Coming towards the end of August, bird-watching starts to get more unpredictable. It's when migration occurs, some of the birds that have bred in our country over the summer head south to spend the colder months in warmer regions. Most of these birds are insectivores, so they need to do this so that there is enough food to sustain the population, Swallows are the most widely known example. It's these journeys that completely fascinate me, how does a bird that may only weigh 15g, or thereabouts, manage to survive a migration of hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles? Crossing seas, battling against strong winds in order to feed up over the winter just to prepare for coming back! It really is astounding.
It's not just that they travel these huge distance either, that's one part of it, but birds such as Pied Flycatchers have been known to have travelled south in their first year after hatching only to be found breeding the next within 300-400m from where it grew up as a chick...... HOW??? It's a mystery I'm sure we'll never solve, but it doesn't go all their way..... sometimes the winds can be too strong or something goes wrong with their navigation, perhaps the stars get covered over by the clouds whilst they are over the sea so they have no means to navigate..... but it means that during migration, birds turn up in the country that shouldn't be here. The Western Bonelli's Warbler and the Alpine Swift that I talked about in my previous post are examples of these migration scarcities reaching our shores.
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| Spotted Flycatcher (Muscicapa striata) |
To really keep an eye on what's happening everyday via migration, ringers across the country put up their nets when the weather is good enough, hoping to pick out a rare warbler or such like, we've been hoping for something like that to happen down this way, but it hasn't happened.....yet. I'm sure it will by the end of the autumn, but we'll just have to keep checking. Mostly in the nets are regular passage migrants like Spotted Flycaychers, Tree Pipits, Willow Warblers and Chiffchaff with the odd Wheatear and others. We've been having a few different waders coming through too with Greenshank and Little Stint joining the regular Green Sands on the scrape. We managed to capture 2 Greenshank and 1 Little Stint so far, (unfortunately I didn't get my hands on the stint), but the waders are only just starting to pick up, so I'm sure there'll be more to come.
After a few hours of searching in all the known wader roosts and with the light fading fast I reluctantly gave it up, I did manage to catch up with a couple of juvenile Curlew Sandpipers and a juvenile Little Stint though so there was at least some reward. But I was sure it would turn up again in the morning so I decided to pop back early morning for high tide at 7am to have a quick look before work.
So 7am, I stood on the causeway looking around for any sign of a wader flock. Nothing. We have spring tides down here at the moment, so high water is just that.... very high, and there wasn;t a margin of mud in sight. The only place that wader tend to congregate if this happens is at the back of one of the big pools on the main estuary, Carnsew Basin, where there is a shingle beach that rarely gets completely covered, so I set off to take a look there.
Before arriving at my destination I went past the Tempest warehouse and onto the causeway, rounding a corner just behind the warehouse itself there was a large flock of waders no more than 30 foot away. Quickly scanning through I couldn't see the Baird's, but there was Little Stint and Curlew Sandpiper, so I decided to try and sneak up to get some shots. Crawling on my belly, I inched closer, thankfully the tide was at it's peak and not yet receding, so they had nowhere to go, but this didn't matter. They were too busy feeding on all the crustaceans and other bits on the shoreline to pay any attention to some wierdo trying to be stealthily quiet on gravel (and failing miserably!). In the end I sat with the flock no more than a few yards away from me. The closest bird ended up being the Little Stint, merrily pottering around no further than 7-8 feet from me.
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| Juvenile Curlew Sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea) |
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| Little Stint (Calidris minuta) |
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| Little Stint (Calidris minuta) |
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| Turnstone (Arenaria interpres) |
Leaving them to feeding up in preparation for their long-haul migrations, I wandered further up towards the shingle beach. On arrival there were a few Turnstone kicking about around the rocks and then, there it was, the Baird's. I tried the same approach as the previous flock and crawled on my front towards them. It was the same result.... getting this American wader down to 10 foot. Reeling off hundreds of photos (and ending up with about 10 that I'm happy with) it really gave me the chance to see it's fantastic scalloped plumage on it's back and it's absurdly long primary projection (the distance the wing-tip feathers go past the end of the tail) which is a consistent feature of all transatlantic waders of this genera. It was brilliant seeing it up close and after a while I left it to feed up and went to work. A good start to the day!!
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| Baird's Sandpiper (Calidris bairdii) |
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| Baird's Sandpiper (Calidris bairdii) |
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| Baird's Sandpiper (Calidris bairdii) |
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