Bretton Update

After a couple of weeks of chasing up and down the country, it was great to be back at Bretton this morning. The weather was stunning - in fact classical for autumn, with beautiful light and colour - though unfortunately there was little in the way of non- arboreal subjects to 'tog'. Not that I was particularly bothered 'cos I've had a brilliant October, and whilst the pics have been - shall we say - not great, the experience did provide me with some flashbacks to those glorious twitchy days in the 90s when life was so much sweeter!

Black-headed Gulls occasionally make it down to Upper Lake, but whenever they do, it usually means trouble. This bird though seemed like it was practicing for a local gurning competition in the 'mirror'! It's not often they get anywhere near the hide but I'm so glad to have captured this jaw-stretching performance which actually lasted several minutes so wasn't just an impromptu yawn.


It's becoming apparent that the resident Dabchicks (all two of them) have adopted an unfathomable fascination for camera noise. The moment my (rather embarrassing) 20D gets firing, the little monkeys make a bee-line for the hide and won't leave until I'm spent. My theory is that being responsible for some of the daftest noises on the lake, they can't resist an even sillier sound! I wish the same applied to some of the more photogenic species at Bretton - but alas this female Teal was the best of the rest today!

Red-flanked Bluetail at Bempton Cliffs RSPB

Definitely not the best day to catch up with the latest in a seemingly endless stream of Flankers on the east coast of Britain. Having missed two at Spurn last week I was determined to add this latter-day mega to my stagnating Yorkshire list, but after celebrating Friday's ECW a little over-zealously (I always accompany a new tick with a soda or two), Saturday became something of a non-starter!

Saturday was the day though, despite the wind and rain. The little multi-coloured Asiatic tart had been dancing on lens hoods all afternoon but unfortunately wasn't in the mood for a repeat performance this morning. After going missing shortly before our arrival the bird was finally relocated three and a half wet and windy hours later in the bottom of a hedge two hundred yards back down the approach. This caused some rather typical twitching naughtiness on the very narrow road with some visiting puffin-botherers getting particularly riled (even more so when they found out all the puffins had disappeared - chased off no doubt by the rabid hordes!... :o/).

Anyways, to cut to the chase, the result is possibly the worst likeness of the critter you'll see - so bad in fact that I felt compeled to included a picture I made earlier (precisely twelve months earlier in fact) in north Norfolk, even though I didn't manage to capture the blue tail then either.

Never mind, the season will soon be over and I'll be back to stroking kingfishers before you know it!

Eastern Crowned Warbler in Co. Durham

Having finally recovered from the excitement of last weekend I was anticipating a quiet stroll around Bretton today and getting back to a little underwhelming nuts and bolts patch-work. Never in a month of monkeys did I expect this! A first for Britain from my favourite genus and less than two hours drive away - the birding gods are certainly smiling on me right now, and it's about bloody time!


Identified only after the finder's photos were analysed, it was late last night before news of the UK's first recorded Eastern Crowned Warbler was released, giving birders planning the early morning dash to the north east plenty of organisational headaches. There were hundreds on site by the time we arrived early afternoon though and sunny conditions meant fantastic views of this stunning Asian sprite as it ceaselessly flitted around the Sycamores and Elders in a disused quarry on the outskirts of South Shields.


With another Red-flanked Bluetail at Bempton today and Dusky Warbler at Flamborough, what price a Siberian Rubythroat at Filey tomorrow - just to round off a truly remarkable week? Not that I'm greedy you understand!

2009 Duck Broken

A spot of twitching this weekend involved a 450 mile round trip that ended my 18 month barren streak. The Staines Moor Brown Shrike continued into a second week on the west London nature reserve and provided my first UK list addition since the Norfolk White-crowned Sparrow back in February last year.

The bird gave typically prolonged views as it hunted from the scattered hawthorn bushes but unfortunately never came close enough for a decent photo. Endless small flocks of Ring-necked Parakeets over-flew the site as did the worlds largest jet airliners. How on earth the residents of Stanwell Moor village (placed rather inconveniently at the end of Heathrow airport's main runway) can hear themselves think from dawn until dusk every day is a mystery but ninety minutes of it did for me!

Another recent split of the Yellow-legged Gull complex was all the excuse we needed to depart the noisy capital and head for the blissful serenity of the Oxfordshire countryside. At a waste disposal site (where else?) near the town of Didcot an adult Azorean Gull had been making regular visits. A small pit adjacent to the landfill was the best place to catch up with this brute of a bird as it performed it's daily ablutions alongside several hundred Lesser-black Backs and a handful of Western Yellow-legged and Caspian Gulls.

We only had an hour or so to wait, which was good going by all accounts, but had to be quick. Almost as soon as the bird had been picked out of the throng, it flew off over our heads and disappeared out on to inaccessible farmland. I did manage to grab these few flight shots as it did so which amply illustrate what a striking species this is. A real evil-looking heavyweight and not a bird you'd ever imagine overlooking!

Despite endless roadworks we were back in God's Own for five o'clock and straight to the pub for a quick celebratory. For the record my UK life list is now 483 and after this weekend I could seriously get back into this twitching lark - I could, I seriously could!