Scorchio!

Sorry about that one...

Well, work's been fun. For a given definition of 'fun' that includes unleashing the Horror of me in shorts upon my poor unsuspecting colleagues... Oh those poor bastards.


;)


Just a quick update, though it might get extended later..

Right then, today I braved the baking heat to go chasing poor innocent odonata again. Over to Smallhanger I did toddle, where the brisk breeze kept the action limited to wherever there was some shelter. And indeed there was a LOT of action, as you'd expect from what is probably the single best place for dragons in Devon. [Well, unless you stock up on chav repellent and try Stover - the two are pretty close]. Azures and Emeralds made up the bulk of the damsels - unsurprising at this time of year -  likewise with darters forming the majority of the dragons.

There were a good number of Keeled Skimmers to be found, with all the hawker types represented, but only a single Broad-bodied Chaser. I only found a single Scarce Blue-tail, but there were plenty of Small Reds as compensation. Though the little bastards made a habit of flying just as I'd set up a shot and was squeezing the shutter! I eventually took the hint and started playing  the 'ID The Not-An-Adult-Male Darter' game. Exercise in masochism self-education. Helps when you realise that the 'big ones' are Keeled Skimmers...

There were a few birds about, too. Swallows, with a cheering number of juveniles among them, and the odd martin were passing eastward. A family of Bullfinches livened lunch up, but the hoped-for fly-over raptor failed to materialise. I went for a shufti over to the other side, and found a couple of fishing ponds I didn't know existed, plus a few more little dinky pools.

A couple of other Fearless Hunters showed up as I was on my way out, but aside from them and the odd dog walker I had the place to myself. Which was nice; aircraft aside it was pretty peaceful, just a constant buzz of busy wings..

Ouch..

No birding today as I was laid up with a crippling headache... Just on the left side - weird.

Anyway, I'm mostly posting to say I've spotted a couple of minor screwups and have corrected them. The most important being my inability to read my own writing; at least 40 juvenile Kittiwakes, not at least 40%.. Dear oh dear.. They did make up about 40% of the first couple of hours' birds, but the vast majority later on were adults.

Also, I've not specified what the Torbay Effect is for my non-local readers;

Hope's Nose and Berry Head are peninsulas framing Tor Bay, which is roughly 5x5km. The two promontories are high ground with cliffs of 200' and more, while the back of the Bay is lower more rounded terrain, though still climbing up eventually. It's the only decent shelter for a long way - indeed it was used as the storm shelter for the Royal Navy when they blockaded Napoleon's France 200 years ago - and usually has anchored ships in it in seawatching conditions.

A lot of birds - especially gulls, terns, and skuas [the latter perhaps more likely after the former!], though also powerful fliers like Gannets and divers - will sometimes move in and stay put, or at least rest up a while. When watching at Berry Head, you will often see Kittiwakes moving south come out of the lee of the land, hit the main force of the wind and find they are making no headway. They often either drop to the sea or turn back into the Bay.

The Torbay Effect thus is when there is a large discrepancy between the two sides of the bay, caused by birds either already there moving on, or coming into and not leaving.

Swift Update

I forgot again...

The main group of Swifts left on Tuesday, with only two hangers-on about on Wednesday. This date, 31/7, is the joint earliest departure date since I've been checking. I suspect the weather may have had something to do with it... The high count of 94 is the highest single count I've had, so the Swifts at least seem to have done ok. But as they are quite capable of trotting over the Channel to forage and their young can take gaps in feeding, perhaps this isn't unexpected?
The House Martins have fledged - though I haven't been able to get a count and I think they too have gone. Down side of work, I'm afraid..

Speaking of young; parties of juvenile Sparrows, plus a band of juv. Blue and Great Tits have been about, also a juv. Blackcap. Goldfinches have continued to be regulars on the sunflower hearts - one good thing that may be due to the devastation of the local trees? Do Goldies prefer more open areas, being into thistles and suchlike? Or maybe they're just desperate for food full stop....

Watching Turnstones

Is something I've done both today and yesterday. I like them. They're incredibly confiding, which helps, but they're also so fascinatingly bright. No dull grey uniformity for these little ones, oh no.

Apologies for the lateness, by the way, but I became distracted by some people in blue and white...
:)

Right then...
It's funny how things work out; I ended up spending yesterday at Dawlish Warren, mostly in the very pleasant company of two extremely able birders who shall of course remain nameless. As well as plenty of fascinating chit chat, there was counting Common Terns and then looking for them, plus the Case of the Invisible Turnstone to deal with. How do you see an invisible Turnstone? Look somewhere completely different... ;) It was fun. :)

The birds around were nice but not spectacular - none of the Roseates I was hoping for, let alone a KP [they're a myth, a myth, I tell you!]. There was an amazingly pale juv. Ringo to look at, and the Bight waders kept me busy as they moved in, out, and indeed sometimes did shake it all about.. [Sorry]

Ok, I've just re-read that and I feel I ought to delete the whole thing apologise. Today has been a lot of fun, you see and I'm a bit hyper. Well, I'm grinning like a maniac [what's new?] and not without reason, as you shall see...

Thing is, I was due to work today, but it was cancelled so instead I went and spent six hours staring at the sea off Hope's Nose. If you've already seen Devon Bird News you can probably take a guess at what's coming.... :D

The weather was interesting, to say the least. A brisk to strong SSW, wandering SW and easing a bit, with blazing sunshine interrupted by some very sharp showers. In other words, not unlike a toned down version of the weather on the Day of the Big Shears at Porthgwarra.
I wasn't expecting much, to be honest, with it getting very sunny as I dragged up at Going To Work time. But there'd been a Great Shear past Exmouth the day before, so I thought to myself, 'Well, you won't see anything in bed [though I do have audiomig ticks from there! ;) ] and what else is there to do?' Self then replied 'SLEEEP!' but was voted down. A sharp shower on the way gave me a bit more hope, and my first scan confirmed that it had been a Good Idea - two Balearics!

Though passage waxed and waned, it kept going, with birds coming in pulses as they maneuvered to avoid the showers. It was also very notably one way traffic, the only recorded birds going north were 4 Scoters, 3 Fulmar, and 2 Manxies! Having seen how the other sites did, my results make for interesting reading;

0750-1400. All birds south.

Cory's Shearwater 1 [at 0814, in the main Manx line]
Great Shearwater 1 [at 0923, in the 'why is it so far out!' line]
Sooty Shearwater 1
Balearic Shearwater 9
Manx Shearwater 1043  [with hourly totals of 56, 157, 389, 96, 249, 96]
Great Skua 1
Pomarine Skua 4 [including 2 4cy - dark and light - together, also a superbly spooned dark morph]
Arctic Skua 4
Arctic Tern 1 [nice and close at 1351]
Common Tern 4
Commic Tern 3 [probably Common]
Roseate Tern 2 [together at 0946, one a still-streamered adult which also dived beautifully!]
Gannet 250
Kittiwake 172 [about 40 juveniles!]
Fulmar 36
Common Scoter 7
Razorbill 3
Turnstone 1
Spotted Redshank 1 [called as it flew over!]
+ Ringed Plover 1 [downed by very heavy shower and wandered about on the rocks in front of me - a distance of 30-40 feet - for about 10 minutes {drying out!} before moving on]
Yellow-legged Gull 2 [both juveniles, one passed south, another came and sat on the rocks the Ringo had vacated for more than an hour.]

Chuffed would be an understatement! Roseys on my patch!! Wooohooo!!!!!!!!!!!! And what a bird that adult was [I think the other was a juv., but I admit my attention was elsewhere and then they were in the sun]. I couldn't believe my eyes as I watched it come, with those massive streamers, then it just angles down 45° and flies into the sea! Oh, what a beauty....


The Spotshank is also a Patch Tick - that call had me scanning frantically before I realised it had gone over the top! And the Yellow-leg just plonked down with a few Herrings and Geebs, had a preen and crashed out. It only went because a couple of fishermen flushed it, and then only when they got to about 10 feet from it! If I'd had a camera with me even I could have nailed it. Ah well.

The hourly Manx totals are interesting, aren't they? They give an idea of how variable things were, with it very dependent on how the showers went by. I took hourly figures for Gannets and Kitts also; the Gannets built up before dropping off, the Kitts started the most numerous, dropped a touch, then stayed consistent, then dropped drastically. Also interestingly, aside from 2 of the Balearics, all the 'good' stuff went by outside the two big Manx hours.

Oh yeah, big shears... Also the other fancy shears and indeed the skuas and terns. The latter two's differences I reckon are due to the Torbay Effect - likewise the Kitt numbers and proportions. But how did Berry and I miss each other's birds [unless they were doing loops, which is of course possible]? Aside from me not being there at 0630 [the shame..], the answer's simple - the showers. They were very compact and sharp, so the birds went around them; onshore side and you see them, offshore and you don't. Also, the light was atrocious when the sun was out; the sea was at just the wrong height to reflect the sunshine in a way that made the Manxies look dusky underneath and the wind was weak enough to make them fly in a quite Balearic-like manner. Also we had the 'four ranges at once' routine going and none of them were hanging about, I can tell you. So I doubtless misidentified a few - I was being very cautious. As I was told when I started seawatching; "If in doubt, it's a Manxie."

I think this one deserves a title: 'The Day of the Roseys'!

You read the blog of a very happy birder.
:)

And Now For Your Viewing Entertainment...

Backward Birding's Dreadful Photography!!


Firstly the disclaimer...
All photographs were taken using an ancient* manual** film*** camera, with a dodgy lens of uncertain origin. As such they will offend the senses of those spoiled by digital to such an extent that various effects**** may ensue. All who view said pictures do therefore entirely at their own risk.


Also. Since the shiny new version of blogger came out, it seems that I can't make photos get bigger when you click on them. I'm sure there's a way to do it, but I'm buggered if I know how.. I will keep trying, though.
EDIT: Got it! Photos now work properly. Woo.


On with the fun!
First up, we have some pretty flowers;

From the meadow at Bystock Reserve. Aren't they purdy? Purple Orchid sp.


Next we have the Obligatory Record Shot Of What We Went To See;

Please compare and contrast with the photo Karen took of the same species at the same site last year. In my defence, it was annoyingly gusty, and the stem was swaying right through my focal plane and out the other side... New lens still needs getting used to, I think. But you can see what it is, at least.

Now for a bird!

  Here purely because I finally found a Redstart willing to sit still enough close enough for me to get! I'm still over the moon! :D Again with the new lens, which is why it isn't a pin-sharp photoscope shot - I was using said scope as a rest, but didn't have the other lenses which I can use with it. Oh well.
I got a Redstart!

Ahem.

Back to the dragons, and this one from Aylesbeare; a reprise of pathetic failures in the past to get a hand-held fly-past shot of an Emperor;

Actually worked!!!
I've left this fairly uncropped, as I think it works better than a tight close up.


Last and definitely least, an example of how my record shots usually come out. I took this one in a rush, from a bad light angle [to get a side view] while it was staying still. It turned out I had good reason to rush, as within 20 seconds of my taking this - while I was lining up a better picture - it took off [due to a low-flying Peregrine] and didn't come back! My attempt at a flight shot caught it with wings exactly side-on, naturally...

Th-th-th-th-that's all folks!






Wait, you want to know what that little blurred thing is?? It's a tern. Beyond that, I'm not certain myself...*

If you think you know, or have an interesting theory [other than Lord Lucan, we all know the nose is wrong], please feel free to Comment!



[[*I got it second-hand. 14 years ago.]]
[[**This means you set the aperture and exposure and so on yourself. And do the focussing. Stone Age technology. ;) ]]
[[***This is how people used to do things, with light-sensitive chemicals on a roll, which you wind on {by hand} to expose images one at a time.]]
[[****May include but not limited to; blindness, drooling, vomiting, mild nausea, hair loss, scrofula, moderate nerve degeneration, low level hallucinations.]]
*To be more specific, it's a juv. marsh tern; it looked like a White-winged. Which is impossibly early.. So I don't know.

Yeah, That WAS Good

I wasn't intending to watch the opening ceremony, but ended up staying up for it all. I always like the parade of athletes, but the often pretentious nonsense that goes on before.. well. And to be fair there was a bit of the latter, very much Danny's friends and his politics, oh dear. But the rest ranged from good to inspired and I have to say I thought it was a darn sight better than the last one. Especially the cauldron, which was sheer genius.

But enough of that.

