Famous spots to your name (1 Viewer)

Hello folks,

My last two topics have been on the line of 'gloomy birding'. However, I would like to change onto the line of far more 'happy birding' now.

Are there any famous spots to your name? Have you ever spotted a rare/very rare bird, then gained renown from all other birders in your county? If so, feel free to tell me the whole story of you seeing the bird you spotted. Go on, have a little gloat. :king:

Personally, I was (don't know if I still am) relatively renowned for spotting a Montagu's Harrier at the Loch of Strathbeg in 2004 (I was only 10 at the time). Here's my story:

It was mid May in 2004, and my Dad and I decided to do a 'Dawn to Dusk' birdwatch. Having got up at around 4:30 and spent our time in the Bennachie area, it was late morning by the time we reached Strathbeg. When we arrived, there were no birders about. For the first half an hour, we spent our time looking at the waders and other birds present, when all of a sudden, I look up to see a big white-grey bird of prey flying in the sky (my Dad wasn't looking!)

" A male Hen Harrier!" I shouted (I didn't know how to define a Hen from a Monty's at that point).

My Dad looks up and glimpses the bird just for a couple of seconds before it suddenly dives into a tree and out of sight.

" Ooh yes, well done, that's a lifer for you!" little did we know that this was a Monty's Harrier..... we only had a couple of seconds view, so what were the chances

We left Starnafin for a bit and went up to Savioch. When we came back to Starnafin, we saw a mass of birders staring at the sky just above the visitor centre.

" Have you seen this Monty's Harrier?"

" It's a Monty's?" my Dad exclaimed, watching the bird.

" Yeah, it has the black stripe across the wing."

This filled my Dad and I with delight.

" My son here spotted that. We glimpsed it for a couple of seconds just inside the visitor centre, I didn't have enough time to see if it had the black stripe. Anyway, that's fantastic!"

At this point I was given a pat on the back and a shake of the hand by quite a few of the birders. The Montagu's Harrier then proceed to fly around just outside Starnafin, showing fantastically. I recieved even more hand shakes and I absolutely loved it! After around 40 minutes, it then flew south, and wasn't seen there again. Later on, my Dad and I were just on our way back from checking the hides round Crimmond Airfield, when, whilst driving through the airfield, we re-spotted the Montagu's Harrier, seeing it flying around in the mid-afternoon heat. There were no other birders around, and this time we had our best views ever. Such a magnificent bird it was; watching it was an enchanting experience, especially on the airfield. Having seen it at two points when no birders were there, the Montagu's Harrier felt truely like my bird. I will never forget the experience.

Wood Thrush last year at Wyoming Hereford Ranch is probably the rarest bird I have ever personally discovered.

Wood Thrush is the rarest thing I've ever discovered as well but renown did not follow because I was the only one who saw it! It can be quite difficult being a sole observer on Scilly in October. I spent three days searching the area of St Mary's where I had seen it but it had moved on never to be seen again.

The best rarity I've found for other people was a first summer Citrine Wagtail at Fleet Pond in May 1993. I had woken early on a bright sunny day to find with surprise and delight that the Friday night beers hadn't left me a hangover, so I went to my local patch to look for migrant warblers. Arriving at Sandy Bay (a small sandy/muddy beach at one corner of the pond, with a stream flowing in) I heard a wagtail call and saw a blob of yellow and grey descending.

I raised my bins expecting a Grey Wag, and wsa hit by this blinding lemon-yellow breast and head, huge white wing bars and tertial fringes on contrasting black, and knew instantly what I'd got. I then started panicking that if no-one else saw it I might not be believed - and that in an hour or less dog-walkers would start arriving.

Fortunately two birding friend lived just round the corner so I ran to wake them (it was 0625). The first door was answered by my friend's sister, who helpfully rushed to get him when she saw how pumped I was: the second heard the door and sent his eight-and-a-half month pregnant wife to answer it! On getting the news he was dressed in seconds and flying down the road in the wake of the shoe-lace flapping other one while I commandeered their phones to get news out.

The bird stayed all weekend and was seen (allegedly) by about a thousand people.

It was an absolute corker and I really enjoyed it.

John

A few highlights for me over the years.

Two barred crossbill in baltimore, cork last year is probably the rarest. Myself and a mate were mooching around rolfs guesthouse when i heard a crosser landing into some pines beside me. I called my friend to say a crosser was calling in the trees beside me. He wandered around the corner to me and the bird popped out into the open to reveal two big white wing bars. We nearly sh*t ourselves. ; )

Stilt sandpiper in loughbeg, cork, august 2003 was also a cracker. I would work the estuary most days after work for roosting gulls and terns. Not long after i sat down on the rocks a flock of waders flew down the channel. I raised my bins and spotted a larger wader in with em, but didnt get much on it. I tracked the flock till it landed and put the scope on them. A medium sized dark, long necked wader was up to its belly in a pool...there was barring on the flanks. F*ck! I knew what it was!i started reaching into my pocket for my fone and then the bird walked out of the pool and stood on a rock. Stillt sand. No doubt about it. A large number of birders came for that beauty!

