Update – stocktake, take stock

With the recent posting of my ‘new species account’ for the scintillating Double-crested Cormorant, I’ve now posted some 33 write ups since I began doing so with the very first of these, that describing my efforts to twitch the Little Bustard in the Lower Avon Valley near Christchurch, Dorset in early January 1988.

I posted the latter on the 8th August last year, and the former on the 19th May this year.

Given it has taken me more than eight months to post just 33 accounts, I thought I should have a stock-take to work out where all this is going (or not).

The Little Bustard was (at the time) considered to be the 264th species on my UK list (now the 266th due, I think, to bad counting and / or the splitting of species such as Siberian Stonechat).

My UK list is now 508, so, assuming one or two more additions before I leave this world, I have so far posted about 12.5% (or 1/8) of some 250(?) accounts.

Put another way, at the current rate of posting, I should finish my task (should I accept it!) around about the end of 2027………. !

Writing up each new addition to my UK list isn’t the issue. I’m bang up to date with this, and so I already have an account for every new addition to my list since the Little Bustard way back when. These are relatively easily and quickly uploaded, when and if I chose one.

What does take time though is producing a drawing of the bird in question. I might have some basis for this in the form of notebook sketches or previously prepared drawings, but part of my self-imposed task is to illustrate each new bird. In addition, sourcing, attributing and captioning any images of the bird and / or twitch in question takes time; again, I already have many of these, but all the same, like the drawings, even once sourced, the scanning and snipping, etc., all takes time.

I’m certainly not complaining. However, after a prolonged period of ‘downtime’ I am once again working, on site in Inverness much of one week, and then from my home office base, as necessary, the following week, and so finding time for drawing, etc., is not easy.

I’m committed to doing so though, not least of all because I like posting my accounts, and find the process of doing so very enjoyable, despite (because of?) the time constraints. And, importantly, I have had some very supportive feedback which encourages me to do so; there is NO point sending my write-ups into cyberspace if no one else enjoys them.

So, no apologies, I’m here for the duration!

Of the 33 blogs already posted there is something of a concentration in more recent years (as these accounts already had more than adequate ‘notebook’ drawings which I used in lieu of preparing one specially). Otherwise, the rest of the accounts are spread out randomly but all the same reasonably evenly down the years.

To some extent this is coincidental; there’s a hard to resist challenge of not just choosing the accounts relating to the absolutely stonking ticks on my list, such as the firsts for the Western Palaearctic like Ancient Murrelet. Theoretically, I’ll eventually post every such account, but I have to give this some thought.

For example, as detailed, the saga of twitching the Little Bustard was the catalyst for preparing the write-ups; the whole occasion was so momentous, I was inspired to try to capture it. And as a result, I continued to do so for each new species I subsequently saw. Or at least, that was until I lost the account I wrote up about the Masked Shrike at Kilrenny in Fife in November 2004 due to some WORD failure. I was so mightily hacked off by this disaster (loosing some creative writing I could never exactly re-create immediately after I had written it) that I stopped writing up new species altogether, and only scribbled down very basic notes and sketches in my notebook or on scraps of paper, etc..

Life at this time was very complicated and ‘normal’ things like writing up new birds went by the by. It wasn’t until the Gyr Falcon in April 2016 that I resumed doing write-ups properly. However, the 30 or so intervening additions to my UK list were all finally (and successfully?) written up during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown years, on the basis of whatever notes I had or could be assembled from inter-web sources, etc.. I’ll perhaps post the Masked Shrike account next to provide more context here.

Anyway, back to an earlier theme. The Little Bustard was around about my 264th or 266th species on my UK list. Coincidentally, my much-loved ‘The Shell Guide to Birds of Britain and Ireland’ which was my go-to field guide when I entered the brave new world of birding in and from Dorset whilst working there in 1987/1988 describes 263 bird species as ‘regulars’ before moving on to the ‘vagrants’.

I came to twitching late (twitching butterflies rather than birds with Dave McAleavy and Paul Pugh, for example, on our wildlife trips in the mid-1980s). Not until I went to work at Wytch Farm in September 1987 did the new horizon on twitching really open up, partly as this move to a very different part of the UK coincided with the advent of the Bird Information Service on 0898 700222, or at least my awareness of it……. .

