Abberton Desert Wheatear… and new software!

Another quick trip out today to go and enjoy the confiding Desert Wheatear at Abberton Reservoir – a somewhat unusual location for what is usually a coastal vagrant. The Prof and I timed our arrival well to find the bird showing down to a few feet in the carpark, though it only hung around for a couple of minutes before heading off to feed along the causeway. Happily, though, I managed a few reasonable shots in that time… though if it lingers until the weekend, I may well go back for more.

This post is also the first after changing my photo editing software – I’ve just got a copy of Lightroom 4, and a book to learn how to use it! Suffice to say there’s going to be a fair old learning curve, but I’m already satisfied that the range of possibilities is much broader than anything I ever used in Canon’s Digital Photo Professional, and there’s plenty of potential.

Anyway, here are the first efforts, thanks to a very co-operative subject – what do you reckon?

I’d be genuinely interested in any constructive comments or suggestions for how other people might have edited these, or any other photos I post going forward. (Of course, whether I can work out how to make the necessary adjustments in Lightroom is another story… but at least I can try!)

Olive-backed pop-out

Was quite well-placed today, having been working from home since early morning when news of an Olive-backed Pipit just down the road in Essex came through. Until recently, this was my biggest ‘bogey bird’ in the UK, having dipped at least seven individuals before finally seeing one… and then promptly seen another one the following year! They’re certainly smart though, and given the likelihood of a small midweek crowd, I decided to chance a flying visit.

Glad I did: ‘the boy’ showed pretty well perched in the open for a couple of minutes, not long after I got there. I’m sure others (Steve A? James L?) will have better photos by now, but here are a few ropey efforts from me. I call this effect “pipit in the mist”….

As I said, very ropey – but enough to show the distinctive head pattern with dark and white spots on the ear coverts and, on one shot the distinct dark upper border to the superciilium; rather plain dark mantle; and a very heavily streaked upper breast on yellowish ground colour. If you use a bit of imagination, the tertial fringes are buffy rather than white, as well! Also very noticeable was the bird’s habit of constantly pumping its tail while perched – a characteristic OBP feature. I didn’t hear it call, unfortunately.

Not bad for a lunch break, though!

Just the warm-up act?

Popped out this afternoon to The Naze – a decent site that I probably don’t visit often enough, given the potential it’s got. (I also don’t know how regularly it’s checked at the moment – any ideas?) Anyway, it was rather good, with a decent scatter of autumn migrants and no other birders. The only downside was the ridiculous number of dogs romping around, being utterly ignored by their loud but vacant owners. S’pose it is Essex, though…

Anyway, back to the birds. I had a slow wander around the undercliff area to start off with, almost immediately stumbling across a Brambling and this rather nice (and very tame) Lesser Redpoll feeding in the pathside weeds:

Over the course of the afternoon, I heard about half a dozen more Redpolls calling overhead – most likely all Lessers. Continuing further north through the scrub on no particular route, a few Goldcrest and Chaffinch were feeding either side of the path, so I resumed Shetland-style tactics with a bit of pishing to see what else might come in. Shetland-style, this did:

Yawn! Yet another one… but still, Yellow-browed Warblers are rather lovely, and when you think how far they’ve come, quite impressive migrants. Unusually, this one didn’t call at all during the 10 minutes or so that I watched it, perhaps too busy feeding up again!

Around the rest of the site, a couple of Swallows were overhead on their way south, and I was pretty surprised to flush a Jack Snipe out of some long grass and low brambles – presumably another newly arrived migrant. Returning back to the car just before dusk, a good concentration of thrushes in the western hedges contained at least one of the hoped-for Ring Ouzels, photographed here at ridiculously high ISO.

So, not bad for less than four hours out. It’s raining here now, and the wind is due to go round into the NE overnight. Hopefully that’ll bring plenty onto the coast tomorrow, where I’ll be from dawn!

In the wilds of Thurrock

Been out to the east of the London area this afternoon with Paul H, primarily to count waders as part of Dave Morrison’s co-ordinated high tide roost survey. The saltmarsh and industrial structures generally hold fairly large roosts, and with a particularly high tide predicted, we were hopeful for a decent selection of birds.

Thurrock should definitely be classified as an urban site. It certainly lacking in classic wilderness scenery, though compensation is provided in the form of an extensive selection of graffiti on the river wall. Amongst the repetitive primary colour ‘tags’, a proportion of the panels are quite impressive.

And the entrance to the site features the most bizarrely contrasting pair of buildings you could imagine – St Clements church, and the enormous Proctor & Gamble factory looming behind it:

Once we’d made our way along the river wall, out of range of the sweet smell of Persil, and past Stone Point, we picked out a wader roost site on the south shore. Numbers weren’t anything spectacular (c350 Redshank, c100 Dunlin, 25 Curlew, 8 Oystercatcher, c30 Lapwing, few Snipe, Water and Rock Pipit), but in ridiculously warm sunshine for late November, life wasn’t feeling too bad at all.

