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Filthy twitchers - which birds do you regret NOT going for? (1 Viewer)

Nutcracker said:
Come, come! Even being a WP birder, Gyrfalcon and WB diver are both waaaay more interesting than an ugly scabby seagull, however rare it might be 3:)3:)3:)

G-w Gull is probably the most underwhelming WP rarity I've seen ;)
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Did you, a purported 'birder', just say seagull.......credibility shot.

Glaucous-winged Gull, if there was on my front lawn, I wouldn't open the curtains.
 
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Britseye said:
Definitely not tiresome, Wolfie. Go for it. That weekend you speak of was six months before I got to the south-west, but I got a phone call from a friend who was in the middle of the same clean-up you experienced. I was living in Ireland at the time, seeing nothing for months, and was totally gripped - not ticks, but seeing 4 or 5 quality birds in a weekend from different points of the compass is one of the most enjoyable highs to be had in British birding. Plus of course you got to experience the mystical majesty of Cornwall, which far exceeds the site (and sight!) of a rubbish tip in Essex (if that's the GwG you're referring to? I didn't really follow the story of that thing from afar.)
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Cheers Britseye, I must admit I do too much reminiscing (which I do enjoy) and too little birding these days.

That was a magical weekend for me, I must admit as you bomb down the A30 which never seems to end, it feels potentially magical at times, Same feeing going for my occasional sea-watch at Pendeen or Porthgwarra.

Yep, I do somewhat regret not going for the Slaty-Backed Gull, but I don't ever feel gripped off by those who connected with it.

Perhaps my biggest local dip was failing to drive ten miles to Chasewater for an American Herring Gull. Just couldn't raise the enthusiasm. My loss I guess, but again it just doesn't float my boat. I do know a lot of people love all gulls (seagulls), I did love the Ross's and Ivory Gulls, however. Different gravy.
 
wolfbirder said:
I must admit I do too much reminiscing (which I do enjoy)
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My football team, Champions of Europe B :) has a motto which reads: What you achieve over the course of Time, has Echoes in Eternity. Of course we should reminisce about these things...otherwise what's the point of going for them! Anything else is just scratching an itch or indulging in momentary gratification. The only thing you can take with you at The End, is your memories!

Walk on Wolfbirder, with Hope in your Heart...
 
Britseye said:
My football team, Champions of Europe B :) has a motto which reads: What you achieve over the course of Time, has Echoes in Eternity. Of course we should reminisce about these things...otherwise what's the point of going for them! Anything else is just scratching an itch or indulging in momentary gratification. The only thing you can take with you at The End, is your memories!

Walk on Wolfbirder, with Hope in your Heart...
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A man after my own heart. I was hoping there would be a larger group of young birders to bore with my stories as I advance in years but it's mainly reminiscing with people of around my age (like Britseye) or older or looking through old birding notes or my website.
 
Steve Babbs said:
A man after my own heart.
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Er, steady on there, Steve...you don't look half as cute without your long hair! ;)

But here's a bunch of flowers anyway :flowers:

So...have you worked out who your secret admirer is yet? I'm sure there's a photo of us standing outside the Huntington House, Cape May 1994 somewhere in my mum's loft. If that's not enough clues.
 
I am walking on water at the moment Britseye, with a heart full of hope.......for the Wolves are coming alive!

But yes Liverpool were superb and I was really pleased for Klopp.
 
wolfbirder said:
I am walking on water at the moment Britseye, with a heart full of hope.......for the Wolves are coming alive!

But yes Liverpool were superb and I was really pleased for Klopp.
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There aren't many great men (or women) in the public sphere at the moment IMO, but Jurgen is definitely one of them! And I count Wolves as one of my three 'second teams' along with Norwich and Newcastle. To see Wolves in their old gold and black play Norwich in their canary yellow and green would be a dream come true for me!
 
wolfbirder said:
I am walking on water at the moment Britseye, with a heart full of hope.......for the Wolves are coming alive!

But yes Liverpool were superb and I was really pleased for Klopp.
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My team looked like they were playing under water last season and subsequently dropped out of the league. All you 'pot hunters' don't know what real football fans have to endure for the love of their team.
 
Britseye said:
Er, steady on there, Steve...you don't look half as cute without your long hair! ;)

But here's a bunch of flowers anyway :flowers:

So...have you worked out who your secret admirer is yet? I'm sure there's a photo of us standing outside the Huntington House, Cape May 1994 somewhere in my mum's loft. If that's not enough clues.
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I'm afraid your cover was blown a little while ago. A little bird(er) told me. The long hair was already a thing of the past by Cape May. I have a photo of the whole '93 Cape May crew which I'd post but I don't want to blow your cover further.
 
Steve Babbs said:
I'm afraid your cover was blown a little while ago. A little bird(er) told me. The long hair was already a thing of the past by Cape May. I have a photo of the whole '93 Cape May crew which I'd post but I don't want to blow your cover further.
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I stumbled into a picture from that era on my computer earlier in the week and was delighted to see I had photographic evidence of my Gurney's Pitta T-shirt that has long since been (unfortunately) lost. The 'Britseye' moniker stems from a thing I wrote in 1999 'A Brit's Eye View of Cape May' - it was around then everyone was first getting into e-mail and I used that as my password. Been too lazy to change it ever since. Hope to see you again one day.

