TURKESTAN SHRIKE AT BEMPTON

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Turkestan Shrike (male), Wandale Farm, Bempton

ANOTHER GRAND DAY OUT IN YORKSHIRE WITH MARK VARLEY. It’s been a long time since we were last on the east coast so the Turkestan Shrike at Bempton was just what was needed to tempt me over, despite the cost of petrol, busy desk at work, other commitments etc. Another reason was that I ‘lost’ all my UK isabelline shrikes, following the verdict that they are not identifiable in immature plumages. This was very disappointing after seeing quite a few from Portland to Eyemouth, Horsey, Nene Washes and of course the Buckton bird, which was most likely a Turkestan too.

As always, a day time drive across Yorkshire was not fun, with zillions of tractors and surprisingly lots of tourists on the A-roads. We eventually arrived and parked at RSPB Bempton Cliffs, miles from where the shrike was, in the small copse behind Wandale Farm. Yellowhammers sang from every hedge along the way and a couple of distant Corn Buntings ‘jangled their keys’, birds long lost from East Lancs. [Yellowhammer has declined by 58% 1967–2016 in the UK and it is red-listed but it still thrives along the East Yorkshire coast thanks to a good winter food supply.] I enjoyed the Yellowhammers just as much as the shrike! A Little Owl peered down from between the slates of the dilapidated old farm house, behind its 1960s successor.

It’s just flown back into the hedge 5 minutes ago’. Time passed by as it got colder under an overcast sky and eventually, more than two and a half hours later, the shrike finally reappeared, in the exact spot it was last seen, in a tangled hawthorn. It obviously disliked the colder spells when clouds covered the sun and it showed several more times until the evening. A Yellow Wagtail flew over calling, another one long lost from East Lancs. We walked past ripening barley fields, towards the fabulous Bempton Cliffs seabird show. As well as the noisy gannets and kittiwakes, there were many Razorbills as well as smaller numbers of puffins and guillemots and lots of comings and goings. Fabulous stuff, almost hypnotic. The Black-browed Albatross was an ‘also’ again today, sat in the gannet colony, far away down Staple Newk, where it has settled again this summer.

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Yellowhammer male singing at Wandale Farm

A SPECIAL DAY AT FLAMBOROUGH

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Quivering cobalt in the autumn leaves - Red-flanked Bluetail, South Landing, Flamborough Head

I WOKE UP AT 4AM TODAY, to some WhatsApp messages asking about Omani Owl. I had decided not to bother going to Flamborough Head for dawn and was intending to do some birding around Ribchester instead. Well now I was wide awake and a couple of hours away was yet another new UK bird for me, Taiga Flycatcher. It was another chance to see one, having not bothered with a bird I have seen lots of in Southeast Asia. If I am going to get to 500 at last I might as well go, right? After all, it was going to be a fine sunny autumn day in East Yorkshire and there was also a bluetail right next to the flycatcher, a bird I had not seen in the UK (or anywhere else now it’s split from its Himalayan relative), since the mould-breaking Winspit bird in October 1993. Bluetail was another one I was ‘saving until later’. Actually the last one I tried to see was in the South Landing ravine as well.

The Taiga Flycatcher was on view on and off early morning in the tall trees of the ravine and even came quite close a couple of times. Top marks to Jack Morris for spotting it on its way towards us! A very grey-and-white bird lacking any peachy tones to the breast and with an almost all dark bill, whitish eye-ring and most striking of all the coal-black uppertail coverts. It called a couple of times too, a short wren-like rattle ‘trrrt’.

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Taiga Flycatcher, South Landing Flamborough - look at those black uppertail coverts!

That’s six new for me in the UK since July and all within 3 hours drive! I left the flycatcher after some very nice views, Jack thinking most folks would stick with it and we should try the bluetail while there was hardly anyone else looking. It seems that the newly-non-rarity bluetail (I can still hardly believe I’m writing this) was way more popular than the flycatcher and almost everyone clogged up the path to the whale bridge searching for it, or rather mostly chatting to their pals. It was well worth the wait and I watched it on and off for the next five hours or so. It was hyperactive most of the time, except when perching in the tall trees of the ravine, where it seemed to rest between feeding sessions. It hardly spent any time on the ground, just diving down into multi-coloured leaf litter where it blended in extremely well, almost disappearing at times. It was very difficult to photograph well with hardly any light under the still quite dense sycamore canopy and owing to the fact it did not stay still for more than a few seconds. Bizarrely the best place to watch it from was a picnic table just inside a sycamore clump, where the bluetail would regularly come within a few metres of folks sat around it!

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The bluetail spent a lot of time feeding under the small sycamores by the path to the whale bridge at South Landing.

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Taiga Flycatcher watchers, South Landing

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Bluetail watchers to the right, Taiga Flycatcher watchers to the left, a unique east coast double!

It transpired that there was no more fitting way to spend today, watching Siberian vagrants at Flamborough, when Tony Stones told me about the passing of DIM Wallace last week. I am sure he would have loved this combination. The flycatcher and bluetail even came into contact occasionally in the ravine. DIM Wallace’s ‘Discover Birds’ book was a big influence on me when I was a child. It opened my eyes to the realistic possibility of seeing rare vagrant birds and the plates showing a selection of typical birds at places like Cley, Walberswick and of course, his beloved Flamborough, were inspirational to me.

The first time I heard of such a bird as Red-flanked Bluetail was on a trip to Norway with my scout group in 1980 when I was 14. Eddie Chapman, an ex-pat birder living in Voss showed me a photo of one caught somewhere on the coast there in the 1970s. Soon afterwards I bought Lars Jonsson’s ‘Birds of Mountain Regions’, which has a first winter bluetail on the front cover. I am glad that the alternative name ‘Orange-flanked Bush-Robin’ did not catch on! Mind you I would prefer ‘Bluestart’, like in Sweden where it is called Blåstjärt. I plan to make more effort to photograph bluetails on the east coast in autumn in future.

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I guess DIM would include a bluetail on the Flamborough birds plate if Discover Birds was written now.

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This lovely book is still widely available secondhand for under a fiver!

YORKSHIRE BLYTH'S PIPIT

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Blyth's Pipit, Wakefield, January 2015

THE WINTERING BLYTH'S PIPIT IN WAKEFIELD HAS BECOME MUCH MORE OBLIGING now that its favourite field has become more flooded and then frozen. It is now feeding quite frequently on the surrounding exposed roadside verges so Alan McBride and I risked a visit to the People's Republic and enjoyed some superb views of this hitherto skulker. The local birders did a great job in encouraging folks to give it some space and stand back from the banks surrounding the field, which is hemmed in by a business park and the pipit duly obliged with a couple of great walk pasts. Very happily there was no need to enter the field or hassle it in any way and it was very instructive to have such a good look at a bird I do not see very often. It called a couple of times as well. Yorkshire is off to a great start this year! 'Great' could have been the word of the day, with the pipit views followed back in East Lancs by a couple of long-stayers - Great Northern Diver at Rishton Reservoir and Great Grey Shrike at Grindleton Forest, although these two could have been a bit closer.

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Blyth's Pipit, Wakefield, January 2015