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MAASAI MARA SERVAL

Serval, Pose Plains, Maasai Mara, August 2022

Card No. 15 in the Brooke Bond ‘African Wild Life’ series, first published in 1962 was the Serval. Illustrated and described by Charles F Tunnicliffe it is a truly beautiful animal. With legs, even more out of proportion than Cheetah, in fact the longest of any cat compared to its body size that give it a stilted appearance. It shares a finely spotted coat too, ‘at one time much in favour with native chiefs for mantles, and even today its fur is used for that purpose by the European furriers’ wrote Tunnicliffe 60 years ago. When photographing wildlife I am often thinking of an image that looks like one of his tea card paintings - I might just have what I was looking for!

We had a couple of Serval encounters on the recent Wild Images Maasai Mara tour. The first was in very harsh late morning light and very nice, but it was more of a watching experience as it hunted in a sea of grass, so typical of the Mara plains. As we waited for it to show in the open, more safari vehicles arrived and made viewing space tricky and backgrounds far from ideal, so we abandoned it. Our next meeting with the ‘Delicate Cat’ was late one afternoon at sunset, when we received a call from our lodge’s other vehicles that a Serval was not far away. This time we had it completely to ourselves for about half an hour, on the prowl in the long grass, striking various poses and crucially a few times without a mesh of grass stems across its face as so often is the way. The low light was actually really nice and the Canon R5 performed. FAB-U-LOUS!

Thanks to my awesome Maasai driver guide Tinka Jackson, without whose expert help these photos would not have been possible.

Brooke Bond Tea Card no. #15, African Wild Life 1962 by Charles F. Tunnicliffe

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KELP GULL AT GRAFHAM WATER - first for Britain

Kelp Gull (third calendar year), Grafham Water, Cambs - the first for Britain

THE LEAST INSPIRING MEGA RARITY I’ve seen is how some people have described the Kelp Gull at Grafham Water but for me it’s been a very interesting ID lesson. I wonder how many of these have passed in the crowds of black-backed gulls in the past and I half expect that this one will eventually get gazumped from its first for Britain status. It was nothing if not very co-operative for a large gull, on view all the time along the dam wall of Grafham Water on the hot and sunny afternoon I visited it. A quick whizz through its identification features: jet eye; bulbous-ended bill; flat-headed profile (at times); black mantle and long jade(?) legs was all news to me having only seen them in South Africa and Argentina, where there is much else of more interest to look at. It loafed around in the water and later on the railings of the walkway to the valve tower. Aged as a third calendar year, it is in active moult with the six, old outer primaries retained and the inner ones regrowing. With so few gulls present it was also nice to see such a variety - Great Black-backed, Lesser Black-backed, Herring, Yellow-legged (2, one even giving the wings-closed long call) and Black-headed as well as the Kelp Gull all standing helpfully in line in a ready-made ID collage on the railings. Also here were five or six Yellow Wagtails and a few Common Terns. The last (and only) time I was here, was way back in the 80s for a Leach’s Petrel. It was unrecognisable with a bank of solar panels below the dam wall and tall trees all around the reservoir.

The bill can look really massive at times, especially when foreshortened

Six old, outer primaries with adult-type inner primaries already growing

Looking flat-headed at times.

Gasping for air in the heat

Jade legs?

Not the most inspiring location, the dam wall at Grafham Water.

Only fools and English men?

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TURKESTAN SHRIKE AT BEMPTON

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.

Yellowhammer male singing at Wandale Farm

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A SPECIAL DAY AT FLAMBOROUGH

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’.

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!

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

Taiga Flycatcher watchers, South Landing

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.

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

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

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