All Our (Feathered) Yesterdays

 Leaving the usual tales of foreign parts as the Sunday cameos, for a while at least, we will turn our attentions to the sometimes frustrating and often fulfilling practice of

TWITCHING!

In a nutshell this is an extension of the usually, sedate and gentle pastime of Bird Watching that sends the protagonists far and wide across the country (and sometimes the World) in pursuit of a particular but ‘rare’ species which often turns their personalities inside out. The term is coined from the condition you find yourself in after receiving information of a particular 'rare species' at a particular location, getting all keyed up and anxious as to whether it will still be there on arrival or not, to miss such a bird is referes to as 'dipping'! This series contains a sprinkling of 'borrowed' images, We will start with the longest distance ‘twitch’ ever made personally in the UK that of a 'First for Great Britain'

SNOWY EGRET

first found on Seil Island, Argyll, Scotland which on that day 03/01/2002 had taken up residence at the Stevenston Golf Course in the same county. A total distance of 776 mile by taxi, train, tube, flight and hire car all, with the exception of the later, unwitinly covered by my employer Stena Drilling as crew changing to the Hunter Drilling Rig the following day. Alone on the course it did take some finding, but found it was, and only a quirk of fate sent me via the Montrose Basin Nature Reserve on the rturn to Aberdeen to find this sub-rarity

IVORY GULL
feeding on a seal carcass on the shore line, which still remains the only Gull in the World that we have not yet photographed.

Some years earlier, 11/03/1989, a

BALTIMORE ORIOLE
had been found in a private garden in Cornwall with a quartet of us, including Paul (Bomber) Harris, scurrying at high speed to the location but causing some gentle conjecture. We both saw the bird immediately, a miracle in itself, but later realising we were viewing a mirror image of it via the house window. This caused some debate later as to wheather we would have added it to the list had this been the only view - still undecided even though irrelivent we saw it well, in the flesh, later!

More mild ribbing in 2012 the year I turned my dear friends P and T, of Emsworth Hants, on to Birdwatching but insisting that I was not a 'TWITCHER' as sometimes looked upon as derogatory, but again 'hoist by my own petard' when veiwing the

SPANISH SPARROW
at Calshot, Hampshire on 11/01/2012. It was afew days later that this

news clip image from their local newspaper dropped through my letterbox showing me quite clearly in pole position and a caption from them saying "not a Twitcher my arm" or words to that effect. 

1990 brought with it a couple of real goodies which we shared with our valued friend and gentleman farmer Hugo Wood Homer, with the first nesessiating a 3 hour drive over 164 miles (a mere baggatelle, as ex formular 2 racing driver Hugo always insisted on taking the wheel) to Chingford, Essex in hopes of seeing a 

NUAMANN'S THRUSH
Joining the throng surrounding a local football pitch, where it had last been seen the previous day, our resolve started waining about an hour later so headed off into the housing estate where the trees and bushes were ladened with berries of all flavours. Within 15 minutes we had relocated it with me suggesting racing off to inform the others. Hugo's slant on that was to enjoy our fill before informing the hordes - Good Plan! That venture had been undertaken on the 07/02/1990 and by the 03/06 of the same year we were at it again but in the opposite direction and in hopes of a totally different species. The 110 miles drive to Bideford, Devon was a short one compared with most and where we boarded the MS Oldenburg to take the short 23 miles sea passage to the Isle of Lundy where there was no difficulty in locating our quarry among the scree as a number of observers already had the

ANCIENT MURRELET
firmly in their optics.

From the distribution map it can be seen that this tiny sea-bird would have to have crossed at least one Continent or 2 Oceans to get to Great Britain, while my last words to Hugo being "there is little or NO chance of seeing the likes of that family group ever again in UK"!
It was in fact just 5,701 days the11/01/2006 before we took the sedate and relatively short drive to the shores of Dawlish Warren to add a

LONG-BILLED MURRELET
to our GB List.

There were a couple more mega marathons up north worthy of mention for a none to showy

BLACK-FACED BUNTING
in Manchester (20/03/1994) along with a totally underwhelming

DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANT
a 7 hours drive each way to Cresswell, Morpeth, Northumberland (24/02/1989) both roundly outshone by what still remains the most rewarding twitch ever, that to a more than overcowded

TESCO CAR PARK

in

GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER

Which personnally, and likely for hundreds of other, still out-shines any before or since!!
A Yank, not only a First for Great Britain but also the Western Palearctic!

