Eider)

Phonescoped photos tend to be paler, more washed out and not as sharp as those I take with my bridge camera, but sometimes they are the only option if the bird is distant as is often the case at the Pennington Flash gull roost for example.  I like this photo because it shows well the bill profile and the sails on the birds back.

The Pennington Flash gull roost - week 1

2cy Iceland Gull

Week one (for me) of watching the gull roost at Pennington Flash comes to an end with a very decent return. John Tymon lured me out last Friday (3rd) and immediately we hit the jackpot with a cracking adult yellow-legged gull and two Mediterranean gulls, an adult and a 1st winter, the latter a plumage I have never seen at the flash before. At least one more Mediterranean gull followed on Monday, before the star bird of the week on Wednesday, a smart 2nd calander year Iceland gull, possibly the returning bird from last year. This is a very early date for the species, in fact I've never seen one in November before, anywhere. It seems particularly early given that it's so far been a relatively mild winter, with other northern species such as whooper swans and woodcock present in much smaller numbers than would normally be expected at this time of year.

Adult Mediterranean Gull - Photo: John Tymon

First winter Mediterranean Gull - Photo: John Tymon

3rd calander year yellow-legged gull

Following close on the heals of the Iceland gull, Thursday saw the return of the 3rd calander year yellow-legged gull, which had been missing for around three weeks. This is also a very smart bird, and very aggresive, it often chases other gulls off the bouys and will attack whole flocks of coots to steal mussels. In fact that's a good way of locating the bird, look for a gull attacking coots. It won't always be this bird but usually it will be!

Yellow-legged gull robbing coots

Apologies for the quality of the photos by the way, most are taken on my phone, through the telescope, in dull often windy conditions and at a distance of 100 - 200m or more, then heavily cropped. It's a miracle I have any photos to be honest.

Scandinavian herring gull spp. argentatus

This is one of my favourite gulls, Scandinavian herring gull, or argentatus as we call it. Darker, bigger, heavily streaked head, they are often monsters! The arrival of the Iceland gull coincided with a build up of herring gulls which included several of these birds.

On Friday the adult and 3rd calander year yellow-legged gulls were again present, though frustratingly the former was very distant and we managed to pick out an adult Mediterranean gull.

Black-headed gulls

It begins....... the Pennington Flash gull roost

I told myself that I might not do the gull roost at Pennington Flash this winter, at least not until the New Year. After all, I reasoned, I did do it a lot at the start of the year and saw lots of good stuff such as glaucous gull, two Iceland gulls, yellow-legged gulls and several Mediterraneangulls. I'd done my bit, so why put myself through it again?  Then I got a text off John Tymon saying that he was in Green Lane for the roost and I just couldn't help myself. All of the old triggers kicked in and before I had chance to put up a convincing arguement I found myself pulling up in Green Lane and unloading the telescope from the car. Perhaps I wouldn't see anything, and perhaps a negative experience would put me off for a while.

No such luck, within minutes John had found a pristine adult yellow-legged gull, and after watching it for a few minutes I reluctantly started to scan the rest of the roost and was aghast to find a near summer pumage adult Mediterranean gull with a speckly head. A few minutes later I had also found a 1st winter Med Gull. Nightmare, that's me hooked for the rest of the winter now. Still, it is one of the great birding spectacles, and it is only 5 minutes drive from home, so perhaps I shouldn't complain too much.....

Mediterranean flycatcher - a very modern way of birding

Spotted Flycatcher - Corfu

I didn't expect to increase my Western Palearctic list by one today, but despite having never heard of  Mediterranean flycatcher before this morning, not only did I add it to my WP list, I even managed to tick both races!

"From 1 January 2018 the British Ornithologist's Union (BOU) will adopt the International Ornithological Congress (IOC) World Bird List for all its taxonomic needs, including the British List". There are gains and losses. Some species are lumped into one species, others such as tundra and taiga bean goose become two. Overall my list remains much the same. Click here for the full BOU statement.

