Last knockings

Flew off Corvo at lunchtime and spent the evening in Cabo da Praia quarry. This year has been pretty quiet at this, the premier Western Palearctic site for Nearctic waders, and only produced Semi-palmated, White-rumped and Pec Sands plus Semi-palmated Plovers. Not bad, but not the range or number of species found in here over the last couple of years. It is a classic birding location though, an oil refinery on one side, fly-tipped crap dotted here and there, and the primary viewpoint consists of the remains of a construction compound complete with rusting storage containers and dilapidated security fencing, aesthetically it's right up there with some of the finer sewage works of this world.

The final full day

Three hours at the Black-throated Green site this morning produced nothing more than a slightly perturbed Woodcock. The da Ponte quarry was similarly barren but a wander back down toward Villa do Corvo resulted in my second American Great White Egret for the trip,... which was nice.

Best day of the trip?

Refound the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker this morning and, after a few frantic minutes of headless chickenry, another half dozen birders scored before it disappeared once again, hotly pursued by the local Chaffinch mafia. Managed to get quiet recordings of both feeding taps (at around 30 secs and 1 min) and calls (at around 3 mins 28 secs) amongst the general melee...

[Two warnings on this one: a. it is a large file; and b. if you can speak French be warned of some upcoming language grossièr]



Spent the rest of the morning failing to relocate the vireo before news from Flores produced ideal conditions for the most fun-filled dip in history. The frigatebird sp. had spent all morning at Santa Cruz so we decided to charter a boat. The trip over was a race across 15 miles of sun-drenched Atlantic swell in a 25 foot rib (wind in the hair, sun at one's back, blah, blah, blah...). Then followed a couple of hours sat drinking ice tea, coffee, etc. at the Buena Vista Cafe whilst the bird singularly failed to play ball. The real fun was the trip back though, in the gathering gloom and rising wind, 12 birders bounced back to base through rafts of Cory's, rain squalls and spray as Villa do Corvo shone in the distance (at least when the increasingly lumpy ocean wasn't spoiling the view). I think my enduring memories will be Pierre doing his finest impression of Washington crossing the Delaware, Stuart being pitched back and fore on a makeshift space-hopper and the sad demise of Peter's Che hat. All jolly good fun and we were safely back in time for tea.

Sloooooow day

No sapsucker, and precious little else. Sperm Whale and both Common and Bottle-nosed Dolphins were probably the best 'birds'.


Que você está olhando?

Two Azores ticks but...

Managed to catch up with the juvenile Hobby (1st for the Azores) today and, whilst staking out the bleeding sapsucker, had a flyover Kestrel. Two new falcons for my Azores list. Unfortunately, both were rather over-shadowed by the fact that only Peter managed to see the sapsucker today, despite 15 of us blitzing Fogo. Sub-tropical woodland, not the easiest habitat in which to find a woodpecker.

WHITE-EYED VIREO!

Found my second second for the WP today, will update properly tomorrow, beer taking precedence...

Update:

During the morning, Peter and I had worked our way up a small valley near the 'beanfields' finding nothing more exciting than a Lesser Yellowlegs; Peter worked his way back through the fields as I pushed on up. Dropping back into the valley, I was struck by how 'birdy' it was and briefly stopped to take a photo as it felt as though something interesting might be about to happen.


I settled down in some shade on one side, scanned across, then a small, grey-headed passerine with double wingbars and yellow underparts came into my life...

Recording one: The sound of utter panic, made moments after having seen the bird drop from a laurel about 50 yards away and instantly disappear. I somehow managed to underestimate the distance between myself and the bird, resulting in an underestimate of the birds size (hence the dendroica tag). I was also a little non-plussed as to the ID of my 'mystery dendroica' and absolutely delirious regarding the possible WP status (I think I was leaning towards Nashville, having conveniently forgotten their lack of wingbars).



Recording two: The sound of straight-forward panic, having had good views but singularly failing to digiscope the blighter, I now knew what it was but couldn't accurately describe where I was and then,... a Canary chased it off down the valley.



It took an hour for the others to arrive and two to relocate the little blighter. Two of the longer hours in my life.


Fourteen birders bagged the bird (well 14.5 if we count Peter's unborn child), my kinda size of twitch.

Seconds of a fourth/fifth

Dawn in the valley with no name was just a touch foggy. It took a good hour to locate the bird but it was still calling regularly and everyone got it; by the afternoon there were some cracking photos in the bag and I even managed some reasonable sound recordings despite the wind, rain and 15 noisy bastard birders.

If you happen to be out looking for dendroicas (and specifically a Black-throated Green Warbler) the following has half a dozen calls on it to lodge in your memory banks...



If, however, you are a budding sound recordist and you want to record at twitches this is the sort of thing more likely to be passing through your microphone [note, some anglo-saxon language may be heard near the termination of this recording]...

So not a blank day

It was all pretty quiet until lunchtime, then Pierre found a dendroica in 'the valley with no name'. Naturally, something bordering on blind panic ensued, mostly involving mud, rotten logs, a few dry-stone walls, two cows, and a small brightly-coloured passerine. By the end of the afternoon, two of us had Black-throated Green on our lists (including the esteemed author of this blog), whilst everyone else had heard it repeatedly but only managed glimpses as it flitted about in the canopy.

So nearly a blank

Spent interminable hours in Fogo and Ponte today and got the square root of bugger all for my effort. Did hear Hermit Thrush singing at one point, which caused me to scale an 8 foot dry-stone wall and scramble up an earthen bank at breakneck speed only to be met by an apologetic French face clutching an MP3 player. Also heard a quiet, disyllabic, downward inflected call, bit like Bullfinch but not so plaintive - God knows what it was. It was not unlike some Catharus calls only very weak, probably another distant playback experiment or I have walked away from a mega (let's hope the former).

After dipping on the Yellowthroats it was fast looking like consecutive blank days on Corvo until, in the gloaming, Pierre pulled out a Hudsonian Whimbrel on the airfield. The bird then flew a short distance to join two of it's European counterparts on the nearby rocks as shown below, I won't patronise you by pointing out which is which (on these views the giveaway is the stronger heard pattern).

Onto Corvo

A quick hour at Cabo added a few more White-rumps and a Pintail but the rest was yesterday's offerings reheated. We then flew out to Corvo (via Faial), on landing we were met by a TV crew, Manuel and bad news on the Yellow-throated Vireo front (no sign despite a search). Spending an afternoon crawling all over Cancales didn't help,... arse.


Another arse, the first in a new series - 'which WP rare's arse is this?'