However, all the same, before the Little Bustard, I had already seen a good few species which could be considered as ‘vagrants’ rather than ‘regulars’, although there are no equivalent write-ups.

These species are listed here:

Ferruginous Duck	19th January 1974
Great Reed Warbler	22nd May 1984
Wilson’s Phalarope	27th September 1984
Ring-necked Duck	27th February 1985
Greater Sand Plover	16th August 1985
(subalpine warbler spp.)	17th May 1986
Spotted Sandpiper	8th August 1986
Cattle Egret	1st January 1987
White-billed Diver	1st February 1987
Black-winged Stilt	24th June 1987
Woodchat Shrike	30th August 1987
Booted Warbler	13th September 1987
Aquatic Warbler	19th September 1987
Siberian Stonechat	3rd October 1987
Black-and-white Warbler	10th October 1987
Ring-billed Gull	19th December 1987
Pied-billed Grebe	20th December 1987

They include a good range of birds and twitches such as the

• returning Ferruginous Duck I saw near my grand-parent’s house, on Doffcocker Lodge in Bolton, when I was 13,
• singing Great Reed Warbler that my co-worker, Chris Thomas and I saw at Saltmarshe near Goole, courtesy of Johnny McLoughlin, when we were staying with him in the North York Moors whilst we were doing the Upland Bird Survey for NNC and the weather wasn’t fit for surveying;
• long-staying Wilson’s Phalarope at Gibraltar Point that I jammed in on when attending a Sorby-Breck Ring Group weekend there;
• straying Ring-necked Duck and Spotted Sandpiper (what, rarities in East Lancashire????) that I were able to see courtesy of my day release course at Manchester Polytechnic;
• exciting Greater Sand Plover and Black-winged Stilt Dave McAleavy and I caught up with at Blakeney Harbour and at Holme respectively when we were on our ‘wildlife’ trips;
• freezing Cattle Egret in New Mills, Cheshire I saw early in 1987 when returning to work in Wigan after Christmas and New Year in Chesterfield;
• interesting(?) White-billed Diver and Woodchat Shrike twitches with Graham Workman when working in Wigan;
• thrilling rare birds I was able to see as a result of working in Dorset from September 1987 onwards including Booted Warbler, Aquatic Warbler, Siberian Stonechat and Black-and-White Warbler; and,
• long-staying Ring-billed Gull and Pied-billed Grebe at Chew Valley Reservoir and Kenfig Pool respectively I was able to take in when travelling from Dorset to deepest Herefordshire for Christmas 1987.

So, I have a dilemma. Should also I retrospectively write-up these rarities and post them on the blog too?

Conversely, after the Little Bustard, as well as numerous ‘vagrants’ I slowly knocked off a series of birds which could be considered as ‘regulars’ for which there IS a new species account. These species are listed here:

Woodlark	10th March 1988
Cirl Bunting	3rd April 1988
Quail	18th June 1988
Red-backed Shrike	24th June 1988
Golden Oriole	24th June 1988
Pomarine Skua	21st October 1988
Common Crane	19th March 1989
Common Rosefinch	12th October 1989
Capercaillie	26th May 1990
Long-tailed Skua	4th June 1990
Common Redpoll	13th October 1992

As such, I have a further dilemma. Should I ditch these accounts (or at least not post them on the blog)?

I have my own thoughts, but I’d be grateful for those of you who DO read the blog. Meanwhile, I shall try to keep on posting the existing accounts.

 Double-crested Cormorant – Charlton’s Pond, Billingham, Cleveland, 25^th February 1989

My attempt to capture the Double-crested Cormorant, and a winter's day on Tees-side, in all its technicolour glory..... .

Well, at least I can truthfully say that I had good views of this one! But not until it had caused me great trauma...... . I had arrived way after it normally did. Every day since its first appearance it had appeared between 08:30 and 10:00, apart from one day when it never appeared at all. Was this to be the second such day? Having driven all the way there from St. Albans(?), to such a desolate place, a ‘sanctuary’ amongst chemical, industrial, residential Billingham, which contained nothing but Mute Swan, Mallard and Coot was a mite dispiriting, to say the least. And the cold was sufficient to freeze the...... .