However, it turns out that completely unbeknown to me, the IOC have split spotted flycatcher into two species in Europe. Spotted flycatcher Muscicapa striata, the bird we know and love in the UK, occurs over the majority of the Western Palearctic (including the vast majority of the Mediterranean).  The new species, confusingly called Mediterannean flycatcher Muscicapa tyrrhenica, occurs as two races with very limited range in the Mediterranean, M.t. balerica on the Balearic islands and M.t. tyrrhenica on Sardinia and Corsica.  This came to light (for me!) today following the discovery a few days ago of a possible Mediterranean flycatcher in North Yorkshire. I can't comment on the identification of that particular bird having not seen it, but you can read more about the ID features of the species on Birding Frontiers here.

I knew that I had seen "spotted" flycatchers in the Mediterranean previously, but they hadn't particularly stuck in my mind, and I struggled to remember exactly where I had seen them. Fortuntately having kept a meticulously detailed database of my bird sightings for many years I was able to query my records almost instantaneously and discover that not only have I seen quite a few on Mallorca of the race M.t. balerica, I've also seen several of the other race M.t. tyrrhenica in Sardinia. Result! One armchair tick and even a possible second pending a futher split of the two races!

Interestingly, the Yorkshire bird is sometimes being referred to as Tyrrenian flycacther, which presumably means that it most closely fits the Sardinian race rather than the Balearic. These two groups of islands also share other species which are rare or unknown elsewhere in Europe, including Balearic and Mamora's warbler. Like Mediterranean flycatcher, I've also seen both Balearic warbler in Mallorca and Marmora's in Sardinia, and in 2010 I saw a Marmora's warbler in South Wales. What a coincidence it would be if in the case of both the warbler and the flycatcher it was the Sardinian race which reached our shores. I believe that DNA has been collected and is on its way to the lab. The joys of modern birding!

Twite

It's not often I get such good views of twite, and with sun in the perfect position I was able to get some half decent phonescope photos. I love their bright yellow bills.

Yellow-legged gull, Pennington Flash

Mid October saw the return of last winters long staying yellow-legged gull to Pennington Flash. It's now a smart 3rd winter bird and hopefully it will remain with us for the rest of the winter so that we can watch it attain full adult plumage. Thanks to John Tymon for letting me know about the bird.

Here it is in 2nd winter plumage from last winter. I wonder where it spent the summer?

It's quite an interesting bird, with a mirror on p10 reminiscent of Caspian gull and a mainly dark quite retarded bill.

It spent a lot of time catching mussels, either diving in as in this instance or stealing from coots.

A late common tern at Pennington Flash

Finally this morning I caught up with a common tern which has been present for a few days at Pennington Flash. It's particularly of interest to me because it's my latest ever common tern, anywhere, in fact it's the first I have ever seen in October, so it was an opportunity to get a good look at it's plumage at this time of year. What makes the date even more remarkable to me is that this is an adult not a juvenile. I would have expected adults to be long gone by now, and any stragglers to be juveniles.

It was very approachable, and I wondered if it was unwell, but an angler told me that earlier it had been feeding on casters which he had been throwing into the water, and later I saw it fishing in the western bay so perhaps it's just a tame bird (extreme northern breeder??). It's also more or less still in breeding plumage, with a full black cap and quite a lot of red in the bill (I love the yellow tip!). Just a hint of a carpel bar perhaps and the dark patch behind the eye is there, despite the fact that the forehead is still black.

It seems quite short legged and pale to me, but I'm not trying to claim anything other than common tern! Most common terns are long gone from north-west England by the end of September, and what few remain into October are almost exclusively coastal.

A dozing Scops owl, County Durham

When a Scops owl was found roosting in an elder tree at Ryhope, County Durham on Wednesday I was working and unable to respond. Scops owls are pretty small and well camouflaged, a feature which they rely on during the day when they hope to spend the daylight hours unoticed and mainly asleep in usually the denser parts of a tree. Unless a bird returns to exactly the same place to roost the following day, it is unlikely to be found again and I thought I'd missed my opportunity with this bird.

The following morning there was initially negative news. The bird was not in the same roost position as the day before. However eventually it was relocated in the same area, but roosting in a different tree. I was off work but still I didn't respond. On Friday it was not seen all day, and was in neither of the previous roost positions.

