randombirder

A truly bonkers day that will go down as one of my best Scilly experiences, and probably one of my best birding experiences. Expect the unexpected is the way things go on these Isles. Feeling energised after a cheeky lie-in, the rosy starling was present, after a brief attempt yesterday, sitting up on residential dwellings at Little Porth. Feeling buoyed by this, I headed for the quay. A few hours on Agnes was the plan on another warm, glorious sunny day. The buff-breasted sandpiper was typically confiding, scampering around the assembled crowd. Not particularly desperate to see anything in particular, I watched the sea for a bit and then walked the coast path toward Coastguards. This is when the fun started. A morning boat had already set off for Bishops Rock, a speculative visit to the lighthouse with the hope of some interesting seabirds and the outside chance of something a little more scarce. And then the news came through that it was there. The red-footed booby was there!! I l...

With the weather more typical of the Mediterranean than the UK, birding today was pretty pedestrian, pootling around picking up some of the more reliable birds scattered around St. Mary's. After yesterday's vigil for the bobolink, there was no intention to stand around anywhere. With that in mind, I headed to the bobolink site and stood around for a while.... but only for an hour waiting for something to happen. Inevitably nothing did happen apart from the much more reliable common rosefinch and a spotted flycatcher picked out among the sycamores. The plan was to visit St. Agnes today, but news of two species absent from my Scilly list were available at Porth Hellick. Entering the Stephen Sussex hide, two grey heron with impeccable timing flushed everything in site but with enough time to see a rapidly disappearing ruff that never did return. Two garganey eventually swam back into view but were typically wary. Cream tea urges took me up to Longstones for a pleasant half hour...

Still not great on a boat but it was ok. A fair scattering of seabirds passed by the Scillonian, that included Cory's shearwater , a couple of great shearwater , at least four storm petrel and singles of arctic skua and great skua . Stepping onto St. Mary's was simply joyous, it was great to be back. Briskly heading over to Albany to park the case, I legged it up to the airport where a painful five-hour vigil didn't really provide the hoped for views of bobolink . A curious bird that stayed hidden in the weedy field below the airport despite the occasional passing of the Skybus and a monstrous Airbus A400M military aircraft that performed three circuits of the airfield. It took a single-engined aircraft to excite this bird into a brief flight before dropping back down into the vegetation - a mere three and half hours after arriving at the site. A repeat performance took place around half an hour after this monumental event, a slightly longer fly-around and slightly better...

A truly memorable encounter during an unprecedented period in British birding history heralded by a fall of American passerines as a result of a fast-moving warm weather front emanating from the North American eastern seaboard. While many had predicted the precipitation of some New World passerines, I don't think anyone would have predicted the scale of the fall. The west coast from the Outer Hebrides, down to Scilly and across into Ireland have produced a variety of forlorn vagrant birds blown across the Atlantic into isolated patches of vegetation within our shores. South Wales has fared particularly well. And as many have commented, for those found, how many birds are still out there waiting to meet their finders, and also the sobering thought of those wayward vagrants that would have inevitably perished along the way. But vagrancy highlights the brutal realities of nature and the anomalies within the natural order.  The draw of the rare that sets birders and notably twitchers i...

8th September 2023 It was only a week but it felt like a lifetime of adventure that would generally fill a month but that I guess is why it's always a thrill to visit places like Turkey, a country bristling with life, great food, and exceptional birding. Flights were booked with Turkish Airlines, there really isn't any better alternative, flying to Gaziantep from Gatwick transiting through the impressive Istanbul Airport. The flight was really comfortable having the complete row to myself settling down to enjoy the IFE and views over continental Europe. A late evening arrival at GZT, sharply leaving the arrivals terminal and jumping into a cab for my hotel located next to Gaziantep Castle before a morning start back to the airport for my hire car pick-up and straight to Biricek. 9th September 2023 It was sweltering, too hot to bird really, but ignoring all that, headed straight for the cemetery which was largely bereft of anything interesting other than a singing dead sea sparr...