Ancient Murrelet – Jenny’s Cove, Lundy, Devon, 17^th June 1990

The object  of our quest, reflecting how it looked at times, a tiny, quite distant auklet of a somewhat indistinct shape.

Another epic trip for a first for the Western Palaearctic....... ! A week after we had driven to Penzance en route to St. Mary’s and the Tree Swallow, as opposed to Ilfracombe en route to Lundy and the Ancient Murrelet as had been the plan, Pete Ewer and I did indeed drive from St. Albans to Ilfracombe (you know the rest.....).

Somewhat bizarrely we arrived in Ilfracombe in time to bother with pitching a tent somewhere prior to finding a pub in which to watch England v. Holland in the 1990 World Cup (0.0, thanks for asking), and then retiring to our tent for an all too brief four hour ‘sleep’. A 05:00 sailing may have been involved.

So, early the following morning we quickly packed away the tent, and rushed down to the harbour. Here we met up with Paul Pugh (he who had chartered the fishing boat we were going to Lundy in) and the rest of the merry gang, including Bernie Beck, before boarding the fishing boat.

We were soon off (as I remember it) on what proved to be a 2.5 hour crossing. A 2.5 hour crossing of the waters of the outer Bristol Channel on the open deck of a small fishing boat with the accompaniment of rotting fish (the crew were going to check their lobster and crab pots whilst we were on the island) wasn’t the best of scenarios for me. Fortunately, it was flat calm....... .

Now, I should provide some explanation as to why we were taking a small fishing boat to Lundy as opposed to the more conventional M. V. Oldenburg, the ‘regular’ boat which serves Lundy.

This was involved in getting literally hundreds of birders to the island for the murrelet, but therein lay the problem. On arriving off Lundy, the M. V. Oldenburg would drop anchor (as we nautical types say) and a lighter would be launched from the beach (having been reversed from the cobble beach into the surf using a tractor and trailer which involved a cradle for supporting and transporting the lighter) before shuttling backwards and forwards between the M. V. Oldenburg and the trailer and the cradle on the trailer, which acted as some sort of mobile landing stage, with loads of twelve or so passengers, who then had to make the arduous climb up the track which traverses the towering cliff-face between the beach and the plateau-like expanses of the island high above. Getting ashore could, therefore, take a very long time if you were at the back of the queue disembarking. Not only would this potentially involve a very short period ashore / at the scene of the twitch by the time you got there, before you had then to set off back, but the bird was very definitely easiest to see early on in the morning when it tended to loaf around in Jenny’s Cove for a couple of hours after leaving the adjacent cliffs, before drifting off out to sea.

Thus, getting there early and quickly was vital. Getting there by alternative means and going early were crucial to our (Paul’s) well conceived game-plan.

Anyway, having made the crossing and the landing successfully, we stormed the island, yomping as quickly as we could up the track and then across the island. I remember vaulting over the side of the lighter down onto the cobble beach, making the mistake of steadying myself with my left arm, yep, the same one that had the undiagnosed broken wrist. That hurt a tad.... .

Anyway, once at the ‘venue’ – a towering amphitheatre of granite cliffs from which we were looking down onto the stage that was Jenny’s Cove – the scene was set. A huge supporting cast of regulation issue auk spp. churned around on the sea. However, without much of an ado the star of the show was pinpointed and proceeded to give its admiring audience a thrilling performance – chivvying its intended, diving, and, particularly later on, flying around. It was always moving, and so was frequently lost, but once it had first been ‘scoped it could be quickly relocated because of its distinctive (banana-like) shape.

It appeared, when at rest, to be long-winged, but, in reality, was short-bodied. The under-parts were white, and the upper-parts mainly black, but the back was grey, and there was a distinct demarcation between the primaries / secondaries and the rest of the wing. The head was a very distinctive shape – like a speed cyclist’s helmet with apparently one white line extending from the eye to the rear of the nape. The bill was almost finch-like, large, stubby and horn in colour – like that of a Twite.

I characterised it as being like a ‘drowning House Martin’.

As the photographs convey, this was very definitely one of the all time best twitches; it had so much going for it besides the bird itself, which made it.

For example, having enjoyed watching it for one or two hours (I can’t remember just how long) we decided to leave the scene as the first of those who had crossed to Lundy on the M. V. Oldenburg arrived, gasping for breath, asking whether it was still showing.

