Cornish Coast Path

Our last day in Cornwall was a slightly different one as we decided to do more walking than birding in a circular route from Mousehole to Lamorna.
First stop of the day however was a brief detour to Drift to have a look at the 3 ring necked ducks that had been around since earlier in the week. They were showing distantly but well at the far end of the reservoir.

The gardens at the top of the hill heading out of Mousehole look great for birds, loads of cover with lots of hedges and sycamores. I'm sure there was a yank in there somewhere but it wasn't to be on that day.

We took the inland route first along the lanes through the farmland. There were plenty of skylarks and thrushes going over but nothing of note. A reed bunting in a hedge did get the pulse racing briefly but it wasn't too be.

The valley at Lamorna was much bigger and more extensively wooded than I expected so finding anything in it would be real luck. A calling nuthatch and 2 firecrest were the highlights but what else was lurking in there...

The walk back along the coast path was stunning with views back over Lamorna Cove and distantly across to the Lizard. With news of a red-eyed vireo on the Lizard it was exciting to come across the  scrubby National Trust area called Kemyel Crease. Again it was an amazing looking area with so much potential but with so much choice for any bird, finding anything would be a challenge.

The very sunny and warm rest of the walk was a lovely way to end our week in Cornwall. We didn't manage to find a mega but the catbird was very unexpected and the supporting cast was very pleasant.

Reverse valleys

Checked the valleys again today but in reverse this time, heading to Nanquidno to start
.

It was evident as soon as we got into the field that there were lots of thrushes in overnight with numerous blackbirds in the first few fields we crossed. Good numbers of starlings (540) and redwings (55) were recorded going over as we dropped into Nanquidno. By the time we we'd finished the valley the passage had stopped.

The valley was pretty quiet but Rachael did find a yellow browed warbler bathing in the stream and there was a 2nd bird by the old mill at the bottom of the valley. Surprise record of the day was a flock of 10 crossbills over calling.

We walked along the coast path to Carn Gloose but the weather had turned much colder and cloudier so there so with no sign of the vagrant hawkers we dropped into Cot Valley. 2 yellow browed warblers were in a garden on the north side of the valley and were probablg different to the ones seen in the bottom.

After searching lots of ivy we finally caught up with some ivy bees near St Just

Porthgawrra to St Levan

Having met up with Paul French last night we spent the day birding with him along the south side of Lands End.

We parked at the start of the Porthgwarra road and started along Higher Bosistow lane. The cover is dense and massive but we did manage a firecrest (probably 2) with a mobile tit flock.

The fields at the end of the lane failed to produce anything amongst the pipits and sparrows but a common redstart at the bottom of Nanjizal was a nice surprise and our first of the trip. We headed towards Porthgwarra along the coast path when a pipit flew overhead calling but sadly disappearing into the distance. I initially called it a tree pipit but in Pauls opinion it was probably an olive backed! Frustrating but the way it goes.

The small valley just before the Moor produced at least 1 yellow browed warbler with 3 wheatear on the Moor itself. 2 further yellow browed warblers were in the dense scrub below the coastguard cottages along with several chiffchaff.

The walk over to St Levan was fairly quiet but we did see the tail end of a large chaffinch movement. We had 3-400 in am hour between Porthgwarra and St Levan but over 1000 had bedn seen during the morning by others. Apart from a ton of chaffinch in the bushes, St Levan was quiet. We walked up the valley across the fields back to the car but despite looking rare we couldn't find anything.

Definitely seemed to be more common birds about today with our final totals of

Chiffchaff - 19
Firecrest - 1
Wheatear - 5
Merlin - 1
Common redstart - 1
Yellow browed warbler - 3
Brambling - 1
Chaffinch - 300+

A very pleasant walk in the late autumn sun.

Cot to Kenidjack

The plan for the day was to go the other way, starting again in Cot Valley but heading north around to Kenidjack.

The morning started promisingly with a firecrest with the tit flock where we are staying. We headed into the valley from the north side this time but again it felt quiet with less birds than yesterday. The coast path past Cape Cornwall was alive with dunnocks, robins, wrens and blackbirds but we couldn't manage to find anything else.

2 black redstarts in the cove at the bottom of Nanquidno were new for the trip but otherwise the valley was very quiet.

We stopped for a cream tea in St Just and headed back towards Cot Valley. A better route than dicing with death on the main road. This proved to be the right choice as we found a yellow browed warbler in pretty much the last garden in the town. It wasn't  much but at least we found something. Amazingly we bumped into another bird, this time calling, almost back at the campsite. We didn't really need to do all the other walking!!

I couldn't resist a couple of relaxing hours seawatching at Pendeen in the afternoon. There wasn't an endless stream of big shears but pleasant none the less. Highlights were 2 Balearic shearwaters, my 1st in the UK for a VERY long time, 3 arctic skuas and 2 med gulls among the steady stream of gannet, auk and kittiwake. 2 chough were over the lighthouse for most of the time too.

