Unblocked!

When you become a sad, washed-up, bit-part birder like I am, but you have many years of birding behind you, there does remain one type of 'birding currency' that is worth its weight in gold - and that is THE BLOCKER. This will normally be a species that has not been seen for a number of years or has contracted its range to the point that it will most probably not be seen again.

Three examples:

UK List: anybody who has visited this blog before will know the score - this is where I mention Wallcreeper. Both of them. But I won't dwell...

Surrey List: Cirl Bunting. We used to toddle along to Pewley Down near Guildford to see these - without fail. Then their range contracted and they disappeared.

Local patch: In this case, Beddington. The others may have seen Killdeer and Glaucous-winged Gull, but I've seen Willow Tit and Grey Partridge, the former now extinct in Surrey and the latter heading that way.

But then the weakness of the Blocker is that it can become unblocked. My UK list blockers have slowly been pulled back, with Belted Kingfisher, Orphean Warbler and Semipalmated Plover leaving my cherished haul of prize possessions to become public birding property. And now, one of my 'Beddington Bankers', the Grey Partridge, has done the same. The first since 1980 was seen today, flushed by the gate and then relocated by the southern lake.

For the faded birder, these blockers are a link with the past and the only way that we can stick two-fingers up at the current birding 'faces'. This is becoming more difficult by the day...

Comments

Skev said…
You're getting some mileage out of those bloody Wallcreepers! I'm running out of blockers (as in blockers against my former twitching colleagues, rather than the whole of the UK listing scene). Grey-tailed Tattler, Steller's Eider, Cliff Swallow and Little Bustard remain, but Marmora's Warbler, Oriental Pratincole, Buff-bellied Pipit and Northern Waterthrush are gone. Got some goodies over kiddie-listers through, like Short-toed Eagle. Best county blocker is Crag Martin .....
17 March 2014 at 20:57
Phil Slade said…
Surely the sportsmen are releasing Grey Partridges in your area and so giving your blocker a lifeline?
18 March 2014 at 13:24
Phil Slade said…
Did you misspell "faces"?
18 March 2014 at 13:26
Steve Gale said…
You've got some good'uns there Skev. The eagle has blocker potential of the highest order - those kids will not get that back in a hurry.
18 March 2014 at 16:53
Steve Gale said…
The cynic in me thinks that it must have been a released bird. Those that saw it will, of course, call that sour grapes.
18 March 2014 at 16:54
Steve Gale said…
Oops, yes, thanks Phil - forgot the 'e'
18 March 2014 at 16:54
unclefish said…
Tengmalms...two...have I not mentioned these?
18 March 2014 at 20:50
Steve Gale said…
Fancy swapping one of your Tengmalm's for one of my Wallcreepers?
19 March 2014 at 11:24
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more