Black Redstart

I'd expect to see my first Black Redstart of the autunm about now, but two visits to of one of their favoured local sites today, Axmouth Harbour, failed to show any.  However walking back to work a female/1w-type didn't the decent thing and pitched up on a distant roof-top on the edge of the Tesco estate.  

Excuse the phone shot taken through heras fencing...

Such a distinctive outline

My walk to work this morning showed a noticeable increase in Goldcrest numbers, as well as four Chiffchaff and five Redwing.   

Also got news from Phil today that one Yellow-browed Warbler remains at Axmouth Church.

Two More Yellow-broweds

After a disappointingly quiet visit to Axe Cliff this morning, where the vismig never really got going and grounded migrants were few and far between, I had a bit of time to check a few other local spots on my way home.  My first stop was  Axmouth church, the location of the only patch record of Pallas's Warbler way back in October 2007.

Soon after I entered the churchyard I was stopped in my tracks by a Yellow-browed Warbler literally shouting at me as I walked past the small sycamore it was in.  And boy was it noisy! I'm absolutely thrilled with the sound clip I managed to record, which is at the end of this post.

Even more surprising was that as I was watching this bird make its way through the branches, a second Yellow-browed Warbler started calling to the south of me, coming from an adjacent large garden.  I was watching and filming the first bird as bird two was calling in the background!

Bird one showed extremely well, really close up views in small bushes and trees.  I even managed to record some video footage of it, and was pleased to be able to extract these three frames from that...

My first view of it

 

Showing a bit more...

That's more like it! 

After several lean Yellow-browed years, these two are my third and fourth on the patch this autumn and make it my best ever autumn for Yellow-browed Warblers here.

And now for the aforementioned sound recording.  Quite a bit of noise coming from passing cars, which I haven't learnt how to eradicate on Audacity yet, but am still thrilled with what I've captured. Bird two starts calling at 1:10...

More of this please!

First-winter Caspian Gull

With Caspian Gulls turning up just to the east and west of us over the past month and more (several on the Exe, Otter, in west Dorset, etc), it's been extremely frustrating not to have come across one on the Axe yet this autumn.  However, this afternoon I put that right with an immaculate first-winter on the Estuary near Tower Hide at 14:30.

Unfortunately I wasn't in Tower Hide, I was over a quarter of a mile away on the edge of the Axmouth road scoping across.  As a result my photos really do not do this bird justice, it was quite simply stunning.  I couldn't actually stop watching it, it was only when I had to collect Harry from school that I left it...

Lovely long narrow bill, clean white head and breast, sloping forehead and rounded rear of head, some flank streaking, plenty of grey on mantle and scaps, lovely black greater covert bar and black centered tertials, also note bulging neck giving it the classic Caspian-shape!

This is how white-headed it actually was. Can see from this angle the flank streaking extends across breast and almost forms a breast band. The typical Caspian front heavy-look also evident in this pic

Amazingly an even worse photo, but that white head and small beady black eye was this striking!

A pic of it swimming, that white head and neck so striking, but look how long that neck is!  Another great Casp feature

Managed to get this pic of some of the upper wing

...but guess whos phone decided to lose focus just when it stretched its wings!  Oh well, the underwings still look blurry white

I've got a bit of off patch news today too.  After a lovely breaskfast at The Hidden Oak, Jess and I took a stroll across the East Devon Commons from Four Firs.  Several Skylark and Meadow Pipits went over, but at 11:35 a single Woodlark came tu-lu'ing over east to west, one of my favourite vismig sounds!  Lovely.

Now this is written I just know I will be spending the rest of the evening pondering where to go in the morning.  There's a load of rain coming through overnight from the west, which I think may well drop a few migrants, however the weather is clearing pre-dawn so vismig might be good... 

Axe Cliff isn't great for grounded migrants but it's one of our best spots for vismigging.  Beer Head has much better habitat for grounded migrants but often misses out on alot of the vismig. Hmmmm... All I do know is I'll probably get it wrong whichever one I do choose! 

Another Yellow-browed Warbler

Yesterdays walk to work, following a night of south easterly winds and rain revealed there had been a fresh arrival of Chiffchaffs in the valley, with at least 14 where there had only been a handful over the previous few mornings.

This mornings walk to work showed only three or four Chiffs again, although the weather was pretty shocking with light rain and moderate winds.  However a vocal Yellow-browed Warbler was nice to stumble upon and more than made up for the weather.  I didn't have my new toy with me so below is a video I recorded on my phone. I was just trying to record the call but I have also captured me trying to get a passing birder on to the call, as well as my hopeless efforts at trying to work out where the bird actually was and my shockingly bad attempts at mimicking the call!  

