Fair isle 2017. Day 4. A wizard day!

Crap. Thats the only way to describe the weather. Crap but improving to shitty in the afternoon. Undeterred we ventured out into the remnants of storm Ophelia and headed north into a strong north westerly gale! Spirits were high though, even with depleted numbers as Mark had failed to surface for breakfast after a few to many sherbets the previous night celebrating Ken Shaw's 65th birthday.

This was Fair Isle at its stormiest best.

 

Once again there were hundreds of Redwings in the sheltered areas and a small fall of Wheatears - including some gorgeous Greenland birds.

Deciding it was to miserable for a packed lunch we returned to the Obs for lunch and ventured out into improved weather in the afternoon and headed south. Despite some serious foot work being put in we failed to find any rarities but there was plenty of commoner stuff to see.

 Hooded Crow

 Female Redstart

 Shetland Starling - race zetlandicus

Whinchat

Swans and geese were taking advantage of the tail winds and started appearing over the island in good numbers heading south towards the Orkneys and then on to the mainland. Three Lapland Buntings showed fairly well on the track alongside Boini Mire.

With the daylight fading we started the long walk back to the Obs. On arrival we heard a merlin had been trapped in one of the heligoland traps and I decided to stay and see it being ringed.  Susannah duly arrived in the Obs vehicle and Sara came out holding a large bird bag which she passed to me. Uncertain what to do I was about to hang it up in the ringing room for one of the wardening team when Sara told me Dave Parnaby had told her to give it to me or Richard to ring and release!!!!
With no sign of Richard the honour fell to me and with an appreciative audience of admirers (for the falcon, not me) I duly ringed and processed the 1st year female Merlin. Wow.

That certainly made my day! Wing length suggested it was an Icelandic bird and as most of the Shetland nest sites are monitored and the young ringed this makes sense - I was even more privileged than I thought as, talking to Cieran later, it transpired he'd never ringed a Merlin as all the others caught when he'd been there were controls from Shetland mainland.

Distance walked :22.34 km.

Fair Isle 2017. Day 3. The day of the thrushes.

Sunday dawned and I went on the first trap round of the day. It soon became obvious there had been a major fall of Redwings and other thrushes and we had to phone the Obs to bring more bird bags!
There were Redwings carpeting every area where they could shelter and feed.

Most of the birds  caught were of the Icelandic race coburni which were noticeably bigger and darker than the Scandinavian iliacus. Some were approaching Blackbird size and could be identified by their darker upperparts, denser red flanks with heavier streaking and buff in the supercillium. Many of the birds also had very dark undertail coverts. Catching a few Scandinavian birds allowed a good comparison.

Icelandic Redwing on the left - notice the heavier and darker streaking and the buff in the supercilium.

Undertail coverts of Icelandic Redwing.

Icelandic and Scandinavian Redwings - the Icelandic bird is on the right and has much darker and denser flank streakings and a richer, rustier red flank. 

These features can also be easily seen in the field! 

Apart form the big influx of thrushes there wasn't much new about.

Distance walked: 21.69 km 

Fair Isle 2017. Day 2. The pipits

Despite a dreary start to the morning enthusiastic team of Jase, Mark, Chris & me picked up our packed lunches, donned our waterproofs and were out soon after breakfast and didn't return until just before dinner.

We'd briefly seen a Red-throasted Pipit at Sherva the previous day and there'd also been a Richards Pipit reported so, kicking around in ditches, we headed that way. The Red-throated Pipit was typically furtive and crept around among the thistle stems but afforded good views with a bit of patience.

A female Redstart was hunting for insects along the same fence line and the wide ranging Richards Pipit did us a favour and dropped in to the same field!

Despite extensive searching we failed to find anything else unusual so went back for seconds of the Black-headed Bunting!

A walk around the sacrificial crop at Bulls park was dubiously rewarded with perhaps the dullest looking bird on the British list - two juvenile Common Rosefinches.

Tired and dirty we retired to the Obs for a shower and a quick beer before a well earned dinner.

Distance walked: 20.86 km

Fair Isle 2017. Day 1.

