Little Bustard – Avon Valley near Christchurch, Dorset, 3^rd January 1988

After a vigil involving some ten hours over the weekend, I finally successfully twitched the Little Bastard!

I had been there futilely staring at empty arable fields, talking to other similarly frustrated birders, between 15:30 and 16:30 on the 1st, 12:00 and 16:00 on the 2nd and 12:45 and 16:15 on the 3rd January.

As a result, I had managed several Grey Partridge, Pheasant, Lapwing and Golden Plover, and very little else.

This was after leaving my Dad’s in Chesterfield, where I had been spending Christmas / New Year during the festive season shutdown of the pipeline project I was working on at Wytch Farm near Wareham in Dorset.

News had broken on Wednesday the 30th December, but it wasn’t until New Year’s Day that I travelled back to Dorset. The wet hour I spent standing on the verge of a muddy lane staring aimlessly at a field late that afternoon was a foretaste of what was to come. I travelled to my rented flat in Swanage that evening and returned for another four hour vigil the following day.
This was so mind-numbing that I vowed I wouldn’t bother the following day; besides the forlorn pursuit of gawping at empty arable fields from an increasingly trashed lane, the twitch involved a journey of at least an hour (although only 20 miles) via the chain ferry between Studland and Sandbanks and then through the Poole–Bournemouth–Christchurch sprawl. Not appealing. 

However, I cracked on the third day when there was positive news again, partly because I would be going back to work on Tuesday the 4th January and then have no chance of seeing the bird, even if it did stay and give itself up.

So it was, that finally, at about 16:15, late on the Monday afternoon (remember, this was the deep mid-winter!) some cyclist / young ornithologist cycled up to us and told us that the bastard was in the Avon Valley. Directions were offered (and skilfully ignored) and a convoy of about seven cars reversed / charged off, with the result that they all ended up following me! But where were we going to? I’d no idea! Anyway, by default, and detour, we arrived at some suburban close, which, coincidentally was where he had suggested we should be.... .

A quick sortie over various fences, etc., and I arrived at a small cluster of birders looking across the floodplain of the Avon, at apparently, two grass tussocks behind which the bird was rumoured to be. It was by now going dark. A Moorhen was the source of a mild flutter. The gloom, both nocturnal and emotional, deepened.

However, hope was on the far away floodplain in the form of a birder who had detached himself from another small cluster of birders, and then some horses, to gradually move towards where the bird was supposed to be. Did he know where the bird ‘was’? Or was he just coincidentally moving in that vague direction?

Left a bit, right a bit ....... keep going.... .

He moved past the imagined spot. Nothing happened. It was a huge anti-climax. It was now a moonlit night, a gloaming evening.

Our chance had surely gone? He continued, and suddenly, wings flashing white in the moonlight, as the bird flushed. It flew off downstream, but then across the river, before then, temporarily at least, alighting in front of us. It then flew off again, but came comparatively close overhead in doing so, above the horizon, and in front of the moon....... .

The euphoria that then erupted after it had departed was an experience – spontaneous cheering, clapping and handshaking!!!! We all trooped back to our cars completely elated.

You bastard, you gorgeous little bastard!!! So this was it. In flight it was similar to a flushed Pheasant in its actions – a fast flight with stiff wing beats. Initially it flew low and then landed and appeared to stand alert in the field before us. It then took off again and flew high overhead, when its long neck and short tail were visible. The only colour visible (as it was largely seen in silhouette) was the white wing panels. 

As suggested elsewhere, this account was the very first I prepared, as, a few mainly sub-rares and a couple of genuine rares (such as Greater Sand Plover and Black-and-white Warbler!) excepted it was the ‘most stonkingest’ bird I’d seen up until then. It was the 266 species on my British list. At this time, the fantastic The Shell Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland addressed 263 species that were considered as ‘Regular’ and then some 240 more that were classed as ‘Vagrants’ (the British list only being c.500 back then!!).

It was also the start of a new year, and the past few months living and working in Dorset (and the advent of Birdline, or certainly me becoming aware of Birdline, a happy coincidence) had transformed the horizons of me, a simple lad from Lancashire, who had spent ALL of his teenage years (my ‘apprenticeship’) going around with a pullus ringer (every Sunday throughout the year, and every evening throughout the breeding season, school or no school) who DESPISED twitching.

