The storms keep rolling in

First-winter Kittiwake heading down-channel

More gusts and bluster over high tide, a few more hours atop the sea wall, a few more seabirds bagged.  An adult-winter Mediterranean Gull went up-channel and two each of Great Skua and Kittiwake down.  No divers, no auks.  A very quick look at the pools produced naff all of note.

You know, they do say that climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of storms in the UK,... so, whilst your kids' futures are a total clustf*ck of accelerated sea level rise, rising temperatures, extreme winter precipitation and flooding, endless summer droughts and heatwaves, the failure of critical infrastructure from water supply to healthcare, ecosystem collapse, international instability, mass movements of refugees, shortages of raw materials and commodities, etc., etc., with a bit of luck, in the short-term, we should get a few extra Kittiwakes in the county.

YAY!

Yet more seabirds

Another half-decent few hours at a chilly and westerly swept Goldcliff Point (luckily we were tucked out of it with tea and chocolate biscuits on tap).  Highlights included: adult Little Gull, Great Northern Diver (it's been a good year for these), two pale phase Pomarine Skuas, two Great Skuas (one coming right in over the point) and 22 Kittiwake.  The one member of 'Team Point' doing a Gwent year list was beside himself with glee.  Unfortunately this was the end of the era of comfy seawatching, from now on it's back to the sea-wall with us.  This time next week it will be a flask of lukewarm, metallic-tangy tea; the twin trails of nose across glove; and the creak and squeal of compacted spine and corroded tripod head,... *sob*. 

At Goldcliff Pools conditions were bloody awful (neither tea nor biscuits on tap) and only a Greenshank made it into the notes app. 

 Bonxie coming in to the point,...

... Bonxie passing over the point.

Wholemeal crusts

Popped in on Ynysyfro in the hope that a roaming Whooper Swan (or seven) had dropped in,... they hadn't.  Also fed the ducks at Fourteen Locks, Newport's premier venue for random combinations of polluted Mallard DNA.

Ducky-poos! 

First-winter Mudwangler.

Oh dear.

Barney,... not quite Wilma

 Two of the Great Skuas in the, slightly murky, estuary this morning.  Difficult to be sure just how many were knocking around but 5-10 would probably cover it.

First-winter Shag just off the point, had a standard metal ring on the right leg, same bird as seen at Severnside?

Storm Barney produced a few seabirds off Goldcliff Point today including two Gwent tart-ticks: Razorbill and Shag.  Had I not got stuck in traffic it would have been three but Guillemot eluded me again, definitely my Gwent list bogey.  Bird of the day, however, was probably a brief Slavonian Grebe on the water just off the point, all the briefer for me thanks to a show of despicable blocking tactics by the former county recorder (ungentlemanly conduct, bringing the game into disrepute, etc., yellow, borderline red, card behaviour).  The best non-seabird was a late Swallow heading off towards Weston-super-Mare.

Haven't had a bad few days 'channel-watching' with Common Scoter, Great Northern Diver, Leach's Petrel, Gannet, Shag*, Slavonian Grebe**, Arctic Skua, Great Skua, Razorbill*, auk sp., Black Guillemot* and Kittiwake all putting in appearances.  Just waiting for the Surf Scoter to come and visit now. 

* - Gwent and patch tick; ** - patch tick.     

The perfect wave of improbability

Remember me, Captain?

There are many obstacles placed before the frustrated seabirders of Gwent, dubious geographical location (does that count as sea?), distance to the deepwater channel, a limited choice in observation points, etc.  However, it is the evil conjoined twins of disbelief and self-doubt that are the most impassable impediments.  Anything half-decent flying up or down-channel is instantly trailed by a dense fret of vacillation.  But add the slightest imperfection of viewing conditions, or brevity of sighting, and the water at the foot of the sea wall broils and froths, spray fills the air and a nigh impregnable wall of watery irresolution rushes skywards.  And there you are, at the foot of an impossibly vertical torrent of unlikelihood, clinging to your possible penguin or probable petrel.  Momentarily a troubled, colourless face peers back then,… the wave breaks and crashes down, crushing down, pummelling the olive clad body without and the ornithological spirit within.  The under-current swirls around once planted, sliding, slipping, flailing feet.  Swept out into the sea of not-quite-knowing, gasping, thrashing, turning to see,… to see nothing but unbearable wave after wave of incredulity, bearing down, barrelling down.  Submerged, wide-eyed, white-eyed, silent screams; brine-filled convulsions, lungs burst and from your grasp slips the prize find; down, down into the weedy, eely-mouthed darkness to a silty-soft, cold as death, hagfish-filled (thats-what-you-get-for-birding-on-the-)bed.

