Western Swamphen – Alkborough Flats Nature Reserve, near Alkborough, Lincolnshire, 10th September 2016
Having ‘dipped’ the (same) bird at Minsmere RSPB Reserve in Suffolk (or at least failed to find the opportunity to go before it did on Saturday the 6th August 2016!) I was massively consoled when it was relocated some 140 miles to the north-west (if it flew like a crow.....) at Alkborough Flats Nature Reserve in Lincolnshire on Tuesday the 30th August 2016.
Just where it originally came from and what it was doing between the 6th and the 30th August didn’t particularly exercise me. What did exercise me was just how I was going to work in seeing it in amongst everything else. For example, I was in deepest Aberdeenshire when the news broke and remained there until returning to Edinburgh late the next night.
I was bogged down with work on the Moray Reinforcement Pipeline Project in Aberdeenshire and also the second Castle Stuart Golf Course Project in Highland until Tuesday the 6th September or so. However, simultaneously, I was ‘phoned by best mate Gary on Monday the 5th September offering me use of his season ticket for the Burnley v. Hull City game on Saturday the 10th September.
A scheme of things then began to emerge involve seeing the bird (or at least attempting to!) and seeing the Burnley v. Hull City game in a combined mission.
I was though, constrained by my commitment to take Tessa to gymnastics after school on Friday the 9th September. This meant I wouldn’t be able to leave until c.14:00 on the Friday; it certainly wouldn’t be a birthday tick, although it could still be a belated one....... .
I e-mailed Ken on Tuesday the 6th September, making a tentative suggestion of going for the swamp monster with him on the Friday.
This scheme of things came to fruition, so that having dropped Tessa off in Linlithgow before 14:00 we journeyed through indifferent weather (rain on the M74 and then it nearly went dark an hour or so before we got there whilst we were on the AI(M)!) via the M8, M74, M6, A66, A1(M), M62, M180 and M181 (eh?) to Scunthorpe and then local roads around Scunthorpe and beyond to Alkborough.
But where to go ........?
Under the duress of impending darkness, clarity of thought wasn’t foremost, and we were befuddled by the ‘directions’. Initially, we humm’ed and harr’ed about just which of the signposted car-parks in and around Alkborough to use. We selected the right one but hurried from there down off the escarpment towards the reserve below for no particular reason. Here we met a birder coming back from the reserve who suggested that the only other birders around were the local boys we had chatted to who were walking out to the hide from the car-park accessible from within Alkborough itself. We stormed back up the escarpment and jumped back in the car and returned back into the village and down the escarpment to the other car-park.
From here we yomped to the hide with the expectation that it would be on view from there.... .
It wasn’t, and worse, the hide was occupied by a couple of ‘know very little’s’ and a couple who had the good sense to leave.... .
We stayed longer than was necessary in the forlorn hope of it suddenly appearing, but there was no chance (all the more so when we got to grips with its whereabouts the following morning).
But I am getting ahead of myself.
We returned to the car and travelled back into Scunthorpe where we eventually found somewhere suitable to eat, drink and be snorey. Not easy in somewhere like Scunthorpe.
Better, the place (a half decent hotel) did breakfast from 06.30.
We were there for said breakfast soon after that time, which meant we were back at the original car-park relatively early that morning. Two or more cars gave hope. As did a group of three birders making their way south along the top of the ridge as I now believed we should have done.
Better still, when we followed, we met two birders coming back from the same direction, one of whom provided Ken with confirmation that it was showing, and detailed directions as to the location from which it could be viewed.
We made our way along the field edge and then down the bank onto the parallel track, and then through a gap in the hedge to the west and along a footpath to a point above some horse paddocks. Here we caught up with the three birders and joined them scanning the distant pools.
Or rather, one pool in particular. Initially, I struggled to work out which pools we were meant to be looking at, but once I got properly set up, I joined Ken and the others scanning one particular edge of the pool in question. I quickly grew bored of scanning this one area, in which the monster was meant to be lurking / emerging.
I began to scan further afield, along the back edge of the same pool. Almost immediately I began to do so, a distant apparition appeared which I (slowly?) realised was it. “I think I’ve got it”, and then, “I’ve got it”, I heard myself saying. I indeed had, but how to get Ken and the others on it? An Avocet standing alone in the middle of the pool made a useful reference point and reasonably quickly everyone else got on it relative to this.
It continued to show, on and off, as it worked its way along the edge of the reed-bed for the rest of the time Ken and I afforded it.
At times it was difficult to locate due to the distances involved, and the light conditions, and the fact that it was often either against, or within, the edge of the reed-bed.
But when it was on view it was bleeding obvious (at least with the ‘scope zoomed up to 60x).
Indeed, it was massive and purple (actually blue) - fnarr fnarr.
No, it was indeed huge. And given the range involved, this was just as well (indeed, given the light conditions the previous evening, I think we may have struggled to see it even if we had been looking from the right place).
As suggested though, when it walked along / away from the edge of the reed-bed it was reasonably obvious, if only due to its size. It wandered alongside the reed-bed skulking in the edge and / or actively searching for and finding food (including, at one stage, what appeared to be a small fish, which it held in its foot).
It was large (the size of a chicken!), and could be of variable shape, depending on whether it was standing erect or reaching forward foraging, etc.. The legs were stilt-like but the neck could also be attenuated.
It had a large pinky-red bill and plate, long (very long) pinky-red legs and big feet and dark eyes (okay, we couldn’t really see this).
Its plumage was various shades of dark blue, constantly changing with the light, and otherwise it had brilliant white under-tail coverts which flashed as it regularly flicked its tail as it walked.
And then it was over to the BOURC....... (who did make the right decision).
Afterwards Ken and I journeyed from Alkborough to Burnley. We did this via Hardcastle Crags, Walshaw Dean, Gorple, Widdop, etc., as I indulged myself showing Ken around my teenage stomping grounds. We made it to Burnley in plenty of time and I duly went to the football match, and Ken suffered more, watching the game in the Talbot Arms. It ended 1.1 with Hull City equalising in the 96 minute.
But I’d seen the swamp thing.
A further notebook type sketch of Western Swamphen. This also commemorates my finest ever moment speaking 'pidgin French'. Towards the end of three plus weeks travelling alone whilst birding in Morocco in December 1991-January 1992 I visited the marshes of Oued
Loukos, near Larache, hopeful of seeing Purple Swampthing for the first time.
Here I asked two young children tending their goats, "Où est l'oiseau avec le grand bec rouge," and they immediately responded,"Ici," pointing out at the nearby marshes!
Clearly, even from a young age, Morroccans are very good linguists, and I am not.