I wasn't convinced that it had gone though, I suspected that it was just roosting somewhere which was difficult to view, so on Saturday we decided to head up to Leighton Moss and wait for news. At least Leighton Moss was vaguely in the right direction and offered us some decent birding while we waited.

And so it proved.....at 10am, after seeing a decent selection of birds on the saltmarsh, osprey, little stint, merlin and great white egret, the news broke that we had been hoping for. The Scops owl was back in its original roost position in the elder tree.  Barring being flushed by an over zealous photographer, this was a twitch which almost certainly couldn't fail, because the bird was unlikely to move all day. We set off across country from Leighton Moss, and two hours later we arrived at Ryehope.

What a cracking little bird it was. Only my 3rd Scops owl anywhere, the other two were in Corfu, which, no matter how British that island may feel at times, are certainly not included on my UK list. This bird was asleep much of the time, but it did spend some time preening and stretching.

The Corfu Scops owls were one of my greatest birding experiences. I saw them with my son after a plate smashing meal out. We were walking back to our hotel at night and we came to an olive grove and watched the fire flies dancing over the undergrowth. Suddenly first one and then a second Scops owl started calling at close range. A dark shadow flew overhead and shining  my torch up into the tree I immediately hit an owl with the beam, and we watched it for several minutes until a second bird flew over to it and the pair flew away into the next olive tree. On a branch lower down we also spotted an edible doormouse.

No edible doormice around today, but whilst we were watching the owl, a 1st winter barred warbler suddenly popped up  in the next bush and sat in full view sunning itself for several minutes. Also in the bush, a spotted flycatcher.

After leaving Ryehope we headed to Hartlepool headland where we saw at least two yellow-browed warblers, my first for the year.

UK life list: 426 (Scops owl); Year 2017: 250 (Scops owl, barred warbler, yellow-browed warbler)

A St. Helens mega

A hooded crow which was found in stubble fields just east of Haydock island on Monday is only the second ever known record in St Helens and the first since March 1979. Despite being a mainly sedentary species breeding in Ireland, North West Scotland and the Isle of Man, hooded crows are occasionally recorded in north west England and more regularly in North Wales, and I've seen them on several occasions on  the Formby mosslands and fairly frequently on Anglesey. As recently as two weeks ago I saw one at Morfa Madryn near Llanfairfechan on the North Wales coast. Hooded crows in these areas tend to be coastal, probably because of pressure from territory holding carrion crows and inland hoodies are rare in our area.

The origin of these birds is unclear. Although hooded crows breeding in the British Isles are regarded as resident and sedentary there is in fact some movement of birds which may account for occurances in our area. Also some Scandinavian populations are migratory and an annual smattering of birds on the east coast of England each year probably orginate from these populations. A drift west from the east coast is a possibility and it's also possible that some of the birds in north west England and Wales are ship assisted.

The species shows clinal variation, with larger and darker birds in the north and west of Europe, and smaller and paler birds towards the south and east. This bird appears to be quite large, but it also seems quite bright and pale which is something of a contradiction if we are to seek clues to the birds provenance from its plumage. Perhaps it is the brightness of plumage which makes the bird look larger than it actually is.Note however the size of the bill and compare with the photographs at the bottom of this page.

Hooded crow does hybridise with carrion crow, but in my opinion the photographs here clearly show that there is no hint of hybridisation in this individual.

A few more hoodies for comparison.....
Here are a few other photos of hoodies from my travels. Obviously light conditions vary as does the size of individuals within a population.

Ireland, 2016. To my mind this is the closest fit to the Haydock bird, large size, pale grey, big chunky  bill.

Ullapool, north west Scotland July 2017. Hard to be sure, but this doesn't look quite such a big bird to me. Certainly pale enough though.

Paphos, Cyprus December 2014. This looks a lightweight bird with a much smaller bill.

Holyhead, Anglesey 2016. Allowing for the fact that it was pouring with rain when I took this photo, this bird looks quite dark. It also looks really small, almost jackdaw like.