Forster's Tern in Essex

For anyone who took up twitching after the early 2000s, Forster's Tern has been a real British blocker. This bird, found yesterday on the Stour Estuary, is the first to linger anywhere in Britain since 2003 - and in fact the last widely twitchable bird was a couple of years further back than that. As such, this bird attracted quite large crowd on a bleak November day.

I've seen two Forster's Terns in Ireland (the regularly returning bird in Co Galway and a first-winter in Co Mayo in February 2014) but it was hard to ignore the temptation of heading up to Mistley this morning for a British tick, particularly given how well the bird was reported to have shown on Saturday afternoon. Eventually it did one close fly-by but in my haste I didn't notice my camera settings were a little awry and the meagre offerings below are about as good as it got for me. Weather conditions and light were absolutely awful and as anyone with a camera will know, photographing a grey bird on a grey background is never particularly easy - particularly as it bombs past at high speed.

Forster's Tern, Mistley, Essex, 20 November 2016

American Tree Sparrow in Sweden

Awful photos (ISO 5,000) of a brilliant bird in near-darkness late on Friday afternoon. Amazingly it did a Friday night bunk and a crowd of 400 (including Brits, Finns and Germans) all dipped. I think just about everyone had assumed that this bird was well settled and many seemed to think it might even stay all winter. It seems I was very lucky!

American Tree Sparrow, Staffanstorp, Sweden, 18 November 2016

Cliff Swallow

November rarities often come right out the blue, and such was the case with this Cliff Swallow at Minsmere, Suffolk. Found on a miserable Friday afternoon, it was clear that the bird wasn't going far that evening and as such it was with a high degree of confidence that up to 300 or so birders gathered on the reserve at dawn the following morning.

Some, myself included, were duped by a message of it reportedly roosting in reeds by Bittern Hide and spent the first 45 minutes of daylight there. No swallow, but great views of an Otter fishing just in front of the hide as well as a couple of fly-by Bitterns and a spectacular flock of Starlings.

The bird was first seen shortly after seven but proved a bit of a nightmare for the first half hour, almost to the point that we thought we'd dipped given that it had been seen gaining height over South Hide. Happily it came back, settled down and showed very well with up to eight Barn Swallows in bushes just north of the reserve's north wall. At times it was just overhead, though it spent most of the morning sat in hawthorns, presumably warming up, until we left a little while before 08:30.

American Cliff Swallow, Minsmere, Suffolk, 5 November 2016

Grip-back Crag

Sunday lunch was fast approaching and the glorious smell of a home-cooked roast had literally just infused my nostrils as the unmistakable sound of a singing Black-billed Cuckoo resonated from my mother's living room. Nonchalantly making for my phone, assuming it would be another feeble excuse for mega-rarity that I'd already seen (what else would be breaking on a quiet, grey Sunday in November?), I was therefore a little surprised to read that the aforementioned mega was actually something I very much did need - and something that I'd missed in the most hilarious of circumstances in April 2014.

I realise that I didn't post anything on my blog at the time so to fill those in who don't use Twitter (where much of the fall-out occurred), essentially I fell asleep reading my book on my bed a short while before David Campbell was picking me up from my flat in Chiswick. I didn't wake up until nearly 08:00 the following morning, by which time David (and everyone else) had got to Flamborough Head and watched the Crag Martin fly off down the headland until it was nothing more than a speck on the horizon. Disorientated, disappointed and feeling downright stupid, it's fair to say I was absolutely seething with the entire episode - particularly as, at that time, it was the most twitchable Crag Martin ever to be seen in Britain and a bird I hadn't anticipated clawing back in a hurry. Surely it would be years before another was so accessible?

Fortunately, that assumption proved to be wrong. Although there wasn't anything I could do about it that afternoon, I arranged to meet Dan Pointon on site early the following morning with the thought that the bird would probably be back around Chesterfield's famous 'crooked spire', which sits like a witch's hat atop the Church of St Mary and All Saints in the centre of town. A number of previous November/December records in Northern Europe have lingered for several days, so hopes were high that this one would do something similar.

And so it proved. The bird was there just after 08:00 the next day, flying round the spire as it had done the previous afternoon. The only problem was that I wasn't - I'd slept in again, ignoring my 05:30 alarm. What a cretin! Fortunately, the martin decided to linger throughout the morning and even had the decency to fly right over my car as I pulled up at 10:15. The weather was miserable, but it gave great views and even briefly landed on the church on a couple of occasions.

Almost as worthy of the #ThingsYoureUnlikelyToSeeInChesterfield hashtag was a female Merlin that zoomed over shortly after I arrived. I had my camera poised for the martin and had blasted off a few shots without really thinking about what the bird was, only realising the ID when reviewing the photos a little later in the morning!

So on the martin front, all's well that ends well - even if I am a bit of a shit twitcher.

Weekend wildfowl

Drake Ring-necked Duck, Startop's End Reservoir, Hertfordshire

Female Long-tailed Duck, Deeping High Bank, Lincolnshire, 7 November 2015

Called in to see the Ring-necked on my way back up to Lincolnshire this weekend - a nice bird nearly back in full breeding plumage, and quite showy to boot (as all the ducks are at this site it seems). The Long-tailed is my third in the Peterborough area following birds in 2004 and 2006 - the latter, which was on my old patch, is apparently also the last area record!

Desert Wheatear

Arriving from the second half of October onwards, Desert Wheatears tend to mark the conclusion of the autumn period in Britain. There have already been three this early November, including the extremely tidy male pictured above at Reculver, Kent.

With Sunday free and having not seen a DW in Britain since the female I ticked while dipping Chimney Swift on Holy Island in 2005, I met up with Rich and headed down to Kent for an hour or so in the company of this bird. The light was grey and flat but the bird made up for it, despite the seemingly endless procession of lens wielding admirers parked flat on the beach about ten metres from its favoured rocks. This species has a habit of being pretty fearless and so it proved; though not bothered by humans, it wasn't quite as ridiculous as the Lowestoft bird looked! You'll notice that the DW is facing left in every shot - all thanks to a light but persistent southwesterly.

More wheatear pics on my Flickr pages:

Having had our fill and taken enough photos to add to the ridiculous total already taken by others, we headed down to Dungeness for the afternoon. The best bird was a brief first-winter Yellow-legged Gull but we did speed by a Great White Egret, which was mincing around in the usual corner of ARC Pit.

Brief (shite) Desert Wheatear vid: