Nice Surprises

I'm not a fan of surprises. I like to know what's coming. Apparently, this is a sign of one of my many psychological issues, but that only matters if you listen to psychiatrists and is also getting way off the point. Much closer to - indeed right on top of - the point is that the exception to this dislike is when it concerns birds. Of course, by their nature birds are frequently surprising - just ask the lucky folks in wadebridge.

The last two days have seen some nice surprises from birds. Not Wednesday, though. Wednesday was one of those days when you just don't get anything. Even the 'ordinary' birds don't do more than be there. There's no special little moments, no Goldcrest sat on a phone wire singing his little heart out, no Robin popping up at eye level, cocking his head and going "What? Am I supposed to be scared?", not even a Woodpig falling off a bird table.

I spent a large part of Thursday at Hope's Nose. Most of that was in the morning watching the Whitethroats. First pleasant surprise is that TCCT's slash and burn version of environmental improvement [I'm waiting to see if they do something about the bracken, btw] doesn't seem to have put them off too much - yes, they've lost their two best nest sites, but they'll just squidge up and fight more. When tail-bobbing song-flights weren't enough, they'd resort to flashing their tails at each other like they're Birds of Paradise or something. It was fun and made up for the utter lack of Willow Warblers. A single 1s female Wheatear sat in a small tree, looking somewhat incongruous there I have to say. My protracted Whitethroat-watching paid a surprise dividend when one sallied into a different small tree to see off what turned out to be a Lesser Whitethroat! They pass through in small elusive numbers [I have fanciful hopes one day they might stay and breed, hah hah hah...], a possibility more than an expectation. An evening seawatch produced a feeding party of Manxies past north, followed by a single Whimbrel with 6 more hanging around on the Lead Stone. Meanwhile an adult male Wheatear hung around, possibly wondering what all the crowds [and there still were a LOT of people there, even as the sun set] were up to.

This afternoon I went for an amble around Yarner with the Folks. The first rain in ages had left the air a little fresher, and with the oaks coming into leaf it was very green there. 4 singing Wood Warblers included one which showed nicely for all of us in the usual place, despite Tilly trying her best to tangle my Dad's legs in her shiny new extendo-lead [took her just over a year to destroy the old one]. Elsewhere, a male Redstart sang, but was cunningly up-sun and flew off before he could be seen, though a little way further, a female gave us the typical view [ie. her ginger arse as she booked!]. A pair of Pied Flys nestbuilding in a nestbox was lovely to watch, though discovering that the nestboxes I so carefully mapped out have now been renumbered in 3 digits was rather vexing... Much less vexing was the flycatcher I got onto in the top of an oak - not a Pied but a Spotted! Did not expect that. Though today is dead on average arrival date, it normally takes them a few days [or weeks] to filter through, so maybe this one was en route to somewhere else? A non-bird encounter worth the telling was a Hornet, which came to have a look at us. I quite like Hornets, they're much more laid-back than jaspers, whose manic inferiority complex-laden craziness makes them far too unpredictable. You know where you are with a Hornet [ie. don't mess and we're cool].

PYL: 112