The Yellow-browed calls about nine times in the video, but you'll need to turn the sound up to hear it...

I never did locate it, and had to head off to work pretty soon after.  So it is yet another heard only Yellow-browed for me, although at least I heard this one a lot better than Sunday's brief bird.  Their call is always such an uplifting and evocative sound to hear though, so I'm not complaining about it too much. 

The only other thing I have to report since my last post is my first night-time Redwings of the autumn, on Monday night over the garden. Good to hear those 'seeep's again and a fairly early date for us down here on the south coast.

Yellow-browed Warbler, Yellow-legged Gull and Great Vismig!

I had a small window of time before work this morning. With a very light northerly wind and high cloud it just had to be Axe Cliff again...

Could never get bored of this view

I think I got there a bit too early, as it seemed to take an age to get light and for any passage to get going, but when it did it was fairly well concentrated along the cliff-edge which is really important for this site. Great to see Wood Pigeons step up a notch, and although no stand-out highlight overhead, numbers on the up.  

07:10 - 08:40 produced:  4,700 Wood Pigeon (my biggest flock 500), 10 Stock Dove (probably missed loads more), 110 Jackdaw, 3 Song Thrush, 6 Skylark, 2 Swallow, 82 alba Wagtail, 120+ Meadow Pipit, 90+ Linnet, 70+ Goldfinch, 62 Chaffinch, 11 Siskin, 1 Redpoll and 1 Reed Bunting.

The local birds of prey were having a whale of a time, with two Peregrines in view throughout most of the watch and two different Sparrowhawks attempting to cash in on this sudden influx of suitable prey.

Grounded migrants were far fewer spread than they were on Friday up here, with just five Chiffchaffs recorded compared to 25 two days before.  However it was nice to finally bump into a Yellow-browed Warbler as I have been hunting high and low for one recently.  When I say 'bump into' though I didn't actually see it as it was deep in The Undercliff (somewhere dead centre of the above photo!) however I half-heard it a couple of times and then thankfully confirmed its presence with a much clearer call.

Which brings me on to my new toy... I will be doing a separate blog post on what it is, how much it cost, the results, etc.  But this was its first outing and I was shocked when reviewing the recording tonight (almost an hour in length!) to hear the Yellow-browed!  And three more times than I heard it in the field!  Time to turn your speakers up...

 

Gavin has kindly sent me a cleaned up version of the above audio file, and a spectrogram, however it took me so long to upload my clip I will wait to share the improved one when I have got a bit better with this audio malarkey!  I was amazed to hear there were actually six calls recorded of the Yellow-browed in my recording from today, all in a ten second window, and then no further sound or any sight of it.  Must have had a rapid bout of calling and then moved on.  I cannot tell you how much I was grateful for my new toy, the early signs of its usefulness clear to see, and its capabilities very promising indeed.

So all in all a great morning out!

I spent the rest of the day at work, but two Cattle Egrets with the grazing cattle in a neighbouring field and a lovely first-winter Yellow-legged Gull that dropped in on the lower Estuary late afternoon ensured it was a good day at work!  

Front left, compare with similar aged Herring Gull

This was actually one of the best and most striking first-winter (not juvenile) Yellow-legged Gulls I have ever seen on the Axe, probably helped by the good views I had of it. That huge white head with darker eye mask, well moulted scaps, long winged appearance, dark tertials and plain greater coverts made it look so different to all surrounding Herring Gulls.  It was bloody big too!

And that brings me to the last thing that I am going to do today.  Bed.  Not been a bad day at all.

Autumn Vis Mig is GO!

Well since my last post the weather has been a right mixed bag.  Lots of wind and rain over the weekend, some more heavy showers during the first half of the week, with the odd clear spell, and then the last couple of days have been a bit calmer.  This morning felt like proper autumn morning, being the first morning I got cold hands! Time to find the gloves!

During the clearer mornings of the last seven days, amongst the Meadow Pipits and Linnets passing over there's been several Skylarks and Siskins for the first time this autumn, but on the other end of the spectrum there's still some Swallows and House Martins going over too.   This morning, Axe Cliff was calling me with the clear skies and light (but cold!) northerly wind.  I didn't have long so didn't do a proper vismig count, but it was enjoyable nevertheless...

Looking west towards Beer Head

 

It was great to see Wood Pigeons on the move, with several 100+ flocks totalling in excess of 1,800 birds flying west.  A few flocks of Jackdaws came through too, love how they often call to each other as they fly through.  Meadow Pipits, alba Wagtails and Linnets were the most common passerines as expected, but several Siskins, Skylarks and a few Chaffinches also went through - I expect number of these three species to increase as the month progresses.   

The soft mournful call of Golden Plover drew my attention to a flock of five that were flying high south.  Pleasingly they circled round and dropped like a stone onto one of the neighbouring fields...