Eventually getting up yesterday I gave up any plans of a day out and wandered about the Patch instead. Mostly very quiet, as you'd expect, with the fun coming from Hope's Nose [ah, what's new..]. The auks are all gone, as you'd expect, but a lone Fulmar was hanging around. A few Gannets were fishing offshore, but other than Shormorants the sea was the preserve of tossers on jetskis, powerboats, and yachties. My attention wandered [yeah, right] to the assorted gulls loafing around, especially when two idiots in a small boat flushed all of them from the Lead Stone. Fresh juveniles are pretty smart-looking gulls, it has to be said, and as well as a dozen Herrings, there were 4 GBBs and a Yellow-leg set up with 40-odd adults and scrawny immatures. The Yellow-leg was a really nice one too, but didn't fly over and pose, as a couple of Herrings did. Cute things, baby Herrings. When they keep their gobs shut, anyway..

Two juvenile Whitethroats were cute if noisy, but elsewhere I was mostly chasing butterflies.. [[Oh dear, oh dear...]] After a bit of kerfuffle a flighty Blue revealed itself to be.. Common. Better were my first two Marbled Whites at the Nose and a very confiding Six-spot Burnet moth, which was utterly unbothered by my peering at it. :) I also got a surprise - a dragonfly! Not what you'd expect at the bottom of the Nose.. More so, it was a small hawker lacking green bits on the thorax or yellow costa - a Migrant! [[It may be observed that a dragonfly right by the sea with no fresh water anywhere nearby would likely be a migrant - though not necessarily a Migrant... ;) ]]

Today, the big gribbly showers made things interesting, with me ending up wandering about Slapton. Despite the brisk wind, the sun [when it wasn't tipping down] was very warm and I was a bit disappointed to only see a female Common Blue damselfly and an unidentified [due to sheer speed] hawker spp. A magnificent Silver-washed Fritillary was much better, accompanied by several Red Admirals and a whole heap of assorted Whites. Among the gulls knocking around was a smart juvenile LBB and of interest among the ducks were 4 Pochard and two weird things which looked very much like drake MallardxPintail..!


EDIT: Forgot to mention the Swifts! I had a merry old time counting this evening, getting a max of 94 - which is pretty darn good - and with many of them down at low level I have little doubt more than 100 birds were present. :D

Kettles

Seems to be the thing right now, with the gulls doing it for things other than passing raptors, and me feeling like I'm in one.

Less whining, more birds.

Flying ants are the order of the day, with upwards of 250 Herring Gulls munching on them - making for quite a sight and sound. Biggest single one I counted was right out back, a good 150 gulls [plus a few corvids] and at least 8 juveniles in among them. I would give a nice exact count, but when the bastards are circling right overhead and more are arriving all the time while others are sloping off... Its an appreciable fraction of the Bay's [sizable] Herring population. It's interesting that the Geebs don't get involved, as its clearly such a good food source. I suppose with them being battered mobbed whenever they get near the Herring's nests, they just stick to the coast. They are more maritime than the very cosmopolitan Herrings - they'll come to the harbour area but that's pretty much it.

In the Garden, having let all the bushes run wild in an attempt to give the birds some decent top cover, we've seen what may be a link in that we're getting Goldfinches more regularly. They used to be a real rarity, mind. It could be they're just having a good year [or a bad one and are ranging further], but it might be the new terrain is more to their liking. Interesting. Still a lack of anything other than Sparrows, Greenfinches [these reduced] and the odd kamikaze Blue Tit...

Today I decided to get out and use the weather - once it stopped being overcast and windy, which took a while - to go chasing odonata again. Reasoning that a sustained burst of hot sunshine should help things get going, I went to Countess Wear and ambled slowly [too hot for anything else] down to the Old Sludge Beds and back. If you've read [Famous Devon Dragonflyer*]'s recent report and felt despondent, think again, as there are plenty of odonata to go around now! Not a huge variety of dragons - I got Emperors and Black-taileds, plus a surprise Southern Hawker - but a whole heap of damselflies. 7 species today, with the first Small Red-eyed being about - though fun to pick from the mass of Large Red-eyed. I found two White-legged Damselflies and two Banded Demoiselles [wow, huge numbers there.. ;) ] among the mass of Azure and Blue-tailed, too. Azure was most common, with Large Red-eyed narrowly beating Blue-tailed into third.

Birds of note were a couple of adult LBBs, which repeatedly tried diving for fish in the canal, to no success that I saw. Having done well with the insects, I decided to try to improve the birds by heading over to Matford - maybe there would be a nice Green Sand? No chance; circling the marsh to get views of all the bits of exposed mud through the thick greenery, I only found one wader... a Wood.  :D Worth getting hot under the collar for.. ;)




[[*Apologies for that one.]]