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WHITE-BELLIED SEEDSNIPE IN ARGENTINA

November 19, 2025

*White-bellied Seedsnipe, Rio Valdez (Mike Watson)*

BY NOVEMBER WHITE-BELLIED SEEDSNIPE HAS RETURNED TO ITS ALPINE ANDEAN BREEDING GROUNDS. THE classic site for it is Garibaldi Pass, on Ruta 3 north of Ushuaia, in Argentina’s far south. Crikey, as we crossed the pass, I was delighted that Birding Ushuaia had recently pioneered access to a much more accessible site for it, seeing its habitat above the endless Southern Beech treeline now covered in deep snow, in fact it was still snowing. After my encounter in Chile in September, I was keen to catch up with it on its breeding grounds but instead of enjoying watching it at leisure, it was clearly going to be a challenge to reach the required altitude in this weather let alone be able to locate one in the snow. ‘Do they stay up high in bad weather?’ was a hopeful question. ‘Yes’, the disappointing answer from our guide Federico. The new site in the Rio Valdez reserve is on the nothern side of the Andean watershed and does not bear the same brunt of weather coming from the south as Garibaldi Pass. The weather was still poor, the mountains above Ushuaia had a fresh covering of snow and we had already seen some evidence that things were rough up high today in the form of a mini fall of Dark-faced Ground Tyrants near our hotel on the edge of town. This was the tail-end of a large storm that had killed hikers in Torres del Paine some days earlier, no wonder I couldn’t see it through the mass of cloud my flight had entered after leaving El Calafate. Other gems driven downslope by the snowfall were a flock of Austral Parakeets feeding on dandelions in town (!!!) and the high-altitude loving Ochre-naped Ground Tyrant that we saw on the gravel airstrip at Lago Escondido en route to the the north side.

*Austral Parakeet, Ushuaia (Mike Watson)*

*Ochre-naped Ground Tyrant, Lago Escondido (Mike Watson)*

Eventually we made our way up through the beechwoods on the north side of the mountains, timber is harvested here and there are forestry roads, complete with padlocked gates(!), it would be difficult to reach the highlands above the forest without a guide with keys, even armed with waypoints. The trailhead at the end of the rutted forest track lies only a gentle 4km uphill stroll from the seedsnipe habitat, much easier than the 45 degree Garibaldi Pass slopes and more akin to a walk up Longridge Fell at home. However, it was a drag today in the snow, significantly trickier than usual and where it did not lie in the forest the track was waterlogged. It would normally be very enjoyable through the lovely, pristine, moss-covered beech trees. We left the trees behind and crossed an area of longer grassland before a snowy hillside. Yellow-bridled Finch and Rufous-chested Dotterel, two specialities of this spot, appear in quick succession. The males of both these extraordinarily beautiful birds lit up the white landscape and afforded stunningly close views. Ochre-naped Ground Tyrants had also stayed up here, at a slightly lower elevation than the pass. We paused for a cup of coffee, as Federico guided us to a likely spot for the seedsnipe, which he keeps regular tabs on, and indeed, one is there, sheltering in a snow-free streambed. So nice to see it on its alpine breeding grounds! But the snow is already melting now, swirls of mist evaporate from the lichen-covered hillside as it is time to leave, quite a different scene to our arrival here!