Pity one of them wasn't a bit smaller and greyer!

 

A closer view of three of them

 

When I was leaving, a sixth lone Golden Plover flew over my head calling almost frantically, and a few moments late the five came up from where I'd left them, made a flock of six and flew off east.    Chiffchaffs were present in good numbers, well amazing numbers for Axe Cliff actually (which is never great for bush-based migrants).  There were a few dotted around in the hedges, but in the Undercliff a flock of Long-tailed Tits moved through and were trailed but at least twenty Chiffchaffs!  Quite how none of them had a pair of wing-bars I don't know, so my hunt for a wing-barred phyllosc continues.

Down on the Estuary, Wigeon and Lapwing numbers are slowly increasing, Snipe numbers have shot up and there were 270 Teal together on Black Hole Marsh last Saturday. The two Ruff are still with us as are a couple of Greenshank and Common Sandpipers and at least one Green Sandpiper.  Cattle Egrets have been present almost daily around Seaton Marshes, with at least five present on Monday.

During the stormy days I gave the sea as much attention as I could but returned with very little.  The best was a tern that flew west past the beach on Tuesday morning at about 08:30, and then out south west towards Beer Head.  My immediate feeling was Arctic due to its bouncy and erratic flight and its really dark grey underparts (yes it was an adult bird, which I thought was unusual for this late in the autumn), so I messaged the news out.  However twenty minutes I reevaluated what I'd seen and decided I hadn't actually seen enough of the plumage to claim Arctic, coupled with the fact the wind strength would have probably made even a Caspian Tern (which is huge in comparison) look bouncy and wobbly in flight! So I relegated it back down to a commic tern (just very likely an Arctic). 

Bird of the week for me was a cracking little Firecrest, feeding and calling in a tamarisk bush along the seafront just after 8am on Wednesday morning.  I watched it for a few minutes before it flew west along the cliff-edge, making it feel very much like a fresh-in migrant.   I can honestly say that however common Firecrest get, seeing one will always put a smile on my face. 

 

Adult Yellow-legged Gull

This blog post was on course to be missing a main highlight to talk of from the last week, but a check of the Estuary gulls mid afternoon today changed that.

Historically October is the best month of the year for records of 'older than first-calendar year' Yellow-legged Gulls on the Axe.  Previous October storms have produced multiple birds in a day, although saying that haven't seen that many at all in the last five years.  So I was pretty thrilled to pick up a massive adult Yellow-legged Gull north of Coronation Corner at 2:30pm...

Photos makes it appear a shade darker mantled than it actually was, however sheer size and bright yellow legs evident even on this awful pic

Views were more distant than they had to be, which I will explain why...  In the southerly wind, the main flock of resting gulls just north of the picnic site at Coronation Corner were pretty much all head-on.  I really don't like gulling head-on, so moved myself to the small gateway just north of Axmouth where the views were more distant but all gulls were perfectly side-on, just how I like them. This bird proved that tactic worked for me, as I did scan through the flock a couple of times from Coronation Corner and clearly managed to scope right over this brute of a bird!

Although Yellow-legged Gull is my bird of the week, my species of the week has to be Chiffchaff.  There have been migrant Chiffchaffs all over the place here, with 18 on my walk to work yesterday morning a really good total.  Basically any time I've been outside I could hear at least one calling, even in the middle of town.  I have been trying hard to pull a wing-barred (preferably not Yellow-browed) phyllosc out from amongst them, but nothing yet.  Still, the sight and sound of so many of these olive-green fresh young Chiffs has been really lovely, and very much appreciated in an autumn that has not involved much in the way of numbers. 

House Martins and Swallows have also been around in good numbers, despite their fate in the UK as a breeding species, with some decent easterly passage on a couple of days this week.  Meadow Pipits have been around of course, but not in the numbers I'd expect considering the time of year.

Last night I ended a busy day at Black Hole, and it was wonderful...

Looking south from Tower Hide

 

Sadly I wasn't joined by any of the crake species, one of which I was hoping might appear with the four Water Rails feeding on the lagoon edge, but there were plenty of other birds around.  Most of them were gulls, which is fine by me, with the small gulls including two first-winter Meds and seven first-winter Commons.  There were 200+ Teal on the marsh which were fun sifting through, but wader variety disappointing with just three Snipe, two Greenshank and a Green Sand of any real value.  A lone Cattle Egret spent the entire time I was there huddled down on a grassy island...

May not be the rarity it once was but I am always thrilled to see them!

 

Hopefully I will have a few hours out in the morning. With a strongish southerly wind forecasted am not sure where I'll be heading, but hopefully something will be waiting for me wherever I do end up...