Dejected, not to say pissed off, I, like several others, drifted away, to find something to eat. My humour was not improved by my visit to a somewhat dubious chippy. Was there some hope in the story about its arrival being determined by the weather conditions? Or had it frozen to death?

But what was this? On my return the cars were empty. More to the point, as I rushed across the railway bridge there were more birders than before, and ‘scopes and binos were actually being used! The answer was, “Yes”. It had flown in just about 5 minutes after I had left.

At first it was out of sight behind the reedmace. But at least it was there. Soon it emerged – swimming anhinga-like. It moved quickly around the pond, constantly diving as it searched for fish. It swam very low in the water unlike a (Great) Cormorant. It was, however, superficially like a Cormorant, apart from the bill. This was a complicated affair, reaching beyond the eye. The basal areas, in particular, were bright orange-yellow merging into green brown towards the hooked tip. The eye had a warm brown iris. The whole effect gave an expression reminiscent of a Gannet. Eventually, having trawled the fringing shallows, even tangling itself up in overhanging willows, it caught something. It then made its way to the wooden island, flapped and preened, before ‘flying’ onto the island and standing with its wings outstretched, Cormorant-like..... .

Double-crested Cormorant, Charlton's Pond, Billingham, Cleveland, February 1989 (photograph courtesy of  Dave Cotteridge)

Black Stork – East Allington, Devon, 17^th April 1988

So, the day after the Rock Thrush at Portland Bill, Sunday the 17th April 1988, I seemingly returned there, but having established that it hadn’t been co-operative that morning, decided to cut my losses and drive from Portland to East Allington in South Devon.

There’d been a Black Stork around since the 13th April, and so now was the time to see it. This proved to be an inspired decision.

The bird was the Black Stork that just was. It was a mega-bird, which was seen both alight and in flight.

On arrival I discovered the location involved a typical, deep, wooded Devon valley. On one side of it there was a narrow lane flanked by Devon banks, and from where I stopped here I could see across the valley, or at least I could once I had managed to park.

The object of my quest was perched high in the bare branches of a tree.

It was a stork with mainly black plumage which had a purple or green iridescence and white under-parts. It also had a large heavy pink bill, and long pale pink legs.

I watched it through the ‘scope as it rested in the tree and then, marvellously, it took off and circled up into the low cloud. Wow!!!!

Black Stork, East Allington, Devon, April 1988, (photograph courtesy of Rob Chittenden)

Ross’s Gull – River Plym, Devon, 19^th March 1988

Good one this – well twitched; once again the man chooses the right moment to make his move. On the morning of Saturday the 19th March I worked on the F to D Flowlines Project at Wytch Farm before I thrashed through west Dorset and Devon to the River Plym. I parked up alongside the A374 which parallels the west bank of the Plym east of Plymouth. And, fantastically I had located the bird within seconds of tumbling out of the car.

It was a small gull, in distinctive immature plumage, both when at rest and in flight. It was quite flighty, and was sometimes harried by other gulls, and for this reason the views obtained were brief.

When flying over the mud-flats it had a deep, deliberate but quite fast wing-beat. It showed a striking contrast between the darker fore-wing and the blackish W mark, and the light grey or white looking hind wing.

When resting on the mud-flats it appeared hunch-shouldered and short-legged, and the W on the folded wing appeared as a black line with a large white-grey crescent towards the wing-tips. The grey of the wings and mantle was of a similar shade to that of an adult Herring Gull, but a slightly lighter grey extended to the nape, giving the appearance of a neck ring like that on an adult. It also had a black eye mask and ear spot.

Some considerable while later I caught up with a second. This was a ‘pretty in pink’ adult, which was one of a small influx that occurred at Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire in January 1993. I also saw another adult at both Marton Mere and Fairhaven in spring 2008.

Ross's Gull, Plym estuary, Devon, March 1988 (photograph courtesy of Rob Chittenden)

Ross's Gull, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, January 1993 (photograph courtesy of Pete Ewer?)

Ross's Gull, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, January 1993