Happy Together - The Turtles (1967)

 Still attempting to catch up and only 38 full days into 2022 and already January has disappeared but not without leaving something of a mark we start with a mini recap. Starting on Day One (or more accurately Night One) we secured the first Moth of the year in the form of a likely migrant

SILVER Y
and across the following days

WINTER MOTH

DARK SWORD-GRASS
and

MOTTLED UMBER
which may have been considered bibliclly as
Walking on Water!

Despite that we have not yet (early days) been able to emulate it but with a balmy +12°C on the clock covering the first night of Feb we did manage to secure this

MINOTAUR BEETLE

along with the tiniest

WOODLOUSE
Add to that a none to shabby 71 species of Birds, across our Recording Area during that first month we consider to have got off to a half decent start? Back to the present and following that usual track it was seen that others were gathering to 

pursue their passions, more Horse Jumping me thinks, while out bound to the south one of last year's

SYGNETs
followed by more Strange Bedfellows

PHEASANT, CARRION CROW and MAGPIE
likely feasting on the corn we scattered there yesterday?

while on the way back the second survivour of a total of c7 eggs.
 We make no apology for continuing with the first 'repeat' of the new month either as being completely captivated by

the fabulous combination of both

GREEN SANDPIPER

and

GREY WAGTAIL

at the newley formed and now thawed

puddle

A veritable ***** Michelin to your average avian!

just off the main bridleway and showing no sighs of being anything but

HAPPY TOGETHER

Longham Lakes - Part II

 A long time in coming we hear you say, continued from Saturday, but all 'Good Things' come to those who wait especially if you are one of the

Angling Fraternity
who are now back in numbers, and while checking the island in the South Lake

EGYPTIAN GEESE

were in residence there

 along with

LAPWINGs

in company with
COMMON SNIPE and infuriating CANADA GOOSE

as is usual, and now they have cropped the screen of

SALLOWs
(left) down to ground level there are open views to the likes of

GREAT CRESTED GREBE

 

up and down

like the proverbial Fidler's Elbow,

while other Warefowl included

WIGEON

occasionally being attacked by one of the numerous
COOTs

along with numerous

POCHARD

with females, strangely, seemingly absent.

After the Snowdrops of recent days on home turf more signs of the oncoming spring our first

DAISIES
The 'bird of the morning' a very distant

CATTLE EGRET
on the
Hampreston Water Meadows

would not have been seen, let alone identified, if not for a passing Birder bearing a telescope, images from the archive, while all the time the contender for second place,

can you see it yet?

RAVEN

continuously calling from its lofty perch.

Eternal Flame - The Bangles

 Still in 'catch-up mode' going back a bit it was 03:20 on the previous Sunday morning and had to ask myself the same question, “am I only dreaming or is this burning an eternal flame”, only way to find out was to swing out of the hammock and check? Yes, stood on the doorstep to the east a

TAWNY OWL

was knocking it out 'double four time' as we have found on many a winter's night since we arrived here. Convinced, given the mass vocals of late spring, that they have successfully bred across all of those years but with only single evidence of them having done so, when a lady resident pointed out

the activity within the cramped conditions of the
 DOVECOTE

where, to our knowledge only a single chick

had been brought off.
Returning to early morning Sunday, but particularly the hammock, we had hardly fluffed the pillow when there was another call to attend, that of a 

LITTLE OWL
this time to the west which is the direction of the only nest site in this

anciently pollarded
ASH
with suspicions of breeding over the years without substantial evidence, and with 2 additions to the Year List in quick succession it was back to the ZZzzzzzzzz's!

Another Firey Dawn
but daylight brought with it even more

MIST
as the sky above the Southern End filled with

JACKDAWs and ROOKs

From the Northern Ponds only a slightly better representation of the female

SHOVELER
still present and just look at those 'hooters'!

While back at Base Camp

and again from the doorstep these 2

GREEN WOODPECKERs

were captured eating their fill on the
Tennis Court.
To end the day, late afternoon and another

New Kid in Town
which may have been 'clicked' far better had we not been cackling to one of the regular anglers.
Undoubtedly a TUI but we don't remember seeing this Robinson varient before?

All Our Feathered Yesterday's - Part III

 Without to much description we complete the compendium of Rare Wild Birds in Great Britain, often in company with our friend Hugo Wood-Homer - Gentleman Farmer of this Parish!