BLACK SCOTER

on 02/04/ 2002
was again a result of a homeward-bound crew change, this time from the Oil Production Platform Buchan Alpha, a car hire for the short drive to the Moray Firth where a fellow Rig Rat was found with the bird in his 'scope - how's that for Good Luck?

Poet and Pheasant - Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers

 There seemed little point embarking on the new day until full daylight which neatly coincided with this

New Kid on the Block
cutting across the clear blue sky an

AUGUSTA WESTLAND 139

of Qinetic Castle Air based at Boscombe Down (thanks John) and as has become usual starting in the Southern Quarter the first wildlife to be encountered, unless you include the single Fieldfare still munching away at the berries on the Ornimentals, was an extrodinarily large

Herd of Deer

c8 in all and all unsurprisingly

ROE

feeding voraciously.
Along the Oak Line with the Moors river this

COMMON BUZZARD

was a totally unwelcome guest as far as the local

CARRION CROWs
were concerned and soon given the elbow

with preening continuing.
Within the Solar Panel Compound a moment of

Déjà Vu
as like in previous days the female

PHEASANT

had returned to what appears to be a

Favoured Perch
while what had been an ordiary sort of day was about to close with something of a
BANG

as a small flock of First for the Year

SISKINs
were located feeding in the tree-tops at the
Sewerage Works

and most unusually (ditto f.f.y.) this

JAY

was also found feeding on the verges of the busy lane leading to the Eco Recycle Centre.

Hummingbird B.B. King / Les Paul

 With yet another +6°C on the temperature gauge it was still more about frustration than reality that we flashed up the Moth Traps again on Wednesday night. Thursday dawned as though it were mid-Spring rather than mid-Winter and stayed that way all day, with a 'blank' from the traps, but the effort seemed worth it when we heard from our friend John Gifford in Weymouth, that he had recorded a

HUMMINGBIRD HAWK-MOTH

in his garden

which is one of the few 'day-time flying' macro Moths.
"like the man said, you ain't going to catch owt if you don't flash the traps up"

At full daylight with frost still deep and crisp and even nipping the finger-tips, there came just a moment of magic with none avian fliers we have been hoping to capture for a couple of weeks or more since the newly liveried

DRAKEN EUROPE
trainer jets took over from the previous

COBHAMs
which we feel are the same aircraft as the company were taken over recently.

WOOD PIGEON
in the first rays of the Sun and then a thin veneer of ice now almost covering the surface of the

with not a Waterfowl to be seen which looked to have moved to the more open waters of the

TUFTED DUCK
a male was thought to be a new arrival

making an acquanitance with the
Little Grebes and other residents as well

but keeping more than a wings-length from the

hunting

GREY HERON

which will take a pop at just about anything while both

MOORHEN and COOT
remain resident.
Knowing 3 regular breeding sites across the Recording Area for the deminutive

Tree Mouse

more correctly the

TREECREEPER
it was thought, as usual, just a matter of time before it too joined the ranks of
First's for the Year.

Still a couple of

EGYPTIAN GEESE

along the course of the

MOORS RIVER
but seemingly gone, or in hiding, we have seen nothing of the Canada's lately.
It feels like we could do with a not to distant away-day which we will further consider over the   Week End - Av a Gudun'

Common People - Pulp

 Chill, Still and not much of a Thrill once again we are consigned to what we could find, highlighted by today's headline! However, once that 

Current Bun
starts to clip the horizen, clearing the overnight frost, it's all systems go!

Mist on the River Stour provided its own charm while we watched both

HERRING GULLs

and

ROOKs

alike trying to sustain themselves, in the neigbouring horse paddock, for another day.
Heading south a

MERLIN

of the none Avian kind clattered overhead while again, across more horse paddocks,

we found the first signs of
SPRING

as a few among the crowd of feeding

BLACK-HEADED GULLs
were already showing traces of their dark top-knots.
A small representation of

HOUSE SPARROW
which must amout to 1 or 200 across the board here with more numerous

WOOD PIGEON
soaking up the first rays of the day.

Further north it was aparent that the Irrigation Pond had been abandoned by the
WATERFOWL

as part frozen but not so the
Gravel Pit
where

a few

GADWALL

and
TEAL

male with female above still remain but no signs of the Little Grebes on the day.