Good weather; good patch birds : So why am I still frustrated ?

November 05, 2020

After many days of heavy rain and winds, which nevertheless failed to produce seabirds here it all calmed down yesterday.

Excellent, I thought, Wains Hill vizmig here I come.

After an initial burst of a few chaffinches and a single flock of Redwings that all dried up so I met my wife in a cafe as it was our last chance before lock-down 2.

While there I got a phone call from Steve to say he was watching a Snow Bunting down to 6 feet (later to become 2 Snow Bunts).

So after lunch I set off to the Yeo. The tide was now fully out and the buntings were thought to have vanished into the, impenetrable, saltmarsh.

Sure enough there was neither sight nor sound of anything except rock pipits , and a single Meadow Pipit on an unattractive fence

As I left the concrete path to walk the short distance to the next gate I saw a small bird flash from one low bramble to another and heard a quiet and brief, harsh churr call. I was instantly alert to a likely Dartford Warbler as they tend to move late in the year and both my previous patch ones have been in late autumn or winter. That was 6 or more uears ago though.

I froze and waited and sure enough after a few mins a male Dartford appeared about 8 feet away in a tiny grassy bramble patch.

I swung the camera round and it vanished. I waited and it reappeared but only for a second before flying 2 feet to a bigger bramble. Again I waited and as soon as it re-appeared at the top of the bramble I pressed the shutter.

As you can tell, I just wasn't fast enough.

It returned to the tiny clump so I resumed waiting, and waiting, and yet more waiting. After 10 mins I backed off, sat down, poured a coffee and continued waiting. After another 10 mins I tried pishing, then playing a Dartford call, then wandering off and sneaking back every few minutes to check from distance. All to no avail, so after about three quarters of an hour I gave up and traipsed back to the road having another slow check for the buntings all the way.

The next morning (today as it happens) I abandoned vizmig to head directly up to the Yeo while the tide was high. The idea was that this would flood the saltmarsh and any Buntings would be on the track or the grassy bank.

One big difference was the fog. Another was the clear fall of thrushes with a few each of Fieldfares, Redwings, Blackbirds and song Thrushes in the single hedge leading to the seawall path.

As I approached the saltmarsh the fog became my friend as I picked up a Merlin sitting on one of the 4 posts there before it saw me.

This was way closer than I usually get and I got three to four shots before it decided it would head off.

Once again I slowly checked the saltmarsh edge and grass but once again the Buntings were not present.

I then checked each bramble to confirm that the Dartford had indeed left before heading for the hide and a coffee. There were a few thrushes sitting on the far sides of bushes from the hide but 30 m,ins did not reveal anything though I thought once, that I heard a short trill similar to the one I had heard from a Bearded Tit on the levels but nothing showed or called again so I put it down to an odd Cettis call and left.

Back at the Yeomouth I heard a shout and looked up to see Paul g who watches the Weston patch, on the far side of the river. The phone signal was so bad that even though we eventually got a call to work I could still hear him better if he just shouted. He was able to identify a distant goose I had seen and heard earlier. My guess of Egyptian had been wrong as it was in fact a bar-headed (or a hybrid). It was directly into the sun, which had now appeared your honour!

Paul then picked up a redhead Merganser and texted me with the direction. Unfortunately, though I could just about make out a shape it was far too far for a patch year tick (and one every 5 years bird).

I then heard definite Bearded Tit pings coming from the pools I had visited earlier. In calm weather these calls carry a very long way, so I set off back through the mud to check again.

Sure enough, once I had got back into the pools and past the hide I could clearly hear a couple of birds in the reeeds. This is where it again got frustrating. It took 15 minutes to get even a glimpse of a male, and my attempts to photograph the reeds where the calls originated just lead to lots of pics like this one

At one point I saw definite movement but it was just a reed bunting.

I took a short video, just to capture the sound but that was too quiet so I set up my recorder. Immediately silence fell ! After 10 minutes the pinging restarted, this time from a hedge and I could track the sound as the birds moved quickly along the hedge and into the second reed bed.

At least I got something. Back home I downloaded it, cleaned up the background and got a sonogram

That would have been the end of the frustration if it had not been for a text from Paul saying "Hen Harrier passing you out over the estuary now" Hen harrier is very rare here and I could not see the Estuary from down by the pools. By the time I got back to the path it was long gone.

So 7 hours over 2 days and I am delighted to have found 2 patch rarities but frustrated to have missed a further 3 and also more annoyed than I expected not to get a photo.

After all, everything else popped up and perched out apart from the wanted birds, For instance this Wren