BERRY HEAD DEVON
with an Ol' Sea Captain friend, on arrival pointing into the distance announced "we should find the bird at the top of the slope close to that long hedge"! That was the first mis-identification of the day as the HEDGE was in fact a 'Wall of Twitchers', but nonetheless where we found the

GYRFALCON
05/04/1986

BAILLON'S CRAKE
Sunderland - 20/05/1989

SQUACCO HERON
Radipole Lake, Weymouth, Dorset, a 10 minute walk from my home in tose days - 11/07/1982

Something of a 'double-whammy' on the1/05/1988 as we headed for Dawlish Warren in Devon in hopes of recording a
BROAD-BILLED SANDPIPER

which, with a little patience, was re-located with all getting thier fill. About to leave, remarkably and equally 'rare' Wader dropped into the very same spot as we also added

GREATER SANDPLOVER
 to the G.B. Bird List.

MARMORA'S WARBLER

Blorenge, Gwent, Wales 10/06/2010

 We seem to recall that it was Thomas Hardy (novelist, not to be confussed with Dorset's other Hardy, Thomas Masterman of Lord Nelson's Sea Captain fame on HMS Victory) who described Portland as "like the head of a prehistoric monster jutting out into the English Channel"?? So no wonder as a first landfall it attracts so many rare birds with this quartet being a typical example - we were pleased to have been there on each occassion.

BLACK-EARED WHEATEAR

Weston Quary 27/05/1985

SAVANNAH SPARROW
12.04.1982

BOBOLINK
15.09.1992

HOODED MERGANSER
found bedraggled in a storm drain on Portland's Chesil Beach Road fisrt seen personally 01/01/1974 which developed into the beauty you see above and favouring Radipole Lake for over a decade. Sticking with the Waterfowl, it was again following another de-mob from the Buchan Alpha Oil Rig on 17/02/1986 that I met Andy Thorpe the Recorder for the North Sea Bird Club at Newburgh, Aberdeenshire. My very first words to him were "you have just 10 minutes to find the

KING EIDER
  as I have a flight to catch! Taking all in good heart he certainly came up with the goods and it was my great pleasure to meet him and NSBC secretary Alma Fraser on a number of subsequent occassions. PS - the club, now defunct, had the same status as all of the counties of Great Britain.

Far to difficult to chose a favourite, without doubt the

LITTLE BUSTARD
at Lizard Headnwall on the 29/10/1996 was the most exciting but little to do with the bird. In the process of getting back Hugo had been lost in the crowd but further on meeting up with a gentleman of far senior years, dressed in a Grogham style coat (the name attrbuted to Admiral Edward Vernon, R.N. who wore such a garment endlessly) and a triby hat we broke into a conservation centred, not surprisingly, on Wildlife. Holding the barbed wire fence for each other he asked if my interests streached further than bird watching replying that back in the late 70's to having been inspired by the then schoolboy Martin Cade (now long time Warden of the Porrtland Bird Observatory) into the world of Moths and how I had fashioned 2 traps out of redundant ammunision boxes and was traping at home in Wyke Regis and East Weares on Portland. He seemed very taken by this with the subject not chanaging until the parting of the ways when I politely ask his name. As a new Moth Man you may well have heard of me as I am none other than the author of the book below

This was Mister Moth himself and what a fillip to have met, talk with and shaken the hand of such an eminent and no frills Gentleman! Note:- Admiral Vernon must have been the most popular man in the R.N. having instituted the 'daily rum ration' with the mix for Junior Rates (Able and Leading Seamen) being issues with one part rum 2 parts water, known as GROG after the Old Lad himself, and Senior Rates (Petty Officers and Chief Petty Officers recieving a 'neat' tot with the explicit rule that this was not to be bottled and stored. Fat chance as it obviously was with the occassion of drinking such a stash be known as a Black Mass! Don't you wish you'd 'signed on' now?
Finally, we come to something of and unhappy ending but not without the story of undoubtedly the most bizarre story from the World of British Twitching. A middle-aged married couple were strolling through Holkum Pines bordering the sea on the North Norfolk Coast on 13/10/1989 when they heard a delicate hooting sound coming from the trees above and imediately attributed it to a bird. Not having a clue and considering as such it might be rare they phoned their son, who was 'twitching' on the Scilly Isles at the time, and offering the phone up to the calls he immediately identified it as a First for Great Britain

RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH
which caused a stampede of other twitchers, jostling for flights to get off the Islands a.s.a.p. in order to record such a rarity. Hugo and I decided to give it a couple of days for the excitement to calm down and wended our way to the site on the 15/10/1989 finding, still under the cover of darkness, the second largest crowd, after the Golden-winged Warbler, but in far more restricted area given the trees, we had ever encountered before. Already the pushing and shoving had started when at daybreak a whisle was sounded with tripods, telescope, camaras etc being scattered and broken across most of the area and even a number of fist-fights. Hugo and I plus others simply stood back and eventually saw the bird but vowed that would be our final twitch, which of course it wasn't but always more reluctant than in the past!

THE END!