Migration is here.... well.... kind of.... (Part 1)

After my manic day trip to the Isles of Scilly it was time to relax a little.... well.... I thought I'd be able to, but it was yet another trip back to Somerset for my girlfriends birthday (not so much of a hardship to be fair) which was great albeit far too brief, then back down to Cornwall in preparation for the last couple of weeks at the Lands End Discovery Centre. The weather down here has been terrible for the past weeks.... more often than not the sea being totally obscured by the fog (so too my hand in front of my face!).... but with the scorching weather we're having, tied in with the easterly winds, the migrants have been starting to make their way into the valleys.

Driving back from Somerset I received a very exciting text..... Kester was out ringing and he'd had something fly into the nets.... a Red-eyed Vireo!! These little gems are passerines from America that have either been blown off-course by strong westerly winds or for some reason have decided to 'reverse migrate'.... travelling in the opposite direction they would normally do so and thus end up on our shores. Anyway, I wasn't going to be able to make it down to the ringing site as I was 2 hours away.... far too long for Kester to hold it in the bag, so I kept my fingers crossed it would hang around for me to see it or possibly catch it again. So I carried on to Lands End and after getting back to work and having to spend the whole day talking to a very small number of visitors I met up with John Swann (a local birder) and Lewis Thomson who was down for the week from Gloucestershire. We decided to have a look for a juvenile Rose-coloured Starling that had been seen on the wires at the entrance to the Lands End complex. Unfortunately it didn't show after an hour or so of scanning through the Starling flock so just before it got dark Lewis and I thought we'd go and see a Pectoral Sandpiper (yes... another American wader!!) which was hanging around behind Tregiffian Farm on the smallest patch of water I have ever seen a wader on! It showed really well but the light was fading fast and it was just a little too distant for my lens to get any images, I'm sure Lewis will have done with his monster Canon 500mm prime lens and Canon 1D Mark 4 body........ (slightly out of my price range by 99% of the cost!!!)

The next day I caught up with a rather bedraggled looking Rose-coloured Starling in the mist and drizzle.... it showed very well feeding on the deck with a small flock of local starlings..... nice to see but the light was terrible for photography so only managed a couple of half decent record shots.

Juvenile Rose-coloured Starling (Sturnus roseus)

Juvenile Rose-coloured Starling (Sturnus roseus)

Lewis and I planned to have a look down Kenidjack Valley during the afternoon after work as the winds were still coming from the south-east, hopefully it would have brought something in overnight. Walking down the valley, the wind was up and the fog was down so the birds (if there were any) we keeping their heads down in the bushes.... it didn't look like we were going to see anything. As we neared the end of the valley we notice a flick of movement in a hawthorn bush on the opposite slope.... after a moment or two a bird perched out in full view, a female Pied Flycatcher.... that was a good sign that migrants were around, so feeling a little more motivated we carried on to the house at the end of the valley.

The 'last house' is a remarkable place.... their garden is just a tangle of fantastic brambles, a few sycamores, pines and other bushes all sheltered in the valley. It is a place of folklore for birders as it is where, just over 20 years ago, the UK's only Yellow-throated Vireo turned up..... the locals still remember that day as the visiting twitchers (1000's of them) caused pandemonium..... the poor lady living in the house woke up in the morning, drew back the curtains and was greeted to a view of a massive crowd of birders with telescopes and binoculars trained towards the house..... a little bit of a shock! People were stuck in the valley as there were cars everywhere..... chaos reigned!

Thankfully (or rather a shame as it meant that nothing amazing had been found there).... only Lewis and I were stood at the bottom of the garden looking up the slope to see what was moving through the trees (if anything) when we both saw a bird hop up onto a gorse bush.... getting our bins on it we saw a medium sized bird, short bill, and very cryptic plumage.... we both knew what it was straight away.... Wryneck.... brilliant stuff. We watched it as it got mobbed by the local Blackbirds, Chaffinches and Great Tits.... (I'd heard about this happening to Wrynecks but never seen it before).... until it had obviously had enough and dropped into deep cover where we lost it to view. We stayed for another half an hour to see if it was going to re-appear, but unfortunately nothing so we made our way back up the valley to get back to the cars.

Wryneck (Jynx torquilla)

The next morning I was out with Kester doing the rounds at the nets and after a couple of hours of standard bits and bobs, he rounded the corner with a big smile on his face.... I knew what this meant.... he handed me the bag he was holding and said ''You might want to get this out a little carefully!''. I stuck my hand in and felt a smallish bird wriggling it's way around my hand..... a couple of seconds later I had it in the ringers grip and pulled it out of the bag..... we'd re-trapped the Red-eyed Vireo!! Seeing all the I.D points in the hand was superb.... the stunning head pattern, the yellow vent under the tail.... a proper cracker of a bird. See for yourself!

Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus)

Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus)

Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus)

Even though the weather had been beautiful during the morning, it gradually worsened over the day, the fog coming back in again, so with no-one coming to the hide I closed up and went down to Nanquidno where a Melodious Warbler had been reported in the morning. Lewis (who I'd met looking in vain for the RC Starling) followed me down, and pretty much as soon as we got out of the cars and walked round the corner the bird was showing out on the branches of the blackthorn. Unfortunately the weather was rubbish and the bird only showed for about a minute before it dived across the track and into cover disappearing for the remainder of the afternoon.

Melodious Warbler (Hippolais polyglotta)

The rest of the week was pretty quiet, nothing much happening apart from the odd Pied Flycatcher here and there until the 29th. The Indian Summer had finally reached us with glorious sunshine and promises of 26 degrees.... perfect.... and it was a day off too.... even better.

I started off going ringing and we re-trapped the Vireo for a 3rd time, but also got my hands on a couple of decent migrants... a juv Pied Flycatcher and a imm male Redstart..... the latter was superb, showing off it's bright orange tail as it sat in the hand... a good start to the day, maybe there'd be a bit of movement?

Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus)

Pied Flycatchcer (Ficedula hypoleuca)

Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus)

Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus)

 After we'd furled the nets and started to wander out of the farmyard we found a Turtle Dove sitting on the wires.... another migrant.... things really were looking up.

Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur)

I had to drive into St. Buryan to put some petrol in my car before I made my way down to the valleys for the day and on the way managed to catch up with one of the 3 long-staying Black Kites just on the edge of the village. I parked up, snapped off a few photos before the bird flew off then carried on.... nice. 

Black Kite (Milvus migrans)

On hearing that there was a Snow Bunting showing well down at Sennen car park I decided to pop down there to see if I could get any shots as usually these birds are pretty approachable.... but on arrival there was no sign of the bird. But with time to kill I sat down and waited.... I was pretty certain it would appear again as they tend to be creatures of habit and an hour later, sure enough, the bunting flew out of the long grass onto the gravel close to me.... I got down on my belly and crawled forward to grab some close ups.... it was a bit jittery and after a few minutes I realised why when over bounded a dog.... the bird zipped off into the long grass and that was that.... I'd have to try again another day if I wanted to get really close, but I was still pretty happy with the pictures I got.

Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis)

Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis)

Just about to get into the car I received a phonecall from Martin Elliot, a local birder/moth-er and renowned wildlife illustrator... (if you don't know his work, he did the gulls and skuas plates in the Handbook of Bird Identification for Europe and the Western Palearctic... which is a phenomenal book. He told me that he'd caught a very rare moth overnight, a Dark Mottled Willow, which he was going to take down to the Land's End Airfield to leave during the day at the cafe if anybody wanted to have a look at it and Colin Moore (another bird and moth man)... had caught a Slender Burnished Brass.... another cracking moth..... not quite as rare but still not exactly common! I told him I was going to check Nanquidno before I headed down to see the moths, at which point Martin said he'd meet me down there.

Arriving at Nanquidno I saw Steve Rogers having a look around the bushes near the car park and got out to have a chat with him. I hadn't seen him since we'd been on one of the Penzance pelagics a couple of months earlier, so it was nice to catch up.... whilst we were talking I looked over the some bushes that were just opposite Nanjulian Farm and saw a big orangey blob sat on the top..... picking it up in my bins it was a full adult male Hawfinch!! I know these are seen pretty much across the country and aren't seen as that rare a bird, but down here in Cornwall, they are few and far between.... so I text a few people to see if they could make it down, but I was out of signal in the valleys, and wasn't sure any texts would go through..... so I got on with watching the bird and hoped that somewhere my phone would find enough signal to let my text fly off to John, Colin and Martin.

The bird dropped into the bushes, so we took the decision to get a bit closer... and as we got round the corner, Steve picked it up again..... he fired off a few shots, but it dropped over the back before I could... you should see his pics... they are awesome!! (they should be with £10k worth of camera gear!) You can see them on his blog swopticsphoto.

It did re-appear on a bush round the corner and a few people like John and Martin actually managed to twitch it while I was still there..... but it was a cracking bird.... the best views of Hawfinch I've had for a long time as it munched away on the sloes.

Hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes)

Leaving the Hawfinch, John and I went up to Colin Moore's to see the two moths.... the Slender Burnished Brass was pretty stunning, with the glints of the green on its wings showing in different angles of light.... the Dark Mottled Willow was nice enough, subtly marked.... but with me being new into moths I didn't realise the significance of it until John told me it was only the 10th ever recorded in Britain.... quite something!

Slender Burnished Brass (Thysanoplusia orichalcea)

Dark Mottled Willow (Spodoptera cilium)

It had turned into a cracking day.... a bit of movement, some nice rares and chatting to some good people in great weather..... hopefully this was the real start of migration..... by the end of next week I was certain we'd be up to our necks in migrants....