Now, suddenly, I was seeing exciting birds in often (but not always!) exciting circumstances, and for whatever reason, I was minded to try to capture this. And the rest is, as they say, history….. .

When I re-visited this account to do the final word-processing, re-formatting, editing and sketching, etc., (on the basis of the original notes and sketches) in mid-December 2021, I quickly discovered that there was seemingly very little material out there about the occurrence, apart from the obvious write-up in Birding World and the 1988 Rare Bird Report in British Birds, etc.. Certainly, there appeared to be no images of it, although I vaguely remembered that it had been filmed in flight by a local news camera crew (I probably saw the footage one evening after having not seen the bird during my forlorn vigil earlier that day to add to my despond….).

So, I took to Twitter on the 16th December to make an appeal for help sourcing any such material. I included an aerial image of the Avon Valley north-east of Christchurch and said:

“Little Bustard. New Year ’88. Coward’s Marsh, Christchurch, Dorset. I know this bird was – rather randomly – filmed in flight (and maybe on the ground?) by a BBC News film crew. Is anyone aware of any photos of the bird (or stills from the footage?)? I’m writing up things”.

The response was fantastic. Mark Golley (aka The White Falcon) tweeted that, “The finder, Alan Hayden, kindly allowed me to use his painting in an old RBA round-up though. May be of interest to you? Best, Mark.” (The round up had involved details of the subsequent Dorset record).

Mike Gibbons followed this up by tweeting, “The BBC used my Shell guide book to show a picture of the Little Bustard on the South Today news. I’m sure somewhere I may have the whole item on video. Not sure where though. Saw the bird after a chase around the Avon Valley area. Bruce Parker was the BBC reporter”, and, then, fantastically, in a follow-up, tweeting, “I have just traced the footage on YouTube. Buy me a drink later”, followed by a link to the footage.

And then, finally, James Rhys-Hughes provided more detail about the re-finding of the bird the day after the original sighting by Alan Hayden, as follows, “It was myself that stood on it the following morning at Coward’s Marsh. I can remember it as if it was yesterday. Also trying to get a certain Mr Hayden out of his pit shouting I’ve got it get up FFS”.

I responded to all of this by saying, “Excellent. I’m entirely grateful to whoever it was who flushed it from the marshes on the Sunday – it then did a flypast including a brief landing down in front of us on a bank overlooking the floodplain on the edge of suburban Christchurch; a moonlit last chance saloon!”

Following these successes, I returned to Twitter the next day to say:

“So, I’ve returned to my write-ups of my ‘ticks’, my new species accounts. In an attempt to get images of the first, the New Year ’88 Little Bustard, I appealed to Twittersphere. Result!! I was pointed in the direction of this new item. Thanks all!!!” I then include the link to the video on YouTube of the footage from the BBC South Today news item.

This is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV_yffOco2E

Also, for the sake of completion, the Rare Bird Alert write-up that Mark Golley referred me to that details the subsequent West Bexington bird and references the earlier occurrence is available here:

http://www.rarebirdalert.co.uk/v2/Content/weeklyroundup2014-46.aspx?s_id=543185378 

I’ve also included a better image of Alan Hayden’s painting here too and a couple of stills I extracted from the footage (well, this is the first such account and so I wanted it to be as complete as possible).

Alan Hayden’s evocative painting of the Little Bustard in the Avon Valley (copyright Alan Hayden).

Two very poor stills from the YouTube video of the BBC Look South news item, poor, but hey, what a bird!

Finally, in relation to this wealth of illustrative material (where once there was a dearth!), in the late 1980s / early 1990s my very good friend Paul Pugh used to visit Richard and Hazel Millington in Cley-next-the-Sea. Paul is a graphic designer, and as such did some work for The Bird Information Service in relation to both Twitching (the forerunner of Birding World) and early editions of Birding World itself. On one such visit, Richard had put to one side a whole lot of his own artwork for throwing out. This included the pen and ink drawing Richard had prepared and included in the write up of the Little Bustard in the very first Birding World. Paul suggested to Richard that, “He knew someone who would like that,” and it has been on my walls ever since. So, I’ve included an image of this too!

Richard Millington’s drawing of the Little Bustard both as used in the write up in the very first Birding World and as framed and displayed on my walls.