ATB
GG
 
'93 was the best year of birding of my life: having spent six months in Thailand and Malaysia, I just couldn't cope with being in the UK so flying out to Cape May for a couple of months was just what the doctor ordered. A great laugh as well as great birding.

That's proved the point about old gits reminiscing.

That'd be good. Being more-or-less retired from UK twitching, I haven't been to Scilly since the ovenbird but if you're ever in Suffolk let me know or maybe it'll be on some foreign field.
 
I have been curious for quite some time: where is this Cape May you speak of? All google shows me is a place in the US, which, frankly, doesn't make much sense for so lany brittish people to go to.
 
New Jersey. One of the top migration spots in the US. Allegedly there used to be a lot of places that were so desperate for workers that some employed people from the UK without a green card. Or so I've heard.
 
Paul Chapman said:
RBA ran it as 'an unconfirmed report of a possible Chestnut-sided Warbler' so I didn't give it a crack from Bristol. I rang a friend in Taunton though who connected. It was called into the Flint pager who broadcast the observers' description eg the bright green, wingbars, etc with the observers' belief that it was a Chestnut-sided Warbler. However, my friend who would have relayed that message was on the Scillies without pager reception. :-C

All the best
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I had just come off Scilly and was in the Safeway car park in Penzance looking at Rosy Starling. A birder came up and told me about the warbler so I headed straight to Prawle - driving past my house on the way! I met Mike Langman and Mush by the phone box in Prawle village to ask for the latest news. They just said to drive to the bottom car park as fast as possible, which I did! The bird was there as I got out of the car. It did a circuit of the car park and disappeared into the reserve never to be seen again. The chap two minutes behind me dipped. To continue my good fortune, I returned the next day and lucked in on a long-taile Blue butterfly :)
 
Darrell Clegg said:
I had just come off Scilly and was in the Safeway car park in Penzance looking at Rosy Starling. A birder came up and told me about the warbler so I headed straight to Prawle - driving past my house on the way! I met Mike Langman and Mush by the phone box in Prawle village to ask for the latest news. They just said to drive to the bottom car park as fast as possible, which I did! The bird was there as I got out of the car. It did a circuit of the car park and disappeared into the reserve never to be seen again. The chap two minutes behind me dipped. To continue my good fortune, I returned the next day and lucked in on a long-taile Blue butterfly :)
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Excellent stuff!

:-C

And on a day when like a suicidal moth to a flame, I have been staring at Needletail photos:-

https://www.birdguides.com/articles/twitching-the-needletail-a-day-to-go-down-in-folklore/

"Dick had rung in at around 12:45 on 24th to report a "large swift with white on" over Loch Direcleit, just to the south of the town, a short while before his call. However, from what I could gather, his views had been brief and in poor conditions and the bird had since disappeared. Over the phone, I ran through the key identification points of both Alpine Swift and White-throated Needletail, but Dick had been unable to ascertain whether the white was on the upper or underside of the bird. He did say to me, though, that he didn't believe the bird to be a needletail and added that, given how poor his views had been, he'd struggle to rule out an aberrant Common Swift. We discussed the options available and decided, given the brevity of view and the bird's apparent subsequent disappearance, to abstain from broadcasting any news. Dick did promise to ring back if he saw it again."

All the best
 
Darrell Clegg said:
I had just come off Scilly and was in the Safeway car park in Penzance looking at Rosy Starling. A birder came up and told me about the warbler so I headed straight to Prawle - driving past my house on the way! I met Mike Langman and Mush by the phone box in Prawle village to ask for the latest news. They just said to drive to the bottom car park as fast as possible, which I did! The bird was there as I got out of the car. It did a circuit of the car park and disappeared into the reserve never to be seen again. The chap two minutes behind me dipped. To continue my good fortune, I returned the next day and lucked in on a long-taile Blue butterfly :)
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Gosh what a tale! Alan Amery was the only bloke I'd known who'd seen this bird till now: him and his wife. He once handed me a glass of whisky in one hand and some sketches of the CSW he'd had commissioned by a well-known artist in the other. I heard only 18 people saw it?
 
opisska said:
I have been curious for quite some time: where is this Cape May you speak of? All google shows me is a place in the US, which, frankly, doesn't make much sense for so lany brittish people to go to.
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When people ask me 'where's the best place you've ever been birding in the World' I answer 'Cape May' before they finish the sentence. But then, as Steve hinted, we were very very lucky to see it through many months of the year. (I even lived there continuously about three years at one point). I still have lucid dreams about the place on a regular basis. I enjoy travelling about a bit from time to time, but at heart I've always loved being a 'patch birder'. There is no better place, in my experience, for the continuity of bird migration practically 365 days of the year because of the latitude it sits upon.
 
When I used to twitch:

Sitting in a pub in Sheffield, with birding mates, discussing the Varied Thrush in Cornwall. Only one of us decided to go - and he connected next day. The rest of us still need it (& for me, for my world list!)

Like Temmie I really regret not trying for Gurney's Pitta when I had the chance.
 
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