And then Paul found these three little beauties!

Snow Bunting is not an easy bird to catch up with in the London recording area, and these were a tick for both of us (when I’d eventually managed to clap eyes on them!). Apparently my 226th in London, though I maintain I’m not really trying on that score – schlepping an hour each way round the M25 to the west London reservoirs, or crawling through to Beddington or the Wetland Centre, for species that I see regularly elsewhere doesn’t exactly float my boat!

Happy days… particularly for Paul, since he had had the foresight to put wellies on, and was able to splosh out for closer, on-the-deck views. My best photos shown here are pretty terrible, but I think you can expect something much better on his blog later!

The only way…

…is birding (in Essex). Thankfully, I didn’t go down to Cornwall where I would’ve dipped a Scarlet Tanager.

Too tired to write anything meaningful, but suffice to say I enjoyed a leisurely day out around Essex – there was even time for beer! Spent all morning working The Naze – so much great habitat – then Abberton and North Fambridge this afternoon. Sounds like we probably missed the big egret coming in ‘the wrong way’ tonight, but not to worry: the sunset was worth it on its own.

A very happy birthday!

Plenty of great birds today in glorious weather, and opportunities to say hello to a number of friends!

Jono and I started off at Thorpeness in Suffolk – it’s a good site for gauging what’s on the move early morning, has turned up numerous good birds recently, and offered options to move north or south up the coast. Plenty of finches were on the move, including c15 Redpolls and a few Siskin and Brambling. In the bushes, a few Blackcaps darted about in and around berry bushes but a vocal Yellow-browed Warbler refused to show more than briefly.

Shortly after leaving here, I received news of a Booted or Sykes’s Warbler at Landguard, no more than half an hour away. JL needed Booted, while I would still like to see Sykes’s properly after awful views of the skulking Channerwick bird before the ID had been clinched last year… so, a win-win situation! On arrival, the bird was showing superbly well…

The bird has swung to and fro throughout the day between probable and definite Booted. I’m far from expert, but still reckon it’s the latter, because:

• there’s a lot of contrast in the tertials
• the bill doesn’t look long enough to me - I’m also pretty certain it has a faint dark tip to the lower mandible (though this was hard to discern in the field, and Sykes’s can show it anyway, I believe)
• the primary projection doesn’t look particularly short, nor the tail particularly long – the bird generally felt quite well proportioned to me
• the head pattern also favours Booted in my view – super clearly extends back behind the eye
• and finally, it always felt rather warm toned, albeit in strong sunshine – my sense is that Sykes’s tends to be rather greyer, colder toned on the mantle

Couple of relevant links and pics – check out tertials in particular:

• http://hughharropwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2008/09/s-is-for-sykess.html
• http://www.shetlandnature.net/2010/10/06/sykess-warbler-shetlands-third-of-the-year/

There – I’ve nailed my colours to the mast, though would be interested to hear what others reckon. If I’ve screwed it up, then I’ve learned something along the way!

Our next move to East Mersea took in two rather less difficult birds to identify. A Glossy Ibis, noted for their incessant spinning while feeding:

…and a Grey Phalarope, with an abnormally long bill, I thought:

Excellent. Though for one twitcher, the other birds in the area were simply too much to resist, and he departed somewhat hastily after no more than 3 or 4 minutes on site:

Blimey, we thought… something must be good! Well, certainly not good enough to persuade me to run (and besides, in my fourth decade on the planet, I may not physically be able to any more, who knows?), but still very very nice: a Pallas’s Warbler at Bradwell. We turned up to find no-one really looking for the bird, let alone at it, but happily in a stroke of sheer brilliance birthday luck I found it (or it found me) within the first couple of minutes, and we enjoyed great views as it fed in small trees. Awesome birds, absolutely tiny, and so smart in a very stripy sort of way. I make it my sixth in the UK, only the second I’ve heard to call (a soft upslurred ‘boiiing’, like a distant quiz show buzzer) and the earliest date yet. Take that: stats, done.

Finally, we played the game of chance that is the Dartford Crossing on a Sunday night, and won! Our prize came in the form of the stunning adult Isabelline Shrike at Cliffe. Unfortunately, this wasn’t particularly close, but in still and crisp conditions, views were superb at 60x. “Always go and see shrikes”, said my chauffeur. In fact, said my chauffeur at least a dozen times while I was extolling the virtues of small stripy phylloscs in remote locations…

Anyway, thanks to all the folk who’ve wished me Happy Birthday or just said hello today – I apologise to anyone who expected a Rob Martin-esque find somewhere along the coast, but that’s setting the bar a bit high!

