It's not my tern today

Experienced my first proper dip of my short UK twitching career today. A Forster's Tern showed brilliantly over the weekend just around the corner in Suffolk / Essex, but I simply could not go. All my mates went and had a great time, that included sending me back-of-camera shots from the field. This afternoon I finally had a chance to go with Ben. We hoped for a repeat of yesterday's appearance at the Felixstowe Ferry gull roost, and there was a probable observation in the morning, so we left Norwich with mild optimism. We were joined by 4yo Toby...
It was cold and windy, and when we got there we were greeted by some grim faces. We walked the long way out to the only place where the roost is viewable from, and hoped for the best. Sadly, our hopes never materialized. Lots of gulls came in to roost, but not our tern. We waited and waited, scanned and scanned, but bugger all. I found a smart-looking 1cy Caspian Gull,1-2 heinei-type Common Gulls, a Med Gull, but I was so cold and so buggered that I couldn't bother getting record shots in the gloom from miles away.
On the way back to the Norwich we had the classic post-dip conversation. One day someone should write a book that collates all the dipping phrases: 'Can't win'em all', 'Part of the game', 'At least I found a Caspian Gull', 'Such a great site - I am really happy I got to know it' etc.

Baird's Sandpiper @RSPBMinsemere

Had a quiet morning with family when news broke of a Baird's Sandpiper at Minsmere. Not a mega rarity, I know, but still one I 'needed'. I couldn't go before the late afternoon, but somehow I managed to remain friendly for the rest of the day and my family didn't suffer too much from me. At 17:00 I met up with Drew and we drove down. Quick walk to East Hide and the bird was showing immediately. We had great scope views in which we appreciated the unique structure: never-ending rear and slightly down-curved bill. It was an adult with a contrasting plumage and a nice pectoral band. It fed almost constantly on the mud, mostly solitary or with Little Ringed Plover, it stayed away from the Dunlin flock. What a great little yank! I was very happy to see it, in fact it was a lifer. But photography was near impossible. The bird stayed in the distance most of the time, only just before we left it moved a few meters closer, but was still about two hundred meters away. Light was not good too - either too dark or we were looking into the sun. I am playing around now with my new phonescoping adapter - certainly need to get more practice.

Adult Baird's Sandpiper, phonescoped using Samsung Galaxy S5 through Swarovski ATX95 and Novagrade adapter

Tried shooting with my DSLR and 500 mm too, not sure if the results are any better...

We watched it and watched it, and I was mainly faffing around with my gear, failing to produce a decent photo of it. All in all the experience was great. Minsmere is really fun to visit. Tons of birds and some more quality too apart from the baird's. There was a Caspian Gull and a Yellow-legged as well; 3 Spotted Redshank; Green Sandpiper; 4 Little Ringed Plovers; 5 Bearded Tits.

Caspian Gull - 3cy?

Sunset over Minsmere

Ring and chog

Had a very nice trip down to the southwest. Lest Norwich Friday morning. My first stop was at Bray GP (Berks) for the Ring-necked Duck that took up residence there. The bird was showing staright away in the pit by the M4 with some Tufted Ducks. Great looking bird! And a WP tick for me... 

 Ring-necked Duck

The bird was lovely but I did not enjoy watching it - this pit is fenced off and surrounded by trees, so I had views of the duck mainly through branches. But there was lots of passerines there - many Redwings and few Fieldfare, and bird numbers of Siskin and Lesser Redpoll. But I had no time to linger there - I had another ringed bird waiting for me.

My next stop was at Blashford Lakes (Hampshire), where I met up with Dave, my host from CHOG. We didn't have to wait long for the Ring-billed Gull to arrive to the roost. We had OK scope views but photography was very difficult - combination of distance (maybe 300 m?) and dim light. Anyway, even in these terrible record shots it is sort of identifiable - heavy bill, pale mantle tones, faint white tertials crescent:

Ring-billed Gull - adult

And in this image it is possible to see the limited white mirror on P10:

Another fine gull there was this 2nd-winter Caspian Gull:

Also 3 Med Gulls joined the roost. This site was really good - Slavonian and two Black-necked Grebes, Goosanders and Goldeneyes, pretty good. And the gull roost is impressive.

In the evening I gave a talk to CHOG in Bornmouth, so quite many friends from Hampshire Bird Club joined as well. I really enjoyed the talk and I hope the audience enjoyed it too.

This morning I met up with Dave, Dave and Chris. The weather was pretty foul so we opted for seawatching off Milford-on-Sea, or rather watching the sea because there were few birds. We did have a Black-throated Diver and two Red-breasted Mergansers but very little else. A few Med Gulls were playing around on the promenade:

After a couple of quiet hours of watching an empty sea we decided to brave the weather and bird around Keyhaven Marshes. In recent days the marshes held Long-billed Dowitcher and Long-tailed Duck but the weather was so bad that we didn't see much. Even the locals complained about the weather ('near-impossible conditions' they called it).

And then it was the long way back home.

Many thanks to CHOG and especially to Dave for inviting me and for the warm hospitality. 

Birding at last!

Wow, this was a long break. But today I finally managed to get myself out of Norwich, courtesy of Jake and Drew. We left early and headed first to Sheringham for a couple of hours of seawatching. **Lesson 1 in UK birding - if the weather is good (like it was today), lower your expectations.** 

No wind resulted in, well, alright birding. Some movement of Red-throated Divers, Common Scoters, Guillemots, one Scaup, one Shag and a few other bits and pieces. Some divers swam rather close in:

Red-throated Diver

Red-throated Diver and Shag

Then we moved on to Cromer. By the pier the long-staying Caspian Gull showed too well at times. It was associating with a Yellow-legged Gull, and most of the time they were both perched on top of Hotel de Paris. Caspian Gull looks a bit different here compared to the more Asian birds that reach Israel. Slightly more black on the wingtip (tiny black dot on P4) and bill shape not quite the same - a bit heavier. Note that now it's growing P8 to P10 so when it finishes growing them in a couple of weeks the wingtip will have even more white.