Cot to Nanquidno

Having arrived last last night we were unable to go for the gray catbird but with no signal where we're staying we decided to stick to our original plan and head into the valleyx. With no news on the catbird be headed into the land of no signal.

Cot Valley, like most of them has loads of good cover and finding anything is a bit of a challenge. We tried both standing and watching and walking but neithrr method produced a great deal. Conditions seemed perfect with no wind but the whole valley only produced 5 chiffchaff and a female blackcap.

We pinged into signal at the bottom of the valley and it told us that the catbird was still present so we decided that we'd walk the coast path to the bird. Just beyond Nanquidno, Rachael started to get a blister so we decided the long walk probably wasn't the best idea.

We turned back and headed into Nanquidno. There were a few more birds with 6 chiffchaff, 5 blackcap and a couple of smart firecrest. Nice but hard work.

Back to the digs for a cuppa then we headed off to look for the catbird at Sennan. I was expecting it to be a bit of a scrum but i was pleasantly surprised by the lack of people, only about 50 at 2pm.
The bird was pretty elusive to start with but we got views after about 30mind. Fairly skulky but well enough to see all the features. After disappearing again for a further 40 mins is appeared and showed really well sat out in the open for several minutes. The  scope views were great, the pics were not! After seeing the bird well for a 3rd time we called it a day.

Despite the frustration of the morning it turned into a good day.

The changing seasons

After the excitement of a 'bit of autumn' yesterday, it was back to normal seasonal fare on the reserve today. There were still several yellow browed warblers about the place, I heard 3, but it was all about the pink footed geese on the grazing marsh today.

Numbers have been increasing over the last few weeks but it seemed that even more birds have recently arrived. On our last count over 13,000 were around the reserve but that number will surely be higher on the dawn count next week.

At this time of year many of the birds spend much of the day roosting on the grassland rather than heading inland to the fields to feed. They can be very restless and are often disturbed by birds of prey, feeding cattle and reserve management work but they never move far. Today I got the chance to spend a bit of time watching a small number of the birds.

Most of the breeding herons have now moved off. The spoonbills have headed down to the south coast, the little egrets are only roosting and disappearing out onto the saltmarshes during the day and only a couple of the great white egrets are still present. Thankfully they are hard to miss!!

There are still a few waders on the move with 4 green sandpipers feeding around the main flood today.

Red necked phalarope

When I got back to the office this morning I was greeted by Andy saying 'I've got your bag, we need to go'. To be honest first reaction was that there was a problem but thankfully he'd grabbed my camera bag as a red necked phalarope had just been found on the boating lake at Wells.

When we arrived the bird was just paddling around the edge of the lake just a few feet from visitors, dogs and another couple of birders, completely unfazed by being so close to people. At one stage it was flushed into the middle of the lake by a surfacing little grebe but soon came back to the edge.

We took a few photos, put the news out and headed off to continue our days work.

There will be better pics out there than mine but I'm well happy with mine and very glad I had my camera with me!!!!

Seawatching at HBO

One of the most frustrating things in birding is being sat in an office with one of your friends messaging you saying the seawatching is great but you can't get out to see it. That has happened to me for years. It has been made worse by the fact they know I hadn't seen an adult pomerine skua complete with full tail before and really wanted to see one.

After many years of trying, I finally managed to have a day off with decent weather conditions so I met Dave at Holme just before it got light this morning in the hope of a decent movement of birds.

Although it didn't seem too promising as we walked to the beach, the wind wasn't quite as strong as we expected, we were pleased to get the first skuas (2 bonxie) through almost as soon as we'd set up. The westerly gannet passage was good and we soon started to pick up a trickle of great skuas. Most of them were close, coming through in 1's or 2's but we did have several larger groups during the morning.
The first 'interesting' bird of the morning, a small dark phase skua, came through as fairly close range. We ended up calling the bird as an Arctic skua but the very light and buoyant jizz initially had us leaning towards long-tailed but after much discussion we decided upon Arctic. In a strong head-wind and dull light, these small skuas are decidedly tricky!

Our first pomerine skuas of the morning, 2 juvs, headed through west before the moment I'd been waiting for all this time happenened when Dave called 'Pom with spoons!' and sure enough, a cracking adult pom skua was powering through west. Worth the wait and great to finally to catch up with one. Two further juvs too the mornings total to 5.

By 11am, things had started to tail off dramatically. The wind had dropped and the continuous passage of gannet and auks had all but dried up and the odd bonxie that was still about seemed to spending more of their time sat on the water rather than on the move. That was my cue to end a great morning.

Holme BO totals 06:44 - 11:30

Bonxie - 88
Common scoter - 106
Gannet - 233
Brent goose - 1
Diver sp - 2
Red throated diver - 5
Arctic skua - 16
Pom skua - 5 (1 adult)
Wigeon - 96
Pink footed goose -  6
Manx shearwater - 13
Sooty shearwater - 2
Kittiwake - 7
Common tern - 5
Sandwich tern - 7
Snipe - 8
Fulmar - 1
Teal - 67
Tufted duck - 2