More of the South Fambridge Wryneck

Couldn’t resist posting more of this cracking bird – I’ve spent a bit more time post-processing these, so hopefully they have a bit more impact than the previous couple, which were basically straight out of the camera. Let me know what you think!

Distant and elusive… I don’t think so!

Bit of a long day today, starting rather badly when I set off for yesterday’s Sharp-tailed Sandpiper in Cleveland, only to receive the dreaded ‘no sign’ message at 7.30 (though many thanks to whoever put this out early – it helped me at least!). By this time I’d reached Newark – about 140 miles from home – so was basically in the middle of nowhere. After spinning out a McDonalds breakfast for far longer than it deserved, in the hope that the Sharpie might be relocated, I headed over to Collingham pits near the River Trent. For a landlocked county, 2 Pectoral Sandpiper, 4 Curlew Sandpiper and a Little Stint in Notts is probably an excellent haul… but it wasn’t really much consolation!

In the absence of any positive news from up north, I bailed out and headed back home, with a slight diversion to look for a Wryneck near Southend. Good choice! After a bit of stealthy creeping about, I ended up lying on a concrete path with an unconcerned Wryneck feeding no more than 6 feet in front of me… brilliant!

I’ve not had time to work on many of the images yet, so there will definitely be more of these to come!

As if that wasn’t good enough, I’d had a couple of calls about an adult Sabine’s Gull on the KGV Reservoir, where I’m fortunately a keyholder. Would’ve been rude not to go for a look, I thought. It was a long 45 minute walk right up to the far NW corner of the north basin to see the bird, but once again, it was wonderfully obliging.

Again, more pics to come in the next day or two… but right now, I’m exhausted!

Two Yanks in Essex: Green-winged Teal at Connaught Water, and Rossi

Making a late start this morning, I diverted from my planned trip to Rainham based on news from Connaught Water: the Green-winged Teal first seen a couple of weeks ago was being reported again. On arrival, the bird was showing fairly well around the wooded islands at the north end of the lake. It’s a rather poorly marked individual, with the vertical white fore-flank stripes appearing rather diffuse and creamy, and at least a hint of horizontal pale bars above the flanks. These led to some suggestion of a hybrid origin when the bird was first found, but as the photos show, they’re very faint. On the plus side, the cream borders to the green head panel are much less prominent than on Teal, and the base colour on the breast was noticeably warmer toned, quite peachy. If I have time, I’ll do some research into Green-winged x European Teal hybrids, but for the moment I think this one’s OK.

Unless Paul sees it.

After this, I headed out east to replace the hat and gloves I lost in Vilnius, from Go Outdoors in Pitsea. For a moment or two, I wondered if my luck was in, as the pager announced news of ‘probable Slaty-backed Gull’ at, you guessed it, Pitsea. Despite being very close to home, this bird has completely given me the run around, and I’ve still not seen it after four or five attempts. And now… I’ve still not seen it. Plenty of large gulls loafing around on Vange Wick, viewed from the marina beyond Wat Tyler CP, but nothing of note.

Given that I hadn’t made a visit to see Rossi in 2011, I decided it would be rude not to pop in having got so close – and as usual, he posed pretty well for photos. Some sunshine would’ve been nice, but hey, there’s always tomorrow!

More from Essex…

Another excellent day out with Paul and Jono took in a great range of scarce birds. After a bit of a false start at Goldhanger, where we failed to locate any divers or grebes of note, we returned to Braxted Park to find some Hawfinches. The birds were fairly mobile, moving between tall tree tops just inside the park, but we got good views and counted at least 10 individuals including some very smart males. Just up the road towards Inworth, the regular Red Kite showed very well, first perched and then in flight. It’s clearly an immature bird, with pale tips to the coverts showing as a thin wing bar (see bad photo below), and the breast is a pale creamy colour, rather than the richer russet of an adult.

Moving on, we headed onto Mersea Island, initially to look through the massed waders on the falling tide. Nothing of note, but lots of challenging flight shot opportunities:

But the real reason we were here was a little further along. News through the week had described a good flock of Lapland Buntings, in a weedy field to the west of the southern end of the causeway. After a bit of legwork, we found the right area and got some decent flight views, counting a minimum of 28 birds – the spectacle of these looping round overhead, giving the characteristic rattle and ‘pew’ calls was superb. Unlike this photo.

 

By this time, the tide had gone too far out for us to find anything good from West Mersea prom (despite some impressive attempts at stringing Cormorants), so we moved back inland to Abberton. The dozen wild geese were still present from the Layer Breton causeway, and showed well along with up to 8 Smew (3 white nuns and 5 redheads). We also got distant views of a juv Hen Harrier from the Layer de la Haye, looking towards the pumping station, and a Bacon Roll showed well (though briefly).

Near Abberton Church, we picked up a couple of Corn Bunting in with c20 Yellowhammers (thanks Daryl!), before a final look off East Mersea produced 12 Eider.