After a few attempts yellow-legged gull finally made its way onto the year list. Herriotts at Chew Valley Lake a fortnight ago was again the venue. The bird wasn’t obvious at first so I went for coffee at the nearby and walkable Stable Tea Rooms. Over the last five years this place has grown from a one little café into a full-fledged restaurant and farm shop. Someone’s still doing well!
On my return a birder up from Cornwall reckoned he had a yellow-leg in his scope. This is the lazy man’s approach to listing. Through my optics the colour of the legs was doubtful but his better scope made them more convincing. The bird stretched its wings to show a couple of small mirrors and, folded, they were almost non-existent. All looking good for the gull.
Best was for last as a herring gull finally loped in to confirm that ours, and one nearby, was a definite shade greyer. Year bird 183, compared with 186 in 2010. This year is also a 12-gull year versus a rather paltry 8, so gulls are doing well.
Even so birding has hit the usual doldrums. Last weekend saw another dip on the Normanton Down stone-curlews. Where can they be? The habitat looks too overgrown. A Google search was so unhelpful that my own post on not finding them in 2012 cropped up on page one.
I practically gave myself heat stroke in this year’s attempt. The walk in must have been two miles with no shade on maybe the hottest day of the summer. Not expecting to go so far, I hadn’t bothered with hat or water. I later needed a couple of pints of Type 42 at Portsmouth’s excellent Leopold Tavern to recover.
Yup, I stayed with the scummers overnight but it is a good stop for working that area next morning. I elected for reported black-winged stilts somewhere called Medmerry. This was new to me because it is new. It’s another flood mitigation scheme, like Stert in Somerset. This is how the future is going: retreat in the face of rising waters. The site isn’t ready yet so it was hard to find and I settled for a rather quiet Sidlesham Ferry.
The list did take off again on Saturday at Pilning Wetlands but not before my car saved me from one of the fiercest of downpours. Hail and thunder pounded my vehicle; not even waterproofs would have been a protection, had I been outside. It’s been said that global weirding is more scary than global warming and the weather this year has definitely shot past weird.
Anyway, wood sandpiper drew me to Pilning and sure enough a juvenile showed with its splendid brown spangled plumage. One little ringed plover was a nice bonus too.
I wasn’t prepared for the pickings on the Severn Estuary itself. Northwick Warth is the official designation here (I bundle the whole lot up as Severn Beach) and dunlin, redshank and turnstone were abundant. Among them were four red breasted individuals, which I initially took to be curlew sandpipers.
Not possible, surely? Way too early and that amount of brick red plumage must be knot. Thus I argued and it wasn’t till I got back to my Collins that I saw plates of breeding curlew sands – very red also. These must have been adults moulting back into winter colours. Twenty years of birding and I’ve never seen the species like this. It became year bird 185 too.
The remarkable variety of birds continues to astound me, from gulls to waders. Isn’t birding just the best hobby in the world?