Washout

South easterly winds coupled with rain is exactly what you want to see in the forecast when September comes around. Perfect conditions for bringing waders, gulls, terns, wildfowl and seabirds in to the south coast. So no surprise I was up early today and could not get out of the door quick enough!  In reality though by the end of the day I'd got very wet for very few new arrivals. Well there was one excellent new arrival, but I managed to let it get away...

Mid morning whilst sat in the kitchen chatting on the phone to James Mc I noticed a large wader flying towards the house, still a fair way off to the east.  It instantly looked odd.  It continued flying west and as it got closer I literally threw down my phone and ran to my binoculars. Annoyingly they were in the car outside, and when I finally grasped them away went the wader over the roof tops to the west.  Thanks to this species fairly distinctive size, proportions and flight style I know it was a Stone Curlew. But having seen no plumage features with naked eye views only in the pouring rain, it was gone for good... so so so annoying. And what a house tick that would have been!

What I have seen today, and managed to actually conclusively identify, include a drake Gadwall on the Estuary this morning, and the following on Black Hole Marsh at dusk; 

50+ Teal

1300 Black-headed Gull

1 Mediterranean Gull (adult)

130 Herring Gull

8 Great Black-backed Gull

11 Lesser Black-backed Gull

1 Common Tern (adult) 

12 Ringed Plover

c50 Dunlin

6 Greenshank

6 Common Sandpiper

3 Green Sandpiper

5 Snipe

Sadly the Ruff seems to have left us now, but I did manage this pic before he went...

Juvenile male Ruff

And I couldn't help but snap this juv Ringed Plover showing at stupidly close range...

Really hope I've not missed the Black Tern boat for the year - thought that was virtually a dead cert today. Oh well, maybe tomorrow?

Ducktastic

Blimey have we had some rain in the last 48 hours!  And that's lead to some pretty serious flooding in the river valley this afternoon...

Bridge Marsh, water as far as the eye can see!

Looking north from the road bridge over the Axe on the A3052

Looking south from the same bridge

The road ALWAYS floods here - that's one brave moped driver!

The flood from Axmouth

Thankfully this afternoon the rain had stopped, but this morning when it was lashing down I did try to go birding.  It was a struggle, but Bridge Marsh (pre-mega flood) was absolutely heaving with ducks so it was well worth getting wet.  This is how Bridge Marsh looked at 9am (compare with my first photo of this post which was taken at about 14:30)...

Great for birds, but not for birding!

Between cleaning my optics and warming myself up with my car heater, the flood water here showed 400+ Teal, 300 Wigeon, 70 Canada Geese, four Pintail (two pairs), four Gadwall (two pairs, first seen yesterday by PA) and a Dark-bellied Brent Goose (the lingering bird). That's my highest counts for four species of duck so far this autumn/winter, in fact it's the biggest flock of Pintail I've seen on the Axe for many years. This afternoon the wildfowl had spread out with the increase in flood water.

Also this morning I finally managed my first Redpoll of the autumn (about two months late!).  I was lucky to time my ten second walk from my front door to my car perfectly as one flew over calling. It really has been a poor autumn for all the finch species, Siskin and Redpoll especially.

Rain Starts Play

At the moment, when I'm not at work, I'm stuck behind this bleeding laptop.  I've been here for about three weeks now and can conclude writing reports is not my thing!  I'll happily do field work until I'm blue in the face (or hands I should say!).

It's not just the local birding I am REALLY missing because of this, there's two birds out there I actually want to twitch. The long-staying Somerset Pied-billed Grebe has been there long enough now for it become 'twitchable' for me, then there's the stunning Exe Bonaparte's Gull! What a looker, and apparently its showing very well too.

I've been waiting for rain and wind for what feels like the whole spring, and last night it came. So I set my alarm for 5am and just HAD to get out there...

I started sea watching at 05:20, too early really! It wasn't all that good, and with the shadow of report writing looming over me I jacked it in by 06:30. No skua, no shearwaters. All I saw was...

1 Velvet Scoter (drake on the sea very close in)

3 Common Scoter (on the sea)

6 Gannet

10 Whimbrel

10 Dunlin

1 small wader sp.

12 auk sp.

1 Mediterranean Gull (first-summer feeding with terns)

9 Kittiwake

3 Sandwich Tern

1 Common Tern (a year tick - woooo!).

After a few hours back at home doing you know what, the conditions prompted me to take an hours break. I did a quick tour of the valley, and tried to check as many places as possible.  The first place I went was Black Hole Marsh, and the first bird I saw here was a cracking adult Wood Sandpiper.  Sadly it was too close for photo with reeds blocking the view, so I had to walk away from it to get any sort of shots...