*Yellow-bridled Finch, Rio Valdez (Mike Watson)*

*Rufous-chested Dotterel, Rio Valdez (Mike Watson)*

*White-bellied Seedsnipe country, Rio Valdez (Mike Watson)*

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WHITE-THROATED NEEDLETAIL

October 11, 2025

WHITE-THROATED NEEDLETAIL! That’s a name to get a birder’s attention. Sitting at my desk in the Birdquest office, the Birdguides app notification certainly grabbed mine. It had already gone from Tophill Low Reservoir though, so I put it out of my mind. Later, almost at the end of the day… Yikes, it was now at Bempton Cliffs and within a few more minutes it was hanging around! A spam of messages followed as local birders caught up with it, but it was too late to set off from East Lancs for a bird in East Yorkshire. Can you imagine the traffic with lots of tractors on the road at this time of year, plus max. HGV numbers, even if there was just enough time? A couple of things. It had been relocated at Bempton by an Oriole Bird Tours group! There were 2000+(!) photos taken of it at Tophill Low by people who thought it was a Merlin… and then an Alpine Swift! The general lack of knowledge these days is shocking. I have a theory that this has something to do with a reliance on apps that are only dipped into when we need to, instead of books, which we used to read from cover to cover and learn about things we had not yet seen. Or maybe there is just a lack of interest in nature other than as a photographic subject? The last message of the sequence, at 20.46 included ‘earlier seen attempting to alight on cliffs’. That was all that was needed for hundreds of hardcore twitchers to be stood on the clifftop at Staple Newk (the Black-browed Albatross spot) before dawn the following morning. Familiar faces! Alan Lewis, Trevor Ellery, Sam Viles, Ash Howe, Paul Chapman, Richard Bonser, John Hague, Johnny Mac, Lee Evans, Richard Fairbank and even my doctor Steve! Plus an endless series of faces I recognised as older versions of how I remembered them. There was talk of an early possible sighting in the thermal cameras, but this got squashed at the time, attention turned to a lovely sunrise over the sea and I was starting to imagine a swift hawking over the cliffs in the morning sunshine. That was until 09:14. ‘White-throated Needletail, Loch of Skene, Aberdeenshire, one over north-west side briefly’ WHAT? The message said ‘also 4 Ring-necked Ducks’… no-one cared if there had been 400. There was some nervous laughter and then the exodus started. Seven and a half hours/366km away! One car, Andy Clifton’s, even made it all the way there, and that was after a message at 11:10 said ‘still no further sign by 10:57’. I wouldn’t contemplate driving so far for it and I find it difficult to believe that it could be the same bird. Do they migrate at night? Apparently, yes. Time ticked away with no further updates, so I went to work. Maybe that was that?

Again, towards the end of the afternoon, I was moaning to a guest about what I’d been up to that morning when another Birdguides notification appeared ‘White-throated Needletail - juvenile at Filey Brigg’. A lot of swearing and another series of updates followed. Much as this annoyed me, I hoped at least Paul Chapman had seen it. He had endured the most painful series of dips on this one, including the Harris bird being killed by a wind turbine while he was en route. Thankfully he did see it at Filey! He had said how he had already committed to staying in the area, just in case. Next level twitching experience. I had to talk to Bolton RSPB group this evening and managed to get through this without too many yawns and then it was off to bed with another very early start. Only this time I was more optimistic about it being seen the following day. That’s two days in the same general area now. Surely it must just have moved up the coast a little beyond the scope of the birders searching around Bempton? Maybe it fed high in the sky and evaded detection? I can’t imagine that a swift would fly non-stop to northeast Scotland and then turn around immediately and fly straight back to the same stretch of coastline 366km away? Either way, I was back next morning, on Filey seafront this time. Familiar faces again. Paul Chapman was back for more, Archie and the Peaky Birders crew, Sam Viles, Ash Howe, John Regan, Lee was here again (but downbeat about our chances as always), Ian Smith and Trevor Ellery, my Birdquest colleague. Again, it was a sunny morning and looked perfect for a swift to be feeding along the seafront, but again time ticked away without a sighting. A bacon and egg butty was just about to become the highlight of the day, when the hoped-for message came through. Shouts of ‘It’s at Scarborough’ could be heard along the promenade and birders ran to their cars. I didn’t have any experience of daytime traffic in Scarborough. Note to self – it’s awful. What a ridiculous system, so progress from Filey was quite slow until I turned right to a parallel road along the sea front, which had no traffic and then I approached the castle from the northwest, that worked well. Something worth bearing in mind for another day.