We made our way back across the island exhilarated about our stunning success.

As we did so, a long, long line of straggling birders were frantically making their way in the opposite direction, invariably panting and sweating, looking a strange shade of red, and blurting out, “Is it still there?” or some such. We found it very difficult to be on our best behaviour (in fact we were total barstewards!!!), and couldn’t resist saying, “Oh, you want to hurry up mate, it was getting a bit far out,” or something similar, and then watching the horror spreading across their tortured faces before they set off staggering towards Jenny’s Cove as fast as they could. Fortunately, as far as I am aware, no heart attacks were precipitated, though more by luck than ‘judgement’.

Incredibly, we were soon in the fantastic Marisco Tavern, at 09:25(!!!!) on the Sunday morning, drinking the lovely locally-brewed Puffin Ale. The pub was a great place to celebrate and the atmosphere got better and better, as more and more successful birders arrived back from Jenny’s Cove. Perhaps it wasn’t that far out after all..... . I remember being very taken by the whole ‘feel’ of the Marisco Tavern, with the various logs for birders, for divers and for climbers, and the way in which it really was the hub of the island.

Anyway, eventually we returned back down to the landing, and the lighter was used to take us out to our fishing boat for the journey back to Ilfracombe.

The crew of the boat were somewhat bemused by us, these strange folk who spoke with strange (mainly Northern) accents who had travelled for hours overnight to get to Ilfracombe so that they could pay a lot of money to charter their fishing boat to take them to Lundy to see some strange bird. It was a real ‘clash’ of cultures, different worlds.

As suggested, the crew had checked and emptied and rebaited their lobster and crab pots around the other side of the island whilst we had been on Lundy, and so we spent the journey back watching them sorting and processing their catch. This involved measuring the lobsters with special callipers and returning those that weren’t big enough to the sea. Both the lobsters and the crabs which were retained were kept alive. However, they had to be prevented from smashing each other up with their claws whilst they were in the crates. For the lobsters, this involved putting elastic bands around the claws. However, for the crabs the procedure was different. The tip of a knife was inserted into the claw behind the claw itself so disabling the ‘hydraulic’ mechanism. There was a knack to this which involved holding one claw out of harm’s way whilst also holding the claw being disabled and inserting the knife. We were shown how to do this by the crew member who was processing the catch, and with lots of banter, he suggested someone should have a go. Paul and Bernie volunteered me, for some reason. It was a very even fight between the poor crab and me with on functional arm / hand, but I won in the end.

A completely brilliant twitch! All the more so, for being the culmination of a amazing few weeks which had involved Dave McAleavy and I doing a Scottish specialities and Shetland (including Fair Isle) trip, which had involved jamming in on the Pallas’s Sandgrouse (as well as some other good birds), then starting a new job, and then twitching the Tree Swallow on St. Mary’s and the Ancient Murrelet on Lundy on successive weekends. From Fair Isle – Isles of Scilly – Lundy in the space of a fortnight was certainly the pinnacle of my manic twitching.

And a brilliant bird. So much so, that on a subsequent trip to the Scillies I purchased an incredibly accurate and life-like limited edition (Number 6 of 30) ‘sculpture’ of the Ancient Murrelet from the very talented and lovely Ray Turley (now sadly departed) from the stall he set up every night at the birder’s log in the Porthcressa in Hugh Town, St. Mary’s. This has graced my shelves ever since. Only the Red-breasted Nuthatch shares this honour, but that is a whole other story……. . Here’s a photo of said piece before the ones of the twitch itself.

The impressive scene of the twitch, Jenny’s Cove on Lundy, with, in the foreground from left to right, Bernie Beck, yours truly and Paul Pugh, June 1990 (photograph credited to Peter Ewer – I think!).

Ancient Murrelet, Jenny’s Cove, Lundy, Devon, June 1990 (photograph credited to Dave Atkinson).

Yours truly inside and outside the fantastic Marisco Tavern – complete with entirely ineffective bandage on my left wrist (photograph credited to Peter Ewer – I think!).

The M.V. Oldenburg (and our fishing boat) moored off the landing area on Lundy, June 1990 (photograph credited to Peter Ewer – I think!).

Processing the haul on the return trip, with Bernie Beck sitting nearest the camera, and yours truly partly obscured standing, with Paul Pugh to my right, June 1990 (photograph credited to Peter Ewer – I think!).