CMO Birding

  Currently the most famous lighthouse amongst birders, Bishop Rock has hosted the Red Footed Booby for two weeks at the time of writing.  Getting there was Thursday’s task, and we set off from Austin’s at 1am to get on the ferry from Penzance at 9.  After some heroic driving from him and the ferry crossing surrounded by shearwaters, with sunfish and tuna, and a brief and wonderful cameo from Risso’s dolphins, we disembarked and immediately got on a Booby special pelagic boat.  By late morning we were watching the Red Footed snooze high on its perch, elated at seeing such an incredible bird and more than a little tired from travel.   Cory’s Shearwaters were beyond ubiquitous - by far the most numerous bird of the four days of boat trips and birding.  I know this is likely an overall bad news story in that their Mediterranean habitat is suffering severely under climate change, but I have to temper my concern about that with personal joy at how many there wer...

 I love Spurn.  Always have.  Saw my first Woodchat Shrike there in the 90s, and my first Pallas’ Warbler in the 2020s.  It’s a place of potential, one of those mystical areas where migration is visible on a scale accessible even to the least talented of birders (me) with the worst powers of observation (also me).   I love Spurn.  But… I’ve always found it hard work.  Spurn doesn’t seem to love me back.  I have walked miles there - and those that have trudged that long walk to the lighthouse will know that there are no easy miles on the spit - in order to miss birds on an industrial scale.  I apologise to all those birders there today hoping to see Wryneck; they know I’m coming and they retreat.  Everyone hunting diligently for Icterine Warblers deserves a reward for doing so with me in the Spurn area.  I never see the target bird.  Not ever.  I always see excellent birds there, but they’re often accidental sightings that...

There’s something about terns that I just like.  The shape, the flight, the colours.  The surprising range of habitats they’re seen in.  The way they fill a summer that sometimes seems empty of birds with something elegant and interesting.  I’ve been lucky, since I came back to birding in the 2020 lockdowns, to see some incredible terns; Elegant in 2021 at Ainsdale Sands; a pair of Caspian at Idle Washes in Nottinghamshire in 2022; and a Gull-billed at Burtonmere earlier this year.  The tern of terns for me (aside from Inca…) though has always been the Bridled tern.  Reports of one on the weekend of the 5th/6th August 2023 at Afon Wen in north Wales had me scrambling to see if I could juggle family commitments and birthdays and after some urgent calling in of favours I set off with Kris at 3.30pm on Monday 7th August on the two and a half hour drive in glorious sunshine, with reports on BirdGuides showing the Bridled in and out of the bay more often than th...