Hard to spot crake

In case you missed it, it's been Birdfair weekend down at Rutland Water. I'm normally there with my work, in fact I haven't missed a Birdfair since 1999... until this year that is. It was becoming like groundhog day, same people,  same places, same conversations... So I took a year off.

Quite often, when I've been down at the fair, there's been a fall of birds on the east coast, so it is about right that the year I don't go we have wall-to-wall strong south-westerlies. It wasn't all bad though, I took Friday off work and we were lounging about at home when a message came through that ADMc was watching a spotted crake in front of the little hide at Druridge. I was quickly on the scene and saw the bird for all five seconds through my bins before it darted left into thick grasses and wasn't seen again until much later that evening, by which time i was in the pub. Piss-poor views but enough to year-tick it.

Luckily it was picked up again this afternoon by Hector and I had much better views, brief as they were though as it crossed open ground between the clumps of soft rush.

This is my third 'patch' spotted crake. My first was in September 2002 which was found by Steve Taylor on the edge of the big pool. My second was found, but not identified, by a photographer who has snapped it on the old boardwalk in April 2013, it hung around for a week or so.

Offshore this afternoon there were 10+ red-throated divers, many still with red-throats, three arctic skuas but little else of note.

These butterflies were on the path...

Wall on knapweed

Peacock on teasel

We did some nocturnal ringing last Saturday for storm petrels. We caught one at 11.25pm - our earliest ever catch so we hoped for great things but it wasn't to be, it was another two and a half hours before we caught the second and final bird of the night. A few folk came down for a look, so it was nice to share these amazing little birds with them. Thanks to Cain Scrimgeour for this photo - if I had known I was in the shot, I might have smiled :-)

Storm petrel (Photo: Cain Scrimgeour)

White-rumped Sandpiper new for the patch

Well, 2017 has proved to be a great year for new birds on the patch, with three patch-ticks already this year and white-rumped sandpiper added to my patch list this evening making it four.

White-rumped sandpiper isn't new for the patch however, before my time, back in 1981 a white-rumper was found at Hauxley on 12th September which then relocated to Druridge Pool on 19th. It was only the third county record at the time. Any local birders remember this?

Today's bird was found on the Budge fields this morning by Dave Elliott seemingly who put it out on Twitter, but as he's blocked me I didn't see the tweet. It's the same bird first found at St. Mary's Island which then relocated to Cresswell Pond/beach earlier this week.

I was in my office by the time I heard about it and as no more news came out I didn't go and look for it. I was in the supermarket when I got a message from Jonathon Farooqi to say he was watching it from the Budge screen. Shopping was quickly done but I was held up by the damn self-service isle which wouldn't recognise the weight of my items, the woman who had to reset the machine was being particularly tardy which didn't help.

Shopping dumped at home, I headed for the patch and the Budge screen. It was empty, so I started scanning through the waders. It was all very frustrating with small groups of dunlin spread out, mostly hidden by the juncus. I couldn't find the bird amongst them and was getting worried, the light was awful which didn't help.

Something disturbed the waders and they all got up and resettled and I was joined by some other birders. Eventually I picked out a paler, greyer bird amongst the dunlin, it was asleep and partially obscured. I stuck with it and eventually got better views - it showed a broad off-white supercillium and the upper-parts were greyer than the juvenile dunlins it was with, but it was still head on. I was convinced I had the bird and then it wandered behind the juncus...

When the birds took flight again, we picked up a white-rump in the flock and were able to watch it back. It landed and gave us much better views, it was preening and showed the white rumped when it turned and spread it's tail. We watched it for another half hour or more in better light.

White-rumped sandpiper takes my patch list to 244.

Also on the fields tonight were 60-70 dunlin, 60+ black-tailed godwit, 2 ruff, juvenile spotted redshank and 30+ snipe.

Waders and warblers

It's been a bit quiet at Druridge so I've not had much to write about. We spent a long weekend in late July in Cambridgeshire exploring the fens, looking for dragonflies and butterflies.

Waders have been a bit of a highlight this week with wood sandpipers, green sandpipers and a nice juvenile spotted redshank on the Budge fields along with plenty of snipe, dunlin and redshank. They can be very frustrating to see because of the rush cover. The birds were still present this morning with at least two of each of green and wood sands.

I didn't have the big lens with me so here is a dodgy-phone-scoped pic of the spotshank

Dodgy phone-scoped shot of the juvvy spotted redshank

We put some nets up this morning for a ringing session. We had a steady morning catching 30 birds in only three nets. Warblers formed the majority of the catch, with 18 of the 30 being willow warblers and all but four of these were juveniles.

We caught two scarcities for the patch - a lesser whitethroat which is barely an annual here and even more rare - a treecreeper! Only our fourth for the site, the last being in 2012 and previously in 2011 and 2008.

Treecreeper

Lesser Whitethroat

As neither of these species breed at Druridge, it is nice evidence that local breeders are on the move already - post juvenile dispersal.

Lastly, some sad news. In my last post I mentioned checking the egret nests. Well, there were three occupied nests and a fourth that was a probable. Sadly none of the chicks fledged, probably victims of the heavy deluges of rain we had whilst hey were still in the nests. The nests aren't substantial and are open to the sky, so the prolonged and heavy rain we had probably did for them.