Where to begin? Our eagerly anticipated trip to Fair Isle almost didn't happen as Ophelia made her blowy presence known and Loganair screwed up our flights. We booked in April this year with Loganair as they were advertising direct flights from Manchester to Sumburgh. Ideal. Only it wasn't. They cancelled the flights in September and re-routed us from Manchester to Inverness and then on to Sumburgh. What they failed to tell us was the plane also stopped at Kirkwall in the Orkneys. This meant we were almost two hours behind Jason who'd taken the regular Flybe flight and with the weather closing in Directflight were trying to contact us to being our flight forward from Tingwall to Fair Isle. A few frantic texts and missed phone calls and we managed to contact them and say we were on our way. We eventually set off from Tingwall an hour earlier than the scheduled time and took the short 20 minute flight in the twin Islander to Fair Isle international airport 0- the only airport in the UK where they use the fire engine to chase the sheep off the runway!

Arriving safely we werte met by Susannah who loaded our bags into the Obs vehicle so we could go straight off to Quoy where Derek Shaw had found a juvenile Black-headed Bunting the previous day - a lifer for Chris and one that showed well on occasions feeding in the crop field with Bramblings.

We soon met up with Fred and Andy who were staying at Springfield (probably the last year this croft will be available for rent as the owners are selling up).

A pleasant few hours was spent looking around the island before returning to the Obs for a shower, dinner and a few beers!

Distance walked: 19.29 km

Scilly's double header - Cedar Waxwing & Cliff Swallow.

Hot on the heels of my last trip to the Isles of Scilly last year for an American Cliff Swallow (see here ) news broke of another one  found on Tresco! Following the Minsmere bird last year thats now three in three years. Chill pill taken I relaxed and didn't think anymore about it until the news broke that a Cedat Waxwing had turned up on St Agnes. Chill pill suddenly tasting bitter - there've been a few records over the last few years but no twitchable birds since the Nottingham bird in 1996!

Plans were made for a couple of days on Scilly's then cancelled then an alternative plan was made. Booing return flights from Nequay we reckoned it was possible t oget there and back in less than 24 hrs. Game on. I do love a challenge.......

It was arranged that Stu would meet me, Malc and mark on the M56 and head down in his car as mine was booked in to the garage. Mark would pick me up at 01.15 to meet up with Stu and Malc at 02.00. We'd drive though the night and get the08.45 across to St Marys and then have a quick look for the Cliff Swallow for Stuart then get the 10.15 boat to St Agnes. Great - a workable plan.............

Only it didn't quite happen like that......ringing Mark told me he'd left his photo I.D at home so had to return for it and was going to be 15 minutes late. I started walking along the lanes to meet him and save a bit of time as we were on a tight schedule. I'd got about a mile and a half before I saw his headlights coming towards me. Bad news. Somehow he'd got lost, taken a wrong turn and hit a curb. His front tyre was completely flat. No problem, 5 minutes to change the wheel and we'd be on our way. 'Ummm, Mark, wheres the wheel brace'? 'What wheel brace. Dunno mate'. Shit. We had no choice but to limp back to mine, grab some tools and change the wheel in the pouring rain and pitch black on an unlit lane. Managing to take a chunk out of my finger and bleeding like a stuck pig the wheel was duly changed and we set off after warning the others we'd be at least 30 minutes late.

'Mark, we need this turning'.
'No, its the next one'.......

We ended up on the M6 at Lymn and having to do a quick turn round as we'd missed the correct junction.

It was blowing a gale and the rain was biblical. Stewart did a great driving job and we arrived at Newquay airport in the dark at around 07.30 to be told the bad weather wasn't moving through as fast as the weather forecast had promised and our flight was likely to be delayed until at least 10.00!

Agghhhhh. Luckily, we had a back up plan. We were going to miss the scheduled boat to St Agnes but had a telephone number for a charter boat. A quick chart with other birders at the airport and we'd arranged the Falcon for £50.00 between 7 of us on a one way trip. We also arranged a minibus to take us directly from the airport to the quayside. Fantastic. Game on again. We eventually took off around 10.15 and the rest of the arrangements went like clockwork.

The Cedar Waxwing had been a bit elusive but we struck lucky. After a 10 minute walk from the Quayside we found a small group watching the bird and for the next 2-3 hours we kept a respectable distance and watched as it fed on coprosma berries and then retreated into the bushes to digest its meal.

What a smart little bird - I even heard it call once. A long drawn out trill, higher pitched and more weedy sounding than our normal Bohemian Waxwings.