How’s it above?

And so it was.  An auk, arse-on, going away, Avonmouth-bound at a rate of (no [knots], only Barwit of note on the wader front).  White below, black tail, white rump, WHITE RUMP!  Get on this!  There's white on the upperparts, THERE IS WHITE ON THE UPPERWING!  GET ON THIS!  It ploughs on towards blighty.  GET ON THIS!  Directly away, following an upriver furrow, lost amongst the frothing white horses.  PANIC!  A squall murks the background, landmarks blur, ill-formed directions are ineffectually blurted.  The arse is lost in the distant foam and all that remains is an alcidic etching on the retina.  A resignation settles on the flock, a helplessness learnt of innumerable unidentified feathery specks.  The one has all but got away. 

Tiddlers in a jamjar?

But it couldn’t be anything else.  There is nothing else it could be.  Solace?!  Who will give me solace?  The good book is sought, offered and, once found (in a glove-compartment beneath the sticky tin of sugar dusty sweets), consulted.  And from the bible-black-backed tome comes forth the flickering light of faith.  No, really, there is nothing else it could have been.  A phone call to Severnside and tweet to the ether (carefully caveated with ‘possibles’, ‘maybes’, ‘keep your eyes open fors’ and ‘he’s not 100% buts’) and,… and that’s all that can be done.  Not that that knowledge halts the wind-whipped waves of despair and self-loathing.  AAARGH! Didn’t nail it.  F***CK!  A county first.  Definitely didn’t get enough to get it accepted.  Jeeebus!  Single observer.  No photo.  Didn’t happen.  Sob.  

When she smiles, is there dimples?

[Ping]

“Thanks… Just had close views of Black Guillemot off Severn Beach”

Oh, Twitter how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.  Get in!  I’m bloody having it!  Will it come back down?  Keep flipping looking. 

Rock-a-bye baby?

Then,…

[Ping]

“Black Guillemot showing well Blackrock… on the rocks.”

Slamming of car doors, revving of engines, screeching of brakes and passengers, then brakes again,… Blackrock.  It was here three minutes ago,… it’s here now!  Lappage, photographage, rejoicage, oh-bugger-it-just-flew-offage,… more birding, then home. 

Oh, my dead dears!

First-winter Black Guillemot, Blackrock, Gwent.  If it had flown by Goldcliff Point in this fashion much less anguish would have ensued.  Photo by Tom Chinnick. 

First-winter Black Guillemot, Blackrock, Gwent.  It climbed out of the water on several occasions, maybe not 100% healthy.  Again, photo by Tom Chinnick.

“Un homme qui dort,…”

 
“When a man is asleep, he has in a circle around him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host.  Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth's surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks.  Suppose that, reclining in a ribeira, say, after a lunch of ham and cheese rolls, sleep descends upon him while he is staring up at the canopy: then the world will fall topsy-turvy from its orbit, his chosen cradle will carry him at full speed through time and space, and when he opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to sleep months earlier and in some far distant country.  Not knowing where he is, he cannot be sure at first who he is; he has only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an non-birder’s consciousness; he is more destitute of human qualities than the city banker; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which he is, but of various other places where he had birded, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from above to draw him up out of the abyss of not-being, from which he could never have escaped by himself: in a flash he would traverse landscapes formed over untold millennia, and out of a half-visualised succession of stone walls and vegetation, would put together by degrees the component parts of his ego.”

Marcel Proust (had he fallen asleep in Poço da Agua on 19th October 2015 whilst looking for yankee warblers)

Yep, another grey and rainy morning in Gwent,... how did you guess?


NB. Quotation marks may have been misused and abused in the production of this bog post. 

“Bloody hell there’s another pewee!”

Not a phrase you expect to hear whilst birding in the WP but Peter got to utter it as we walked back from obtaining video/recordings of the calls of the original bird at lunchtime today.  The second bird was every bit as vocal as the first making bagging a few more video clips/sound recordings easy-peasy-jack-n-squeezy.  

Our descent to the village was interrupted by news of Swainson’s Thrush back along the track to the Lighthouse Valley so we pootled along for that and then headed for coffee.

Just before dark news of a female Golden-winged Warbler soon became news of a Blue-winged x Golden-winged hybrid at Da Ponte.  During a few brief views, I managed to get one sharp(ish) shot of it (see below).   In addition to what you can see in the image (there should be much better available tomorrow), the bird has two strong yellow wing bars, grey lesser coverts, grey edges to the remiges (making for a largely grey closed wing), possibly a grey mantle (did I see this? Did I imagine it?), olive-green rump/back and a largely grey tail with a fair bit of white on the outer tail feathers.  From the limited amount of stuff to hand this evening, we're going with 1st-winter ‘Brewster’s Warbler’ type but it will be interesting to see it better tomorrow.

Hybrid wobbler at ISO 12,800

See previous posts for shiteness of photos during this trip. Pretty sure it is all Nikon Capture NX-D’s fault now, doesn’t paper to be applying the settings on export,… go figure?!  Try clicking on the image, p'raps that'll help.  I'll redo them all on my return,... if I can be arsed.  

Eastern Wood-Peewee

Saw the peewee *very* briefly seconds after Pierre found it,... three hours later, saw it properly; in the intervening period heard it calling but failed to identify it,... aaaargh, what a bloody doofus.

Cracking addition to the growing list of megas found in the Lighthouse Valley though.

ON MY AZORES LIST!!!

The falling rares

As Margaret Postgate-Cole might have said,...

They dropped from their western sky, in a still afternoon, when no wind bore them whirling on, but thickly, silently, they fell, like ashes wiping out the noon; and wandered exhausted thence, for thinking of a gallant multitude, which now all drownèd lay, slain by no wind of age or pestilence, but in their beauty strewed like snowflakes falling on the Atlantic waves.

Incredible on here today,... a minimum of 24 yank landbirds of 10 species dropped onto the fields around the village including: three Buff-bellied Pipit, American Robin, Gray-cheeked Thrush, seven Red-eyed Vireo, two Philadephia Vireo, Blue-winged Warbler, Ovenbird, three Scarlet Tanager, four Rose-breasted Grosbeak and two Indigo Bunting.  Gawd knows how many didn't make it to this tiny rocky outpost.

Veery still present in Fojo too.

Blue-winged Warbler. A gem. Quite a moment when this popped up out of the grass.

Ovenbird found on the back of a decaying, rust-ridden, pick-up just before dark. Perfect rare habitat.

Veery

The third first for the Azores of the trip, the first from the 'right' side of the pond.  Mind you, the RAW converter/Blogger interface is still doing it's level best to screw up my pics.

A Wood Warbler not a wood warbler

The Wood Warbler reappeared near the power station, rarest bird I have found this trip, knocks American Redstart into a cocked hat.  However, the big news of the day was bagging the Siskin, flew over moments before the above popped out.  Azores tick! 

Blocked

The westerlies are blocked by the easterlies, the Buff-breast was blocked by the White-rump and the American Goldie was blocked by a Starling.  I walked flipping miles today, including a not insignificant amount of ascent and descent,... for nothing but waders.  Buff-breast was an Azores tick mind.  Whoopee!

 Buff-breasted Sand with white-rumped interloper.

American Golden Plover with fame hungry Starling.

Still, my current RAW converter/Blogger is, or are in combination, doing something fupping weird to my pictures. Will update them on my return to the land of Photoshop,... for now,... squint.

PS. I assume y'all know, the 'official Azores bird news' is available here.

Azores acro

A morning of tip-tap, leaf twitching rain gave way to glorious blue bird less skies.  Bagged the Sedge Warbler at Poço da Agua then climbed up Pico and down through Da Ponte.  Had lunch at the reservoirs with the Buff-bellied Pipit, American Golden Plovers, Dotterel, Snow Buntings, etc., then down to the power station to check the Arctic Warbler site,... no Arctic Warbler.  Finally, a late wander around the village, nowt for me but Vincent pulled out an Indigo Bunting just before dark.

Two of the four White-rumped Sands tzeeting their way round and about.

Faaaaand a peanut, faaaaand a peanut,...

Found a American Redstart in the Lighthouse Valley, two American Golden Plovers between the reservoirs and the Tennessee Valley and another Corncrake in the Tennessee Valley.  Not a bad result for a slog round.

Record shot of the Yankstart, since the initial sighting(s) it has proved difficult to see and even harder to photograph.  Note the missing central tail feathers, made it look very odd in flight.  

PS. Does this picture look fuzzy?  Looks fine on my screen in the RAW converter but totally bollocksed in Blogger.  Gawd knows what is going on.   

I don't like cricket, oh no,...

Looks like this,... sounds like this. 

Today's pic-err-tures

 Hot on the heels of the Cattle Egret Gwent tick, the Cattle Egret Azores tick.

 Goatees aren't even worn by goats anymore.

 Lots of these chacking around. 

 Stalker, probably developing a taste for Wheatears as we speak.

Whinchat near Lapa; another still present in the village fields. 

PS. Doing all the picture prep with the raw converter, Photoshop free zone,... just in case they look soft as shite,... or just shite.

Corvo but not as we know it

Landed on a strangely European infested Corvo.  Wheatears flicking about all over the shop.  Headed off in search of the Arctic Warbler, found a Wood Warbler (presumably the bird from Da Ponte relocating), had a longish wait, up popped the Arctic and then headed down to the village.  Tragedy!  The shop has stopped stocking All Bran.  Pottered around the fields in a branless daze finding a Corncrake and seeing a Sand Martin, a House Martin, a Willow Warbler and 15+ Wheatear.  Not a yank in sight.

Oggy doggy.

Wind, rain and gocklings

Mallard x 'farmyard goose' hybrid, a highpoint in an otherwise hum-drum day.

A wet and windy day on São Miguel produced the long-staying Great White Egret and flipping long-staying Pied-billed Grebe at Sete Citades/Lagoa Azul; a dose of Roseate Terns at Ponta Delgada and little else,... apart from a brood of superb intergeneric hybrids at Lagoa Azul; accompanied by a female Mallard-type and a white 'farmyard goose' they were the ugliest of gocklings.  Cannot wait to see what these turn out like.

BREAKING: rarity update

Turns out the Water Vole(s) was/were, and I quote: "... the first confirmed sighting [on the reserve]..."

BOOM! RATTY BOOM! RATTATATATTY-BOOM! RATATTY-RATATTY-RATATTY BOOM!

One's mammal patch list leaps to about 24 (if we include Feral cat, Pipistrelle sp. and a dead dolphin sp.).  I should probably invest in a bat box and mop up a few wingèd insect munchers, beyond that maybe a wandering Wild boar? Or a Killer Whale off the point?   

Two birds, one mammal

Cattle Egret on the patch today, Gwent and patch tick,... yay.

An early morning, Cattle Egret related, text from TC meant a slightly rushed cuppa and Shredded Wheat and a quick dash patchwards.  Unfortunately, as I whizzed down, the Cattle Egrets flopped over to Boat Lane and, from there, were watched to head off north-eastwards ("high,... lost in the distance,... doubt they'll come back,... no chance of locating them,...").  Bugger.

Headed off down Saltmarsh Lane.  Found a Water Vole (probably two), mammal patch tick!  I'd always put the odd report from the reserve down to a combination of rats, inexperience and string.  But there one was, felling a reed, swimming across a reen and then spending 20 minutes devouring the aforementioned reed.  I'll have to double-check there isn't a covert reintroduction scheme occurring; alternatively, I have either been walking straight past them for over a decade or they have colonised from gawd knows where.  Interesting,... in a soggy little rodenty way.

Anyhoo,... news floated across the ether that the egrets had returned to Goldcliff.  Tore myself away from ratty and headed back to Redhouse and the car, collecting a Nuthatch on the way (dwip-dwip-dwip). 

Zoom, handbrake, mini-yomp, Cattle Egrets,... tah-dah!  On the Gwent and patch lists.  Nice.

The pools also produced a male Marsh Harrier, 3 Golden Plovers, 1-2 Little Stint, 2 Ruff, 2 Spotshank and 6+ Greenshank; overhead a few hirundines, Skylark, Siskin, Mipits, etc. 


PS. Shredded Wheat eh? Never quite bottomed out whether they are for eating or scrubbing your pants out. 
PPS. Just checked,... eating apparently,... Shredded Wheat are for eating.