Ticking goeth before a fall....

Many and varied are the birders who go a' twitching. While it was too cold and windy for me to sport my silliest hat, others had made more of an effort; with long green coats, shiny jewelry, impressive facial hair, unimpressive facial hair [seriously, Joe, razor! ;) ]. Yup, it was off to sunny dorset today to go after the Bufflehead!

Being of a kind, forgiving, almost you might say saintly disposition, I gave Young Man In Need Of A Shaver [that's his Native American name, btw] a lift. Defying negative news and the advice of our elders to stay in bed, we set off, soon rejoicing as the news of its refind broke. After a couple of minor navigational issues, we found ourselves trooping down the long lane [pager said '250yds', map says about 1.8km] from the Pythonically named Langton Herring and passing various famous birders coming back up. [No names - due to twitch situation, Birder Listing is not possible]. [[Joe did get to fulfill his life's ambition and speak to The Legend though. ;) ]]

The Bufflehead was even more glorious than I'd hoped, and with the aid of the Big Scope showed pretty well. Lovely little thing - very Goldeneye-like [unsurprisingly] - being around Pintail, R-B Mergansers, and even the Wigeon it came across as extremely petite and compact. It had the habit of sometimes sticking its wings back between dives - so that the tips protruded beyond its rump, and at others of lifting its [surprisingly long and actually very similar to the Hooded Merg's] tail like a Ruddy Duck, which was interesting. The light wasn't as bad as I'd feared, and the bird helpfully stayed pretty much put - at least until it started diving, anyway! Then it was up and down with almost Little Grebe frequency... I drew some sketches. They are rubbish. Nothing new there, then! Faced with the choice between walking around the bay to get a better look, or going to Radipole to get food and maybe some Bearded Tits, we decided half an hour's admiration was enough. This turned out to be a good idea.

Radipole also contained a Bun and a Karen Woolley [fresh from scoring great views of said Buffledhead - see Karen's blog for fancy pictures]. The four of us had a good wander around the reserve, but the li'l buggers were feeling elusive - chief entertainment was the chat, back-chat, and general mouse-extraction between Joe and Bun - I spent more time laughing than I did looking through my bins... :D Time caught up with our companions, and after I'd finished feeding my face [always keep an emergency flapjack in your car, folks - it might save your life! ;) ] we too headed back towards the car park. 50 yards or so down the Budliea Loop, it occurred that the 'missing' section of main path might be where the Beardies were hiding. We turned around and had barely taken a dozen steps, when two birds landed on the path in front of us. They were very flat to the ground - Sparrow-like pose. Joe got his bins up first, and those 'long-tailed for sparrows' birds were of course a pair of Bearded Tits, which proceeded to give us crippling views, first feeding on wind-blown bulrush seeds on the path, then attacking the bulrushes themselves - down to about 10' at eye level through the scopes......... Wow. They were totally unbothered by us, the people passing, the other birders who came up - incredible. Another called behind us, then flew over, but we barely noticed it or anything else for the ten minutes or so they performed.

On the way back, we stopped off at the Otter estuary for Joe to pick up LRP for his British Yearlist [he having given up on a Devon Yearlist due to missing vertebrae]. Here came the fall that took the gloss off an otherwise excellent day, and the no-claims bonus off my insurance. Bugger. The LRP was beautiful, very close, nicely active and also unbothered - this time by the legions of dog-walkers, slightly shocked-looking rich people, families with small children, and assorted 'others' wandering past at high volume. Nice bird.

And finally...... I'm not doing a yearlist, not chasing yearticks at all, so this is only because Joe asked: 139