PALLID SCOPS OWL

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Pallid Scops Owl, Al Hajar Mountains, Oman, October 2014

PALLID SCOPS OWL TORMENTED ME FOR YEARS! Back in May 1986 I was ordered back to my hotel at gunpoint in Turkey, while looking for the famous birds in Birecik tea garden, and told to leave town the next day. PKK Kurdish terrorists were active here at the time and the police were not keen on letting me and my friends stay around. Then followed many years of seeing nice photos taken in southern Israel combined with a failure to catch up with any of them. Happily I now see this bird every year and sometimes twice a year, in both Oman and Gujarat in northwest India. I even see them when I am looking for other things! This one was a particularly nice obliging bird, having perched in an unobscured spot in a large ancient acacia. I had been playing a tape of Omani Owl, which has Pallid Scops Owl calling in the background, just before dawn when this bird responded. I left it until daylight to start searching and was very happy to set eyes on it! There is nothing like a day roosting view of an owl!

INLAND DOTTEREL, NOBODY MOVE!

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Inland Dotterel, Erldunda NT - one of the most wanted birds of Australia's vast outback

INLAND DOTTEREL WAS ONE OF MANY EXOTIC SPECIES THAT LEAPT OFF THE PAGE of the historic book 'Shorebirds' when it was first published back in 1986. I was still a teenager at the time and didn't really expect I would ever see one, however, a lot of things have changed since those days. On the recent BirdQuest Northern Australia tour we had walked several kilometres searching for this bird, across the rolling gibber plains near Erldunda, when Janó said the magic words 'Inland Dotterel, nobody move!' and there about twenty metres ahead of us was one of the most beautiful shorebirds on the planet. I have a special affection for dotterels of any kind having spent so many hours with them but this is really special. Fortunately this bird was (apparently) a little less wary than usual and allowed us to approach it reasonably closely. One of the main tour highlights for me this was a very exciting moment! Like so many birds, never as good as the first time. Formerly called 'Australian Dotterel' I think its present name is much more fitting, although 'Outback Dotterel' would have been even nicer! Nothing is known about its present status partly owing to its vast range but it is always one of the trickier birds to find. Other sought-after outback birds also in this area included Chiming Wedgebill and Orange Chat.

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Gibber plains near Erldunda

MASKED SHRIKE

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Masked Shrike at Kilnsea, Spurn

THE UK'S THIRD MASKED SHRIKE happily stayed long enough for Mark Varley and me to cross the Pennines again to Spurn. We spent a couple of hours trying to make the most of some very harsh reflected light on the bird, which was busily feeding on the third day of its stay. However, later in the afternoon it approached to within a few metres at times catching craneflies (you can see a cranefly leg still stuck to the feathers on its head!) on the edge of the grassy field in the lee of its favoured roadside hedge but always ‘against the light’. Long after the crowds had gone home, there were fewer than 10 people still here on a sunny afternoon, including artist Darren Woodhead, who did some really lovely watercolour field sketches of it. Thanks to the Friends of Spurn for organising a great viewing area and especially to Mark for doing the driving today! We even had time to enjoy a couple of Jack Snipe in front of the canal scrape hide as well as some great fish and chips in Patrington on the way home. A classic!
 

SPURN MIGRATION FESTIVAL 2014

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Eurasian Wryneck, Beacon Lane, Kilnsea (on the same driveway that the 2013 Great Snipe frequented)

A GOOD SELECTION OF MIGRANTS AT SPURN THIS WEEKEND tempted me across the Pennines again. Coincidentally it was also the Spurn Migration Festival so there were a lot of birders around (although I have seen just as many or maybe more on an autumn 'fall' weekend) and I caught up with a few friends as well. Whinchats were probably the most visible migrants but there was also a wide variety of other species. I spent a long time trying to take photos of wryneck and Barred Warbler (I saw one of the former, mostly along Beacon Lane and the adjacent campsite and two of the latter, one in the hedge opposite the church and another in a hedge at Kilnsea Wetlands) but also caught up with sother interesting birds including a first winter Caspian Gull (expertly picked up flying north by Martin Garner at the warren and thanks to Garry's emergency stop we saw it fly by just south of the Bluebell). Martin said it was only around the 10th record for Spurn as this recent taxon catches up much rarer birds with records already in double figures here. A sandy-coloured Lesser Whitethroat in the Crown & Anchor car park was probably a blythi Siberian bird but I missed the 'Lesser' Golden Plover that flew over my head at the warren. Pied and Spotted Flycatchers were everywhere and Common Redstarts popped up in hedges here and there. Chattering flocks of Eurasian Tree Sparrows passed overhead at the Warren - is there anywhere else that you can see this in the UK I wonder? I have not heard so many flava wagtails flying over in this country for many years and newcomers like Mediterranean Gulls and Little Egret (at least five of each) were also conspicuous. I love birding at Spurn, despite the crowds of other birders and hope to be back there again later this autumn.

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Barred Warbler, in the hedge opposite Kilnsea Church, a real brute that stuffed its face with elderberries all day