*White-throated Needletail, Scarborough Castle, 10 October 2025 (Mike Watson)*

I first set eyes on the needletail over the Sycamore trees from the castle’s barbican, however, the best vantage point is the viewing platform on the inner bailey wall, overlooking the harbour and town, as well as the north bay. Racing up there, it was very nice of the English Heritage staff to give birders a concessionary rate to enter the castle, thanks! The needletail was very mobile indeed, hawking for insects and feeding very widely over the south bay and the castle woods, covering a hundred metres or more in a few seconds. Viewing conditions could have been better as most of the time watchers on the castle were looking into the sun but a couple of times it zoomed low over the small crowd of us on the ramparts. What a setting! The wall we stood on was built between 1198-1206! It even landed very briefly or rather bounced off the wall of the great tower itself. As far as my favourite rarity events go, it is up there with the Doctor’s Garden White-throated Robin, Spurn Siberian Accentor, Anglesey Black Lark, Vorran Island Steller’s Eider and the Salthouse Little Whimbrel. All birds I never imagined I would see in the UK when I was a kid, visiting Scarborough on our summer holidays. What a grand day this one was.

*Needletail watchers Scarborough Castle (Mike Watson)*

There have been 10 previous British records of White-throated Needletail, one of which was 120km offshore from Caithness, on the cruise ship MV Ortelius. The first two were shot in the 1800s and five were on outer islands, leaving only two mainland records. I missed the first of these, at Fairburn Ings forty years ago, on 27 May 1985 (we raced there from North Norfolk and spent the rest of the afternoon chatting to birders from all over the country but the swift had departed ahead of rain). None of these were in autumn, or juveniles, which makes this one very special. Add to this the fact that the extreme western end of this Asian swift’s normal range, in the western Himalaya, is 5,000 miles away. Most of them spend the winter in eastern Australia!

*It would take 70 days to walk to the nearest hotspot from the UK (Google Maps thinks you could walk 68 miles per day!)*

The name Scarborough was long thought to have derived from the Norse ‘Skarði's borg’, meaning ‘Scarthi’s Castle’, however, this has been questioned recently - there has been a stronghold on the site of the castle for 3,000 years. The royal castle itself has a long and interesting history. Building of the main fortifications, including the great tower, began in 1159 during the reign of Henry II and it later hosted several subsequent monarchs: King John, Edward I and Richard III. Mel told me that in the English Civil War, a single Parliamentarian cannonball weighing 25kg had split the wall of the great tower during the siege of 1645! It was fired from St Mary’s Church below the castle, where most of the birders parked today.

*Recipient’s view of a cannonball fired from St Mary’s Church! (Mike Watson)*

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STILL GOT IT

October 2, 2024

*A Powerful Owl, doing its best to keep the local population of possums under control*

MY PAL ALAN MCBRIDE always used to joke that he’d still got it, well I am happy to report that he still has! I spent a great couple of days birding around Alan’s newish local patch of Melbourne before my recent Birdquest tour downunder mostly in search of a day roosting Powerful Owl for the incoming group. Well, it took us longer than anticipated but almost 20,000 steps later we found one, with a little help from another friend Field Guides’ Chris Benesh. Using eBird can sometimes be frustrating as recent waypoints are not always accurate and sightings are not up-to-date enough, so it is often a good idea to go and take a look first. One site we visited was a nest hole, which had been vacated in the previous week and was now occupied by a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, another day roosting spot had simply been deserted. So it was a relief when we set eyes on this massive creature peering down at us in a public park in downtown Melbourne, early office workers passing by under it, morning coffee in hand. It ultimately stayed put for the group and almost as good was the excellent Garden View Cafe right next to the park! We love a good pie shop! A tour of Alan’s local patch, the Western Water Treatment Plant at Werribee was also very worthwhile, producing some ace views of trickier species like Musk Duck and Baillon’s and Australian Crakes. This spot also has a great cafe within easy reach, no wonder Alan spends so much time here. There are kilometres of drivable tracks around pools, many of which are filled with birds. What a brilliant place! We stopped at another excellent bakery, Oaks in Anglesey on our way to Point Roadknight, where by chance we bumped into Chris, Jesse Fagan and their Field Guides group, watching Hooded Plovers and Pacific Gulls, it’s a small birding world indeed. Thanks Alan!