Owen

This is mine .

OK not a particularly rare bird, but Kinnordy is a long way from any of the release sites and it was completely unexpected.

D

Wouldn't say it was really "on thread" but I saw a hell of a lot of good birds around Butterworth in Malaysia. :t: :t: :t:
Chris

Orlotan Bunting
20 May 2009.
Lancashire.
First for 20 years... well 18 years!
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=142151

chris butterworth said:

Wouldn't say it was really "on thread" but I saw a hell of a lot of good birds around Butterworth in Malaysia. :t: :t: :t:
Chris

Click to expand...

Hi Chris

Not sure if you have been to the East Cape region of South Africa, but if not, you need to head on over, as we also have a town named Butterworth, and now I know where it got its name:t:

Back on topic then - about the best I have done is a Franklins Gull in Durban, we don't get too many North American rarities this way, so was rather enjoyable!

Andrew

Wonderful stories folks; I am very impressed with all your rare findings. I'm particularly interested inthe Ortolan Bunting you saw gradders, as you didn't know what it was at first. The discovery that it was a fairly rare bird must have been a shocking but delightful experience. Feel proud guys, you have spotted some crackers.:king:

Some stories of a couple of my better ones:
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=9930
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=97045&page=9

How fantastic to find both Desert Wheatear and Brunnich's Guillemot, Andrew! Well done!

I wasn't recognized for this but because of me getting all muddy in Panama and having to wash off in a stream for around ten minutes we saw a Harpy Eagle on pipeline road. Otherwise we would of walked right past it.

I guess it's something :-O

Couple more from me that i didnt have time to finish yesterday.

Birding the clonakilty area in april 2005, i picked up a small egret thru bins on a wall a kilometer up the estuary. It was oddly shaped and appeared to have orange on the head. We drove up to it and sure enough it was an adult summer cattle egret. A bit of a trash bird these days, but only the 9th for ireland at the time. It was pretty well twitched over the next few days.

A couple of months later i stopped into the same spot on the way to grab lunch after a mega sea watch, and found a 1st summer lauging gull. That one was well twitched also.

One of my favorite finds however, was a gullbilled tern at womanagh co. Cork. The 2nd of 3 birds ive found in ireland. I was driving from pilmore to knockadoon head, when the bird flew right in front of my car. I swerved into a layby (without even checking my mirrors im ashamed to say). I had a good certainty of what the bird was, but at this point i hadnt gotten a clear optics based view of it.

It mooched off down the estuary at lightspeed and i put out a tentative ID to some locals, worried that the bird had fecked off out to sea. I neednt have worried though. The bird came right back by me moments later and left no doubt as to the ID. The bird showed well for the whole day and was well twitched.

Owen

The mention of Brunnich's has reminded me of another story: only two birders involved, me and BF's Dendroica.

Back in 1993 we planned a two-week stomp across the top of Scotland, looking at all the seabird colonies, in an attempt to find our own summering Brunnich's Guillemot. (This was only a few years after one had summered on Shetland, being twitched by richer people than me at Sumburgh Head).

We spent nearly a week looking at auks from Duncansby Head to Dunnet Head to Strathy Point to.... eventually we rocked up to get the boat and minibus to Cape Wrath, only to find the Army Bird Watching Society had booked it for a whole day to get a load of kit across for a ringing expedition. (I still haven't made it to Cape Wrath despite more attempts, but that's another story.) We must have scrutinised about a quarter of a million auks by this stage and we were so clued up on Guillemots and Razorbills we could have picked out a Brunnich's in the dark at twenty miles range. In flight. With our eyes shut.

We spent some time watching the RAF and USAF bombing the blazes out of Garvie island just offshore, I'd never seen live thousand-pounders going off and they are quite spectacular as fireworks go. Having walked out along a low headland to get better views of the fast jets, we noticed the bay filling up with auks on the rising tide and settled down with our scopes, back on the chain gang.

After about twenty minutes I got on a bird with a solid triangular head and a white stripe on the bill. Razorbills have square heads and Guillemots have a blob and spike.

I said to Mike "I think you'd better have a look at this, use my scope rather than waste time with directions". With one bound he was leaning over my shoulder with his eye glued to my old Optolyth 30/80. I was saying I wanted to be quite sure it wasn't just holding a fish (gives a silver line in just the right place) and I wanted to see the deep V on the upper breast/lower neck and he just went "You've got one!"

We watched it for about a quarter of an hour before it flew off out of the bay. I rang it in to Birdline but they didn't put it out - it wasn't exactly twitchable anyway.

For the second week we didn't have to look at any auks we didn't feel like looking at, and it was great!

Its always surprised me that more people don't give this a shot. Comments about odds on the SbC thread notwithstanding, the numbers of birds must mean the odds are in favour of the odd BG being there every summer.

John

Pariah, you have spotted a fair few rare birds in your time, which undoubtedly has earned you countless respect. Well done.

Farnboro John, that sounded like a lovely spot!