I know dodgy photos - but you can just about tell what it is!!!

Shortly after I sent the texts out, a land rover came driving down from the Tower Hide and the it took off and flew south. About five mins later I could see it flying around over Seaton Marshes, and about ten minutes after that I could heard it overhead again.

Also on Black Hole Marsh, three Greenshank. On the Estuary, one Dunlin with a few Blackwits and Whimbrel. But that really was it.

Next stop was the beach, for another quick look over the sea and a check for waders. The sea was still dead, but on the beach I struck patch bronze with a cracking Sanderling. For stunning frame-filling images take a look at Karen's blog.  Have a look at those cracking pics, and now take a look at a proper photo of a Sanderling on Seaton Beach...

I call it art. Everyone else calls it crap.

In my defence I didn't want to go near it incase I flushed it - I knew others would want to see this bird. Waders on the beach in spring often fly off and away when flushed, obviously this bird wasn't so skittish!

The Estuary, Coly Marsh and Axmouth FC showed nothing of note, then the hour ended and I returned home.

Blog readers won't be surprised to hear I love local patch birding. Not just this local patch, but the whole concept of local patch birding. I really enjoy reading tweets and blog posts from local patch birders about their local patch antics. Being a bit of a simpleton, looking through this blog you will see my posts are pretty much just about me going birding and what I've seen. I do admire, and am jealous of those who can write proper paragraphs about interesting stuff that sparks debates, but pure birding blogs is what I'm in to. And one I love is 'Stringer' at Beadnell Birding.

At work last night I learnt of a Collared Flycatcher at Low Newton-By-The-Sea, and spent the whole evening wondering if 'Stringer' was the lucky one who turned this cracker  up.  Click on the link above and you will see.... what a gripper and many many many congratulations. Looking back through his blog (warning, swearing often is part of his posts so it's not for the faint hearted) you will see how he, with a few others, have got Newton on the map through habitat improvement and observer coverage.

Right, that's enough for now. I'll finish with a couple of pics from last weekend...

Spring Lambs

Dear Oh Dear

A Summary Of The Last Week

Well I didn't leave you waiting quite so long for this blog post!

Jess and I have had a week off, and during the week we enjoyed some nice trips out, like...

Bath - the first time I've been here...

Stunning place!

Dartmoor...

Most of these photos were taken around Dartmeet, except for Venford Reservoir at the top

And several trips to Black Hole Marsh...

A 'must visit' for any holidayers in my opinion!

Each visit to Black Hole Marsh showed the cracking juv Spotted Redshank (stunningly depicted here), and average numbers of the more usual wader species (for example Friday showed 24 Blackwits, 17 Dunlin, six Snipe, five Green Sands and a Ringed Plover). Teal numbers increased as the week went on, with a surprise Tufted Duck also present on Friday...

A very distant and underwhelming Tuftie in the rain

A mid afternoon wander over Beer Head on Thursday is also just about worth mentioning, as singles of Yellow Wag and Whitethroat were noted. Sadly not the Wryneck I was hoping for though.

After my Hoary Footman success of Sunday night, I put the moth trap out again on Tuesday evening. When I woke up Wednesday it felt pretty chilly out, so I knew the trap wasn't going to be fully loaded - I was right! Amazingly though I managed another first for the garden - two in a week! This was a very overdue and predictable one though...

Canary-shouldered Thorn

I was back to work today, and typically Beer was almost sinking under the weight of grounded migrants this morning!

One Hundred Thousand...

...is the land mark number of hits this blog reached between this and the last post. I would just like to thank all readers, regular, occasional or one-off, for looking at this blog. I'm sorry it's not being updated as regularly as it used to be, and I know it isn't the most comical or well written birding blog on the internet - but I enjoy writing it so I hope there's at least one person out there who enjoys reading it!!

This morning, the heavy rain enticed me out. I started at Black Hole Marsh, then had a beach wander. Later on I had a look along the Estuary and from the farm gate. My totals are;

45 Ringed Plover (10 BHM, 12 on beach and were then joined by another 23 that had flown in off the sea, all 35 then flew up river), 1 Knot (juv Coly Scrape), 8 Dunlin, 6 Common Sands, 4 Green Sands (Coly Scrape), 2 Wood Sands (BHM), 1 Greenshank (Coly Scrape), 1 Whimbrel and 11 Blackwits. There were also two Common Scoters on the sea (one drake), a Yellow Wagtail on the Tesco site and at least six Swifts feeding low over the town.

Later on I had a wander around the fields behind Beer Cem. It was just the usual couple of Whitethroats and Chiffchaffs and six plus Blackcaps...but then a lovely Garden Warbler hopped out in front of me....

...a patch year tick yes, but a Melodious would have been better!!