With Stuart still not having seen the Cliff Swallow we decided to head to the Turks Head for a dressed crab salad and a drink before getting the scheduled boat back to St Mary's at 14.15. Arranging with our friendly cab driver to meet us at the Quay.

The Swallow was getting seen regularly at the airfield and was actually flying around our plane when we landed but by the time we got off birders watching it told us it had headed towards New Town. Deciding that was a good starting point we instructed our driver to head that way. As soon as we got there we met Chris Webb (Spider) who pointed it out flying around the airport buildings! Fantastic and with the sun out the Cliff Swallow put on a display along with the local Swallows and House Martins  for the next few hours until our flight home! With an Isabelline Wheatear on the grass surrounding the runway it was a case of East meets West.

This time I did have my camera and although it was moving so fast photography was virtually impossible I did manage a few record shots.

The Issy Wheatear was always on view and provided a nice distraction when the swallow occasionally flew out of sight.

Our flight actually left early so we arrived in Newquay ahead of schedule at 18.15 so we managed a good hour of the drive in daylight in vastly improved weather conditions than on the way down. An uneventful journey was enlivened by lots of banter and laughter and before we knew it we were back at our meeting point where  I off loaded my gear and Mark drove me home.  I eventually arrived at 11.55 and climbed straight into my much needed bed.

Mark trying to be inconspicuous behind a rock whilst photographing the Waxwing.

Pallid Harrier on the Dee estuary - potentially a 1st for Cheshire.

Pallid harrier is one of those rarities that seem to have got commoner over the last decade as they've increased their breeding range westwards into Finland. A pair also bred for the 1st time in Holland this year and there was a long staying male displaying at Bowland. With a winter harrier roost off parkgate Old Baths we've been hoping for a Pallid Harrier for some time - especially as their now almost expected on our annual Shetland jaunt. The 1st one I ever saw was when I was working in Finland in 1983 when it was still scarce over there and I twitched it with a mad group of Finnish birders. The first UK one I saw was the juvenile at Winterton, Norfolk in June 2006 - I took a very young Dan Pointon along with me! Photo's of this bird I took are below:

When Alan Davies reported he'd seen an interesting, small, long winged harrier distantly on the Dee estuary last week my interest was aroused. Unfortunately I couldn't get down during the week and after a few days with no news it was temporarily forgotten. Until the weekend............

Independently both Eddie Williams and Mark Garner saw it and both confirmed it was a Pallid Harrier. Mark P arranged to come to our house and we travelled the short distance to the marshes in pouring rain to find we'd just missed the harrier by a few minutes! It was quite a social gathering of Cheshire & Wirral's finest waiting patiently in the pouring rain. At this point the bird was tentatively being aged as an adult female, not a juvenile, and to make things even more confusing there was a ring-tailed Hen Harrier in the same location that some people were watching whilst others were watching the Pallid Harrier! It didn't help when people claimed they'd seen it then asked what it looked like and what the identifying features were. No wonder the bird information services got their undies in a twist on the Sunday and were putting out Pallid / Hen Harrier!

After a long wait the bird appeared again and flew past at distance before pitching down into the marsh where it spent the next 90 minutes barely visible. A Hen harrier appeared and we were all watching that and comparing diagnostic features when the Pallid decided to fly again! This time it put on a good show to an appreciative audience and video footage and photo's were obtained seemingly proving it was an adult female.

Mindful of the spectre of hybridisation with Hen Harrier (common in Finland) a great deal of attention was paid to the all important wing formula. Jack Ashton Booth's blog was great help in this respect:  http://raptor-id.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/harrier-hack-1.html?m=0

A bird we also saw at Loch Hillwell, Shetland that had been apparently oiled by a Fulmar also caused a lot of discussion at the time. See here: http://birdingfrontiers.com/2011/10/13/juvenile-pallid-harrier-identification/

Overall we were happy it was a sub adult female rather than a juvenile. I didn't take my camera with me because of the pouring rain. Luckily Simon Slade was braver than me and took the pictures below.

A great afternoons birding with great company, a good craic, some good discussion and some good birds. As well as the Pallid Harrier there was a supporting cast of 3 Short-eared Owls (all in the air together), Hen Harrier, at least 3 different Marsh Harriers, Sparrowhawk, Merlin, Peregrine and Kestrel as well as at least 2 Great-white Egrets (seen together).