Caspian Gull

Yellow-legged Gull 

What a brute

FF

We spent the rest of the day at Stiffkey, which was really nice even though we didn't have anything special. Lots of birds both on the scrapes and on the mudflats.

**Lesson number 2: always carry a good rifle when birding to shoot down dog walkers.**

Some highlights included 3 Curlew Sands, 2 Green Sands, 4 Rock Pipits, Peregrine, 14 Spoonbills, 1 continental White Wagtail, 2 Whinchats. Not too shabby.

Rock Pipits

Thanks to Jake and Drew for the ride and company - it was a good day indeed.

Ashdod ringing

On Friday I had a productive ringing session at Ashdod, with many migrants around. Newcomers to my site were several Sprossers:

These are not Levant Sparrowhawks on migration - this is a small part of a swarm of mosquitoes that escorted us most of the morning:

After ringing we had a quick look at the gull ponds. There were only 100 gulls left - fuscus, heuglini, cachinnans and armenicus. Among them three birds with rings - two from Finland and one from Norway, all long-staying birds that do not want to leave. Other than that several hundred Yellow Wagtail (incl. supecilliaris and beema), and a single Citrine Wagtail was a good local bird.

Ashdod gulls with KMO

Today I had the pleasure to spend a day gulling at Ashdod with Klaus Malling Olsen. He arrived a couple of days before the festival to join the Ashdod gull team (Amir, Ehud and myself) for some hardcore drop-dead gulling.
It was a terrific gull day, with peak fuscus migration. We had something like 3000 gulls, about 80% of them were fuscus. The light was excellent so we had good photographic opportunities.
It was a very educational day for me. Even after watching gulls for so many days at Ashdod, I learned so much from Klaus today. Eventually we agreed on most gulls, which was a good sign for me...

Most barabensis have left already by now, but we had a few birds, including this beautiful couple. Look at this amazing yellow tongue!

This image shows the wing pattern quite nicely, especially the black tongues all the way to P4, with strong black 'streaks' penetrating the grey.

It was another big day for rings (Ehud has the figures, possibly 50 or so), including this Swedish ring.

There were other birds too. We had two late Greater Spotted Eagles. This bird confused us a bit because of its long gape, but it is identified by the unbarred remiges and characteristic pale comma on outer primaries.

Another nice bird we had was a male Desert Wheatear. One late Pallas's Gull was nice too.

The rubbish dump was very attractive today. It was very impressive to see all of those fuscus.

This is a nice trio - fuscus, armenicus (2nd winter) and heuglini (3rd winter):

And a close up on the heuglini admiring the Israeli scenery. Note the still growing P10 - typically late moult of this species:

we had very large numbers of cachinnans, almost all 1st-winters.

Ashdod gulls

So, I have some birds of my own too...

Continued yesterday's trend of wasting my time, and had a useless day attempting to catch gulls. They were so nervous today - two kites hung around the rubbish dump the whole day and prevented the gulls from feeding and us from catching gulls.

During the day I had some Finnish clolur rings on fuscus, including this 2cy seen for the first time in Israel.

The gulls against the dark sky provided some photographic opportunities.

This is an adult cachinnans:

And a mixed flock spooked by a kite - fuscus, heuglini, cachinnans and armenicus:

Audouin's Gull

This morning I had a brief visit at Ashdod rubbish dump, to collect an exhausted Caspian Gull that was found by the workers there. A quick scan through the gulls - bang! 1st-winter Audouin's! Unfortunately it took off very fast and flew towards the beach. No images - camera was in the car. I chucked the poor exhausted caspian in the car, and sped off to the beach, but I saw no gull roost and no sign of my gull. Hope it sticks around for some time, though they usually don't these guys...

Chukars were very vocal, among some nice almost-spring vegetation.



Hybrid Laughing X Siberian Gull:


This Grey Heron was very happy among the roosting gulls.

Ashdod rarities

This morning we had a gull-workshop at Ashdod with the top Israeli gullers - Ehud, Amir and Sassi. Not too many gulls about but as always the variety is terrific - many fuscus, heuglini, cachinnans and armenicus, with smaller numbers of intermedius, barabensis and a possible michahelis that didn't allow good views. Still so much to learn on the variation of this group.

We had an adult Common Gull - a pretty tame bird. As the name implies, it is a good rarity in Israel...

Numbers of Pallas's Gulls typically rise during January. Today about 20 birds:

On the way out Ehud found two Desert Wheatears - a good winter bird for this area. This is a record shot of the male:

Ashdod beach

This morning had quite a good time at Ashdod. Started with some gulling by the rubbish dump. Many gulls but few colour rings, and no outstanding gulls. Still waiting for a glaucous...
This pretty fuscus is on the pale end of the spectrum:

This 2cy cachinnans shows the classic head shape:

Then I headed to the beach for some seawatching. Quickly I found the Scopoli's Shearwater - the same individual found by Amir Ben Dov on Saturday. The bird was patrolling up and down the beach, very close to the shore. However, the wind was strong and the sea was pretty rough, so the bird never settled on the water, and the spray made my life difficult. I didn't have such an amazing experience like Amir had on Saturday, but still had amazing views. Since this species virtually disappeared from Eilat, it became very difficult to get good views like this in Israel.

It's such a cool bird!

And just to share the atmosphere:

While waiting for the shearwater to fly by, quite a few gulls flew past me. This is a 2cy armenicus:

And a 2cy fuscus:

Several Pallas's Gulls were about. This is a 3cy:

And this is an adult: