Confessions of a lapsed birder

Bufflehead –Colwick Country Park, Colwick, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, 18^th March 1994

March 1994 Bufflehead, so long ago it's in black and white, and the March 2024 version, which isn't.

Twice within a week I was rewarded with a good (if, at the time what was considered to be potentially dubious!) tick in a country park. Again, though, as with the Black-faced Bunting, for me at least, my scruples allowed, and it - Bufflehead - was on my list.

News was first relayed on the pager on Thursday the 17th March 1994. I had just returned from a Premier-Transco team-building event in Hinckley, having flown from Edinburgh to Birmingham on Tuesday the 15th March and from Birmingham to Edinburgh on the 17th. As alcohol had been involved I was in no fit state to do anything but recuperate that day. However, so it was that, after visiting Nick Smith in Haddington for work-related reasons, I continued south on the A1 and beyond on Friday the 18th March.

The journey south was largely uneventful, if long, particularly as once in Nottingham, despite my intuition which took me around the ring-road to the football and cricket grounds and the national water-sports centre, I was thwarted by the lack of directions. Anyway, after almost an hour of travelling around trying to find the scene I finally made it there. Much frustration....!

By the time I finally reached the country park and the car-park where birders where parked, it was late in the afternoon, and worse, it had started to drizzle. Some 25 birders were assembled nearby, beyond the landscape planting around the car-park, and they were watching the bird on the lake. It was feeding near an island with Goldeneye and was at about 200 m range.

It was a really smart little duck; constantly diving and, as such, with the continually worsening rain the views weren’t the best. It was a small diving duck, owing a lot to Goldeneye with which it associated. It was a wonderfully attractive pattern of black and white; the crown, lores, forehead, throat, necksides, mantle, back and tail were all black and the rest was white. The bill was grey and the legs were flesh-pink.

Coincidentally, almost 30 years to the day later, one turned up at Carbeth Loch, near Milngavie, on the 19th March 2024. As such, this was reasonably 'available' and, as such, of interest to me in relation to my Scottish list. As my UK list had passed 500 some while ago, and as my Scottish list now approached 400, the latter was of increasing importance to me. When I had first come to Scotland more than 40 years earlier, I wasn't particularly interested in good birds which were available in Scotland if I had already seen them elsewhere in the UK. This was now longer the case.

Anyway, news of the 'available' Bufflehead broke after 18:00 in the 19th March (too late to go). For whatever reason I didn't go the following day, which proved to be a good decision, as it had disappeared.

The following Sunday, the 24th March, I drove from home in South Queensferry to Castle Stuart outside Inverness, where I was working on the second golf course project there, 20 years after I had been involved with the first one. As I arrived that evening, news broke that the (yep, the same one) Bufflehead had been relocated on Sand Loch, near Collieston in Aberdeenshire.

When, early the following morning, Monday the 25th March, RBA reported it was still there, I WhatsApped my birding friend in Ullapool, Andy Williams, and asked whether he was 'Buffleheading'. He responded saying he was at Alturlie (2 km from where I was) waiting for Bob McMillan to arrive from Skye before the two of them continued on to Collieston to twitch the bird. Andy subsequently offered me a lift, but by then I was busy at work. He 'phoned me at 09:00 to reiterate his offer, and I explained I couldn't get away from work as I had pre-arranged meetings, etc., but that I was hopeful it would stick, as on the Thursday I had already made plans to drive home from Inverness to see eldest daughter Ellen and her boyfriend Shane in Aberdeen.

Unfortunately, the Bufflehead hadn't read the memo, and again had disappeared when looked for early on Wednesday 27th March, so I was thwarted again. I did have a forlorn look around nearby sites on the afternoon of Thursday 28th before going to see Ellen and Shane, but to no avail.

Having had a good night with them that evening, I left Aberdeen on the morning of Friday the 19th and drove towards South Queensferry.

I opted to call in at the Loch Leven RSPB reserve (formerly known as Vane Farm) en route, in the hope of some early summer migrants, or a scarce duck.... . Little did I know. Once there, for whatever reason, I opted to visit the three hides in reverse order to my norm, starting with the furthest away, before returning to the largest, and closest to the loch itself, rather than the pools.

Here there was one other birder, who turned out to be young George Dunbar, whom I had never previously met, although before he had an accident whilst ringing at Tay reed-beds and fractured his knee-cap, had been meant to be part of my party staying at the Low Light in early autumn 2023. Subsequently, George had, I knew, become the bird recorder for Perth and Kinross; Loch Leven was, in every sense 'his' patch.

It was excellent to finally catch up with him, and we had a great conversation about all sorts of common aspects of our birding worlds. Whilst we did so, we scanned the viewable parts of the loch for anything of note; George commented that he was hopeful of a Little Gull (given the time of year and the heavy showers) or even just a Scaup, and we both hoped for our first Sand Martin.

Despite our combined efforts we failed to produce anything, and had to confine ourselves to rescuing two stunned Chaffinches after they had smacked into the large windows of the hide with a terrific bang.

On leaving and returning to our cars via the visitor centre we reported this incident to one of the RSPB wardens (after first looking at the recent sightings on a whiteboard). As we approached him to tell him about the Chaffinches he said, "Is there anything wrong?" which at the time struck me as a rather odd comment, as if we had been looking for something else on the whiteboard.

Subsequently, George and I said our goodbyes. He messaged me early that evening saying it had been good to finally meet and casually suggesting we'd gone to the wrong loch (as Ken Shaw had had two Little Gulls at Kilconquhar Loch).

I responded somewhat later that evening, and within 30 minutes he had forwarded a tweet saying, "This is so annoying".

The tweet was from a Stuart Milligan, who had tweeted George (as the recorder) at 15:17 that afternoon to say, "Hi George. Pretty sure the Bufflehead has popped up on Loch Leven, east of the RSPB centre. Apologies if old news". For whatever reason George hadn't received the tweet and as such, despite scanning virtually the same area of the loch (the bird was seen from just a few hundred metres away) we were oblivious.

George subsequently also forwarded an e-mail from Stuart Milligan (presumably as Stuart was mystified as to why the news hadn't got out) reiterating and enlarging on his sighting. He also suggested he had reported in at the visitor centre and would be sending a description via BirdTrack.

So near and yet so far. George and I had a dialogue about the scenario and George confirmed that the news was now out.

I subsequently sent a message to our Serious Birding Bantering WhatsApp group detailing this unfortunate scenario.

As a consequence, the following morning, I got a WhatsApp message from Ken Shaw saying, "The Bufflehead is showing Loch Leven".

I was there within the hour, and so finally caught up with it. And very good it was too. I missed Ken (who had relocated it - fair play) but caught up with Mark Wilkinson, John Nadin, Dennis and James Morrison, Sandy Morrison, Euan McLauchlan, et al.. What a saga!