Musk Duck, another of Australia’s unqiue avifauna

*Australian Crake at Werribee, very confiding!*

*Baillon’s Crake seems to be easier to see in Australia than anywhere else I’ve been*

*The primitive Cape Barren Goose is a weird bird indeed, it has established a small foothold at Werribee*

*A pair of Pacific Gulls hanging around a fur seal at Point Roadknight*

*It’s amazing where you can find Inger Vandyke’s images! Here’s one in Alan’s apartment.*

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MOUNTAIN PEACOCK PHEASANT

September 29, 2024

MOUNTAIN PEACOCK PHEASANT is a ‘one site bird’, although it occurs more widely throughout the highlands of Peninsular Malaysia, it can only be seen regularly at one place in the world - Bukit Tinggi in Pahang state, around an hour and a half drive from the Kuala Lumpur’s international airport. In a nutshell it took me three days to see one! Things have changed at Bukit Tinggi. Whether it is the fact that fewer Malay bird photographers now visit this spot (so the food put out to lure the peacock pheasant has diminished), or the disturbance caused by a large fallen tree, or the establishment of an ill-considered second screen (where any watchers are silhouetted by the rising sun), or simply that the birds’ behaviour has been changed by some other factor, who knows? What I can say is that it did not appear on two of the days I spent at the tiny feeding station screen. I had seen so many images of these beautiful birds against the backdrop I was now looking at, that it felt like I had already seen one. Imagining what it would be like if and when one turned up during the many hours I spent staring at the same scene, it was a very exciting moment when a fine male finally walked out of the forest and onto the old trail. WOW! The traversing of KL’s ridiculously complex traffic system (I did wonder if it might be possible to go round and round and run out of petrol before following the correct off ramp), the very odd accommodation in Bukit Tinggi’s Colmar Tropicale resort (modelled on the Alsatian town of Colmar!) and many hours of sitting on the muddy forest floor watching nothing most of the time proved worthwhile. I do wonder how long it might last at Bukit Tinggi before something brings this wonderful opportunity to a close, so sooner rather than later probably applies yet again.

Every now and again there were some nice distractions while waiting for the peacock pheasant. A beautiful male Siberian Blue Robin was present each morning (but not in the afternoon), freshly arrived for the winter from Russia, Buff-breasted Babblers and Ochraceous Bulbuls also showed an interest in the feeding station and Brown-backed Needletails zoomed around high over the forest. On one afternoon a group of gorgeous Dusky Langurs moved noisily through the trees overhead. On another occasion a small mammal was rooting around under the fallen tree trunks, I thought it must be a rat of some kind but I was surprised to see that it had a long snout like a treeshrew. It was actually a Gymnure, a soft-furred hedgehog, presumably Max’s Hylomys maxi on distribution/altitude. It was nice to be back in the forest in this region after 20 years! I also met some very nice birders from Singapore, Sebastian Ow, Eunice Kong and their friends. All incredibly quiet and polite! Unlike the couple who spent one morning blasting playback from the other screen, seemingly oblivious to the main position and I heard later from James Eaton that Ferruginous Partridge does not like incessant playback anyway. The partridges have not visited regularly in recent months. There were also some flashy butterflies around, but unfortunately not the big one I was hoping for, that would have to wait until Fraser’s Hill in a couple of days time. I could hear Siamangs calling while up on the ridge and I descended down through the Japanese Garden in their direction but their far carrying whooping calls were coming from somewhere out of reach way down in the valley below. Driving back to the highway I was happy to finally catch sight of a family group of this impressive large black gibbon, the huge male swinging through the trees.

Leopard Lacewing *Cethosia cyane,* Bukit Tinggi Japanese Garden

Dwarf Crow *Euploea tulliolus,* Bukit Tinggi Japanese Garden

Presumed Max’s Gymnure *Hylomys maxi, Bukit Tinggi*

Stormy skies over the forest ridges at Bukit Tinggi

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WHITE-BELLIED SEEDSNIPE IN ARGENTINA

WHITE-THROATED NEEDLETAIL

STILL GOT IT

MOUNTAIN PEACOCK PHEASANT