A visitor's tale
Just had a rare and brief but wonderful visit to the Backwater. Hooked up with very old birding pal Gavin Haig, who was as entertaining as ever, despite showing signs of sinking to worrying depths of maturity:eek!:, which included almost imperceptible reactions to unsolicited mentions of any freshly dipped nearctic scolopacids that happen to have popped up locally lately.
Hot drinks and banter at Gav and Sandra's had to eventually give way to some birding, as it was such a nice day. Nicky and I had expected to perhaps be attempting to boot out little brown things from bushes on bushy Beer Head, or looking for bigger things wading around in local wet bits, but no. When it was time to leave, Gav said" How do you fancy helping me try and find a Lapland Bunting?". This was perfect, as I've been actually quite embarrassed about not having seen one this autumn, as there have apparently been several blllion in every UK shopping mall. Gav was pretty excited too, as prior to the one or two birds that have just been found on the high fields above Axemouth, the only Backwater Birding area record was of one unseen flyover a couple of years back. This made it, at this point, a rarer patch bird than all this Solitary Sandpiper dross and nonsense that had by now been seen by almost everyone. Oops, there I go again.
So the last thing Nicky and I expected was to spend the afternoon stomping about in stubble fields on cliff tops. On arrival on site, crippling views of locals Karen and Bun were quickly obtained, including vocalisations, though neither were particularly happy, as they'd failed to score, and were about to give up and head off. Bun wasn't even very well, poor chap, but had still given it a go.
So Sandra , Nicky, Gav and me weren't too hopeful as we stubblestomped and stubblestomped, but eventually, after bothering a bunch of Skylarks
and 3 Meadow Pipits, and clocking a few flyover Yammers a (the?) Lapland Bunting decided to randomly flyover our field. Luckily for us, this is a species blessed while in flight with avian verbal diarrhoea, rendering the bouncing little dot readily identifiable, even if it was only to watch it drop out of view a couple of fields away.
We persued it, of course, and after we gave up looking, it decided once more that we hadn't heard enough of what it had to say, which perhaps unsurprisingly was "tid-tip-tid-tip-tit.....Chu". This time it flew right over us, and landed in the next field. We started towards it, but then remembered that the right thing to do, now that we had it pinned down, was to phone potentially interested local birders, and 20 mins or so later Karen and Bun reappeared for the "organised flush". Karen cleverly pointed out that if we circled the bird from seawards, and formed a line perpendicular to our current one, then we'd be looking up the lines in the stubble, and would stand a greater chance of seeing it on the deck. Amazingly this worked, and against all odds we spotted the little beauty scurrying mouselike on the deck before flushing it. This resulted in prolonged close mega views, and some great photos on Gavin Haig's blog, and some worse photos on here (below) with Nicky's camera. We were all very happy. I love that Lapland Bunting.
We then went on to see the Whooper Swan, that's been knocking about with Mute Swans in a field between the Axe and the road down to Seaton. A fine end to a great day's birding on a local patch that I wish was mine.
This may bit a bit verbose for what, let's face it, is just a Lapland Bunting, but blimey, not so many people are posting on this thread of late.
So, fish and chips, and parking up over night in the van on the Seaton seafront, and a morning's birding before deparure. A stop at very high tide at Coronation corner produced comparatively few birds, but a fair few more Black-tailed Godwits than we'd have seen if we'd stayed in Bristol. Colyford Common produced great scope views in perfect light of a Kingfisher, a couple of flyover Green Sandpipers, and a flyover Brambling. I was also dead chuffed to perhaps outdo our Gav by not only dipping the Solitary Sand, but dipping good views of the entire scrape that it was seen on. The hide was closed.
What a brilliant birding area, with a great birding community. Here's some pics:
1. Lapland Bunting
2. A man out standing in his field
3. Some weird duck seen down the road this afternoon
