Cracked birders

When the whole world and his wife are knee-deep in birds, be they Autumn migrants or eastern vagrants (with a few also coming from the west) it is easy for birders based in places that are not so blessed to get a little peeved. This is especially true if every effort has been made during daylight hours to cover your patch - and particularly if there are few birds to sift through anyway.

Such scenarios break birders' spirits and, after a prolonged bout of little return, can force them elsewhere. This has happened this very week to those gathered at Dungeness. Monday saw a car load leave Kent for that most blessed of bird observatories, Spurn. Maybe it really is in God's chosen county after all. They saw 'the bird', several other 'the birds' and hundreds of viewable migrants to boot. On return to the shingle it was as much as any of them could do to muster up any enthusiasm at all, having been gorging on the ornithological feast that East Yorkshire had dished up.

Today was my turn, as I fled to Cap Gris Nez on the cliff tops of northern France, lured by the promise of NW winds and plenty of bird action. There were four other shingle-crunchers present as well, the second incidence of a mass Dungeness bunking-off in three days. These are indeed desperate times. As it happened, the wind was WNW so delivered a fraction of what we hoped, although this did involve Arctic, Pom and Great Skuas, Sooty and Manx Shearwaters, several hundred Med and Little Gulls, plus 1600 Chaffinches and 100 Skylarks coasting, so hardly an epic fail. But as far as grounded birds went, it was similar to Dungeness, windswept copses, hedges and bushes with barely a crest or warbler to bother the optics.

So tomorrow sees the resumption of flogging the peninsula. I did catch up with a Yellow-browed Warbler yesterday (which also saw 800 Linnets and 160 Alba Wagtails heading NW) so it is not a total dark hole of despair down here. We carry on.

Comments

Stewart said…
France is a lot nearer to you than Spurn, let alone Northumberland...You will have your day though, mark my words...
19 October 2016 at 20:31
Steve Gale said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
19 October 2016 at 22:12
Steve Gale said…
I hope so Stewart. In the meantime can you please send me down some of that Holy Island magic!
19 October 2016 at 22:14
Stewart said…
After years of only the odd good day on the island, with genuine rarities few and far between, this last month I ve had three British ticks on there! It wont last, I'm sure. :)
19 October 2016 at 22:44
Derek Faulkner said…
The strange world and needs of twitchers well described. Clearly I'm easily pleased when it comes to patch watching.
20 October 2016 at 05:45
Lee Dingain said…
After reading so many blogs of late about people seeing 'rares', finding 'yet another' Yellow-browed Warbler, or witnessing scores of migrants tumbling from sky, finally here is a post I can actually relate to - sums up how I feel about this autumn perfectly!
21 October 2016 at 08:59
Steve Gale said…
It can be hard Lee, it can be hard...
21 October 2016 at 19:24
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